All I Want for Christmas is a Stand Mixer… and my sanity back.

As I’ve said before, I love December. I spend the whole second half of November looking forward to it, and then it hits and I suddenly remember that December is the month I spend frantically cramming an entire semester’s worth of information into my head. This semester is even worse than years past, because this year I’ve been finishing my courses online and have no real deadlines. Naturally, that means I’ve done absolutely no school work since September. Since my ultimate deadline is December 24^th, I have written six papers in the last eight days and still have four more to go. As a result, I’ve stopped being human and become this weird spaced-out creature who drinks whipped cream vodka in coffee (its rank, I don’t recommend it) and then drunkenly buys shoes online at 3am after filling a governance paper with Jersey Shore references. The only thing keeping me remotely sane right now is taking study breaks to fill cupcake orders, so I thought I’d share those little adventures with you before I hit the books again.

Candy Cane Love

My kitchen basically looks like Christmas threw up on it at the moment- there are cupcakes everywhere and they’re all holiday flavours. I’d like to say I just whipped them up effortlessly, but to be completely honest it couldn’t have been more of a disaster. After dropping a bag of icing sugar on the floor and running out of mini cases half way through, my trusty superstore hand mixer finally took its last breath and completely crapped out. A few exam-stress tears and a shopping trip later, all’s right with the world again and things are back on track.  Mini Holiday Cupcakes = great success, and hopefully a hit at the staff party they're heading to!

White Chocolate Mint Cake with Peppermint Buttercream

Mini Meows!

White Chocolate Eggnog

Caramel Buttered Rum

Sparkling Red Velvet

All ready to go!

Red, Red Velvet

Yesterday night after getting off work at the bar, instead of making crazy Friday night plans or gossiping with my girlfriends, I had the following text exchange with my beautiful baking buddy Dee:
          D: Why doesn't my red velvet ever turn out as red as it should be? :(
          M: Story of my life. (you laugh, but it actually is)
This continued for way longer than a conversation about food colouring should continue, and ended with:
          M: I'll try them again and see what I can come up with...the little bastards are always reddish brown.

Because I'm a compulsive perfectionist about some things, cupcakes included, I set out to make the reddest red velvets I've ever made. According to Wikipedia, "Red velvet is a cake with a dark red, bright red or red-brown color." If that's the case, then why is every red velvet I've ever seen made on TV this unnatural shade of scarlet that I just can't seem to replicate? This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night (I don't like to focus on real problems)...so here's what happened:

I decided to stick with the ingredients and amounts of my regular red velvet recipe, which is a mish-mash of recipes I've found online and in books. Most red velvet recipes are essentially the same, so I figure this can't be the key to the colour. I kept the cocoa to a minimum, and added what I think is scientifically termed a 'shit-ton' of red food colouring to my buttermilk. By the time the batter was finished, it was definitely bright....bright bloody FUSCHIA. After swearing and stirring it for a while hoping it would magically turn red, I made a thin cocoa-water paste and added more red colour and a little bit of yellow. I threw them in the oven and tried not to look, convinced that my velvets were going to look like a drag-queen's wet dream and not the scarlet beauties I was aiming for. BUT THEN, a 'one month til Christmas' miracle happened... and the cupcakes I ended up with were a gorgeous deep red and totally delicious. I suspect that my oven is actually a portal to Narnia, and that my cupcakes were swapped out by a charming little goat-man who took pity on me swearing at random kitchen appliances. I'm going to take credit anyway though, so here you go. Really Red (yay!) Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. 

Winter Wonderland

Lately in this rainy little corner of the world, it's been FREEZING. We've even had snow! In November! Personally, I love it because I think snow makes everything a million times prettier. I love it even more after looking at the gorgeous pictures of snowy scenes on All Things Carly(which you should definitely check out because she's actually diligent about blogging and doesn't forget for weeks at a time like me). Anyway, I was so excited about the pretty snowy icing on everything and the pretty photographs, I decided to make some cupcakes inspired by the beautiful bits of winter. 


If this all sounds a bit too whimsical for me, don't worry- I love the snow here because I know it will last a maximum of 3 days, and if we get more than 4 inches there's a strong possibility I won't have to go to work. I'm also confident that I won't wake up to 6 feet of powdery white doom, a-la New Brunswick, which I will then be expected to wade through to get to class/work/the bar. On the flip side, I'm afraid to go anywhere when it's actually snowing because no one really knows how to drive in the snow here...I'm really not too keen on getting plowed down by a soccer-mom in an Escalade who's slammed the brakes on and covered her eyes because she hit some slush.


