Archive for Cupcakes

Dessie is one of my super duper best friends and her lovely daughter Gabbie (Lillie’s super duper best friend) celebrated her 6th birthday at the Des Moines’ zoo last weekend.

Part of the party package includes having the children learn and interact with two animals from the zoo, of course some of the friendly critters. They actually bring them to the room for the kids to see and touch. Gabbie choose to have a turtle and a hedgehog at her party and I decided to add another cute critter to the pack.

When Dessie asked me to take care of her treats this year, I absolutely agreed.

The hedgehog cupcakes are chocolate with buttercream icing.

Then we have some turtles on strawberry cupcakes (Gabbie’s favorite flavor). sitting on a combination of soft yellow and white buttercream icing.

And my addition to the critter set, a sweet fox. Maybe I should have made a red panda since they have one at the zoo. She looks cute (I think).

We also made sugar and brown sugar cookies for party edible favors.

After making these cookies I thought that maybe the fox should have been smelling some pretty flowers instead of a tree with barely any leaves left on the branches. Opps…

The hedgehog walking on grass…

And the turtle swimming in water, sort of… yes, no?

I think I made over 60 chocolate decorations and used them on both the cupcakes and the cookies as you could see.

Gabbie was very happy with her treats and I was delighted to hear to see her pretty happy birthday face.

We love you sweetheart… Happy Birthday!

We again had the opportunity to make treats for one of my favorite family events, Kindermusik’s Fall Family Music Night. It was only appropriate to make spooky treats since the event was held on Saturday 29th, just before Halloween.

Here are some of the cookies we prepared for them this year.

I’m not a huge fan of candy corn (although I can eat a few of them without complaining), but I love how they turned out in cookies.

I love this cookie because it is so versatile and I can make for pretty much every occasion.

The next one was also one of my favorites. I don’t have the spider web cutter, but the circle cutter worked. I wish I would have made it in different colors. The spiders (on the webs) look more like mmh… ticks (yikes!). I’ll fix that next time.

My mom loved this particular cookie design. Eye catching uh? It made a few people wondered how we made that.

I love these friendly creatures. Adorable and cute ghosts.

What’s Halloween without some witches? Here we have the boots/leggings and the hats. Maybe I’ll work on the entire body next year.

And just to make it spooky enough for the little ones…

I was never happy with the “B”… I just couldn’t get it right.

The family night was a lot of fun. It was all about sharing a music night with the whole family and learning while doing it.  Let me share the experience with you if you have never been to one of them.

Parents and children gather in a spacious room with the very awesome and talented Jenn Horak leading everyone on a musical journey of fun and games. Jenn either plays music or sings to everyone to make kids become active while they jump, sing, dance and share musical instruments.  They may not know it, but children are learning and developing other skills (social, musical, and more).

Caregivers become active too! Grown ups get to participate along with the kids on this musical event as they also get to sing and dance with their little ones.

If you are interested or just curious about Kindermusik, visit their website. My children have benefited tremendously from this learning experience and I’m sure yours will too. My son Noah is almost 3 years old and he absolutely looks forward to Saturdays for his music classes.

We got very positive feedback from the cookies we made this year. I just feel bad that I ran out of them  in the end!

Check out last year’s event here.

Enjoy a sweet treat every day!

I finally got a chance to post this. This post really did take me a lot of time to get it done. Here it is…

The love of my life (one of them) turned 5 years old on July 4th (sniff). It breaks my heart to see her grow up, but she is turning out to be this wonderful little lady (with a sassy attitude) and I couldn’t be more proud of her.

For some reason, something almost always goes wrong whenever I make cakes for my family and I tend to be very unhappy with the end results. However, this year I was happy with Lillie and Noah’s cake.

Lillie decided to have a Scooby Doo party for her 1st birthday party (yes, she had a few). So Scooby Doo it is!. They have both become very big fans of the lovable Great Dane.

I was soooo busy with all the party details that these are the only pictures I managed to get of her cake (… bad ones).

The cake design is meant to be Scooby Doo’s collar with his doggy tag. Velma, Shaggy and Scooby himself were part of the topper. We had chocolate butter cake as the main cake, vanilla bean buttercream for the filling and it was covered in fondant.

I made a lot of sugar cookies and added the chocolate images, doggy bones and some funky colorful flowers. I couldn’t get better pictures being in such a rush.

 … and some chocolate and fondant details of the cake.

Here are only few of the pictures of Lillie’s friends having fun breaking the pinata and waiting for cake. Friends, you might see some of you out there too.

Overall we had a pretty good, but windy day. We had to leave sooner than we wanted because rain and lightning were fast approaching.

Thank you very much to all our wonderful friends for making the day extra special for our children. Out of the three parties she had, she really enjoyed this day the most. If you weren’t there, we missed you!

Thank You again from my little bakers.

Oh, just to answer someone’s question… we celebrated Noah’s birthday too because I never organized his party back in December. I know, shame on me.

The next cake celebrates Erin’s (her name is on the cake anyway) 40th birthday.

Since I was given permission to let my imagination play with the design (and it can be dangerous sometimes, jk!), I decided to go with girly colors and wild design.

I love zebra prints.

A few cupcakes accomapnied the order. I decorating cupcakes in two or even three tones of color. I think that has become my signature docoration on them.

The cake is a White Caramel Cake with Dulce de Leche buttercream and it is covered in a marble mix of soft pink and white.

This bunch is a cute one because they were created to be the toppers for baby shower cupcakes.

