Spring has Sprung, and I still can't make Cake Pops.

March is a great month- Spring Break, St.Patrick's Day, the first day of Spring, and Something On A Stick Day(yes, I'm serious). The first day of Spring was last week, and we've had some pretty gorgeous days. There's something about sunshine that puts everyone in a good mood, especially me. Have you ever heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder? Some twisted bastard decided to call the disorder that makes you depressed in winter "SAD"....thanks for that one, champ. Cruel irony aside, I'm pretty sure I have it and nothing makes me happier than when the weather starts to get amazing in March/April. 

Since I'm not actually at school right now, I didn't have 'Spring Break' this year. What I had instead, was a night in for my baby sister who was on Spring Break and has been harassing me to have a girly sleepover for months. We made mini pizzas (on garlic naan bread, go try it, now), took her for frozen yogurt, and turned my living room into a massive fort to watch Puss In Boots and sleep in. I highly recommend Puss In Boots, I really don't recommend spending the night sleeping on hardwood floor and couch cushions...my back is still creaking. We also made these adorable springtime bird's nest cupcakes. I think she ate as many eggs as she put on the cupcakes, but somehow we got them all decorated and the end result is just too cute!

Best fort ever? I think so.

almost as cute as her :)

You know what the best way to spend St.Patrick's Day is? Working at a bar.......NOT. I barely had time for any festive cupcaking what with work and making time to drink entirely too much, but I did manage to squeeze in these Irish Cream Coffee Cupcakes, which were pretty tasty. They didn't taste that much like Irish Cream, which is surprising considering the massive amounts of Carolann's I put in the batter and the icing...oh well, there's always next year!

Irish Cream Cupcakes with Carolann's & Coffee Buttercream

Another favourite from this month was Rainbow Sprinkle Sundae Cupcakes. Vanilla & rainbow sprinkle cupcakes topped with whipped vanilla buttercream, chocolate drizzle and a cherry on top made these treats a huge birthday party success! 

I love any excuse to use maraschino cherries...
I will literally eat them out of the jar, it's a problem.

Last but not least, March 28th is 'Something On A Stick Day'...what better way to celebrate than to make another attempt at my nemesis, cake pops. If you're unaware, my first attempt at cake pops resulted in something that looked like dessert turds. The second attempt resulted in something that looked like slightly more uniform dessert turds. This time, when I messed up a batch of cupcakes I mixed up cake pop paste right away and chucked it in the freezer. Today, in honour of Something On A Stick Day, I faced my fear and reattempted cake pops with my frozen Chocolate Key Lime batter. In the end, I've decided that cake pops are still not for me. These are delicious, and they do look nicer than my previous attempts, buuut I'm gonna leave this one for the experts and stick to what I do best. :)

Chocolate Cake, Key Lime Cream Cheese Frosting,
Dark Chocolate Coating...deeelicious.

DIY Meowcakes: Cookie Dough Cupcakes!

As you may have noticed, this isn't a blog where I share recipes. There's a couple of reasons for this...

Firstly, the recipes I use are my own creations. They took months to perfect to the point where people bite into a cupcake and immediately say "Oh My God."  So I'm a little like a protective mother about them. No, it's not in the spirit of food blogging at all. No, I don't reeeally care. Secondly, there are so many fantastic blogs out there posting great recipes daily, if you want to recreate something you see here you can literally just google the flavours. One of my favourites is Sweetapolita, a beautiful page full of gorgeous photos, really great recipes, and helpful baking posts. 

