"99" Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

I fondly remember the fun ice cream cone cupcakes parents would make for class birthday parties when I was in grade school. Who doesn't love an ice cream cone that doesn't melt? I wanted to recreate this for Miss A's birthday this year, but make it a bit more special.  We used pieces of Cadbury Flake chocolates to make it a "99" ice cream cone cupcake since we also love 99 ice cream cones when we visit family in England.

Miss A was turning seven. We've done several other fun school birthday treats the last few years, including ice cream cone cake pops. She was excited about the idea of ice cream cone cupcakes and requested chocolate cake and strawberry "ice cream" frosting. It was fun and easy. I referenced several different recipes and ways to decorate the cupcakes to make them look like true ice cream cones.  Here is my how-to to create this version:

1) Make the cake batter - I made homemade chocolate cake batter

2) Bake the cake in the cones - I used regular cake cones as they have the flat bottom. I filled the cones 3/4 full with batter and baked them until firm. Let them cool before frosting.

3) Make the buttercream - I always make Martha Stewart's simple buttercream recipe. After making the basic buttercream, add some color. I added some strawberry JELLO gelatin powder to add some color and a little flavor for the "ice cream."

4) Decorate! I piped on the buttercream to look more like ice cream, added some sprinkles and used a red M&M for the "cherry" on top along with the small piece of Cadbury Flake.

After we decorated them so nicely, we realized they weren't going to be so easy to transport to school.  So, my handy husband fashioned a holder from a piece of cardboard to hold  each of them in place in the tray.

The birthday girl was pretty excited (as were her class mates)!

Christening Cupcakes

A friend of mine asked me to make some cupcakes for her daughter's christening this weekend.  I was very honored, of course, and took the challenge on.  I really don't do a lot of baking for order and mainly just bake for fun, family gatherings or to try something new.  So, I have to admit I was a bit nervous to make sure I created something that was special enough and tasted amazing too.  We talked through flavors and decorations and while she thought chocolate would be good, she left it to me to come up with colors and decorations for her. 

I was thinking of doing some fondant or marzipan cut outs in white on a colored buttercream, but I had difficulty finding small fondant cutters in the shape that I was looking for - crosses and doves.  However, at my baking supply store, they do have candy making supplies and I found these great chocolate molds. While it was a little tedious, it was quite easy to do and I love how they turned out.  I melted down my white chocolate pieces in a glass measuring cup in the microwave, poured it into the molds, tapped them to get the bubbles out and let them set for around 10 minutes in the freezer.  Just like the lady at the store said, they popped right out after I took the trays out of the freezer. I made chocolates!

I tried a different chocolate cupcake recipe for these.  I used the Devil's Food Cupcake recipe from my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book.  I LOVE this recipe compared to others I've tried.  The cake is much more dense and moist and has a nice rich flavor (yes, I had to sample one!).  I made a simple vanilla buttercream frosting with the white chocolate decorations. 

I was so happy I remembered to get a few cupcake bakery boxes to transport them in.  Plus, it makes them seem professional when they're packaged nicely. 

I really like the color of these.  They remind me of the Wedgewood jasperware pottery that I have a small collection of. I hope she likes them!

Sugar Cupcakery

My little brother, big sister and I happened to be together this past weekend and my sister has been wanting to take me to this cupcake shop, so we had a little sibling outing to sample cupcakes at Sugar Cupcakery near Cincinnati, OH.

They've been open less than a year, but I was especially intrigued as my sister let me know that they were actually going to be on the first episode of Food Network's new show, Cupcake Wars (which I have to admit I am now addicted to).

The shop has a beautiful location amongst several antique shops and other eateries. Their cafe is full of space for people to sit and enjoy their cupcake and has a nice modern decor. They even have this room available for people to rent for events. I can imagine a gorgeous cupcake bridal shower or baby shower!



They have several different cupcake options and boast using the best organic ingredients. They also offer vegan cupcakes. However, this is ALL they have - just cupcakes and no other options whatsoever. Hopefully people in Milford and Cincinnati area are hungry for cupcakes! The cupcake options were nice, but nothing out of this world. I think they look quite pretty, but I thought their piping looked a little broken and sloppy (which they commented on Cupcake Wars).





When you chose your cupcake flavors, they set them on a tray before plating or boxing them.



We decided to relax and sample our cupcakes there. We tried the strawberry, coconut lime (my favorite), chocolate truffle and vanilla bean along with a nice hot cup of coffee. I loved their big coffee mugs and their logo with the frosting swirl and outline of the cupcake paper is adorable.

Of course, we had to get some to go for the kids and the guys watching the kids. They did a nice job of boxing the cupcakes so they looked like a pretty present.

