Wedding Cupcakes Take 1

May23

Well I spent a good portion of the day making cupcakes. Three batches to be exact. The first ones were a big failure. Huge failure. I concluded that it was the stupid cupcake liners that I had purchased for the wedding. They don’t work! They make the cupcakes fall flat and crack. Soo batch number two was baked in normal cupcake liners and they faired a little better but I wasn’t pleased with the light and fluffy cake that it produced.

At this point (with about 20 cupcakes in the trash), I consulted my cookbooks and a few blogs and decided on a different recipe. Of course I ran out of SUGAR so I walked to Giant Eagle to get that and a few other ingredients.

An hour later I was back at my apartment and ready to tackle batch number 3. These ones turned out much better! They were still not quite as dense as I like but the recipe was much easier and didn’t flatten out too much. The recipe yielded 16 cupcakes. I let them cool and then filled them with some strawberry jam. No clue what I was doing… I’ve never filled cupcakes before. I used a tiny pastry tip in the corner of a ziploc baggie and just squeezed some jam into each. It seemed to work pretty well.

Close up:

Then I made some butter cream frosting, tinted it green and frosted about a dozen of the cupcakes:

I had made three sugar paste flowers a few days ago. I’m still working on mastering that but I’ve made some progress. Hopefully they’ll look better by the wedding. It’s a start though. I also need to tweak the frosting so it pipes more smoothly.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased. My kitchen is a huge mess, a tasted too many cupcakes, and I have jelly on my elbow but yeah, pretty pleased.

I have declared next weekend, WEDDING CUPCAKE NIGHTMARE.

Please join me next weekend as I tackle carrot cupcakes, butter cream take 2, and the saga of the sugar paste roses.

Sun glare will become a problem today in Pittsburgh

Mar30

It’s Tuesday. I can’t WAIT for the weekend. Nothing too exciting going on though. I think I’m going to try my hand at some Tartelette macarons so stay tuned for that very exciting post. It’s Easter weekend so there will be some new family time and sunrise Church service and probably some finishing of my taxes. Also, there will be basking in the glorious Pittsburgh weather.

ummm

What have I been up to lately? Well, Aaron broke his finger. He has a lovely green cast now which I took a sharpie to…

We had thai food at Thai Gourmet some time last week. Shrimp Summer rolls for an appetizer:

And then I ordered basically a giant plate of vegetables in a brown, garlicky, spicy sauce. It was delicious! I now know that I’m a fan of baby bok choy. I later wikipedia’d it and found that it’s in the cabbage family. Aaron and I kind of thought it was some type of onion. It definitely has an oniony texture. Aaron had Pad Kee Maw which I bet I spelled incorrectly.

Thai Gourmet is sooo much better than Thai Cuisine (both on Liberty Ave. in Bloomfield) so why are there always so few people here. It’s byob!

Our fortunes:

Saturday afternoon I made it out for an outdoor run. It was a great run! The weather was perfect and I was listening to the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. Yayayay

Long sleeve t-shirt and shorts running weather (plus sweet sunglasses).

Then I made a spinach/frozen blueberries/banana/chocolate almond milk smoothie. Aaron says, “someone got mud in your glass.”

After shower and smoothie, we met Aaron’s parents, friends and parent’s of friends for dinner at Max’s Allegheny Tavern in the North Side. I opted for the only vegetarian option, the veggie delite sandwich with a side of purple cabbage. It was actually pretty good for vegetarian food at a German restaurant. Everyone else had some form of sauebrauten/wurst/schnitzel thing.

After dinner, we didn’t feel like going home so we drove to the Waterfront and wandered around Barnes and Noble. I checked out this cookbook which looks pretty awesome.

I’m trying to narrow down my cupcake flavors for the wedding cupcakes. I’m thinking of going with three flavors:

blueberry cupcake w/lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream
carrot cake cupcake w/ vanilla buttercream
chocolate cupcake w/ strawberry jam filling and champagne buttercream

Do you guys have any other ideas for flavors? I’m trying to keep all of the frosting colors pretty similar for cupcake uniformity. I like ORDER. That’s why I blog.

Okay time to get ready for work. It’s going to be 80 DEGREES in Pittsburgh this weekend!!!!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakedom

Sep9

Good Morning All!

So first of all, it just occurred to me that all of these pictures are terrible. I think… my camera is still set on Night Shot.

This will soon be corrected. For now, we have some pixilated pictures.

I woke up pretty tired yesterday morning but work was so busy that it kept me awake. I had oats with peanut butter and maybe a 1/4 cup of that cereal. I’m a big fan. FLAX.

Morning snacks included frozen strawberries and two carrots.

Then lunch was tuna and spinach on a whole wheat Arnold’s thin plus a tomato and basil salad with salt, pepper, and maybe a teaspoon of someone’s balsamic vinegar…

After eating all of that, I was still kind of hungry so I had maybe 1/2 cup of yogurt with cinnamon. I ended up not having time to eat my afternoon snack so that worked out.

Boss came back from lunch and left sushi on my desk. Who knows why. I left it in the refrigerator at work. Maybe I’ll have it tomorrow. If not, I’ll at least photograph it.

I got home from work at 5:30, ate some quick dinner and then started baking.

Baking wreaks havoc on my clean counters (and dishes and floor):

I made banana chocolate chip cupcakes for a coworker’s birthday. 12 regular size + 25 minis.

I also made a giant batch of buttercream frosting. I tinted it brown with a bit of melted and cooled chocolate.

The pastry bag that could take over the world. And frost it.

Some cupcakes:

I melted some chocolate and dipped/drizzled chocolate on banana chips for garnish.

Finished cupcakes:

And ready to be lugged on the bus:

That’s about it for now. I think I already posted this recipe because I’ve made these cupcakes about five times now. I’ll check tomorrow and post it if it’s not already up somewhere.

Have a lovely day!

It’s already Wednesday.

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Wedding Cupcakes Take 1

Sun glare will become a problem today in Pittsburgh

Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakedom

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