Having said this...there are some things that need to be shared, and Cookie Dough Cupcakes is one of them. Whether you're a kid, a toothless geriatric, or a munchie-hungry university student, these are a guaranteed hit. They look like cupcakes, but really truly taste like chocolate chip cookie dough. The best part is, anyone can make them by adjusting recipes they already use! So here you go:

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

You will need:

- brown sugar

- ingredients for your favourite vanilla cake recipe

- mini chocolate chips

- ingredients for basic vanilla buttercream

~~~

1) Take your favourite vanilla cake recipe, and replace 1/2 to 2/3rds of the white granulated sugar with golden or brown sugar. As long as your recipe usually begins with creaming butter and sugar, it will work just fine. Spend an extra couple of minutes beating the butter and sugars together to make sure you get out any grittiness from the brown sugar. Brown sugar is what makes homemade chocolate chip cookies chewy and delicious, so by replacing some of the sugar in your  cake batter with it, the cake itself will have a similar taste.

2) Prepare the rest of your recipe as usual, and stir in mini chocolate chips. A batch of twelve cupcakes will need about half a cup of chips, but this is pretty much to your taste. I like the mini chips because I find large chocolate chunks too much for a cupcake, but again this is totally your call. Bake your cupcakes as usual.

3) While your cupcakes are cooling, you can prepare the buttercream. Start whipping about a cup of room temperature butter with half a cup of brown sugar. Beat for about 4 minutes until the brown sugar is well incorporated, then gradually add another 2 cups of icing sugar. Add milk by the tablespoon as needed, and beat until you have something that looks like frosting. Stir in a big teaspoon of vanilla extract, and then beat in a third of a cup of flour and half a teaspoon of salt. Flour in frosting sounds totally bizarre, but trust me- your frosting is going to taste like unbaked chocolate chip cookies.

4) At this point, you can choose whether or not you want to add chocolate chips to your frosting as well. I chopped dark chocolate super fine and folded it in, but you could just as easily drizzle chocolate on the finished cupcakes or cover them in chocolate sprinkles.

5) Ice your cooled cupcakes with the cookie dough buttercream and enjoy! 

Whoever you're baking for, these won't last long!

Sweet Treats for Secretaries!

 I love it when someone gives me a vague sort of idea or theme for a cupcake order and tells me to make whatever I want. It's a chance to get creative, try out new cake flavours and frostings, and of course to strut my cupcake stuff. So when I got a phone call from a lovely lady wanting to show her appreciation for her kid's school admin staff, I was pretty stoked. The brown-frosted cakes you see below are Vanilla Bean Chocolate Chip with Dark Chocolate Buttercream, and the pink are Lemon Raspberry Swirl. My favourite part of these decorations are the post-it notes (I have a bit of a thing for post-it notes as it is, but these are made of fondant!)...They're definitely a keeper for office-themed orders as they're the perfect template for writing messages!

no appointments? time for cupcakes!

office supplies!

A kid in my high school chemistry class stapled his hand once. True story.

The mouse cord suffered a little pre-photo, but still cute!

Post-it love

Sometimes I wish I was the one making those announcements:
"Students are reminded to adhere to the school dress code. 'Snooki' is not a look
and wife beaters are both tacky and incredibly ugly. You don't have
muscles yet, you're 13. Put some clothes on."

ring ring!

Late slips? pssh. Back in the day  I used to phone the school
pretending to be my mum and excuse myself from class.
Worked every time!

A tasty show of appreciation!

well duh.

Yes, I know this is out of proportion.

Not gonna lie, these are a huge pain to make.
So cute though!

click!

Vanilla Bean Chocolate Chip

Lemon Raspberry Swirl

Made With Love

This Valentine’s Day, I seriously considered making a sentimental cupcake post about love to go with all the romantic cupcake orders. Thirty seconds later I remembered that I’m really crap at being sentimental and that idea went straight out the window. Instead I was just going to stick a load of pictures up.

Since then though, a few things have happened that I really wanted to share. This is now a three-part post and I’m sorry in advance for the length!

Part One

