Lucky Monkey Baby Shower

This past weekend I made cupcakes for a shamrock/monkey theme baby shower. The family is Irish (hence the shamrocks) and for the monkeys they wanted the Fisher Price Rainforest monkey. I did my best interpretation of the monkey I could ;-) Cupcake flavors included lemon and Oreo mint.

Since I had extra cupcakes, I made some different flavor combos to bring to my friend's bachelorette party that night. Flavors included lemon or chocolate cake with raspberry swiss meringue buttercream with a Chambord raspberry filling. Kinda funny - I bought the jam at the dutch market and mixed alcohol in it ;-)


I also made a coffee swiss meringue buttercream to top off some of the chocolate cupcakes. I looove the coffee swiss meringue, it reminds me of coffee ice cream and pairs so well with chocolate cake.

The ladies loved them, I mean... Who doesn't love cupcakes after a few drinks?? ;-)

100th post: Black Bottom Cupcakes!

Wow! So I just realized this is my 100th post!! Time really flies when you're blogging I guess ;-) Well good thing I have a fun post today for my 100th.

One of my managers will be leaving us this week to go on to bigger things. I won't be there on the last day since I will be away, so I made them today instead. For flavors she said chocolate and raspberry... I came up with a Raspberry Black Bottom Cupcake. I took my favorite chocolate cake recipe and found a cream cheese filling recipe. I modified the cream cheese recipe by adding frozen raspberries that I thawed out and drained though a sieve. I took that left over syrup and added it to the cream cheese mixture. I also portioned off some of the cream cheese mixture to make regular black bottom cupcakes with tiny chocolate chips.

I don't like naked cupcakes, so I thought a light smooth swiss meringue buttercream would compliment the cupcake quite nicely. This is my first time successfully making a swiss meringue and it turned out so beautiful and yummy.

For decor, I was inspired by my manager's pregnancy. Sounds weird I know, but she always talks about how she misses sushi. So I made some fondant sushi toppers: california roll, sashimi, ginger, wasabi, and a good luck fortune cookie :)