An All-Around Catch-up Weekend

Soooo...guessing you might have thought I might never blog here again. Honestly, I was starting to think that myself. I have been meaning to get to it and update, but as usual life has been getting in the way. Actually it started because in March we found out we were expecting a new little Flick so for the first three months I didn't want to blog since I wasn't ready to tell the online world that we were pregnant - plus I was nice and tired :) Then somehow the three months turned into six months - and here we are today. I actually have not been baking all that much over the summer. Partly because it's been so hot that I haven't wanted to turn on the oven unless absolutely necessary and partly because we've just been  between work and trying to keep running and going on vacation etc and beyond that I've been using all of my energy just to keep up with my non-stop little man and to get ready for our little girl coming in 3 short months now!

That said - while they have been few and far between, I have actually put together some of my All-Time favorite cupcakes this year, so the goal of this post, like the goal of my weekend has been (cleaning out the basement, raking leave (YES our yard was already covered and YES I know it's only August!) cleaning bathrooms, and organizing closets, posting pics online, etc) is to play catch up and highlight these cupcakes!

Because the past year has been a bit of a blur, I am not going to even try to put these in chronological order (we'll blame that on the baby brain :), so going to start with what I would have to consider quite possibly my best cupcakes ever. These were for the fourth Birthday party of one of my Running Buddie's sons. He asked for Toy Story cupcakes. I was so excited because I have been wanting to do toy story cupcakes for quite a while now - and was right after Toy Story 3 had really come out - so I do have to say I might have gotten a little carried away! The most challenging part for me was figuring out how/what to do for each character. And the number of characters I decided to include was where I probably went overboard, but being such a Toy Story and PIXAR fan it was really hard to decide who to include and who to leave out. Thus the final list ended up being: Buzz, Woody, the Aliens, Ham, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky, the toy soldiers, and Rex! Here is part of the gang. I do have to admit that Rex was kind of a mess-up but and was the result of just playing with extra green icing - but thought he was a nice addition so we kept him :)

 The Aliens were straight from the example at FamilyFun.com using marshmallows with black icing dots as eyes (think Family Fun uses white m&ms, but since they are expensive and I didn't have them on hand I went with the half mini-marshmallows instead) The toy soldiers are obviously my easy filler cupcakes - just ice and stick a soldier in! I decided to just do cowboy hats for Woody as my attempt at making his full face just didn't look right and the hats (made out of shaped caramels) ended up being cuter and obviously way simpler. Ham was super easy and fun  - just used a half a marshmallow for his nose and starburst slightly melted and shaped for his ears. Then "spray painted" him with pink spray on icing color and added his eyes and eye brows. Then Mr. Potato head was a caramel flattened and shaped with starburst ears and icing hat and mouth and feet. I have to admit I was pretty excited how he turned out :)Slinky Dog was following a pretty basic dog pattern using a nilla wafer for his mouth/nose, mini-marshmallows for his eyes,caramel for his ears, and icing for the rest of his face.

The biggest challenge was figuring out Buzz's helmet. Online I saw a picture of exactly how I wanted to do Buzz, using half of clear Christmas ornaments as the helmet. Only problem is I no longer work near a Michael's and could not seem to find time to get out to one. Luckily my baking partner in crime Christy has a Micheal's both enroute to work as well as near her house - so she commenced a search. Unfortunately her first Michael's did not have them :( So both her office and mine spent a good afternoon discussing other options for the helmets. It was actually kind of funny to see our co-workers - yes even the guys - get into thinking of ideas. We thought of the tops of Starbucks drink cups, oops - they have lids, the little plastic containers in the quarter machines at the grocery store - close but to small, and the ideas went on and on, but none were quite right. Luckily Christy's back-up Michael's had the clear ornaments on hand and she was able to grab them for me! YAY! She saved the day again!

Buzz was by far the trickiest one to do - but also the most fun. I used cookies for his face then iced them with skin color and outlined with his signature purple and decorated with icing. The ornament globes definitely made him pop though - and pretty sure he was the star of the party! To Infinity and Beyond!!!!