My little sister arrived to pick up her special Valentines order yesterday afternoon- mini valentine cupcakes for her class at school. She’s ten years old, has a teenage attitude straight off the family channel that makes you want to strangle her, and is one of the most precious things I’ve had or will ever have in my life. I always know how much she means to me, but I sometimes forget that the feeling is mutual. Until I realize that out of all the people in her little world, she chooses to put her time and effort into making her Valentine’s card for me. It might just be a construction paper heart- but it’s got her best stickers on it and a painstakingly handwritten message inside and that’s all I need. My fridge is literally covered in ‘I Love You’ drawings of flowers and scarily disproportionate stick people with bellybuttons on their heads, but today, this little paper heart takes the cake.

Chocolate & Vanilla Valentine Minis :)

Part Two

Just in case rainbow sprinkle batter wasn't enough...
A rainbow sprinkle heart seemed necessary. Just so he'd know
what was inside, right?

A little later a friend came over to get help making a cake for her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day. Nothing fancy- vanilla cake with rainbow sprinkles and about a ton of vanilla frosting was the order of the day. As we set out to make the tackiest looking cake we could possibly create, this pretty quickly became my favourite baking project ever. It wasn’t about looking good, it wasn’t about impressing anyone with fancy piping or decorations…it was about the time and love she wanted to put into it and the end result was adorable. At the end of the day, the tackiest thing I’ve ever put out of my kitchen is also the best thing I’ve ever sent out, because it was lovingly made (using a seriously excessive amount of sprinkles.)

All together now: D'awwwwwwwww

What's better than a fondant heart? A tye-dye
heart with a face, duh.

Normally I'd rather die than use those toothpick paper
toppers....but I think they really tied the whole thing together here.

Part Three

As I’ve mentioned before, I work in a pub. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find a sentimental love story- mostly it’s full of alcohol and poor life choices. But everyone has a story, especially the old men drinking alone at the bar. One of our regulars found out about MeowCakes a few nights ago and immediately ordered a dozen Valentine’s cupcakes. “Make me your best ones, charge me whatever you like.” I was pleased, assumed his wife would be getting them to make up for him practically living at the bar and went about my business. Later that night, I found out that his wife has been dead for two years and he just wants to support my little project. It’s the same story with a few other regulars- one is a ninety-something guy who gets up at the crack of dawn every Sunday morning, visits his wife’s grave to tell her all about his week, and then waits outside for us to open so he can come have some lunch and a chat. Another was married to his wife for 65 years before she passed away- he pops in for a coffee and some company every single day. Even though he has the short-term memory of a goldfish, he can take you through every detail of his marriage beginning to end. I am one of the most jaded, cynical people you will ever meet- but the way this guy talks about his wife usually sends me running for the bathroom to have a little cry.  So that Valentine’s order is going to be as fantastic as I can make it, because in my own little way I’m making it for all three of those men and the women they still worship.

Red Velvet Valentine

The point of these three stories is that even though I am cynical and don’t usually like Valentine’s Day, this year I’m feeling pretty good about it. Because all of these stories, all these cupcake orders, all those kid’s drawings, all of them, were truly made with love. At the end of the day, who can complain about that?

That last Valentine order....check!

Chocolate Hazelnut

Red Velvet

Chocolate Hazelnut Rose

Valentine Order- top to bottom: Raspberry White Chocolate,
 White Chocolate Amaretto, Chocolate Hazelnut.

Red Velvets & Raspberry White Chocolate Roses!

White Chocolate Amaretto Valentines

Petal Dusted Rose

What it's all about.

                                                    

Happy Birthday Kelly!

Birthdays are the perfect excuse to get fancy as far as I'm concerned, and there's no reason home made cupcakes can't look better than a store-bought birthday treat. I love to surprise people with their birthday orders and give them something ten times better than they expected. I also like to theme the decorations to the person they're for--for example a girly soon-to-be-bride planning her tropical destination wedding! So plain old red velvets for a celebration? Not in my kitchen.

Working with fondant isn't really working at all...honestly, it's basically
adult play-doh and no one will yell at you for eating it! Win-win.

Criminal Minds on TV and a flower-making station on the coffee table!

Red Velvet Cupcakes, Cream Cheese Frosting & a little extra sparkle!

Hand-painted colours and petal dust make the perfect tropical toppers.

I was determined to fit the 'Happy B-Day' onto one cupcake... no matter
how much frosting it took!

Personalized birthday wishes for the birthday girl!

A little wonky, but they all fit! 

A tropical birthday cupcake garden :)