‘Tis the Season to be Different!

Dec16
Christmas - Purple & Silver Cupcakes

Christmas - Purple & Silver Cupcakes

Every year the stores surprise us with different colour combinations for baubles, decorations and table settings for our Christmas tables.  This year it looks like pink, turquoise and pale emerald are all fighting for a look in on our Christmas trees amidst the traditional red, green and gold.  You have to admit they are beautiful and it is exciting to see all the new colours and trends but as I reached out for a beautiful new star shaped packet of shimmering pink and turquoise baubles I thought where oh where am I going to store these new baubles when it comes time to pack them away?  I was really good and with great difficulty forced myself to leave them prettily decorating the shop shelf.  

It was to my delight that some of my customers ordered non traditional cupcakes this year and I could enjoy the new colours of Christmas through these rather different cupcakes.  These were really different – purple and silver!  I cut out white snowflakes from sugar paste and then sprinkled some with silver   and the rest with purple edible crystals.  I cut out flowers in different sizes and embossed them and then layered them giving them centres of shiny silver balls.  To complete the elegant look for each cupcake I sprinkled them with a few silver balls and a shimmer of glitter.

Christmas - Purple & Silver Cupcakes

Christmas - Purple & Silver Cupcakes

 

 

 

 

Little girls are made of sugar and spice……..!

Dec14
Cute Cupcakes for a Baby Girl

Cute Cupcakes for a Baby Girl

There will be the pitter patter of little pink bootees in Julie’s sisters home soon as she is expecting a baby girl.  Julie asked me to do these pink baby shower cupcakes as she was giving her sister a surprise baby shower on Saturday.  I know Julie loves my cupcakes and because she is the first customer who encouraged me to think out of the box and away from the shop bought cupcake decorations all those months ago in May for her Mad-hatter party I wanted them to be really pretty and ooh aahish for her sister.  I did buy the sleeping baby for some the cupcakes and then made the rest of the decorations.  The little prams and bottles I had seen in one of the cake decorating magazines I have.  I thought they would look really cute on the cupcakes.  The baby feet, baby-gro and rattle I made using a mold and then completed them with small flower buttons.  For extra sugar of course I finished off each cupcake with pink pearls and glitter.  Thanks again for your order Julie!

Cute Sugar Art for a Baby Girl

Cute Sugar Art for a Baby Girl

AJ’s Birthday Weekend Cupcakes

Dec13
The Boys on the Water

The Boys on the Water

AJ is a great biking friend of my son and he was celebrating his 16th birthday with his mates at the dam.  His mom, Sonya, who is obviously with her husband Deon, a brilliant organiser asked me to do cupcakes for the weekend.  They were taking a group of AJ’s friends away for the weekend and had all the food, logistics and activities planned to make it an awesome weekend for the boys.  Of course I was delighted with the brilliant photos of the weekend they put together on a CD for each boy – I wish I had  just an iota of your planning ability guys you are really great.

So the ideas Sonya had for the cupcakes were logos from different brands such as Rock Star and Monster energy drinks and the Fox logo.  I puzzled over these a bit as it was the first time attempting a cupcake with a logo for a decoration.  The Rock Star was the easiest logo to recreate with sugar paste.  I cut out the star shape logo from sugar paste that I had coloured in different shades of yellow to try and get as close to the logo star as possible.  When the stars were dry I wrote the RR logo on back to back with my edible black ink pen.

Cupcakes for Bikers - Rock Star
Cupcakes for Bikers – Rock Star

For the Monster cupcakes I iced the chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing that I coloured black and then using an icing nozzle that makes squiggly lines I iced the Monster – M on the cupcake with lime green/yellow icing – the boys thought the effect was really cool so I was chuffed.

Cupcakes for Bikers - Monster

Cupcakes for Bikers - Monster

The Fox logo was the most challenging and after watching a few of my botched attempts my husband suggested I do them out of chocolate.  This was a great idea as I had the logo printed and placed it under my baking paper and recreated the logo with melted chocolate on the paper.  They were easy to then put on the vanilla iced cupcakes.

Cupcakes for Bikers - Fox

Cupcakes for Bikers - Fox

AJ loved his cupcakes and I was so pleased to get them right for such an awesome boy and such a great family.  I love this pic of you AJ wake-boarding and here’s to the enthusiasm and energy in everything you do!

