Project Craftiness

Cupcakes coming soon, in fact I even have a new flavor to introduce to you. I'm also backed up on recipes I want to share, so hopefully lots of blogging will occur within the next couple of weeks!

Monday's, my oldest son (Josh) has off of preschool, and this being his last year before kindergarten I've been trying to be diligent with that time. This was our first Monday together in awhile without things being off from the holidays, so it was fun to get to enjoy that time together. We met some friends at Chick-Fil-A where he got to play an extra long time and then we came home to work on a project.

My friend Kristin recently introduced me to this blog which is my new favorite. She has all kinds of fun crafts as well as photography, plus some great ideas for kids. While looking through some of her great crafts I found this post on a DIY apron that was thrifty and cute. I can use up some aprons so thrifty caught me. It was also simple enough I could make with Josh.

So that was our Monday bonding, aprons and his favorite muffins. The aprons only took me 5 minutes to make. For 2. I will be making these more often! Plus they would make fun gifts to stick in stockings, or a bridal shower gift, or to take to someone with some goodies, a recipe and an apron. We also cranked out the muffins pretty quick since Josh is an old pro (he can even crack eggs!), and the recipe gets made a minimum of once a month in our house.

Here are our results:

Josh's apron

Creaming the butter and sugar

My apron, not so graciously photographed!

Our muffins

Now it would be mean of me to show you our wonderful muffins and not give you the recipe. Being the nice person that I am, here you go:

Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip muffins:

• 2 sticks butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 large or 5 small bananas extra ripe (I throw mine in the freezer until I'm ready and then defrost)
• dash of salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups oatmeal, you can use more or less depending on your preference
• 1/2 to 3/4 bag of chocolate chips, I use ghiradelli dark, for this recipe

Preheat over to 350 F. Cream butter and sugar (by hand or in mixer), add eggs one at a time and mix well. Add bananas and mix until just combined. Add baking soda and salt, stir a few times to incorporate and add flour. Mix well. Add oatmeal, mix well. Add chocolate chips, stir until evenly distributed. Place heaping tablespoons into a greased muffin pan and bake about 19 minutes. Makes about 18.

Tiramisu, Bread Pudding and recipes!

Happy New Year!

Hope ya'll enjoyed your holidays.

I enjoyed a nice vacation with lots of cooking and baking, but no cupcakes!

It was nice to take a cupcake break and rediscover some other desserts I love. For Christmas I made tiramisu and bread pudding with a bourbon currant sauce. And since I have been lacking on the cupcake love I thought I would throw some dessert recipes your way to make up for it!

This was my tiramisu, which is surprisingly easy. It takes maybe 20 minutes of hands on prep and then you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight. Easy and elegant! My favorite tiramisu recipe is here but I half it. Half of it was plenty for 6 people! I would buy a few more ladyfingers than what it calls for though, I like extra and needed it to cover both layers. You can't always find them at regular grocery stores but Whole Foods has them in the cookie aisle. Also, I was out of Marsala wine so I used Madeira (as they are comparable, and I may have another recipe coming up soon that will help you use the rest of your Madeira wine!), I also just used Kahlua as the coffee liqueur.

For Thanksgiving we were in STL and took advantage of grandparents and their free babysitting (a luxury for us!) and went out to a nice meal at Harvest in Clayton. I'm normally not a big bread pudding person (unless it's a chocolate brioche bread pudding!) but theirs sounded intriguing and came highly recommended so we gave it a shot. It did not disappoint. When I started asking my husband if he had any opinions on Christmas dessert he reflected back to the bread pudding telling me if I could make that it would "awesome".

I knew it was a fairly standard bread pudding, but the sauce made it extraordinary. The restaurant strangely did not have their dessert menu online so I called them and asked what the sauce was. Bourbon currant. Just for kicks I thought I would google it to see what kind of recipes were pulled up. To my amazement this appeared. The exact recipe the restaurant had given a magazine!

My modifications were to again, half it (I did 2 eggs and 2 yolks for the custard), and I baked it longer since my dish was a bit deeper. Don't be afraid of it getting brown on top as the crispness adds to the texture. On the sauce, I would completely ignore their recommendation to take the sauce off of the heat before adding the bourbon and currants. Their is a decent amount of alcohol which needed to cook out or else you were left with nothing more than the taste of bourbon from the sauce. Also since the currants were dried they could use a good soak to plump them up. I also found the currants at Whole Foods, but I think fried blueberries or golden raisins would be a suitable substitute.

