Shout out | Alex & Shae

My blog was recently featured on Alex & Shae's blog, check it out here. 

Thank you to Alex & Shae for my shout out!  

Definitely check out their blog, the ladies specialize in stationary and jewelry.  They also have an etsy.com store!  Good luck Alex & Shae!  I wish you two the best!!!

~Danielle

Minne Mouse Cupcakes

Minnie Mouse themed Cupcakes

I love the mouse and I have always loved the mouse! I really wanted to do a bachelorette event at Disneyland, so with many thanks to my coworker and her future husband to be, my girlfriends and I were able to go for a day! I wanted to do something special, so I made these Minnie Mouse inspired cupcakes for all the ladies to enjoy. 

Here we are posing in front of Disney's California Adventure.  "C" is for cupcake!

I knew I wanted to do a least two different designs. Everyone knows the famous red bow, but not that many non-Disney fans know about Minnie's cute hat! Last year, while walking around the park, I noticed a cute new hat that you could purchase and I was inspired then to create a Minnie Mouse cupcake!

Minnie used to wear a blue skirt with white polka dots as well!

The cupcakes were chocolate cake with espresso swiss meringue buttercream. I created my own cupcake wrappers.  I work for the craft company, Sizzix and we have an art room where we can use our machines for personal projects (I really want to buy a Big Shot Pro!).  I found this fantastic red and white polka dot paper at Michaels and I used my Stampin' Up Perfect Setting die to cut out the wrappers. The Minnie Mouse heads were created out of black fondant.  The red bow was created with red royal icing and my ribbon tip. After the royal icing hardened, I added a little ball of red fondant to complete the look. 

The hats were made out of yellow fondant.  I cut green flower wire to 1/2" pieces and laid them down on parchment paper.  I then took a piping bag with a #2 tip and white royal icing and created a flower.  After the royal icing dried, I pulled the flower carefully from the parchment paper and stuck the flowers onto the hat. 

Tyler did a fantastic job taking pictures outside our apartment complex, the photo below is my favorite because the hat came out perfectly!

And here is a picture of my sister and I with our Minnie ears!

Until next time!  Happy baking and decorating!

~Danielle

Cake Decorating Supplies!

Half an aisle!!!  Who was excited?  I was!

Wednesday, while on my lunch break, I needed to go by Michael's craft store to pick up cake boards for a couple graduation cakes I am working on this week.  As I turned down the aisle, I turned my head to the right and noticed a whole new display of cake decorating supplies and materials... and what brand do suppose I am talking about... it's not Wilton, but Duff from Charm City Cakes!  Oh, happy day!  No, literally, it made my day!  I actually squealed in delight and the woman down the way looked at me like I was weird.

Some of you may or may not know, but baking and cake decorating is a side venture of mine.  During my normal 40 hour week, I happen to work at a craft company.  I am constantly bugging my product department to venture into the cake industry (hasn't worked... yet).   Many cake artists use scrapbooking and sculpting tools, so it is nice to see our supply selection growing!  Right now the Duff line is only being sold at Michaels.

I took these images with my iphone and I was a little excited (just a little...), so they are kind of wobbly.  Mary Alice posted more pictures on the Charm City Cake blog, click here.  Enjoy! 

Printed icing sheets for easy use, Duff calls them Cake Tattoos

Nice Plan-o-gram action going on right here!

Texture Mats for use with Fondant and Royal Icing

Sprinkles and Royal Icing!

High quality fondant... who is willing to try it?

If anyone has tried out Duff's product, let me know what you think!  I bought a texture pad and I'm hoping to try it out soon.  I'll do a follow up post when I do. 

Until next time!  
~Danielle

Personal Cakes

4" round cakes are about the cutest things you can possibly see.  I like to call these little 4" round cakes personal cakes, even though it serves 4 slices...   A couple weekends ago, we attended my friend's 3rd annual birthday party at the Olde Ship in Santa Ana and I brought along this cake for her.

It's a chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache.  Decorated in fondant accents.  I finally got to try a new technique, rolled ribbon fondant flowers... not too shabby if I say so myself. 

These are great little cakes for birthdays, baby showers, bridal showers or even your occasional tea parties!

Hope you enjoyed, until next time happy baking!

~Danielle

Wedding Cake for Katherine and Kevin

This is the largest wedding cake I have done to date and I was pretty proud of myself (no tears!).  The bottom tier is chocolate and the other two tiers are vanilla buttermilk.  Each tier has three layers of cake, so for the filling I did chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting (per request of the bride).  I pulled the piping pattern from the bride's dress.  The dress was so gorgeous! 

My favorite applique on her dress were these two mirroring flowers.  I pulled this detail into the top tier of the cake.  I didn't know if the bride and groom were going to have a cake topper, so I used these two flowers to symbolize Katherine and Kevin.  

I got a text message from the bride's sister during the reception letting me know that the cake was delicious and the bride's mother emailed me the next day to let me know that the bride thought the cake was "amazing."  Just starting out, it's so nice to hear comments like that.  So thank you to the family!  Congratulations to Katherine and Kevin!  I wish you two the best! 


Until next time, happy baking!
~Danielle

MSC | Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

On Tuesday, we had a bunch of people over to celebrate the return of Glee!  I decided to make Martha's Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate cupcakes and I have to say I was a little disappointed again.  These weren't terrible, they were chocolate peanut butter goodiness!  But they were to dry for my specific taste.  I would have much preferred peanut butter-filled brownies (note to self - find recipe) or peanut butter chocolate molten cake.

The cupcakes formed a hard crust on top and I don't like biting into cupcakes with hard crusts. I don't know about you, but I don't like cutting the roof of my mouth when I'm eating delicious morsels of sweet yumminess.  I ate my cupcake with a spoonful of ice cream on top and that was pretty good.  These may be the type of treats you eat right when it comes out of the oven so they are still warm and gooey.  The ingredients were fairly similar to what you find in the peanut butter chocolate molten recipe and those need to be eaten right away.  Or they truly become hard as rocks!  But they are so good!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Molten Cake

 And just for kicks, here is the group shot from Glee night - thank you to everyone who came out! 

 Up next, the largest wedding cake I have done to date.
~Danielle

MSC | Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

This past weekend, Ty and I gathered our wedding party over at our house.  Our wedding party is made up of people from different times in our life and we wanted them to have a chance to get to know one another before all of us hop on a plane to Maui in July.  The majority of the wedding party will be staying together in an awesome condo that we are all renting in Paia.  Per usual, everyone brought a bottle of wine and some food to share.  Of course, me being me, I baked cupcakes.  Ty looked through the Martha Stewart Cupcake book and we both agreed that the Snickerdoodle Cupcakes would be the easiest to bake seeing as I already had all the ingredients in my pantry.

I tend to like recipes that use buttermilk and oil rather than butter.  I have found that those recipes ultimately create moist and fluffy cupcakes.  So, I was a little concerned when I saw that this recipe called for butter; I baked another one of Martha's recipes last fall with butter and the cake was a little dry.  This Snickerdoodle cake was a little too dry for my taste.  It did, however, taste really yummy with the frosting (Vanilla Swiss Merguine buttercream) and cinnamon sugar sprinkles.  I am going to attempt to bake these again switching out a few ingredients (butter) for the ingredients (buttermilk and oil) that always seem to deliver. 

Although, I do have to say that the cake batter was simply delicious!  It tasted exactly like Snickerdoodle cookie dough. 

Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, happy baking!
~Danielle