Garden Cupcakes

Chocolate Garden Cupcakes

I made some chocolate cupcakes, frosted them in chocolate icing covered them in crushed oreo and then decorated them with fondant that I molded into tiny vegetables.  I got the idea from Pinterest.

 They were a hit at the local farmer's market here in Nome.

Purple Ombre Wedding Cake

I made this cake for a friend as a wedding gift.  This cake turned out better than I had expected. The bride's only request was that it had purple in it everything thing else was up to me.  My original plan was to make a white fondant cake with purple flowers.  After hours of baking I nixed the fondant idea and decided to stick with buttercream (plus it tastes better).

I used 12 in, 9 in, and 6 in cake rounds. Each tier has two layers of cake.  Bottom tier is white cake with tundraberry jam filling, Middle is chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling, and top is a strawberry flavored cake with vanilla buttercream filling.

After frosting each tier with a layer of buttercream I piped simple roses using Wilton's 2D tip.

 Making the buttercream roses is a very easy process.  You just start from the inside working out and spiral around in a circle. The 2D tip is what makes this look beautiful. There are numerous You Tube videos on how to do this... here is one: Rose Swirl 2D tip

 

After making all the rose swirls I felt like the cake needed something more.  So I made these cute white ruffle flowers. 

For the leaves I just cut out leaf shapes and used my fondant ball tip tool and rolled it around the edges.  The centers of the flowers are edible silver dragees glued with a little corn syrup.

Isn't it gorgeous!

 The bride gave me a lot of flexibility on this one.  I am glad it turned out well.

Husky Cupcakes

I made these cute cupcakes for the Iditarod craft fair... they were a huge success.  I can't take all the credit because the idea came from here http://www.duncanhines.com/recipes/cakes/awbaird/husky-dog-cupcakes

Husky Cupcake.  Photo by Kim Knudsen

I took some photos of how I made these....

Take a regular size cup cake put some frosting in the middle as glue and stick a donut hole on top.  Take a mini marshmellow and using scissor cut a circle.  it will be in the shape of an almond.  Cut the almond in half to make ears.  and use the remainder of the mini marshmellow as the nose.  Attach with frosting.

I used a size 13 star tip for the fur.

Pipe stars around the base and front. Smooth frosting with your tip around face and nose.

I used dark chocolate frosting and piped using the same #13 star tip around the ears and back of head all the way down to the base.

Fill the rest of the base of the cupcake with white frosting.  I piped a small chocolate nose, and used pink fondant for his tongue (you could use taffy if you don't have fondant) and some frosting under the tongue to hold it in place and to give him a bottom lip, finally add eyes.  Isn't he adorable? Photo by Kim Knudsen

Of course I didn't just stop here.  I also made Iditarod musher cupcakes as well but I forgot to take step by step photos...

Iditarod Musher.  Made using a fondant covered Nila Wafer cookie then piping with a star tip his fur ruff around his head.  Photo by Kim Knudsen

Iditarod Mushers cupcakes. Photo by Kim Knudsen

Hello Again Kitty

This is my second attempt at making a Hello Kitty cake at the request of a friend for her daughters birthday.  I like this one much better than the one I did two years ago. http://nomemade-cakesandcookies.blogspot.com/2010/08/hello-kitty-cake.html

 

I baked 3 layers using a 11x15 inch baking pan (1/3 sheet cake).  You could make a slightly smaller Hello Kitty and bake two layers using 9x13 pan.  
I used a Hello Kitty clip art as a template to cut out the cake shape.

For this particular cake I used 2 layers of Strawberry cake and the middle with Chocolate cake with Strawberrry Jam filling. Crumb coat a thin layer of butter cream frosting and then added rolled fondant. 

Bow, eyes, nose are all fondant.  Whiskers are toothpicks covered in fondant.  All are attached using corn syrup.


I didn't want them poking holes with candles into Hello Kitty's face so with my left over cake I made a small one.

Decorated with Wilton's Hello Kitty candles and cake rings which you can purchase through Amazon.com

Don't forget to purchase party favors...

Happy Birthday Cayli