Sorry I don't have a picture of the bread pudding, it went too fast!

So that's part of what my holidays looked like, hope ya'll enjoyed yours and are having a great start to the New Year!

I Do More Than Cupcakes!

Here is some of my non-cupcake work:


I do mini pies:

Pumpkin

Pecan

And frosted Sugar Cookies. I can do them in specific designs and colors, but I don't use royal icing (the stuff that turns hard) I use a light fluffy frosting that tastes much better, although doesn't lend itself to neatness the way royal icing does. I choose taste over appearance any day!

Holiday Flavors

Vacation over, and I hit the ground running with an order for over 200 cupcakes almost 100 mini pies. Tis the season right?

Well along with the Christmas season comes some new holiday flavors!

Introducing:

Eggnog Cupcakes, that in my opinion are way better calories spent than drinking the stuff, and they taste just like it! I think I am going to make these a Christmas tradition for our family!

And Peppermint Mocha cupcakes

So far I've had these compared to Andes mints and girl scout cookies, all I know is that from a person whose typical Starbucks order during wintertime is a peppermint mocha, I've found something new to snuggle up with!

I am now accepting all holiday orders and the closer we get to the holidays the more limited availability will be, so book early!

Both of these flavors are great for holiday parties and get togethers, in fact I'm planning on making them for my own!

Cookies and Cream

I've added a new member to the family

My new Cookies and Cream cupcake. It's a chocolate cupcake with an oreo type cookie inside topped with cookies and cream frosting.

If I do say so myself, they were delicious! Actually my taste testers deemed them as one of their new favorites as well.

My father-in-law's birthday co-incided with it's conception so I thought I would give shipping another go and see how they fared.

They made it in tact with no harm done. You just snip the tip of the frosting bag and frost the cupcakes yourself. They may not be quite as pretty, but they still are tasty!

Halloween and a Party

I'm a little late in getting the last of my Halloween cupcakes up. Oh well, ideas for next year!

These are vanilla cupcakes tinted orange with chocolate buttercream. I had the cute bat liners so I thought I would match that. I had some leftover pie crust from something so I used that to cut out tiny bats and baked them. After they cooled I piped chocolate on the tops of them and took orange sprinkles and cut them in half for the eyes.

Sometimes I'm a little hesitant to reveal my secrets because then ya'll will know how easy it all really is : )

In addition to the Halloween cupcakes I did this cute cupcake tower this weekend for a surprise 50th birthday party. I'm a little rusty on cakes (as in it's been a year since I've made one?!), so I was thrilled with how it turned out. No worries though the cake pans are officially dusted off and my cake skills are returning.

The cake and bottom layer cupcakes are Snickerdoodle cupcakes and the other ones are double chocolate. All the decorations are edible.

So now that Halloween has passed (in my mind) it's officially Christmas season. I am SO excited. I have so many Christmas cupcake ideas swirling in my head that I can't wait to try out. and show ya'll. Except we just have to get over this whole Thanksgiving pie phase I'm in. Oh well, only a few more weeks!

Thanksgiving Flavors

I've had some more questions regarding holiday orders. So here is my attempt to answer some of them:

I do cupcakes and pies (among other things, but for the holidays...)

I can do full size pies or mini pies (pictures below)

Recommended cupcake flavors for the holiday would be: caramel apple (apple cinnamon cupcake with a dulce de leche frosting), pumpkin spice with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, or snickerdoodle cupcakes, but all flavors are available and feel free to do something crazy, like Pina Colada!

Pie flavors: apple pie, apple crisp pie (instead of a crust on top it's topped with a crisp topping), pumpkin, pecan, and chocolate

All holiday orders must be placed by November 20th. ATL day for holiday order pick ups will be the Monday of Thanksgiving week. STL order pick ups will be the day before Thanksgiving (Wednesday). My hope is to do most of the pick ups in STL around the Chesterfield Valley area.

If you have any other questions, or want pricing information, please feel free to email me at cupkatesforyou@gmail.com

Mini Pumpkin pies

Mini pecan pies

Apple Crisp Pie

Snickerdoodle cupcakes

Caramel Apple Cupcake