Cupcake Ronald Reagan, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

So yeah, I was that blogger. Just disappeared for 5 months! Well, to catch you up, my husband and I sold two condos and bought and moved to a house, we went on a vacation to the East Coast, and celebrated our son's first birthday. Also, I did some baking! I had a few special projects that I worked on during the blog hiatus, so I'll be posting those soon (promise!).

Anyway, onto the Cupcake Reagan. This was an ambitious undertaking that I pulled off in one muggy June afternoon. Looking back, I'm not sure how I accomplished that, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that my son was eight months at the time and much less mobile than he is now. This was baked for a fundraiser/party that had a Ronald Reagan theme, and was inspired by the cupcake mosaics of Barack Obama that appeared around election time last year. The portrait was made out of 100 cupcakes, all vanilla if I remember right, and was created by placing a grid over the Reagan logo that had been designed for the party T-shirts. Here is the original design (I did not design it, but the a lovely and talented friend did):


I took the top portion of the photo and cropped it until it was square, then placed a grid over the photo that divided it into 100 equal-sized squares. Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I simply followed the grid and piped star-dots on the cupcake that corresponded to the appropriate square on the picture grid. I used three colors of frosting: white vanilla, blue vanilla, and chocolate. Honestly, I had no idea if thistechnique was going to turn out, but it seemed to work! I only have the one picture of it and I didn't even take it. My whole place was covered in frosting and I was pretty frantic trying to get the whole thing finished in time for the party, so getting artistic shots wasn't high on my list. Luckily the decoration went smoothly and quickly, and the cupcakes were a hit, and a friend took a photo at the party:


This picture was taken from the loft overlooking the cupcake table, I believe. The cupcakes were placed in a 30x30 box that I built from foam core boards and white masking tape. Two layers on the bottom for extra support, because 100 cupcakes are not light. My husband and a friend had the lucky job of getting to transport it from our condo to the party, but they did good and everything made it there intact. Overall, this was a fun project, and I may attempt it again with someone else's face in the future.

Flavors of Spring

When the weather turns warm, my cravings start to gravitate toward those of the fruit variety. Behold, I give you the Strawberry Cupcake!


These cupcakes were made for some dear friends of mine that I had lunch with last week (yes, I'm late posting these but better late than never!). The cake is vanilla with pieces of strawberry mixed in the batter. I used my usual vanilla cake recipe and added about 2 cups of quartered strawberries, mixing them in right before dividing them into the cupcake pan. The frosting is strawberry butter cream based on this recipe. I loosely follow it and adjust it based on how it's tasting as I add the sugar, and also on the consistency I need. Using strawberries in the frosting can make it a little runny, so it needs to be played with a bit to get it just right. Also, that particular recipe makes a LOT of frosting, so you may need to adjust it unless you are making more than 2 dozen cupcakes. The really great thing about this frosting (aside from it's scrumptiousness) is the color. That pink is all-natural, no artificial coloring needed!
These cupcakes are not only delicious, but also showcase my new-found frosting abilities! Don't you just love the little rosettes? So sweet! Just like a strawberry cupcake :).

Adventures in Cake Decorating

During the month of March, I participated in a Wilton cake decorating class at my local Michael's. It was a basic intro to cake decorating course, so of course I had to amass an obscene amount of tools and gadgets. Right up my alley! Anyway, we made 2 cakes and one batch of cupcakes over 4 classes. These are the cakes I made, the cupcakes were nothing special as we were basically just messing around trying out new techniques (read: not cute or pretty). The first cake (made for class 2) is a rainbow cake. It's 2 vanilla cake layers filled and frosted with vanilla buttercream and decorated with a star-tip rainbow. Pretty easy to make and overall a good, fast effect. Not bad for my first decorated cake!

Oh, the rainbow isn't just off-center, I was supposed to put some Happy Birthday writing underneath it, but, well, I didn't feel like it.