Hoppping along to Easter...I did super simple cupcakes. Just butter pecan flavor with pink cream cheese icing topped with the CUTEST cupcake toppers I've seen - that my mom sent to us. Made decorating a cinch! Which was good, because I also decided to try my hand at Cake pops - which were not so easy (for me at least!) They turned out delicious - but wow - definitely a challenge for the first time. My friend Megan is semi-pro at these, so I keep telling her I need to just stand there and watch next time she makes them - there has to be some trick or something. I just found mine to be mis-shaped and messy. Luckily I was only making Easter Eggs - so the abstract look worked :) If you have never made cake balls before you create a mixture of cake and icing then shape into balls and freeze onto sticks. Then once set, you dip into melted chocolate and serve or add icing/decorations. You can see some of my eggs didn't do so well on the sticks, but luckily they still looked nice on the4 edge of the cupcake plate. And like I said - they were pretty delicious - so definitely worth the extra effort. Will just need to keep practicing them to get the method down!

Hmmm...what next. Oh here's another super easy set of cupcakes I did this Spring - for my nieces first birthday party. My sister-in-law request Minnie Mouse cupcakes - only catch was that we would all be at a family wedding the day before so would have to do all decorating the morning of the party. Clearly needed something quick and easy - but they had to be cute enough to be perfect for the little Birthday Princess! I did a bunch of googling on Minnie Mouse cupcakes and saw several pretty easy kind of abstract looking ones so thought they looked like the best bet - and actually I LOVED how they turned out - especially since they were so easy! Just did pink icing with chocolate candy melt ears, white pearl sprinkles for the polka dots and then topped with a red icing bow. Minnie all ready to go for the party!

Okay - think I have time for one more before the little man wakes up from his nap. So here's another one of my favorites from the summer. Flower cupcakes for another Baby Shower! :) Hurray for 2011 babies! The shower was a garden themed tea party, so I had fun making a mix of flowers. I did a few sunflowers - using mini-oreos for the center, then did daisies with mini marshmallow petals and candy centers. These ones are kind of cool as you cut the mini-marshmallows in half and then dip the sticky side in colored sugar and they appear to be an instant flower petal. Really they are not hard - just perhaps a bit tedious, but definitely worth it. I then added a few icing daisies to create a bit of variety like a real garden. Finally, I also found the cutest little flower lollipops on sale at Michael's so I had liked idea of "planting" them in little flower pots of cupcakes covered with oreo dirt. I wasn't quite sure how they would mix-in with the other flowers, but think they went alright and if nothing else were something different for sure! Here they are all packed up and ready for their tea party debut!

 

From what I heard both sets of cupcakes went over quite well. And most importantly - they have a new little girl in the family now - YAY! :) 

Alright - well guess I have baked a bit more then I realized over the past few months so will have to finish catching up next time- since I need to get back to catching up around the house now. Keep an eye out for an update on a Dr. Seuss cupcake set and shower and a rockin Guitar Cupcake cake next time (promise it won't be quite as long!!!) For now, Happy SUMMER! :)

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It's Raining on Sunday...

It's raining outside and quiet inside (the boys are still sleeping so it's just me and 91.9 on the radio :) and actually really quite nice. And since I ran my long run for the week yesterday (which my legs are definitely feeling this morning) I feel no real need to run today so the rain is actually relaxing - again nice. So I am just sitting here writing cards and drinking coffee and now blogging again- on a roll this week.

I have been excited to finally get to these cupcakes on the blog as they are by far the most fun ones I have made yet this year! And even better they were for a super fun occasion - the first birthday of one of K's best buddies Will, whose mom, Emmy, is one of my best friends from college. It was such a blessing to be pregnant at the same time as Em -so nice to have someone close to go through all the ups and downs of the "long" 9 months with. Plus, now we have been able to share the joys of the first year of having little boys together - just awesome!