AJ

AJ

Happy Birthday Tracy!

Dec13
Lime Green & Chocolate Cupcakes

Lime Green & Chocolate Cupcakes

I have a page in my gallery for quick reference so that visitors to my site can look up cupcakes for women, It is – For the Beautiful Women in Your Life.  These cupcakes I made for Tracy who is one of the beautiful women in my life.  She is an awesome mother, wife and friend and it has been a privilege to have met her this year when Teigh and Paige introduced us to each other.  Thank you Tracy again for welcoming Teigh into your family and your home so easily and a huge thank you for welcoming him into your kitchen and grocery budget as you know how much he loves to eat and he is always so excited to share a meal with your family.

Tracy loves chocolate so to celebrate her birthday I baked chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate icing laced with Beacon’s smooth and creamy Midnight Velvet Chocolate.  Tracy is a bright and colourful person so to top these velvety chocolate cupcakes I made lime green and pearl flowers.  Thanks to the latest cake decorating magazine – party cakes-  I found at CNA, I was inspired to try out a few different designs for Tracy’s cupcakes.  While being inspired by gorgeous designs I came up with 2 of my own, the large flower with the multi-pearl centre and the layered green and white flower.  These are really easy and quick to do.  For the large flower I cut out 2 of the same shaped flower and then cut away the centre of one of the flowers.  I layered the cut one over the first one and made a ball for the centre of the flower and filled the gaps with pearls.  For the layered flower I cut 3 flowers of the same shape layering them one on top of the other and cut a small daisy for the final layer.  What would I do without these gorgeous pearls to complete my designs?

Lime Green & Chocolate Cupcakes

Lime Green & Chocolate Cupcakes

Thank you Tracy for being a beautiful and colourful pearl in our lives and the lives of those around you and for being  the inspiration for these gorgeous cupcakes!

Squiggles on Paper!

Dec10
Creative Calligraphy Hands

Creative Calligraphy Hands

Instead of squiggles on cupcakes, today I am spending some time on my sqiggles on paper.  My calligraphy skills have been a little neglected over the last few months so today I am spending some ME time with Gill, Lisa and my pens.  Gill has been blessed with having the most exquisite writing whether she is doing calligraphy or just writing and I was inspired by her writing to do a course with her and try and learn this beautiful art.  I love it but have a long way to go and loads to practise!  Thank you Gill for being so patient, so generous with your knowledge and such a peaceful and special person to be around……….  Back to cupcakes tomorrow.

May the Wings of the Butterfly …….

Dec6
Butterfly Cake

Cascades of Butterflies

Everyone has something that they go dilly over and those who know me well know that yes I go dilly over anything to do with cupcakes but my real love is for butterflies.  I have now made countless butterfly cupcakes in every colour and on Sunday I was delighted to be able to make my first butterfly cake. This cake was ordered by Jean, a very excited granny, for her granddaughter’s birthday party.  Ashleigh was turning 6 and she wanted butterflies and flowers on her cake and cupcakes and they had to be pink and lavender.  I had a picture in my head of flowers and butterflies cascading gently over the top of the cake and down the side.  It was brilliant when I saw the cake translate from the image in my head to this really pretty pastel birthday cake.  I finished off the edge of the cake with pastel pink and lavender sugar paste balls, an idea that is seen in so many baking magazines now but one I hadn’t tried out before.  Hats off to the sugar art crafter who started this trend as it completes a cake beautifully and just gives the cake a more contemporary feel as opposed to the piped icing edging I had been using to complete my cakes.

Butterfly Cake

Butterfly Cake

I have started embossing the flowers and layering the colours as this adds texture and interest to the sugar art flowers.  It doesn’t get any easier than finishing off the centre of the flowers with a small ball of sugar paste in a contrasting colour or a few sugared pearls.  This is now of course a great excuse for me to collect bottles of these different coloured pearls – I have a weakness for collecting beautifully coloured articles from paper to flowers to butterflies and sugared pearls.  What a delight to have such amazing colour choices in our lives!

Butterfly Cake

Wings of the butterfly.....

“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun, And find your shoulder to light upon. To bring you luck, happiness and riches, Today, tomorrow and beyond.”  – Irish Blessing