This next cake is also all vanilla. It was made for the forth class, which I didn't actually attend as it was a very stormy and tornado-y night. I had all the cake and frosting ready to go, however, so I just followed the directions in my class book and winged it. We had been working on the beginning of the rose in class, so I had to teach myself the rest of it. It was actually pretty fun! My roses are a little ragged, but not bad for a first time. I'll work on it. I like the shell border and I will definately use that on future cakes.


I had a good time taking the class, but I'm not sure that I will take any of the other three that are offered. All the tools get expensive and the instructors want you to use the Wilton frosting recipe, which uses Crisco instead of butter (in buttercream (!)). It was not tasty. I think I may just purchase the other course books off of Amazon ($3-4/book) and teach myself the other techniques I want to learn. I am glad I learned a bit about decorating though, my future baking projects will be that much more glam!

Cupcakes from Kitchen Stadium...

Today's secret ingredient...

ROOT BEER (and root beer concentrate)!!!

Exciting, I know. Since it was such an uncharacteristically nice day here in the frozen tundra of Nebraska, I was in the mood to make something kind of summery. Well, that and these Root Beer Float cupcakes are always so good (and were a big hit when I sold cupcakes at our farmer's market a couple summers ago). They're pretty easy to make, I just use this basic vanilla cupcake recipe and substitute the root beer concentrate for the vanilla extract. You'll have to use your best judgment on how much concentrate to add, but around 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon per dozen cupcakes should do it. Just adjust it for how strong you want that root beer flavor to be!

I topped the cake with vanilla buttercream (your basic mix of unsalted butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and a bit of milk). Before I frosted them, I whipped up a root beer glaze from approx. 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 4 tablespoons root beer soda. Mix together well in a small bowl (I use a whisk) until a syrup forms and the sugar is dissolved. No heating required! I stabbed my baked cupcake tops with a fork, and then brushed them with the glaze to make them a bit more root-beery. Then I piped on the buttercream using a pastry bag (!) and a 1M large star tip. I think the came out pretty cute, sort of looks like soft-serve ice cream! Also, there is a bit of the glaze drizzled on top of the buttercream for extra effect. What a refreshing cupcake!

Cupcake Paparazzi

So I decided I really should try harder to take pretty pictures of my cupcakes (they deserve it!), so today I experimented with my camera, some natural light, and the cupcakes I made last night. These pictures were taken in a window sill, as I live in a condo and have few spots with plentiful natural light.

Here is a crazy spiky cupcake that I thought would look like flowers, but really looks kind of like a sea anemone up close.


This one is quite elegant...notice the smooth, calming swirl of buttercream...


Looks good, right? Well check out who else noticed the swirly buttercream, and joined me in the window sill:


Lucky Dog :)!

Coming soon: Adventures in building a photo light box! (Dachshund-proofed).

Gotta Respect the Classics

It's always good to start with the basics, so I whipped up a batch of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting. I'm not sure how interesting this will be, but I took some pictures along the way. I use my own recipe that I adapted the batter from this one. That's as much info as I'm willing to share about my recipe... feel free to experiment with your own! Here we go!

Start with the dry ingredients...


Then you mix together the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla....


Combine the two with some milk, and divide it among your cupcake papers.


Put your cupcake tin into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, and you've got:


Num Yummy, I know! But wait, you're not done yet!

Frosting!! Yes!! I used vanilla buttercream, but I don't have photos of that process because the baby was upset. I don't know what he has against frosting. Anyway, I tried my hand at using a pastry bag, like this:


But in the end, I used my trusty Pampered Chef frosting "gun," it makes such a nice swirly effect.


Ta-da!
So, what have we learned? Well, I know I need to work on my frosting techniques and master the pastry bag. I also learned that my camera kind of sucks, and I'm not so hot at photography yet, so I apologize for this mess. It will get better, I promise!
Well, that was fun. Not bad for a first post!