In anycase, that said, I wanted to make Will's cupcakes perfect, but being that 1. they live in Philly now (just bought a super cute house in Havertown!!) so whatever I made had to be able to survive the 2.5 hour trip up 95 and 2. I have never done Winnie the Pooh cupcakes before this was going to be a challenge. I looked and looked for good inspiration for Pooh cupcakes online, but just did not find anything I really liked. I did come accross a few smash cake ideas I liked, but just no fun cupcakes. What to do, what to do??? So I kept looking and looking up to the week of the party. I knew the color scheme I wanted so I made sure I had all the icing and cupcake liners I needed, but still was not sure what I was going to do for the Pooh Bear design. Then while changing K one night that week, his Huggie wipes container caught my attention - it was Winnie the Pooh. And a nice and simple but very cute Winnie the Pooh at that. Poor K ended up laying there diaper-less for a few minutes as I distractedly picked up the wipe box and stared at it trying to think about would this pooh work. Hmmm...PERFECT.

So using the newly discovered Pooh wipe box as my inspiration I set out to make Pooh bears and Pots of honey to go along with bee-hives. As I still find red one of the hardest colors to make look sharp in icing - (for some reason it always looks pinkish) I decided to do my sanding sugar trick to really make the red pop. Plus as I've said before I really LOVE the combination of icing with the sugar on top - so again a win-win. Then to mix-it up a bit more so I would have some yellow based cupcakes, also coated in sanding sugar, I made cupcakes with red 1's on them. (these also were a bit easier - so gave my hand a little break :)

Pooh Party coming to life on my counter, comp;ete with sanding sugar still out..

Cupcakes all packed up and ready for teh trek up 95.

Once the cupcakes were done, I had to make the smash cake. As I mentioned, I had found some good ideas for the cake, BUT the bigger issue here was making sure it would make the trip to Philly. The pictures I found online actually used the Wilton little bear cake pan which I already had (what I used for Cookie Monster cake for K's bday) so that was a plus. My concern was that if I make a 3-D cake will it really make it in the car and if it doesn't  - then what?? Then Will has no fun cake for his First Birthday? Not acceptable. So just in case, I made 2 cakes for Will - using the extra batter after filling the Wilton pan, I just made an 8 inch round cake figuring I could make some sort of Pooh cake out of it for the back-up cake.

As it turns out, both cakes actually turned out pretty well. And despite freezing the little 3-D bear cake overnight to give it the best chance of staying solid in the car, I was super nervous the whole ride up, but the little guy made it in one piece! YAY! So Will lucked out with two Birthday cakes :)

Here is the 3-D Pooh cake on display at the Party!

For the backup cake, I decided to cut the round cake into a pooh head shape - somewhat abstract but think that's one of the best parts about baking - abstract is good! I then used the extra yellow icing I had to coat him in frosting and decorated him like Pooh. Think he actually ended up coordinating pretty well with the pooh faces on the cupcakes and was a nice addition to the cupcake display for the party!

Back-up Pooh cake on display!

Cupcake display. Emmy had the perfect mini-cupcake stand - so cute!

And here is the Birthday Boy facing off with the Pooh cake!

Goofing off in Will's new bedroom. K's not sure about having someone sit on his lap!

And being the big 14mo old here, K felt the need to show Will how to work the new Elmo airplane he gave him for his birthday (K definitely had some practice time before we wrapped it :)

Will's first birthday party was quite the hit! Lots of little guys to play with for K and lots of fun drinks for all the Mommy's and Daddy's and of course yummy food and cupcakes :) :) Just can't believe they are both one now - what a year. Looking forward to many more adventures with these two!

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Blog Break!

So instead of cleaning the house or baking cupcakes (which I need to do at some point before tomorrow for an impromtu baby shower/going away party for a girl at work) or doing anything productive as I should be doing right now since I am home with a sick K, I am sitting here drinking coffee and catching up on reading some of my friends blogs - which I rarely get to do- so kind of a nice break (almost feeling guilty how much I am enjoying K and my impromtu day home!) While I am sitting here though, figured I should take advantage of the opportunity to also update my blog (I know, 2x in 1 week - craziness :)

Before I sound like too bad of a mom though :) Let me clarify that K is sick as in has a 100.5 fever but otherwise besides being super clingy and tired he seems pretty okay. He took some baby advil this morning and is now playing away happily and just keeps coming back to me to take snuggle breaks about every 15 minutes (which I think might be the only real upside of having a sick kid home). Okay now that we have that clarified...back to cupcaking!

