You Are My Little Cupcake

Your smile is sweet as frosting.
Your snuggle can't be beat.
Your kiss is irresistable.
And makes each day complete.

Amy Sklansky's You Are My Little Cupcake board book is full of sweet rhymes telling baby how wonderful she is...just like a cupcake! I can't wait to get this one for my own little cupcake, Logan. Order here for $6.99 through Amazon. Who is YOUR little cupcake?

Red Velvet Cupcakes for Logan's First Birthday

It was an absolute joy celebrating my son, Logan's, first birthday! The year went by so fast and was full of many learning experiences {for example, I learned the true meaning of "exhaustion"!}. My husband really wanted me to make red velvet cupcakes for Logan's birthday party and I was more than happy to oblige! Logan's cupcake didn't have frosting on it because I thought it would be too much sugar for him at this age, so instead I topped his with his favorite organic peach yogurt {YoBaby brand from Stoneyfield}.

The majority of red velvet cupcakes had cream cheese frosting but I did make two with buttercream for my sister who doesn't like cream cheese {and all the cheesecakes in the world breath a sigh of relief!}.

Tissue pom poms I made hanging above our island. The hubbs brought how a whole bunch of balloons and the ribbons tied to each one were way too long. So he trimmed the balloons' ribbons, handed me them to me, and said, "Here, maybe you can make something with these." Those are seriously the best words you could ever tell me! So I taped them to the bottom of each pom to give it a "comet" kind of look.

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe (makes 24 cupcakes)

{350 degrees, 15-18 minutes}

~2 cups milk {I used whole cow's milk, but you can even use soy milk in vanilla or chocolate for a truly vegan recipe}

~2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

~2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

~2 cups granulated sugar

~4 tablespoons cocoa powder

~1 teaspoon baking powder

~1 teaspoon baking soda

~1 teaspoon salt

~2/3 cup canola oil

~3 1/2 tablespoons red food coloring {you're certainly welcome to use more, it just so happened that a brand new bottle of McCormick's had this amount in it, about 1 ounce}

Extracts:

~5 teaspoons vanilla extract

~1 teaspoon almond extract

~OR~

~4 teaspoons vanilla extract

~1/2 teaspoon almond extract

~2 teaspoons chocolate extract {Chocolate extract can be a little tricky to find, I've only seen it at Sur la Table but never in a grocery store}

1) Whisk milk with apple cider vinegar in one bowl, set aside

2) Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, & salt in a second bowl

3) Whisk in oil, food coloring, extracts to the milk and vinegar in the first bowl

4) Gently fold wet ingredients into dry {first bowl into second bowl} and mix until large lumps disappear

5) Fill cupcake liners two-thirds full, bake 15-18 minutes

Cream Cheese Frosting

~1 stick {1/2 cup} unsalted butter at room temp

~1 package {8 oz} cream cheese at room temp

~3-4 cups of powdered sugar

~1/4 cup milk

~1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1) With a hand mixer, beat the butter, cream cheese, and slowly add in the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. Add milk and vanilla after 2 cups of powdered sugar have been added.

Cake Stands {Glass Edition}

For some reason, I find cake stands to be some of the most beautiful pieces of form and function. There is such a wonderful variety out there of these purty lil thangs! Cake stands come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, and materials. Here I am starting a series of sharing with you the most gorgeous, distinct, and avant-garde of all cake stands that I can find! In this first edition of Cake Stands, we'll look at what we can find in glorious glass! Click on any image to jump to the website I found it at.

Handblown glass pedestal from www.save-on-crafts.com for $16

Handpressed American glass from www.fishseddy.com for $99.95

Milk glass from Barking Sands Vintage shop at www.etsy.com for $94

Moon and star pattern from Smith Glass Co at www.replacements.com for $59.99

From Jolly Molly at www.jollymolly.co.uk {out of stock but still pretty to look at!}



Mercury glass from Apartment 48 at www.apartment48.com for $145



From Sweet and Saucy Supply at www.sweetandsaucysupply.com for $115



Homemade by Fawn from alwayschasinglife.blogspot.com with a plate, candlestick, and Gorilla Glue!



Vintage pressed glass picked up at antique mall for $9 by Rachel at heartoflight.blogspot.com

Starbucks Cupcake

This is a peanut butter and chocolate chip mini cupcake I got this morning from Starbucks. I just had to see if the rumors were true that Sbux was in fact serving cupcakes {and cake pops too, which I'm surprised Starbucks can call them such because I thought "cake pops" might actually be copyrighted to Bakerella}. Our nearby Starbucks offered either this delectable mini cupcake or a carrot cake mini cupcake.

