Super Bowl XLV Cupcakes

I made some Super Bowl cupcakes for the big game today. I came up with a "Pretzels and Beer" cupcake. How I came up with this concoction:

Pretzels + Chocolate = Flipz
Pretzels + Beer = A delicious food combination
Chocolate + Beer = Young's Chocolate Stout
Pretzels + Chocolate + Beer = CUPCAKE!

The result: a cupcake with a pretzel crust, chocolate stout cake, a little vanilla swiss meringue frosting, and topped with a chocolate covered pretzel.


I could care less for the teams who were in the game (I'm and Eagles fan myself ;-) but I did match the colors black liners with yellow sprinkles for the Steelers and then yellow liner with green sprinkles for the Packers.

Recipes I used

Crust: I just winged it... smashed up some pretzels, sprinkled some sugar and some melted butter

For the cake: Smitten Kitchen's Chocolate Whiskey and Beer Cake (just the cake part, and I used Young's Chocolate Stout instead of Guinness)

Frosting: Martha Stewart's Swiss Meringue

Fishing Cake

Finally got to present my dad with his retirement cake yesterday. He was so impressed he did not even cut it! It was a fishing scene since he loves to fish (typical retiree eh??) Haha... I also decorated the table with a fishing net, those fishing bob things, and gummi worms (I wanted to get fake fishing worm lures he could use but apparently they contain lead so it's a good thing I read the packaging!)I used my cupcake tower and put the cake on top. The cake was a 6 inch round and a 4 inch round tiered cake. I decided I like working on a smaller scale cakes now. It was so much easier to stack and deal with. I got all the fondant decor finished during the week, covered the cake the night before and then decorated it in the morning. It was the least stressful cake I've done so far :)

Cupcake Flavors:

Strawberry Margarita - strawberry cupcake with hints of lemon and lime zest. Then topped with strawberry cream cheese frosting with hints of tequila, lemon and lime zest.
Key Lime Pie - (one of my dad's fave deserts so I put it in cupcake form) graham cracker cupcale with key lime curd in the middle. Topped with a cream cheese frosting with hints of lime zest. Garnished with a little toasted coconut.
Chocolate Stout - a chocolate stout cupcake made with a home brewed stout. Topped with Bailey's Irish Cream frosting.
I stuck a few homemade toppers I made on some of the cupcakes too - can you guess where he retired from? lol... Well I'm glad everyone enjoyed and I received so many wonderful compliments (when I left only 3 cupcakes were left). It was a definite success!

Congrats Dad!