Well first actually - here are a few pics of my favorite little icing taste tester from last month :) As you can tell he takes his job VERY seriously :) and makes sure to get every last lick of icing off of the spatula! And while he can't quite tell me yet if the icing is good or not, I'm taking his standing under the mixer holding his spatula up as equal to a thumbs up :)

He even danced with the spatula - def saving this for blackmail when he's 16 :)

 Hmmm still thinking  :) Trying to decide whether or not to give his approval.

The cupcakes that Kellan helped ensure the icing was on par was for a fun set of Birthday/Running cupcakes for my running buddy and coach :) Kathy! As you can tell by the cupcakes Kathy is running Boston (again!) this Spring!

Simply put, Kathy is AWESOME and she has somehow tricked me into training with her and a few other girls who are also running Boston this Spring. I say tricked as while I love running I have NEVER been one to stick to a training plan, but by not really laying it out as a training plan and rather just telling me where to be when for morning runs and then telling me the workout upon arrival, Kathy has me training with them! So not only do I not have to dread :) the track or tempo workouts as I only have about a minute to think about them before we start, but the group of girls who are training with Kathy are super fun so it's become somewhat of a social hour with solid workouts so I actually look forward to them!

The cupcakes are simple vanilla with vanilla frosting covered in pink, purple and silver sanding sugar, which makes them look pretty different with the flash off vs on with my camera (above are without flash). The things with the nike swoosh's are supposed to be running shoes, but were kind of tough to make out of icing :)

Hopefully the cupcakes will be lucky ones and Kathy and all of my running buddies running Boston will do AWESOME! Not that they need luck - as they have all been training super hard and should do amazing anyway, so guess I will have to work on ideas for Boston Celebration Cupcakes for the end of April!

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Final Flashback of 2010 - Finally!

So finally finally finally...here is my grand finale of cupcakes from 2010 so I can finally get to my already growing list of 2011 ones :) Yeah, yeah, yeah so I am way far-behind. I know. Maybe someday I will catch up - or maybe not :)  For now, I've just accepted that all I can do is the best I can do :) I will say I was excited today at work when someone said something about how I must be super organized to be able to fit in running along with work and Kellan, etc. HAHA...not so much - if she could only see my kitchen - or worse my baking cupboard!!! :)

In any case, here are the last of my favorites from the fall - starting off with the Sesame Street Parade for Kellan's first birthday in November! I was pleasantly surprised with how these came out! I had even done a practice round (that my office greatly enjoyed!) to make sure I could pull them off for the big day. Turns out they were actually fairly easy - especially using the oreo's for mouths and marshmallows for whites of eyes like I did instead of fondant :) Then did dots of black icing to finish off the eyes and used peanut m&ms for Bert, Ernie and Elmo's noses and shaped starbursts for Big Bird's beak and wahlah...we had a complete Sesame Street Party!

Then for the little man's smash cake - I made a 3d Cookie Monster! Again - I was actually pleasantly surprised how this turned out - especially since the cake pan used was the Wilton 3D teddy bear pan that I had used for my niece's first birthday a few years ago. Who knew it would come in so handy?!?

Going back a bit more in time to October - here is a quick set of baby girl cupcakes I made for a co-worker. As her daughter made her arrival a good 6 weeks early - we never really had a chance to give her a good send off before her birth, so made these to welcome her back to the office! I was super excited about using the pink with brown polka dot cupcake papers - so coordinated the icing with a chocolate icing with pink accents. Enjoyed making these - kinda like abstract art :)

Then going back to earlier in October - here are the Super Cupcakes I made for one of my running buddies Super son :) The birthday party was a fabulous fall/halloween festival with a Super Hero Theme! So fun! I really had fun making these ones and since I had done batman earlier this year for her other son's bday (think super heros are big at the Haddon house these days!?! :)

Think the trick to really making these cupcakes look sharp was dipping the cupcakes the yellow or blue sugar and then decorating the batman or superman logo on top. Just seemed to make the colors stand out more (plus think icing completely covered with sanding sugar is my fav way to top a cupcake-YUM!)