I always ask customers to see if  they have any ideas, designs or patterns in mind so I can figure out what to do with their request. I received this blanket picture with the baby animals.

Here are the cupcakes with the baby animal toppers.

Giraffes, tigers, elephants, monkeys, parrots, oh my!

And of course my daughter Lillie asked me if I was going to make animals girls. So, I added eye lashes to some elephants.

What do you think? My husband liked them a lot and my boy Noah said “Wow” when he saw the first chocolate pieces.

As far as the cupcake flavors, we had chocolate butter cupcakes with chocolate ganache filling and strawberry cupcakes with fresh strawberries inside of them.

Here’s the wonderful comment from my customer.

“You did a wonderful job on the cupcakes!  They were SO cute!  And a big hit with everyone at the baby shower (even the men).  People raved about the edible decorations and the chocolate filling.  Thanks so much for all your hard work and talent!”

Big Thanks!!!

First Communions and Confirmations are happening now everywhere and that is always a very happy occasion to celebrate. I was glad to prepare treats for a few people from my church, St. Francis of Assisi. Here are some of them.

The follwing cupcakes are for a little girl that is not too much into ‘cake’, but she was more than happy to try my Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

The cupcakes are topped with a small white chocolate lavander & white cross.

We also prepared a platter of cake balls in White/Caramel cake with Dulce de Leche buttercream mixed. Some of the were covered in chocolate and some with a sugar glaze.

More first communion treats are coming…

I have been participating on this event for the past couple of years. I’m talking about the Family Music Night offered by Kindermusik.

This event is always open to families of all ages that are interested in having an amazing time around music, fun activities, crafts, and much more.

Anyway, back to the treats right? My mom and I made lots of treats for the event. I always try to bake something different to the event, but our cookies have to be there. Here are some of the pictures.

Easter Cookie Tray

 Cookies inpired by candy & chocolate.

Eggs and Peeps

Robin Eggs' Cookies

Pink and Yellow Peeps

Yellow & Blue Peeps

We always bring cake to the events and that day was  no exception. Here we have Lemon Cake soaked in lemon syrup and frosted with a simple lemon frosting. We made cookies looking like limes, lemons, oranges, kiwis and my favorite fruit… watermelons. 

Spring Fruit Cookies

Mini Chocolate Cake cupcakes.

Chocolate mini cupcakes with ganache

Mini cupcakes with chocolate frosting

We made our Cake Balls in Chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, Caramel cake with Dulce de Leche buttercream & White Butter cake with vanilla frosting. They are all covered in a light sugar glaze.

Easter Cake Balls

Personally, having my children enrolled in Kindermusik since they were babies has been one of the most wonderful experiences I can give them. They have gained so many skills not only music, but developmental skills.

If you are interested in learning more about Kindermusik, you can email at info@piedpiperstudios.org  or call 515-221-2948.

This cake is for a couple celebrating their 30th year anniversary. The cake incorporates the beautiful 80′s bright colors. Let me show you.

Spring Flowers - Anniversary Cake

This is a strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.

We also made a few Red Velvet cupcakes (bride’s favorites) with cream cheese frosting and a small sugar flower.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I hope their surprise anniversary dinner party was a huge success and that they had a wonderful time. 30 years of marriage is surely something special to celebrate.

This post has been waiting patiently it’s turn to be posted, but the time arrived. Here’s a cake with snakes.

This cake was designed with lots of love because it was for my sister’s boyfriend’s sister’s son (followed that?), Lalo. This dear boy was celebrating another year on December 5th. His mom (wild mom, in a good way of course) had the idea of combining his love for snakes and the number 6 (for his sixth birthday).

So, Lalo loves snakes and his mom looooves cake. To please both of them, we made lots of cupcakes and chocolate snakes that looked like the number 6. The chocolate snakes were cupcake toppers.

Snake on a Cupcake CakeGiant cupcake and baby cupcakes

 Here are some of the pictures from the party.

 Starting on the top left side we have the new addition to the family, Mario and behind him Jose (dad). Axel, my sister’s boy and my little Noah whose birthday was the day before. In the middle we have the monkey from Monkey Joe’s. On the right side Alexis, Jose’s daughter. Lalo, the birthday boy below her and Laysha (my sister’s daughter).

The birthday boy

 The birthday boy gets to sit on a really cool inflatable chair like a king. Looks comfy uh?

Lalo and Alexis

My Noah!

Not his best picture, but a funny one.

If you are in the Des Moines area, Monkey Joe’s is a very fun place to have a party and spend a good time with kids and family. 

*** Happy Birthday Lalo ***

Dessert Table

Mexican Wedding Cake cookies

Candy Corn and Meringues

 Our cupcake flavors were pumpkin (top), chocolate with chocolate frosting (middle) and caramel cakes with dulce de leche frosting (bottom).

Cupcake DisplayMeringue Ghosts

Aren’t they the cutest things? Delicious too…

  And here are some of the sugar cookies we decorated for everybody. Cookie flavors were sugar/vanilla, chocolate and cinnamon cookies all covered and decorated with royal icing.

BOO!

Black Bats

Spider Webs

Small ghosts and bats

Happy HalloweenCandy Corn

Pumpkins

I hope you enjoyed looking at these pictures.

I have to thank Jenn Horak for allowing us be part of the event. If you are not familiar with Kindermusik, I invite you to take a look at their website and see what she has to offer for your family. My daughter Lillie has been attending music classes since she was 2 years old and she simply loves it.