Surprisingly, this one I had wasn't too bad. At first I was a little jilted by how orange-y/yellow-y the peanut butter frosting looked. I think the word that first flashed into my head was "fake"! What also pushed me to cry foul was that the icing was somewhat overwhelming in its peanut butter taste, much like when you suck on a piece of hard candy that's strawberry or watermelon flavored; you just know that's not what a real strawberry or watermelon tastes like.

Since nutrition is one of my biggest passions {and perhaps one of my biggest downfalls since I think it brings out a Debbie Downer side of me when I get fired up talking about ingredients and human pathophysiology around my family, friends, and meat-and-grease-lovin' husband}, I had to check out the Starbucks website to see if my suspicions of fakeness were in fact true. Since the first ingredient listed is in fact peanut butter, I had to swallow my pride and admit that I was wrong. This was totally okay with me because it was still a pretty tasty treat.

I now vow to try and create my own peanut butter frosting and chocolate cupcake concoction in the near future! I hope you'll check back soon for that. In the meantime, you can also enjoy a carrot cake mini cupcake, red velvet cupcake, and/or vanilla bean cupcake. How do they measure up to other cupcakes you've had?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

This is about a year {maybe two years?} overdue! I made these cupcakes for husband's cousin's son's {whew....} 3rd birthday two Decembers ago. Sorry it's taken me this long to put these up here, Kathy! Ethan was having a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme for his birthday so here is what he got. And forgive me because I can't remember what flavor they were, probably chocolate {maybe?}. Go Raphael, Donatello, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo!

Bestie's Baby Shower

I had the honor and extreme privilege of throwing my best friend her first baby shower! My mind was seriously churning for several months, and there were many sleepless nights because I was just too excited. Creative juices flow at all hours of the day, unfortunately, but I think at night it's the worst! A lot of my inspiration came from Pepper Design Blog, where countless images of glorious dessert tables decorated to the nines warmed my heart just looking at 'em!

My favorite parts of designing/decorating this shower were first and foremost the cupcakes {of course!}. This was my first time ever making mini cupcakes and they are absolutely adorable. Kristy wanted "confetti" cupcakes so here's what she got!




There were also triple chocolate fudge cupcakes {on the three-tier plates} but I am so embarrassed to say that they came out burned. We've had our new oven/stove for almost a year and I am still getting used to baking times with it. The hard thing about chocolate is you can't really tell when it's burned until it's too late! Oh well, they were still gorgeous to look at. They were topped with vanilla buttercream swirls.

This was Kristy's invitation so the theme of the shower went off of the emerald/kiwi-ish green color with white polka dots and chocolate brown.

It might be a little hard for you to tell in the pics, but the fabric and ribbon both have white polka dots in them. Super cute! The bows were made from old dictionary pages that I folded up accordion-style.

Isn't she just gorgeous?! Baby Noah is going to be one good-lookin' kiddo! I made the green tissue pom poms behind Kristy's head. The smaller pom hanging down to the right of that was three dictionary pages folded accordion-style and all three were taped at the center, one stacked on top of the other. Then, all poms were hung with fishing line from the ceiling.



You can see the green poms better in this pic. I just adore those smaller dictionary page poms because they almost look like wings. Anthropologie should totally hire me to do their front window displays! There's also white tissue poms to the right up high. Originally I was going to hang those from the ceiling too but I wasn't sure where. I thought it was kind of cool to have them up on the ledge.

The fireplace mantel complete with gorgeous tulips and two prizes for guests that won the shower games {beautiful Anthropologie aprons!}. Oh and by the way, my amazing husband made this wooden box shelf mantel; from cutting the wood, to staining, to polyurethane-ing, he did it all! Plus, he put this gorgeous flagstone up as well. WAY better than the boring, yawn-worthy white tile that was there before.

This thumbprint guestbook was a little something I had Kristy's husband design for her shower guests. He did a great job! We had all her guests place a "leaf" thumbprint on the tree and sign their name next to their thumbprint. This will go to a couple more showers for friends and family to fill out the tree, then it will be hung in Noah's room!

I told David I also wanted to have a banner with Noah's name at the shower so he designed the ark with animals, letters, and dove on these cards {the dove is carrying a green baby bundle on the last card...hard to see in the pic!}

And of course I just have to throw in a picture of my cutie patootie son, Logan. He's on the left playing with his buddy Stephen. Stephen was sweet enough to give Logan kisses! Melted my heart completely.