Spring Flower & Bumble Bee Cupcakes

Happy 1st day of Spring! Oh how I love this time of year! I am so ready for the warm weather to be here to stay. I just wanted to buzz in real quick to share an old favorite recipe of mine and get you in the mood for spring. You may remember my Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes originally posted on The Cake Blog back in July 2011. Well to this day they are still one of my all time favorites. I absolutely love everything about them from their bright colors of yellow and pink and the tartness of the lemonade to the sweetness of the strawberry buttercream. If you check out the original recipe you will remember I made them in mason jars, which is still such a fun trend and such a great way to display, serve and transport your sweets!

This past weekend I made them again for a baby shower to celebrate my friend Katie and her little girl Macie that is on the way in early April! The invitation sent out said "Have you heard the buzz?" so of course there is nothing more appropriate than a little bumble bee topper to fit the theme. All the decorations were pink and yellow so these cupcakes were an absolutely perfect fit for such a sweet occasion!

To create the flowered look of the buttercream I used Wilton piping tip #104 and just went around in a circle 3 times layering the icing on top of each other. You can get all the instructions from this post about my Ombre Ruffle Cupcakes. The only difference is for the Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes we aren't using 3 shades of icing, it's all the same color.

To create the bumble bee all you need are 3 things: sliced almonds, yellow jelly beans and black royal icing. Pipe three stripes of icing across the jelly bean and gently place the almonds on each side. Add two dots of icing for the eyes and that is it! Allow the bees to set up overnight and then place on top of the cupcakes!

These cupcakes are absolutely perfect for spring, summer or even Easter which is just right around the corner!

Hope you all have a happy spring!

Baking Organization - {Part 2}

One thing I've been working really hard on this year is getting all my baking things organized, as you may remember from this post. If you ask my husband he will quickly tell you that almost every single room of our house and all of our cabinets and pantry are overflowing with something related to baking! So to keep my baking hobby under control and eliminate the chaos throughout our house I decided it was time to give everything a place. I've gathered bins and baskets and have re-purposed a book shelf to create my central baking hub in my office. Here you will find a lot of the props that frequently show up in my blog posts such as ribbon, cupcake wrappers, fabric, napkins, etc.

Using an open wall storage system and clear bins with labels and baskets provides both a great visual for things that I have on hand and also provides a lot of color to brighten up my office and make it a fun place to work!

So here's the behind the scenes pictures of one of my central blog & baking related spaces in our house! The baking organization doesn't stop here though, I've got more to show you in my kitchen so check back soon for fun ways to organize your cookie cutters, sprinkles and cupcake wrappers!

Easy Banana Cupcakes

I'd like to introduce you to one of the simplest and tastiest cupcakes I have ever made! I will admit I did cheat a little bit with this recipe and started with a box mix (everything can't be from scratch these days with an 11 month old on the go), but throw in some bananas, sour cream and vanilla and you can't even tell this cakes not from scratch! I was inspired to do banana cupcakes for two reasons...I was cleaning out/organizing my bazillion cupcake liners and discovered these adorable yellow and green polka dot ones and immediately thought..bananas, and since Sam is a banana lover these days, well we've always got a bunch laying around that get pretty ripe before we can eat them all up!

I'm sharing all the details and recipe for these super easy Banana and Cream Cheese Cupcakes over on Half Baked-The Cake Blog! So head on over and check them out! And while you are there you have got to see Carrie's amazingly beautiful Speckled Egg Cake. It is absolutely the most perfect spring or Easter cake to create for your family this year! She shares step-by-step instructions and photos on how using a bit of cocoa powder can turn your robin's egg blue cake into a speckled masterpiece in no time! It really looks like a fun technique and one I'm excited to try! So I hope you will give these banana cupcakes and Speckled Egg Cake a try!

Happy Baking!

Cora's 1st Birthday

I recently had the opportunity to help with the sweets for my friend Jennifer's little girls' 1st birthday party! Miss Cora sure is one special little girl, and also Sam's girlfriend so I wanted to go all out for her party!  Jennifer had the vision to decorate with shades of light and dark pink and lime green with both polka dot and stripe patterns. She coordinated all the party decorations and together we brainstormed on the sweets for the dessert table. We decided on cake balls, cookies and cupcakes, and of course a smash cake for Cora. I tried to carry the polka dot theme through the sweets as much as possible using pink and white polka dot cupcake wrappers, white cake balls with pink sprinkles, and #1 cookies with pale pink polka dots. We used some lime green polka dot wrapping paper as the table runner to balance out all the pink and add an extra pop of color to the table. Jennifer came up with the theme "year of firsts" from the invitation she chose so I used this idea to create a few special cupcakes with toppers displaying some of Cora's memorable "firsts". Jennifer really did an amazing job with all the party details and I was so honored to be able to help in the sweets department! Hope you enjoy the pictures from this sweet pink 1st birthday party! 