Sweets in Cincy

On my recent visit to Cincinnati to visit my sister, I had the time to take a side trip to O'Bryonville to the Bonbonerie Bakery. This is where I had my sister's bridal shower and I don't know that I had been back there since then. They have since added a cafe and I was interested in checking them out again.

The old tearoom was closed since they have the new cafe and we spent most of our time perusing the bakery cases and all the pretty treats.

Audrey had fun looking at all the pretty cookies and cupcakes and gravitated towards the brightly colored frosted sugar cookies.

Their displays are so pretty!

They had a lot of sample cake designs. They do gorgeous (and very delicious wedding cakes) and this is actually where my sister got her wedding cake.

They had a pretty outdoor seating area, so we ordered a sampling of pastries, got a latte and enjoyed our treats. We also got a loaf of brioche to go and made amazing brioche french toast the next morning!

The real reason we were visiting for the weekend was my niece's 2nd birthday. My sister also loves to bake and made some vanilla cupcakes for the birthday girl. She had some chocolate buttercream to use and made some vanilla buttercream, so we had some fun piping together. I had some Dora decorations to put on a few since she loves Dora. The others we piped with swirls and topped with a purple flower (although the purple was darker than I had originally intended). We used the same flower tip to pipe the chocolate buttercream and it turned out nicely.

Here are the ones with the pretty bright white buttercream and purple flowers.

The chocolate buttercream was made with real chocolate (not just cocoa) and was SO good (Audrey coco approved!). It was the first time I've tried the big flower tip and it was quite easy.

Spring Cupcakes

I had found these pretty tulip inspired baking cups recently and thought I'd make some spring cupcakes to adorn with my pretty marzipan tulips and also try practicing some piping with some of the new pastry tips I found.

I used my favorite vanilla cake recipe from Billy's Bakery in New York. It's light and fluffy with a great vanilla taste. I made this same recipe for the vanilla cupcakes we had for Audrey's birthday party last year. It's very easy to make with mixing dry ingredients together and adding the wet ingredients to mix in the kitchenaid. It's makes such a glossy and smooth batter.

The recipe makes around 30 cupcakes and I filled all my tulips papers (it came in a pack of only 24) and also made an extra tray of 6 with some pretty pale pink papers. I considered these the test batch! When you put the batter in the tulip papers, the petals folded in a bit and looked so pretty!

Here they are out of the oven. They rose nicely and the only thing that annoyed me was you can see where the paper soaked in some oil from the batter, but the tips are dry. They also came out of the pans nice and held their own.

I made my favorite vanilla buttercream frosting and found it easy to not only put the pastry bag in a cup to fill it, but I folded the edge of the bag over the side of the glass so it wasn't as messy.

With the tulip papers, they probably weren't the best cupcakes to practice piping, but I was up for the challenge. I used a very large star tip and put a nice big swirl of light purple buttercream on top of each one. For the ones that I put the marzipan tulips in, I just spread some of the frosting on top so the tulip would stand out.

Marzipan in Bloom

I first tried to make marzipan last month around St. Patrick's day. After some difficulty and several hours, I ended up with marzipan, managed to color it and ended up with some cute marzipan shamrocks. I had made such a huge batch of marzipan, that I tried freezing it (wrapped in both plastic wrap and foil). I was ready to try molding marzipan again and wanted to be a bit more creative. To go with the season, I wanted to make some marzipan tulips and had seen these in my new marzipan book. Easy, right? Well, since I already had the marzipan made, it wasn't too bad.

I read in another baking book on how you can reconstitute dried marzipan. And, while the marzipan froze quite well, it was a bit dry after it thawed. I used a little bit of corn syrup and kneaded it quite a bit until it was nice and moist and mailable. I started by coloring it the color I wanted my tulips to be and just went with a bright yellow. After the color was kneaded through, I started with a small tube shape.

The tube was cut with a sharp paring knife into equal pieces for each of the tulip flowers.

Then, you molded each piece into a nice smooth cone shape.

Then, I took a pair of sharp kitchen scissors to cut slits in the tip of the cone to make the petals. The book had the petals pointed in, but I molded mine out just a touch.

Here are all my tulips! Once I had accomplished this piece of it, I read on to see how I could do the leaves and stem to finish them off. I used another piece of marzipan to color green, made the cones again and only cut one larger slit to make two leaves.

For the stem, the book suggested using spaghetti noodles (a 3 inch section) to color with food coloring to match the stem. I thought this was ingenious, but was actually out of spaghetti, which I couldn't believe. So, I found some small lollipop sticks, cut them in half and colored them green with a pastry brush. It worked great!

I was so proud of my marzipan tulips and proudly displayed them on top of my spring tulip cupcakes (see next post). I have more marzipan in the freezer and fun plans for things to make coming up!