Sparkling Wine Cupcakes!

For my 25th birthday, I had lots of people say, "I hope you aren't making your own cake!"  But, I didn't see the problem there, because I love making cake!  That, and using friends as guinea pigs for new recipes, like Sparkling Wine Cupcakes!  The frosting was incredibly light and fluffy and delightful, but I need to learn how to fold egg whites into cake batter...the cupcakes were a little dense, but still flavorful.

Photo Credit: Dana!

And, with the help from Joe, my mom sent me some lovely tulips!  It was nice to get to share my birthday with some close friends! :)

St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

Last New Year's, I found a recipe for Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and thought it would be only appropriate to make some for St. Patrick's Day!  These are supposed to have a whiskey ganache in the center, but I didn't have the ingredients, so I just left that out... but you wouldn't know that from the pictures, would you??  They are Guinness chocolate cupcakes and Bailey's Irish Creme frosting.  Little bit of Irish heaven right here.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Brie!

My adorable niece turned 2 on March 10.  To quote the little love, "March 10's my birthday. I be 2!"  Her Mom and Dad asked me if I could make an owl cake, or cupcakes, for her party, and I was so excited!  I had so many ideas, it was hard to pinpoint just one! 

The cupcakes were vanilla cake, recipe from the back of the King Arthur Cake Flour box, which might be my new favorite vanilla cake.  And the frosting was the swiss buttercream with which I have fallen completely in love!

I still don't love the idea of using fondant, since I don't care for its taste, but have tried my hand at melting chocolate.  It's not a universal switch, but it can be pretty useful!  For the idea of the owl cupcake display, I wanted the owls to be elevated above the letters.  I had seen a post on a blog seen on tastespotting.com a while back about making cupcake stands from chocolate, so I thought I would try to make "tree" stands to hold the owls.

 And it worked!  I fell in love with the goofy little free-form owls.

So when the big birthday party came, I set up the display.  I was pretty happy with the fact that the thought I dreamed up actually came together!