Just wait until you see Cora and her smash cake...not so sure she is a huge fan of icing just yet!

1 more month... {Party Planning}

Today my little guy is 11 months old! I can't believe he will be ONE year old on March 25th. This has been the fastest, most tiring, but truly amazing year of my life and I can't wait to celebrate little Sam's first birthday next month. As you already know from last month, the party plans for Sam's first birthday are well underway. The theme has been decided...Mustache & Tie. Colors have been picked, and decorations are being bought little by little to "tie" everything together into one hopefully super cute little man party!

I promised I would share some pictures along the way as things come together and I'm excited to share the behind the scenes photo shoot for Sam's birthday invitations! These photos were taken in his nursery I just moved the crib out of the way so I'd have a large wall to photograph against.

I saw this birthday party invite on I Heart Naptime and immediately wanted to use the same chalkboard idea for Sam's invitations. We had an old frame from our attic that we painted aqua and turned into a chalkboard frame with chalkboard spraypaint. I plan to use this chalkboard the day of his party as well for the dessert table. My original plan was to photograph the chalkboard, balloons, the cupcake and Sam in the same photo for the invite. But after a few trial shots, I quickly realized the cupcake was not going to make an appearance in the same photos as Sam b/c well he is a wild child that is on the go. As soon as we sat him down he was on the move crawling left and right and straight towards me while I was trying to take the pictures. So basically 50 shots later I wound up with pretty much the few decent photos you see here.

I love this photo I caught of him on the move! He has the sweetest blue eyes and little mouth!

So to replace the cupcake idea, I quickly improvised and added a mustache to a popsicle stick to give Sam something to hold on to so he would sit still for a few seconds so I could snap some shots. But that quickly turned into pulling the mustache and stick apart and trying to eat them both and laughing about it.

How cute is that little face! This was the winning shot of the day! And you can even see his little tie onesie I ordered from Chic Couture Boutique on etsy.

Sam's invitations are going in the mail this week! I will be sure to show you at least one or two more sneak peaks of the behind the scenes party planning in the coming weeks!

Stay tuned for Sam's girlfriend, Cora's 1st Birthday party I helped with a few weeks ago! It's lots of pink and green and polka dot fun!

Happy Birthday To Me!

I'd like to introduce you to my birthday cake! It's pretty fun don't you think? Definitely one of the most colorful and sprinkled cakes I have ever baked or indulged in. Oh and yes it was absolutely delicious too! I have been DYING to make my own version of this Pastel Swirl Cake ever since I saw it on Sweetapolita's blog a while back. If you have never visited Sweetapolita's blog, you sure have been missing out. Rosie makes the most decadent, delicious, unique, and most beautiful cakes that look like pure pieces of art! She is one talented lady and I am in awe every time I look at her latest cake creations! I wish I could spend a day in her kitchen and learn some of her techniques and be her taste tester!
 I have baked several of her cake recipes and they never disappoint! I have been anxiously awaiting the perfect time to try her Pastel Swirl Cake and figured I would give it a go for my birthday cake this year! I loved the three colors Rosie picked when she did her swirl cake, but I wanted to create a cake that was completely different so I decided to go with pink (since my birthday is the day after Valentine's day), purple because it's one of my favorites and then a teal green...well because as you can see from my blog I kinda have a thing for teal! And as far as I'm concerned every cake tastes better with sprinkles, so I loaded up the top with some Valentine jimmies, pink nonpareils and some pale pink sugar pearls!

Lucky for me and you, Rosie made a video tutorial (and yes I have watched it several times) of this very cake on her blog so you can learn just how to blend the colors to make the perfect pastel swirl cake! I decided to use the same Chocolate Cake Recipe and Whipped Vanilla Frosting recipe that Rosie used but just made a 6" cake instead of 8". This is seriously one of the best cakes I have ever tasted in my life and I've already had 2 slices today!

And then I got out my camera and snapped about a million pictures of my colorful cake because it just made me so happy!

Happy Birthday to me and thank you Sweetapolita for making my birthday so sweet with this beautiful cake idea! You truly are an inspiration!