Holidays are in full effect

Well it's December 1st, and the holidays are in full effect. Hanukkah starts today and only 25 more days until Christmas! I have yet to shop for anyone (sorry guys! lol). As my grad classes are winding down for the semester I decided to make some cupcakes for one of my classes that is ending today (any excuse to try a new recipe creation).

I decided to make cran-orange cupcakes. I made some last year, which were pretty good. But I wanted to tweak the recipe a bit. For the cake, I made a yellow cupcake batter and added fresh orange zest. Then I cooked the cranberries first with water and sugar (like you would cranberry sauce) but left them whole and drained the excess juice when cooled. The cranberries are then folded gently into the batter. For the frosting, I'm hooked on the SMBC (swiss meringue buttercream)! The cream cheese frosting I did last year was good, but can be so sweet with an already sweet cupcake. So I did a white chocolate SMBC. To top it all off they are garnished with sugared cranberries and a fondant holly leaf.

Very happy with my result this year. Hopefully my classmates will enjoy them too :) Happy Holidays!

50th Birthday Cake

Had an order for another friend. It was her father's 50th Birthday this weekend. She basically told me the color scheme and we worked from that. This is what I ended up with :) (Wish I got better pics but I assembled it at their house. They were kind enough to hold up a white cloth for me though ;-)

Flavors included: chocolate cake with vanilla swiss meringue and chocolate ganache as well as white chocolate cake with white chocolate swiss meringue and raspberry preserves.


I'm very happy with the result and hope the birthday party went well. Ya know, the more three tier cakes I do, the more I'm just amazed at how time consuming they can be. I need a sous chef!!

Fall is in the air

It's been awhile since I last blogged. I've kinda been taking a break from baking - as in less orders and more baking for myself :) I'm also enjoying fall quite a lot this year. I've always considered myself a summer person, but after this crazy heat wave we had in the DC area this summer...I think I am REconsidering what my favorite season is.

Last weekend was beautiful! We took a metro ride down to the Eastern Market in DC. I have lived in the MD/DC area my whole life and have never ever been. We enjoyed it so much we brought family friends from London, down to the market this weekend as well. Look at all the beautiful fall colors at the market:

(click to view collage larger)

Waited in line for a good 30 minutes for this crepe!

We decided to make dinner based on whatever we bought from the market. Here is what we ended up with on our menu that evening:

~Fresh Raviolis (2 flavors - Mozzarella and roasted tomato; goat cheese, butternut and apple) half of it I toasted ("St. Louis style") and the other half I boiled. We made a few different sauces on the side: marinara, vodka sauce, and a brown butter sage sauce with bacon (which went great with the goat cheese!)
~Homemade meatballs (a mix of pork, veal and beef)
~Brussel sprouts (my BFs family recipe...and it includes bacon and butter! I think bacon and butter can make anything taste good)
~Salad (fresh mesculin mix with grape tomatoes served with a homemade citrus honey mustard dressing)

~Topped off with a bottle of Vidal from the Lailey Winery we got on our trip to Niagara on the Lake this summer.

AHmazing dinner...

It was SO good! I kinda felt like how I feel after I eat a thanksgiving meal lol... but it was worth it! Oh and I can't forget the most important part of the meal... DESSERT :) Our family friends have never had a Cara Lee Cupcake so I whipped up some homemade Orange cupcakes scented with fresh zest topped with an orange zest swiss meringue and filled with a Grand Mariner raspberry filling. The jam I had bought on our trip to Niagara this summer as well. I mixed in a teaspoon or so of GM and some orange zest into the jam before filling the cupcakes.

Got to use my new orange with polka dot liners

The inside...

It's been such a great weekend and I'm loving fall... not ready for the cold weather to move in just yet though. In the meantime I will be getting ready for Halloween the rest of this week ~Cara Lee

New Flavors!

Since my friend gave me pretty much free reign over the flavors for tomorrow's party, I came up with some new flavor combos... I'm going to take the extras to work tonight and see what they think :)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana

Oreo Mint Chip

Chocolate Orange Creme

Blue and Orange

My friend Ashley ordered some cupcakes for her friend's birthday. She was having a bowling party and her bowling ball is orange and blue. I didn't go all out with the bowling theme but stuck more with the colors instead. I topped the cupcakes off with the letters to spell out "Happy Birthday Amanda" and cut out some fondant bowling balls and pins. I also had an extra 6 inch cake left over that I decorated to match the cupcakes. I topped it off with fun swirl roses.

The Cupcakes:

~Red Velvet w/ cream cheese frosting

~Vanilla Bean

~Mango Citrus (a citrus zest cake with mango curd filling and mango butter cream frosting)

The Cake: Almond cake w/ a vanilla raspberry mouse. Covered with traditional buttercream and topped with homemade rolled fondant. The flowers and leaves are also fondant.