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 Though I originally made the following cupcakes for the back-to-back birthdays of my sister-in-law, Ali, and mother-in-law, Robin, I cannot continue this post without offering up a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.

Since MJ was turning 8 on April 8th, this was her one and only Golden Birthday. So I was extra excited when she asked me if I’d make the cake for her party at Remington Park.

Her request was perfectly ‘MJ’: A tiered chocolate cake with pink icing and polka dots. So that’s what she got!

Her little friends were so cute. They kept saying, “You MADE that?” and “You make really good cakes!” I love kids…they are so easily pleased.

Happy birthday, sweet girl! We love you and are SO proud of you!

Admittedly, I’ve never seen a single episode of the show, but I do have the power of Google working on my behalf, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out what kind of cake I was supposed to make.

I started by printing out the logo at the size I would need for the cake (a 12″ round, which I cut into an octagon).

I then used all the bits and pieces from the template to create black fondant pieces (thanks, Anya, for generously giving me your leftover black fondant!! You are awesome!)

I allowed those to dry overnight on hunks of waxed paper, then transferred them over to the octagon-shaped, buttercream-covered cake.

The waxed-paper-backing technique worked really well and allowed me to get everything lined up almost perfectly!

Then, all it needed was a little buttercream lettering to round out the logo.

Not bad, huh? Especially since I have no idea what this logo represents. HA!

Stephen, happy 33rd birthday, pal! Glad to hear your party was a smashing success! Happy to have been a part of it in this way!

Teddy will be turning 4 this month, and in Anne’s words, “he would love a personalized field journal to write down ‘observations.’”

How cute is that?! Anne did some research about Teddy’s favorites and as luck would have it, he loves green frogs! I happened to have the perfect fabric for his book!

To jazz up the fabric a bit, I added orange brads to give the frog’s warts some texture (eww?)

I also used silver embroidery floss for the bugs’ flight patterns.

I love the depth that the sewing gave both the wings and the swirls. I’d been wanting to try this technique for a while, and this fabric was the perfect opportunity!

Teddy’s favorite color is red, and since no observation journal is complete without a writing utensil, I added a red ribbon pen loop and a red mechanical pencil.

Teddy also loves the alphabet, so for the inside paste pages, I used lettered paper in coordinating colors. Anne also included the verbiage for a personalized inscription, so I added that to the inside cover as well.

Anne, thanks for asking me to make Teddy’s book! It was such a fun change of pace to make a child’s journal!

Teddy, HAPPIEST OF HAPPY BIRTHDAYS!! May this book house all your big ideas!

It’s…a bowling ball!!

And no bowling ball would be complete without pins! M was going to celebrate her 4th birthday by going bowling with her friends, and M’s mom called me to request a bowling themed cake.

I cut a 11 x 15 sheet cake into a ball-and-pins shape using a template I created on my computer. The whole cake was then iced with classic butter cream in white and hot pink. The ‘holes’ in the bowling ball were actually dark cocoa Candy Melts.

M’s mom send me a photo from the party. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a kid blow out the candles on a cake I’ve made!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M! Hope you had a great time at your party!

Therese’s daughter Aden was having a birthday and wanted a leopard print cake. So, I set out to find a great pattern I could recreate in royal icing.

I spent several hours piping icing into perfect leopard-like shapes. My shapes are on the left, the pattern I studied is on the right:

Once the spots dried, I iced a 12″ two-layer chocolate cake with pink icing. I then added the birthday phrase, a beaded border, and the leopard spots.

I would loved to see how these spots would look on a tiered cake!

Detail shot of the spots: Outlined in 100% thickness royal icing and filled with a looser version of the same icing to make a ‘pillowy’ look.

Happy Birthday, Aden! I hope it was a great one!!

***

It’s cupcake post kind of week, and since I used my blog as a virtual birthday treat for my cousin Zoe yesterday, today I’m doing the same for my friend Jacee. Only her birthday will be celebrated in past tense, since it was in December.

Below are the cupcakes I made for Jacee’s birthday…a baked version of one of my favorite (pre-pregnancy, that is) drinks: The Cuba Libre (rum & coke).

The first step is to boil a stick of butter in some cola (sounds healthy, no?)

Then, you get the dry ingredients ready…

and pour in the coke/butter mixture,

along with some cream or half-and-half (depends how naughty you are feeling).

I bought these shaped muffin papers a while back and wanted to see how well they worked. I realized later that using carbonated batter wasn’t probably the best time to try them out.

I was careful to not over-fill them, since I wasn’t sure what would happen as the batter baked and expanded.

While they baked, I cut up some candied lime slices for decoration.

And, as I should’ve suspected, these bubbled and caved much like the Root Beer Float Cupcakes did, only this first attempt wasn’t a total disaster. It must be due to the carbonation in the pop. That’s the only culprit I can think of.

But they were still moist…and there’s nothing a little icing can’t fix.

A couple tablespoons of rum and some powdered sugar made up the icing.

And, naturally, each cupcake was garnished with a lime wedge…like a real Cuba Libre.

And, my cute papers worked fairly well with the batter, even though it wasn’t ideal. I’d be curious to see how well they work with a commercial cake mix…

Bottoms up!

Well, who better to help you turn this age…

…than this superhero?!

Amy contacted me for some party/gift giving help. 1: she wanted to have a custom journal made for a gift. 2: her son was turning four and only likes Spider-Man. Nothing more, nothing less. Spider-Man. No questions asked. Aren’t 4 year olds great?!

So, I spent some time creating a custom-made Spider-Man cake…better than the regular ol’ sheet cakes you buy with the decal stuck on top, no?

I used homemade marshmallow fondant to create his spidey eyes and layered them on top of rich, dark chocolate icing.

I used Candy Melts (dark cocoa flavored) to create the spider emblem on his spandex suit.

And the edge was finished off with a row of chocolate icing beads.

Happy Birthday!!

Naturally, after being cut to the correct shape, girls’ cakes start with a base coat of pink icing:

I added details in purple to make the cake truly “Hannah-ish”.

To complete the guitar, I used chocolate icing for the frets and screws. All the details were made from homemade marshmallow fondant (which tastes much better than the store-bought kind).

All of the fondant pieces were brushed with a faint gold luster dust to give them a nice, girlie sparkle. Here are the tuning pegs:

The pickups:

The knobs:

And a monogram for the birthday girl herself. A true rockSTAR.

And THIS is the best part…seeing a child’s face light up when they see their custom-designed birthday cake.

Here’s to many more happy, happy birthdays, Mikala!

***

This is the third batch of cupcakes that was made for my mom’s birthday: Brownie Cupcakes!

And there’s no denying that once out of the oven, they definitely looked more like brownies than cake. And, boy, did they smell good!

Each one was frosted with a fudge icing and topped with a walnut half.

I loved using all the different colored papers for this batch…it made a simple cupcake so playful. You can get fun papers like these (as well as sprinkles, sugars, packaging, etc.) at Bake It Pretty or Confectionery House.

I’d like to try making these again sometime, but doing them like the coffee house Cuppies & Joe does: With a dollop of caramel on the top instead of icing. Mmm.

As the year 2009 draws to a close, I’ve made some headway on this crazy adventure. I started with 113 recipes on the to-do list, and now I’m down to 89 (24 done!). I’m hoping to finish at least another 20 batches before Baby Meadows makes his/her appearance in early July (or late June, if my mom’s guess is right!), so we’ll see how that goes. Wish me luck!

What was your favorite dessert in 2009? Something you made? Something you tried in a restaurant? Any baking/cooking goals for 2010?