Minis

I have made a whole bunch of fun new cupcakes recently, but have been a big fat failure when it comes to documenting them. I just have too many people chomping at the bit to eat them! My new favorites, raspberry almond, with chocolate frosting should have pictures coming soon since I have an order for this weekend, which I will be SURE to take pictures of. I'm pretty excited to share those with y'all anyways.

But for today, I have cute, petite mini red velvets.

I do regular and mini size cupcakes, but I must admit I am a little partial to the minis. They are a bit more complicated, but for parties, gatherings with large people, and kids, they are absolutely perfect! They are easy to manage, make you feel less guilty, are less of a sugar buzz for the kiddos, and give you the option to try several flavors. I'm dying to do a wedding cupcake stand with regular and mini sized cupcakes in different flavors mixed together. With toppers like the ones in the post below with a monogram on top. Not that I have it planned out or anything... now if only I knew people who were getting married!

Baby Boy shower

Here are some cupcakes I made for a baby shower (obviously boy). They are double chocolate cupcakes with baby themed chocolate toppers. There is a baby buggy, bootie and bottles. I was pretty happy with how these turned out. I would love to do these for a wedding in co-ordinating colors with a monogram on top. How pretty would that be?

Side View:

Top View:

Again, I realize that I may be biased, but my double chocolate cakes are SO good. I normally don't like getting double chocolate cupcakes (or cake for that matter) because people usually don't know how to make them well. Either they are too rich to eat a whole one (which come on, it's a cupcake!) or they are too sweet with no salty balance.

Mine fall into neither of those categories, and still have enough chocolate punch. My husband is not a cake person. His sweet default is ice cream every time. I know my cupcakes are really good when he will eat two in a row (or more), if he only eats one, I know they need more tweaking. Let's just say I lost count of how many of these he ate the other night.

Cupcake Cake

Another example of a cupcake cake. This cupcake cake was 15 regular sized double chocolate cupcakes filled with strawberry cream that I made for my doctors office.

I called in today to get some test results I had done and the receptionist went out of her way to tell me how good they were. I was quite flattered. My cupcakes may not always win the prettiest on the block competition (not that they are ugly by any means...), but when it comes to taste, I like to think of myself as a cupcake rockstar.

This is a side view so you can see the cupcake part:

Top View:

Peach Ice Cream- with recipe!

Recently I have been so busy baking the cupcakes, I haven't had a chance to blog about them. Hopefully this week I will be able to make up for lost time. For now I will attempt to redeem myself with a recipe.



Peaches are in season here in Georgia, and ridiculously cheap. Having such a bounty of the luscious fruits I decided to get a little creative. Sure anyone can make peach cobbler, or crisp, but boys aren't big fans of that and quite frankly I was a little bored by that thought too. However, if there is one thing my boys like it's ice cream.



So why not give peach ice cream a go? When I first got my ice cream maker I used to use it all the time, but recently I have let it be neglected for my cupcake pan. I was glad to have an excuse to dust it off (and after my success I think it will stay in a more consistently used spot!). My go to recipe inspiration website is usually epicurious.com or chow.com. Epicurious gets first dibs, and they happened to have a recipe that was exactly what I was looking for with glowing reviews.



What resulted over the next 24 hours (yes it's a process, but a rather simple one) was one of the best things I have put in my mouth this summer. Unlike my boys, I usually find ice cream lacking a little something. Whatever that is, this version had it. I plan on making it again soon, and the same basic concept to give blackberry ice cream a try too.



Here is the recipe, and the results :

My only notes would be to not add the chunks of peaches, but to puree it all.

I had such success with the ice cream I thought I would give peach cupcakes a try. Somehow though they were eaten before I remembered to take pictures of them. Bummer. My taste testers all said they really liked them. I wasn't as thrilled with the texture, and I thought that they could have been more "peachy". Although that is what everyone said that they liked about them, that they weren't overly "peachy". Maybe I will just work on the texture and call them vanilla peach cupcakes instead! To give them the peach flavor I used the same concept that the ice cream uses to make the peach puree, and added that to my cake batter.

Anyhow, hopefully you can get some inspiration from this post to use whatever produce is most fresh in your area to experiment a little in your cooking/baking!