Squeezed in between the marathon of Birthday parties I did this fall, my baking buddy Christy and I did our first wedding! It was quite the adventure - but we ended up having a blast and at the end of the day the Bride was happy so we were all happy :) We decided to divide and conquer the challenge of baking 200 cupcakes plus a grooms "cake" and a mini-wedding cake. Luckily Christy knows that although not all that different then cupcakes, I am TERRIBLE at cakes :) go figure. In any case, she let me take on the Grooms Cupcakes while she put together the mini-wedding cake. The groom had requested  fishing themed cupcakes with the only other prerequesite being that he wanted JUMBO cupcakes.

The water fall with the fishing guy in the middle is what resulted :) Actually turned out fairly easy - the true challenge was getting it to Tysons corner for the reception in one piece - talk about a stressful drive! Luckily he made it and with only minor repairs he was ready to go for the party!

Christy and I with the complete ensemble. I know it's small - but hopefully you can see her super cute mini-wedding cake. SO IMPRESSIVE - especially since like me Christy is really a cupcaker at heart!

Here are the wedding cupcakes out and ready for the main event! At the bride's request we did three cake/icing combinations: champagne cake with champagne icing, yellow cake with chocolate icing and chocolate cake with white icing. Thinking of her guests, the bride wanted to make sure there was a flavor for everyone and really think the combination actually turned out well!  We also lucked out that the hotel hosting the reception had such great cupcake/dessert stands - really made it look pretty cool and helped us help the bride and groom kick start a Happy Forever!

Okay - last but not least, here is a safari animal parade for the first birthday party of another one of my running buddies sons. Despite making animals several times before, I find them a challenge everytime. There is always one animal I seem to get stuck on! This time it was definitely the lions. They ended up turning out okay - but took some serious icing surgery as at first they definitely looked more like puppies then lions!

Close up of lion (after surgery - you can still see the remnants of a puppy face - someday I will get it down!) My favorite animals from the safari parade ended up being the elephants and the zebras - and not only because they ended up being the easiest to make. They were both new animals for me this time - but both turned out super cute - so that was exciting! I wasn't quite sure what color to make the elephants, but the elephant on the cupcake paper that I was using as my example was the teal color so I thought I would give it a try - and really like how it actually brightens up the whole ensemble! The zebras I saw somewhere online - can't remember now - but they looked fairly easy and cute - so had to give them a try! The monkeys and tigers I've done a few times now - although somehow they always look different - kind of funny. 

Okay - think that wraps up the highlights from 2010. Yes, in case you are wondering, I did make plenty of Christmas cupcakes - but being that it's almost time to start thinking about Easter think I will hold those off for next winter! For now bring on 2011 - only 2 months late :)



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And like that ... it's 2011!

Not sure how it's 2011 and not sure I even have truly accepted that it is. Just this morning as I was tidying up and putting Kellans' bottle from school yesterday in the dish washer - as I pulled off the date tape I realized I had written 1-7-10 on it - oops (good thing they weren't audited yesterday :) Made me think though - wow. What a difference a year makes. On 1-7-10 I was still on maternity leave, Kellan was definitely not at daycare yet, he definitely wasn't sleeping yet (although in some ways that part hasn't really changed!), he was barely smiling yet. And to look at him now - just this week he officially started in the toddler I class at daycare wher they sit at the table for snacks, they color, they take naps on cots, he is walking - practically running  all over the place. He is definitely not a baby anymore - and I love that as everyday he is more fun, shows more personality, does something new - just can't believe it was only a year ago he was my little peanut sleeping for hours curled up on my chest. 2010 was a wonderful year - just went too fast!

So what does all that have to do with cupcakes - nothing really I suppose. Except for in my realization that it is really officially 2011, I am WAY behind on posting about all the 2010 cupcakes I made. And as I look back - 2010 was probably the busiest baking year I've had! Thus, going to try my best to squeeze in as many cupcakes here as I can - may take more than one post...all depends on when the little man decides to get up (yes he is still sleeping - but that is only becuase he is not a big fan of sleeping between the hours of 2-5 right now!) Okay so here goes...

