No, this post is about celebrating the green-thumbs in my life. Though I originally made the following cupcakes for the back-to-back birthdays of my sister-in-law, Ali, and mother-in-law, Robin, I cannot continue this post without offering up a shout out to my sister Arica, who is turning 25 today!

Happy Birthday, Seester! I LOVE YOU!

Now, Arica is a gardener for sure. She gets it from my Grandpa. I, however, get cupcake baking skills from my Grandma (and the book Hello, Cupcake).

This set is meant to resemble garden rows, complete with veggies, tools, and cookie crumb dirt!

The shovels were made from pretzel sticks and candy melts. The “seeds” were candy-coated sunflower seeds.

Heads of lettuce were made using green Tootsie Rolls and icing-covered corn flakes.

The peas were made from green Tootsie Rolls and M&Ms.

Radishes were made from red and white Tootsie Rolls and icing-covered corn flakes

The carrots were my most favorite veggie to make…orange and green Tootsie Rolls. The carrots were then scored with a knife and rubbed with cinnamon to give them a fresh-pulled look. Yum!

So what if I don’t have many outdoor gardening skills…these ‘veggies’ taste better anyway.

After my mom and I spent some time hashing out ideas, she created this cute maternity top for me:

And it fits The Bump and I perfectly!

Tomorrow, I will be 33 weeks pregnant. If my mom’s prediction of Baby’s arrival time (read: early!) turns out to be correct, that leaves me only about 5 weeks before I’m officially on Mama duty.

And there’s still plenty to do, like finish setting up Baby’s space:

Get all of Baby’s clothes and diapers washed and ready to go:

Bake a bunch of lasagnas and quiches and other dinners that can be made ahead and frozen:

(Just because I’ll take a break from baking for clients doesn’t mean I get off the hook completely!)

All that to say, I am taking some time off from creating. A Baby Sabbatical, if you will. In fact, “sabbatical” is defined as “a rest from work, or a hiatus, often lasting from two months to a year.”

I can’t predict whether my break will be closer to the two month end or the one year end of that spectrum. That will depend mostly on Baby’s temperament and my energy level. (I sure hope it’s not a YEAR!)

But I can tell you this for sure: I finished my last cake order this morning and I’m only taking orders for custom books through TUESDAY, MAY 25th.

So…if you are planning to want a journal, photo book, or sketchbook made for an upcoming birthday, anniversary, or other special occasion, please order NOW. I want to be able to guarantee I can get it done for you before Birth Day!

In the meantime, I will continue posting about the projects I have completed…until the queue runs dry!

Thank you so much for your understanding and for your patronage over the past few years. Your loving support and sweet comments mean a lot to me!

–Abbi

***

Today is my dear friend Megan’s birthday!! It’s been 9 years since we first met in a Survey of Western Arts history class in college. We hit it off immediately and it didn’t take us long to become close pals, especially when we figured out our apartments were just one mile apart! So many of my fond college memories (and beyond!) include Megan. She has such a sweet disposition and is the kind of friend a friend would like to have. Despite the several states that separate us now, she has continued to put forth the effort to keep in touch and continue our friendship…including traveling to Oklahoma to be one of my bridesmaids!

After nearly a decade, Megan remains one of my favorite people to talk to and spend time with. She’s an incredible artist and if she were here, I would make here these cupcakes!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEGAN! These are for you! ((After this baby is born, we should get together for REAL piña coladas…and maybe some turkey/spinach tacos! haha))

***

The first step was to cream together butter and sugar and then add eggs one by one.

Next, pineapple juice and rum combined to make the ‘liquid’ part of the batter.

Dry ingredients and the pineapple/rum mixture were alternately added to the butter/sugar/egg mix.

Pretty yummy looking batter, huh?

Next, a scoop of coconut was added to increase the Piña Colada effect.

Then, egg whites were beating within an inch of their lives…

…until they formed stiff peaks:

The beaten egg whites were gently folded into the batter.

And the little suckers were ready to be baked.

Mmmm.

Then, there was more beating of egg whites…

to which powdered sugar was added…

to create the icing.

And, yup, more coconut.

Then, these morsels of sunny goodness came into play. Oh man, do I LOVE dried pineapple!

