Birthday Cake Gone Bad... Cupcakes to the Rescue

Okay, so it was my friend Aaron's birthday this past weekend. I had these grand plans to re-create something I found on the Charm City Cakes website (this is the "Ace of Cakes" bakery). Who was I kidding! I spend a week trying to figure out how I was going to re-create the TI-84 Graphing Calculator Cake you see below. I had some of it figured out - I even did some math to do this. I used my scanner to scan in my own graphing calculator. I then enlarged the image so that it was about the size of a 9 x 13 in. cake. I was then able to print it and use it as a template for cutting out my fondant pieces. That all worked out fine, but when it came to being able to write on all the little fondant pieces the only success I had was the white keys. For these I was able to use my black food writer. However, most of the keys are gray or black and I was not able to find a good way to write such small text on these keys since none of my food writers would work. Then came trying to get the right color gray fondant and being able to use this to cover the 9 x 13 in cake. I got the fondant to be on okay gray color, but man of man, did it look pretty bad when I put it all on the actual cake. Believe me - nobody would have wanted to eat it! :-) Sorry, no pictures! So, I decided I just couldn't do this. All hail Ace of Cakes! You are amazing! How cool is this cake?!?! So, I decided that since I agreed to make the cake that I would quickly swap out the calculator cake with some birthday cupcakes instead. These are my usual chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I decided to do something different than my usual star tip for the icing. I piped these on without a tip to create little mounds of icing. I then used my Wilton Alphabet and Number Fondant Cutters to cut out the letters and numbers for "Happy 31st Birthday Aaron!" These were a little rushed, but in the end I think they were cute and people thought they were tasty. So, that is a plus! Here's one more picture - a close up. From now on, I think I'll stick to cupcakes, or at least simple cakes for now! :-)

German Chocolate Cupcakes for the PhDCupcaker photographer (a.k.a. Josh)!

Josh loves German Chocolate cake. It is one of his favorites and he often has it on his birthday. I decided I would make this for his birthday this year and then thought – why not try cupcakes. I had seen these in my Martha Stewart Cupcake book, but decided to use the recipe that Josh likes from the Baker’s German Chocolate, but instead of a three-layer cake make cupcakes instead. Making cupcakes also meant that I could make some with coconut and pecans and some without since I am not a big fan of either of these, but Josh really likes the coconut. Since the icing wasn’t very thick without the coconut and pecans I decided to add some mini chocolate chips after the icing cooled. The chocolate chips melted a little, but helped to make the icing a bit more chunky so when I put it on the layers it didn’t just side right off. I think I should have made a few more coconut ones though since Josh liked those!

Cake Tattoo Experiment (inspired by Duff)

I thought I would try two new things - a new cake (yes - cake, not cupcake) experiment and a new Blog experiment. First, I hope the Blog experiment works. I created a slide show of pictures from my Cake Tatoo Experiment. You should see this above - I hope. The Cake Tatoo Experiment was something I thought I would try for a cake I was bringing to a friends house for a BBQ. It was not a success, but also not a total disaster. I used Duff's Cake Tattoo. Duff is the cake designer from Charm City Cakes that is featured on the Food Network show Ace of Cakes. I am bummed that I can't watch this show. We don't have cable (we just get over the air stations) and they don't air this on hulu. I also can't find the DVDs on Netflix. Oh well! Anyway, the Cake Tattoo is a thin piece of edible art that you place on an iced cake. I am a bit miffed because in this video (If you are interested I think you'll have to click on the Watch Video link and scroll down to view the Graffiti and Killer Cake Bling video) Duff said it will totally look awesome. Not so much, but I won't hold it agaisnt him. I mean, if he did it, it probably would look totally awesome! Anyway, when I did mine my base cake was too small and so the cake tatoo wouldn't exactly fit. So, I had to cut the bottom a little. Also, I could not get the seams right. You can see that in the pictures. I was happier with the upper tier. It didn't look too bad. I then used blue icing with a decorator tip to add some extra pizazz! I was a little too embarrassed to bring this to the BBQ because Josh said it looked like he was eating paper. It may have looked a little wonky, but it tasted okay (for days....). Maybe I'll have to just try Duff's Cake Graffiti products. Maybe spraying designs would be easier... Stay on the lookout for that at some point (maybe).

Fourth of July Cupcakes by Lorraine & Patrick!

Whew! I am almost caught up! I made these cupcakes in July (of this year!). These Fourth of July cupcakes happen to be one of my favorite batches because my nephew Patrick helped me decorate them. My family (mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece) came to visit for a few days. I asked Patrick on Friday if he wanted to help me make the cupcakes on Sunday. Periodically throughout the day on Friday and Saturday Patrick kept reminding the family that we were making these. He would say, "Guess what?" We'd reply "What?" He would then say "On Sunday we're making cupcakes!" We decorated these with red and blue fondant stars and red, white, and blue sprinkles. Cream-cheese icing of course. The two without icing were Patrick's since he doesn't like cheese. It was so much fun to make these!

