Baby Parties!

Those babies just keep popping up everywhere, don't they? It is so fun to celebrate friends' and family's new additions and their children's milestones. What better than to celebrate with some cake???

This Fall, we had my friend Amy's baby shower here at the apartment. The theme was black and white polka dots (she's a big fan) with hints of good Ol' Carolina Blue. Going with the black and white theme, I decided to try a marble cupcake (See recipe at the bottom of the post). This is my first run with this recipe and doing marbling, in general. It took some patience but it was so worth it! The key was to alternate spoonfuls (I just used soup spoons) of the chocolate and vanilla batters in the cupcake cups. After I got them all filled, I used a knife to swirl them--but just a touch or else they would have melded together.

Here's the cupcakes before going into the oven:

And after!

So, the second obstacle was finding a buttercream that I actually liked. This has been a struggle for me in my last cake endeavors. Sometimes, I just can't get past the butter taste and it disappoints me. This one that I found seems to be a keeper though (See recipe at bottom).  One of the keys was using real vanilla bean paste instead of just real vanilla extract. It made the flavor pop and it didn't just taste like butter.

Finally, in theme with babies. I used a 50/50 gumpaste/fondant mix and chocolate molds to press these cute little animal toppers (sorry for the resolution, my camera isn't the best). In retrospect, I wish I had just gone for it and used candy melts to make these so people would have eaten them. Next time...

Lion:

Monkey:

Elephant:

On the cupcake stand:

It was a great party! 

This week, we celebrated my roommate's nephew's forth birthday. This was our second attempt at cake pops and MUCH more successful! Our first was for the forth of July this summer...

Sigh... We had obviously overcooked the candy coating and overstuffed the cake balls. Not to fear, though, my roommate always pushes me into the next challenge! Her nephew's party was farm animal themed and here's our finished product. We had chicks, roosters, pigs, cows, spotted dogs, and sheep (cat/bat/sheep, but sheep none the less). We used Bakerella's directions for the animals.

So fun! The kids loved them (so did the adults). They are sweet with the mixed in icing--so I am looking forward to experimenting with some recipes.

On to the next project! With Christmas weekend coming up, there will be lots of good cookin to share! See you then!  

Marble Cupcakes:
Makes 20
Ingredients:

• 2 cups AP flour 
• 3 tsp baking powder 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 cup sugar 
• 4 eggs 
• 1 cup vegetable oil 
• 1 cup buttermilk 
• 2 tsp vanilla extract 
• 2 oz semisweet chocolate, melted (always remember to invest in the good stuff-I used Ghirardelli) 

(preheat oven to 350 degrees)
1. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, salt
2. In a large bowl, mix sugar, eggs, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla
3. Mix in the dry ingredients and stir until just combined
4. Remove 2 cups of the batter into a separate bowl and mix in the melted semisweet chocolate
5. Alternate batters into 20 pre-lined cupcake cups.
6. Gently swirl the batters with a knife
7. bake about 15 minutes  

Vanilla Buttercream:
Ingredients:

• 3 cups confectioners sugar 
• 1 cup unsalted butter 
• 1 tsp vanilla paste (or extract) or more, to taste 
• 1 to 2 T whipping cream 

1. Beat butter and sugar on low til blended
2. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes
3. Add vanilla and whipping cream (I keep adding vanilla til I like the taste)
4. Beat for one more minute
5. Pipe onto cupcakes