To summarize: Snow is pretty, snow-themed cupcakes are pretty, take a look and enjoy!

Baby it's cold outside...

On this rainy November Monday, I should be spending my day off writing policy papers and studying super fun things like the evolution of human rights theory. Instead, I've spent it dancing around my kitchen to Martin Solveig and working on my latest creation: Hot Chocolate Cupcakes. Initially, my plan was to make milk chocolate cupcakes and top them with marshmallow frosting, which was a great plan. Until I nearly blew up my hand mixer in the Great Marshmallow Fiasco of 2011....no, I don't want to talk about it. Anyway! I persevered and the end result is rather delicious. So here we have hot chocolate flavoured cupcakes with fudge frosting and marshmallows....and a pretty amateurish-looking mug of hot chocolate, but I guess that's what you get for 5 minutes of effort. Enjoy! 

Halloween Comes Early

Halloween is quite possibly my favourite holiday that isn't a holiday. I don't know why- I don't like candy, scary movies make me cry, and fake blood is one of two things on the planet that I'm really allergic to. For some reason though, I love everything about it and have been getting into the spirit by filling some Halloween cupcake orders.


Even though Halloween itself is a full week away, my current plans include being 3000 miles away on the east coast. So as far as my kitchen is concerned, Halloween is coming early this year and the product of my excitement is three new treats:

1. Death-by-Chocolate Ghosts (I know, I'm hilarious)
2. Caramel Candy Corn Cupcakes.....and last but not least,
3. Black Cherry Truffle Cupcakes with Eyeballs (I couldn't think of a clever name for these obviously)

White Chocolate Buttercream Ghosts on top of Double-Chocolate Cake

oh hai!

Caramel Cake topped with Butterscotch Frosting

rows of ghosts!

Gumpaste, food colouring, piping gel and a paintbrush: success

Black Cherry Cupcakes, Dark Chocolate Ganache Topping

mmm...eyeballs.

Just for fun- chocolate ghost family!

Mama ghost is a little fat, but she is made of butter I suppose.

Cupcakes for days...

Two Girls, One Cupcake

As promised....What's better than baking cupcakes? Baking cupcakes with your beautiful bestie! What, were you expecting anything else? A certain little 6 year old who may have already been featured in this blog made a special request the other day and the lovely Deihdra came to help fill the order. At first I was hesitant to tackle Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes...mostly because I was afraid they would taste like mouthwash. Having said that, after way more taste-testing than our stomachs would have liked, we've created something that's pretty damn delicious. Oh, and I've managed to lose my camera somewhere so please excuse the iPhone photos!

Batter that looks like mint-choc-chip ice cream = on the right track.

Hilariously bad chocolate toppers...

Dark chocolate buttercream = total win.

Yeah, that happened.

:)

Yes, we do have matching aprons.

Be jealous.

OMNOMNOM

Green! 

Happy Birthday Chantel!

Twenty-two years ago today, a little tiny version of one of my favourite people was born. In celebration of her birthday a few things are going down: 

1. She's wearing the dress all your dresses wish they looked like.
2. Tanqueray and Absolut will be making special appearances at her festivities this evening.
3. Her super helpful hubby will be surprising her with these little gems!

Chocolate cheesecake-flavoured cakes

The original plan for these was just chocolate cakes with white chocolate icing. I had spare cream cheese kicking around though, so they became chocolate cheesecake flavoured. Then I got distracted by facebook and incinerated my white chocolate, so the icing became ''only slight white-chocolate(because I could only salvage about a tablespoon) & sortof-cream-cheese(because I ran out) buttercream''. As a side note, it was about half past midnight at this point, so the fact that there's even icing on these things is kindof a big deal. Despite everything though, they do actually taste like chocolate cheesecake, and the shiny silver nonpareils are my new favourite thing. :)

So Happy Birthday to a very special lady, and enjoy! <3 

With vanilla cheesecake buttercream!

I hate the flash, but it does show the icing colour better...

These little silver nonpareils make my life.

shoooo cute :)