Each cupcake was iced and topped with a wedge of dried pineapple.

Yes, ma’am. This round’s on me!

And just to be sure they were tasty enough to share, I took one for a test drive.

All that’s missing is a little paper umbrella!

Things are crazy at Z as in Zebra lately (due to things being crazy in our life right now). I’m still growing a baby in my belly and creating projects for clients, etc…but on top of all of that, I am traveling this week to see my family before I get any bigger/more uncomfortable. THEN, after I return, my husband and I are moving to the country…which means packing, schlepping everything we own across town, unpacking, and organizing.

That said, there won’t be any new posts for the next two weeks. Feel free to spend some time perusing the archives OR come on back in May to see what’s new!

Here’s a little sneak-peek of what is yet to come:

SEE YOU ON THE FLIP SIDE!!

***

I guess I can bake faster than I can blog! That said, here are the shots from the cupcakes I made for St. Patrick’s Day.

The dry ingredients are the typical ones you’ve likely come to expect: flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder.

And, naturally, the batter starts by creaming together these two studs: butter and brown sugar.

Mmmm.

Perhaps the name of this post gave you a clue as to what else comprises the batter: pistachios!

No St. Patrick’s Day treat would be complete without green dye!

To round out the batter, I alternated adding sour cream and the dry ingredients from the first photo.

…and then the chopped pistachios.

Yummy!

Then, the suckers were baked until brown around the edges.

To make the icing, I started by melting a little bit of butter and water.

Next came the powdered sugar.

And, naturally, more green dye and some vanilla extract.

Green, green, green.

Here’s the final product as a group:

…Better make sure these taste good.

Um, YUP! They sure do!

Sláinte!

Some have been extra-tasty-ooh-let’s-make-these-again-sometime recipes while others have been ‘never-agains’. No matter how they taste once finished, each batch has taught me a little more about cooking (and myself). I’m telling you, there are life lessons to be learned in the kitchen!

You can find the corresponding post to each one of these batches here. Thanks for following along and commenting as I make my way through the book. The feedback I get from you makes this crazy idea all the more worthwhile.

Cheers,

Abbi

***

What, you’ve never heard of a Cupcake Kabob before?!

The first thing I did to prep the kabobs was grab a bunch of these:

And a bunch of these:

If I could help it, I didn’t want to repeat colors on each kabob, so I skewered the candied fruit slices on the sticks so I could get a feel for how things would pan out.

The next several steps are the same ones I followed to make the Lamington Mini-Cupcakes. In fact, the same mini-cuppies were used, so I just repeated the photos here in case you missed the Lamingtons post (shame on you, by the way).

Like I mentioned before, it made a BIG batch…which is good when you have lots of kabobs to create!

The icing was a simple paste made of warm milk and confectioner’s sugar.

Each mini cupcake was hand-dipped in the icing,

and the excess was given a moment to run off.

Here’s the tricky part…you have to refrain from just gobbling these up after they are dipped. It’s difficult, let me tell you! Especially since they are so miniature and cute!

Since I managed a sliver of self-control long enough to add some sugar sprinkles, this was the final result:

Now, repeat a million times with various colors of sugar sprinkles.

Okay, maybe not a million, but MANY times nonetheless.

Mmm. If you are the impatient type, you could just stop here, slap these babies on a plate, and call it a day. You just wouldn’t be able to call them “kabobs.”

I then added one cupcake of each color (orange, yellow, pink) to a skewer, alternating fruit slices in between.

And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat….

Since these were for a bake sale, I wrapped each one in cellophane, tied the ends with cheerful yellow ribbon and called it a day.

They were absolutely darling.

And I was absolutely spent.

***

Halloween?! Yes, I know it’s April now. I didn’t choose the names for the cupcakes I make…I’m just working my way through the book. Never mind the timing, or the title for that matter, if it bothers you that much. Besides, the finished product doesn’t look Halloweeny at all. So there.

First, of course, I creamed together butter and sugar.

If you EVER need to zest something, get yourself a microplane zester. It will change your life (at least in the kitchen). Promise.

I zested the living daylights out of this orange, being careful not to shave down into the bitter pith.

