And More Cupcakes!!! Drum roll please....

I decided to live on the edge, yep that's right and I made chocolate ganache cupcakes. They were chocolately yumminess. I ate far more than a girl who is trying oh so hard to get into shape should.



The sad little blueberry on top was because I was sick and tired of working on the stinking things after baking for 3 hours. The original idea was to make them look like Hostess cupcakes, but failed miserably when I realized that it was hours later and I was still not even close to being done.

At least it was an excuse to use my double boiler again.

Cupcake Wrappers

I finally figured out, sort of, how people cover their cupcakes to make them look fancy. They wrap them in scrapbook paper! I'm not saying that my cupcakes looks fancy, but I did think the wrappers made them look a little more interesting.

Wilton Tip 1M

I have recently added several cupcake blogs to my google reader. Each and every day I am dazzled with new pictures of cupcakes decorated with swirly icing that looks like an ice cream cone. I have to recreate this technique to no avail. Finally, on Thursday I had the nerve to sent a flickr mail to one of the individuals  who added their cupcakes to the blog I was reading.

Jessica, aka The Cupcake Princess was kind enough to reply that she uses the Wilton 1M. I was super glad that she was really nice about that because I have sent out questions via flickr mail before and have been told that "secrets should not be shared online." Apparently photographers refuse to help others learn their photoshop secrets.....to make a long story short, I hope that Jessica is paid forward for helping me understand how she created her look.

My little cupcakes look nothing like hers, but I was very, very happy with the result.





I've got work on swirling the frosting higher, I have a few mishaps attempting that, but all in all I would say its a success. All of my neighbors can plan on having cupcakes delivered to their homes since I have 10 cake mixes left to bake from my cake classes and they are burning holes in my pantry!

Martha's Syrup

I am not really a Martha Stewart fan, but I have a made one exception. I decided to make some frosting from a syrup recipe she had in her magazine that looked delicious. I was at my Grandma's house and she gets Martha's magazine. If you get her mag its on the last page of the May issue. There were cupcakes with the shiniest looking frosting that you made from syrup that was boiled out of strawberries and blueberries.

Since I'm in a semi-baking mode as of late, I decided to give it a go, especially since it gave me an excuse to get a double boiler. Before I move on I need to stress how wonderful and amazing double boilers are....I think that quite possibly they are life changing.

So, what you do is you take your strawberries and put them in the double boiler over simmering water and stir occasionally with some sugar to draw out all the juices.

Here's my strawberries ready to go...



After you strain the whole pieces out you're left with a syrup that you then begin to stir in confectioner's sugar. Don't be alarmed if it takes a whole bag. I started getting nervous about this but believe me, if you're ever going to get that stuff to the consistency of honey you have to add a boatload of sugar.

Here's the finished product, don't be expecting anything beautiful. I had a cake sitting around waiting for my next class this week and instead I decided to cover it in this stuff because I had so much left over. It actually tastes really good, although your teeth feel like there is a grimy coat over them when you get done. The light pink is strawberry and the purplish color is from blueberries.

Cake Pops

Have you ever been to Bakerella's site? That woman is amazing. She makes everything so beautiful. She has a section on her site devoted to Cake Pops. According to her instructions, the cake pops look very easy to make and decorate. Mindy and I being the baking savants that we are, decided to make some.

Luckily, Mindy baked the cake, frosted it and rolled it into little balls before I even got there. My only job was to bring the white chocolate to melt.



A few tips here....

1.) Dip your lollipop stick into the chocolate before you stick it in the cake. The stick will stay in much better.
2.) Only work with frozen cake. Once that stuff defrosts you're in big trouble.

The fun part is rolling the cake pops into the chocolate coating.



The next best part? Actually decorating the pops.



We decided to go with an Easter theme. It was working out for the most part, until the cake pops started sliding off of their sticks.



Bless their hearts, we tried really hard. I'm thinking that the pros would have to use a mold or something to shape that stuff into something semi-professional looking. Plus, I would think that the pops would have to stay in the mold until they have dried because that was when we ran into big problems with the cake pop staying on the stick. It was just too heavy for it.



As you can see, the little guy on the left and the one in the right, back corner didn't make it. Although I think that the cardboard box is a good addition as a cooling rack.