Fairy Cupcakes

This is definitely one of my favorite projects to date: Tinkerbell Cupcakes for a perfect fairy birthday party. I think birthdays should be special, especially when kids are little and things are still magical. Here's my little piece of magic.

I piped out the white chocolate outlines of these wings, then let them cool on a board covered with wax paper. Then I filled the fairy wings with gelatine and edible pearlescent glitter and let them dry for two days. They might not have needed that long to dry, but I wanted to be careful. 

I also made these little Tinkerbell wands, which took a ridiculous amount of time, but look how cute they are. 

Okay here's a whole bunch of pictures. I got kinda crazy with the camera.

Fairy Cupcake Preview

On Friday I'm making Tinkerbell Cupcakes for a little girl's birthday party. I'm so excited to get to do something so unabashedly girlie and cute and fun! I did a practice run on the cupcakes over the weekend. Here's a little preview of the ingredients that (I hope) will make the best Tinkerbell Cupcakes ever.

Crafting 3D Tinkerbell Wands

Hand Piped White Chocolate Fairy Wings Filled with Sparkling Gelatine

Delicious Vanilla Cake

Fairy Cupcakes should look like delicious flowers, right?

Finished Fairy Wants on Lollipop Sticks for Extra Magic

Chocolate Ganache

Not the most glamorous picture, but it will have to do. For my darling, chocolate-addict friend (who is also a huge fan of this! and this!) I made this little birthday dessert I like to call "Chocolate Never Dies."

Fudge cupcakes with dark chocolate chips (60% cacao) topped with dark chocolate ganache. Did you swoon? If not, re-read that last sentence.

Glad you're back.

Ganache can be used as a filling, a glaze, or a "frosting" and is just sinfully good in any of its forms. To get the ganache thick enough to pipe out of a piping bag onto cupcakes, I read about six recipes and came up with this. (Most recipes are pretty much the same, so if you already know how to make ganache, prepare to not be surprised by my recipe.)

Ganache

Here's What You Need:

1 T Butter
1 Scant Cup of Heavy Cream
1 Cup of Chocolate Chips, or roughly chopped chocolate. I used the Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips and it turned out amazingly dark and delicious.

Here's What You Do:

1. Chop your chocolate, or open your bag of chocolate chips. Measure it out into a medium bowl.
2. In a small saucepan bring the heavy cream and butter to a boil.
3. Pour the heavy cream over the chocolate.
4. Slowly mix the chocolate and the cream until they become one dark chocolately liquid.
5. Once all the cream is incorporated, you can put the ganache in the fridge if you want it to thicken a little faster (takes about 45 mins if your fridge is quite cold), or you can leave it on the counter. I like to give it a stir every 10-15 mins to make sure it's cooling evenly.
6. Enjoy.

*Note, for runnier ganache, add a little more heavy cream. This would be fantastic poured over the top of a bundt cake or as the coating or center of home made truffles.

Elmo!

Little M and his mom (and their trusty yellow lab, Isa) take care of Brownie during the week while Lito and I are at work -- so naturally when little M turned two, I had to do something awesome for his birthday. Since he's usually dancing to Elmo or Thomas when I drop Brownie off in the mornings, and since I have this awesome piping tip and because Elmo is easier to make than Thomas, I made Elmo cakes. Voila!

Ingredients: 

• Body: Yellow Cake
• Fur: Red Buttercream Frosting (with a whole jar of Wilton "No Taste" red coloring)
• Eyes: Sliced Marshmallows and Sparkle Black Gel
• Nose: Peanut Butter M&M
• Mouth: Oreo

A couple of things I am happy about:

1. The fur! The red Elmo fur was actually red, didn't taste horrible (have you tasted red frosting? it's normally pretty gross b/c the coloring is too strong)

Harry Potter Cupcakes

Okay, I admit it, I'm a total Harry Potter nerd. Yep. My ringtone? Hedwigs Theme.

Nerd.

So what, like I'm not going to make Harry Potter Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and White Chocolate Toppers?

 And I was too excited to go see Harry Potter 7.2 to take any decent pictures of these before they were devoured. They were, by the way, delicious pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting (adapted from Smitten Kitchen's lovely recipe). I added mini chocolate chips, which, if I say so myself, was a pretty

Happy Birthday to Me

Let's just see how big I can get the "cupcake" label in the cloud over here --->

A happy coincidence: A friend ordered a box of red velvet cupcakes the same week of my birthday. And happily, a batch of cupcakes is greater than a box of cupcakes. What to do with the extra cupcakes? Hmmmm. Happy Birthday to me! This time around I used Magnolia Bakery's recipe for the cakes, but played around with the frosting.

retro-post: cinco de mayo & margarita cupcakes

I grew up in a culture that generally doesn't imbibe much. At all. So I remember the first time when my family vacationed in Mexico, my mom ordered a virgin margarita to enjoy out by the pool (or the pond) and the bartender replied, So you want lemonade? Right?

And maybe he wasn't being snarky. He was probably just making sure he understood that we all wanted fancy drinks with little umbrellas without the complimentary (at that hotel) booze.

So for Cinco de Mayo, in honor of a culturally irreverent/irrelevant gathering at my apartment, I made "virgin" "margarita" cupcakes. Which is code for lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and a twist of lime that made the frosting taste ridiculously good. Look at that lil twist! I'm smacking my lips right now.

Ahoy!

In honor of Halloween, of no longer being sick (after ten days in bed), and of Lito going back to work (despite the fact that he still has a very mean esophagus that hurts him), I give you: Pirate Cupcakes.