Then, I squeezed the juice from the zested orange,

added some lemon juice,

and then added some water to make 2/3 cup.

I gathered together my dry ingredients, including the orange zest.

Dry and wet ingredients were alternated into the mixer with the butter/sugar combo to make the batter.

The zest was folded in,

and red food coloring was added to make the batter a deeper orange color.

Now, if these aren’t the most fun papers…makes me feel like singing and dancing around in the summer sunshine! (oh, wait, it’s only April.)

The final batter reminded me so much of the orange sherbet push-up-pops from my childhood.

And the color was so pretty after the cupcakes baked, too.

Next, orange juice and powdered sugar formed the basis of the “icing”, which you’ll soon see isn’t much like a frosting at all.

In fact, after it boiled, it was more like a jelly.

Few things make a cupcake cuter than a jellied fruit slice.

Each cupcake had a corresponding slice and they waited to be merged using the jelly topping.

Again, to deepen the orange color, food dye was added.

THAT’S more like it!

A dollop here, a dollop there, here a dollop, there a dollop, everywhere a dollop dollop.

Ta Da! Looks like a tropical drink of some sort!

So many neon orange cupcakes…

and they just looked so cute, I couldn’t stop myself from posing with one of them.

Nor could my husband avoid jumping in the shot after I peeled the paper in preparation for the “bite shot”. Ha!

The jelly topping definitely made for a different experience, but if you like orange-flavored foods or jelly-filled donuts, you’d probably dig these.

Boo! (had to get some sort of Halloween reference in there!)

***

Now that 1/4 of 2010 is behind us, it’s a good time to remind you of the fun and excitement that came with ringing in a new year! What better way than with a batch of confetti cupcakes?!

First…you get to take out some aggression on a bag of Jolly Ranchers.

Aren’t they pretty? All those little candy bits look like pirates’ treasure! Jewels!

Then…guess WHAT!…you cream together butter and sugar to start the base for your batter.

Eggs and other such ingredients round things out.

Then the pretty candy pieces are thrown into the mix.

Sorta looks like a bowl of Fruity Pebbles that sat in milk too long, huh?

The yellow (and red) papers complemented the confetti batter quite nicely.

Next, sugar and egg whites are combined to form the icing.

Once that mixture is a bit frothy…

You use another pan to continue beating the eggs/sugar over boiling heat (definitely not for the faint of heart).

Once that process is finished, the icing resembles fluffy divinity.

Slap some of that sugary goodness on each cupcake and you’ll have something that looks a little something like this:

Naturally, you can’t have “confetti” cupcakes without confetti sprinkles!

Cute!

The Jolly Rancher chunks melted in the oven and gave the whole cupcake an interesting fruity flavor. There were no hard bits left and since the color blended, there were no bright, concentrated bits like you might expect from those commercial “Funfetti” cake mixes.

Overall, a fun way to ring in the new year (Or a new month. Or a birthday. Or for no particular reason at all.)

***

Whenever I have several batches of cupcakes to make, I start by measuring out my dry ingredients into labeled containers. It saves me a lot of time measuring and dividing.

As with most every recipe, you start by creaming butter and sugar, and then add the egg(s):

With Red Velvet cake, you use an obscene amount of red food coloring…this recipe called for 2 TB!

Obviously, all that coloring give the batter a killer shade of maroon:

Then, the dry ingredients are added.

As is the milk. You’ll notice that the dry ingredients include cocoa…Red Velvet cake is essentially just chocolate cake with a boatload of dye in it.

Here’s our batter, ready to be baked!

And here they are, fresh out of the oven!

The icing the author suggests for these cupcakes is similar to the one I use for most of my cakes: a buttercream made from shortening, powdered sugar, water, and flavoring (vanilla used here).

Once that was whipped up, I prepped my piping bag to make decorating a snap.

LOVE LOVE LOVE rosettes. They are so simple and so elegant all at the same time. And what’s NOT to love about sugar sprinkles?!

I also made some red buttercream and accented the rosettes with large white heart sprinkles.

When the icings started running low, I mixed the two together to create a swirl effect.

They looked pretty cute as a set, too. These did very well at my cousin’s bake sale. I guess everyone loves Red Velvet!