Looks like I left off (just had to open my blog to look...ha.) with my late summer cupcakes. So will pick up with the firetruck and firedogs I made for Mr. E's birthday party. Mr. E always seems to have high expectations for my cupcakes as I think I set the bar a little too high with monkey cupcakes for his third birthday and then spongebob ones for his fourth. In any case - I look forward to his party and the cupcake challenge it presents every year - so 2010 was no different...

The final cupcakes ended up with White chocolate molded firetrucks and fire hydrants with icing hoses with tootsie roll nozzles (yes the tootsie rolls ARE hose nozzles not "presents" left by the dogs at the fire hydrants as my husband and Kellans' friends Leah's dad askeds so - silly boys!!!) and the main thing Mr. E wanted was Fire dogs so had to make sure we had dalmations with fireman hats!

The whole set assembled for the big birthday party!!!

My little fireman - checking out the firetruck!

A fire-dog upclose!

Next up were Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cupcakes for a special two year old - celebrating his last birthday as an only child as his mom was due with his little sister any day at the time of the party. These actually turned out pretty well - and I was excited that the little guy loved them as I had a hard time coming up with a good idea as my original plan did not work out, so at the last minute had to really improvise with what I had on hand (luckily my baking cupboard while an absolute mess is farily well stocked - if you can find what you are looking for at least :) In any case, I had seen these pictures of thse super cute Mickey Mouse cupcakes online that did not look like they would be all that hard.They looked like the baker just made a Mickey Mouse shape and then dipped in chocolate/black icing and let solidify.  And while I know dipping techniques can be tricky (despite Hello Cupcake making them look super easy :) I way under-estimated this one and also did not have quite the right color icing. BOO. So after both Jeremy and my mom who was down visiting that weekend, asked me if I was making bears - I aborted on trying to make the Mickey shaped heads and tried to find a plan B.  Here are the "bears" as my family put it :)

So since these clearly did not work :(  I was back to the drawing board - or to Google for ideas at least :) Found a really cute idea for the Mickey Mouse Club House cupcakes where they did the pieces of Mickey - like his ears, shoes, and shorts. If you watch Mickey Mouse Club House you might have seen how the house is just that - made up of Mickeys head/ears, shorts and shoes or if you have been to Disney World or maybe even the Disney store lately you may have seen the "Best of Mickey" pattern also just featuring his ears, hands, shoes, shorts on plates and towels. I thought it was pretty cute and since I had the red and yellow fondant on hand (yes I know I don't love using fondant - but desperate times call for desperate measures) I went for it. I used chocolate melts for the ears as I luckily also had them on hand.  They weren't quite what I had originally had in mind - but think they turned out pretty well and helped the little guy celebrate his big day!

Close up of Mickey feet, shorts and ears.

The whole plate of cupcakes just about ready to go to the party!

Well think I can squeeze one more set in here before life gets in the way of posting as usual :) Last but not least, in early October one of my running buddies asked me to make golf cupcakes for her husband's birthday party which was going to be at Top Golf. Not ever making golf cupcakes before, but seeing a really cool set of them in the "What's New, Cupcake" book, I was excited for the opportunity to make them. They actually were faily easy and super fun to make - think the biggest challenge was figuring out how to pack them safely enough that they would make the trip down to Alexandria in one piece. The grass is all icing and the green is a light green sugar on green icing, the rough is a mix of dark and light green sugars and then the sand trap is brown sugar on tan icing. (word was that the sand trap cupcakes were the favorites!). To make sure they would not move en-route I packed in as many cupcakes as would possibly fit into the container and then surrounded them by a bunch of actual golf tees to keep them nice and safe and seemed to do the trick! FORE! 



The 30th whole ready to be played...

All packed up and ready for the party! :)

Okay now that this has taken me just about all day to get together - time to make dinner :) Can you guess what is for dessert?

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