Let's Talk About Math!

Here I unveil my new cupcake display. I had been wanting to get one of these, but just never really had the reason. Since I decided I would make these cupcakes for an important meeting we were having I figured now was the time to buy one of these. So, you are probably wondering what in the heck these are. It's no surprise that I decided to make these with chocolate cake and cream cheese icing (I know, I need to start branching out more), but what are those funny things on the cupcakes you ask. Well, they are talk or thought bubbles to represent each of the five talk moves for having a productive mathematics discussion - Wait Time, Revoicing, Restating, Prompting, and Applying. For more about these "tasty" moves you should check out the book by Chapin, O'Connor, and Anderson where these moves originated. You can find it on Amazon. The book was written with elementary math classes in mind, but one of the projects I worked on this year was in the process of developing PD materials for middle and high school teachers centered around these moves. I also discussed these moves in my secondary methods course (so some of you might remember them!) The bubbles are made out of Wilton fondant and I used my new gourmet food markers made by TCP Global (who actually makes paint for cars - go figure!) I love the new markers. They are great! So much better than the marker I used for the iterated cupcakes. It was so easy to write on the fondant. Anyway, these were not only pretty tasty, but where great discussion pieces and since these moves are all about discussion - it was perfect!

Happy Birthday FMBH!

Here's another long overdue pic of some cupcakes I made for some colleagues who had birthdays in March. You guessed it (well, maybe you did) - their names began with F, M, B, and H. I originally tried to use my letter cookie cutters to cut the letters out of the sugar cookies, but that didn't work very well :-( The dough just expanded and you could not see the letter anymore. So, I decided to just bake the cookies as I normally would and use the cookie cutters to create little fondant monograms that I could put right on the cookie. These are chocolate cupcakes (of course!) iced with my favorite cream cheese icing.

Thin-Mint Cupcakes

I am so behind in posting my cupcakes. I have made quite a few since the last post, but have been busy doing lots of other things... like officially passing comps, working and trying to put together my dissertation proposal. I do have my priorities straight! Rather then posting all of my back-logged cupcakes today I will try to space them out a bit.

Here is a cupcake I made a few months ago for a meeting I was having with someone who happened to have a birthday that day. I really liked the chocolate icing I made for the Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes. So, I decided to use that icing, but add some mint to it in the form of mint extract and some crushed thin mint cookies. Yummy!

Chocolate Salted-Caramel Mini Cupcakes

So, this one deserves two pictures... I actually copied this one from the Martha Stewart Cupcake book. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but pretty close. If I get a chance (next week when I'm on spring break I'll post the recipe I used). I decided to make these because I was jealous that some family were indulging in cupcakes from Cake in a Cup in Toldeo, OH (http://www.cakeinacuptoledo.com/). So, these are great! They are mini-cupcakes - so tiny you can just eat one whole in one bite! Although.... that means I have been eating them all day! I love the salty sweet combination. These are completely homemade - the cake, the icing, and the filling. Although the cake isn't the greatest on its own the sea-salted caramel filling makes up for it! Plus, the icing is so delicious! I promise I'll post this recipe soon because you will want to make these ones!

Cool Math Chicks Fondant-Covered Cake

Okay... So, yes.. this isn't a cupcake, but it is a cake and my first attempt at using fondant to cover a cake. I brought this to dinner at a friends house for our cool math chicks dinner. I must say that it looked better than it tasted. It didn't taste bad, but I don't think I am a big fan of a cake covered in fondant. It is a chocolate cake with a thin layer of white icing covered with white fondant. All of the little flowers are also made of pre-made fondant. I just used different sized fondant/cookie cutters to cut out the flowers.

MSU PhD Cupcakes

So, I am still behind on posts - so these are some cupcakes I made a few weeks ago for a friend of mine that finished her PhD at MSU.

These were chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing tinted green (not homemade this time). The graduation caps were made out of chocolate covered marshmallows and a chocolate square (Hersheys or Ghiradelli). You could also use Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but I thought the marshmallows were better for a PhD graduation.

Definitely needed to eat these in two stages!

Iterated Cupcakes

Here was my first attempt at trying to use fondant. I made these for my advisors birthday. He is the PI of a project I work on involving measurement in elementary curricula, hence the rulers!

I made two different kinds - chocolate and spice cake and even made my own cream cheese icing!

First "big" attempt - Chocolate Ganache cupcakes

So, even though I made these cupcakes a while ago since I just started this blog I thought I would go back to the beginning.

So, here is my first "gourmet" cupcake attempt. Some chocolate ganache cupcakes that I brought to the Math Ed opening potluck. I had dessert!