Gingerbread Cupcake Recipe!!

Happy Holidays!  Looking for a great recipe to bring to your holiday gatherings?  Today, I wanted to share my recipe for Gingerbread Cupcakes!  It's a delicious holiday treat (also, great for any time you want a gingerbread treat!!).

Ingredients:
-1/4 Cup Unsalted Butter (softened)
-1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
-1 large egg (room temperature)
-1 1/3 Cups All Purpose Flour
-1/2 tsp Baking Powder
-1/2 tsp Baking Soda
-1/4 tsp Salt
-1 tsp Cinnamon
-1 tsp Ground Ginger
-1/2 tsp Nutmeg
-1/4 tsp Allspice
-1/2 Cup Milk (room temperature)
-1/2 Cup Molasses
-1 tsp Vanilla

I topped my cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, with a little orange zest!  So yummy!  I'll have my cream cheese icing recipe coming soon!

Rimmed with sanding sugar and topped with mini gingerbread cookies, these cupcakes are a cute dessert for holiday gatherings, or a sweet gift!

Happy Holiday Caking!

Craftsy Flash Sale! (October 30th-31st)

Happy Halloween!!  I know I've been pretty absent from my blog and Facebook lately... I delivered my last cake of the 2013 Wedding Season a few weeks ago and I've been busy celebrating birthdays, tending to family matters, preparing for Halloween and the holidays and just generally being "Mom" for a while!  I've got some tutorials, videos and recipes planned, but those will be a few weeks out.

But, I just heard about the Craftsy Flash Sale going on today and tomorrow in celebration of Halloween and wanted to make sure my readers knew about it!  Be sure to check out the sale for a great deal on some of the wonderful classes offered on Craftsy!

Happy Halloween!

...and Happy Caking :)

Apple Tea Cake Recipe!

Hi Everyone...  Today I am excited to share a recipe, perfect for fall!  Here in New England it has been prime apple picking season...  Pick-your-own is one of my favorite things to do with my son and we try to take advantage of whatever is in season during the summer.  Last week we made it out to the apple orchards to pick a peck of Cortland apples! 

 This recipe has been handed down to me from a family member... I hadn't made it before, but I'm so glad I decided to try it!  Apple Tea Cake, like a coffee cake, is a not-too-sweet crumb cake... perfect for enjoying with a cup of afternoon tea.  It was a huge hit with my family and will probably become a staple through the fall!

Apple Tea Cake Recipe:

• 4 Lipton Tea Bags
• 1 Tart Apple
• 1 ¼  Cups Sugar
• 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
• ½ tsp Baking Powder
• ½ tsp Baking Soda
• 12 Tbsp Unsalted Butter (softened)
• 2 Eggs
• ½ Cup Sour Cream
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• Crumb Topping* (recipe to follow)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. In a medium bowl, pour 2 cups of boiling water over tea bags, let steep for about 5 minutes.
3. Remove tea bags, add ¼ cup of sugar and stir to dissolve.  Add peeled, cored and rough chopped apples and let stand about 1 hour.
4. After an hour, remove apple pieces and set aside.  Also, reserve ¼ cup of tea liquid.
5. In a small bowl whisk together dry ingredients and set aside.
6. Add sour cream & vanilla to tea liquid, and stir to combine.
7. In a large mixing bowl (or in the bowl of your stand mixer) cream together the butter and 1 cup of sugar.  Then, add eggs one at a time.
8. Next, alternate adding dry & wet ingredients, be careful not to over mix!
9. Fold in apples with a spatula and then spread into a lightly greased 9” spring form pan.
10. Evenly spread the crumb topping over the top of the batter, and then bake about 1 hour (or until a toothpick comes out clean) in a 350°F oven.
11. Let cool completely on a wire rack before removing from pan.
12. Optional: sprinkle powdered sugar over the top!

 *Crumb Topping Recipe

• ½ Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/3 Cup All Purpose Flour
• ½ tsp Cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp butter (softened)
• ½ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)

1. In a small bowl, combine all ingredients (except pecans) and blend with a fork until the mixture resembles crumbly, wet sand.  
2. Stir in nuts.

I hope you will try this recipe... Enjoy!

Happy Caking :)

Pleats & Brooches Cake!

Here is another of the cakes I did in September!  I was excited to work on this one, I had designed a cake with diagonal pleats some time ago and never had the opportunity to make it.  So, I was thrilled when my bride told me this was what she wanted!

I used a scribing tool to roughly mark out where I wanted the top line of the pleats to go.  I added a little tylose powder to the fondant I used to make the strips with, to stiffen it up and make it easier to work with.  Using my pasta attachment, I rolled strips of fondant to a #4.  I trimmed the fabric strips to roughly 1.5 inches, it didn't need to be exact because the bottom edge would be covered with the pleat below.  I moistened one side and folded the strip in half so the top edge was a nice rolled/finished edge and the bottom was the open seam.  Starting from the top, overlapping my scribed line, I layered the pleats!  When I got to the bottom border of the cake, I used an exacto blade to make everything nice and neat.

The brooches and topper were supplied by the bride.  I love the sparkle they added to this otherwise "simple" looking design.  It's hard to capture the sparkle of the "bling" in these photos!!

Thanks for looking!

Happy Caking :)

Ruffled Petal Cake!

I made this cake a few weeks ago, for a wedding at the gorgeous Saltwater Farm Vineyard in Stonington, CT.

When I was discussing the design with the couple, they were in love with a cake by Cinderellas Cakes... check out the fun, "shabby chic" styled bridal shower she created the cake for: here.

My take is very similar... But, I tried to keep the ruffles a little thinner, so they would look like fabric or flower petals pealing away from the cake.

I loved the fashion flowers on the original cake, so I styled my own after them.  The centers are just balls of gumpaste, on wire, coated with copper and gold disco dust.  I used a peony cutter and left the petals un-textured, and fairly un-ruffled to give a nice contrast to the pleated and folding fondant on the cake.  They almost look like paper flowers!

So pretty and romantic!  I brought the ruffles up over the edge of each cake, so it looks like one piece, with out any seems.

The cake was set up on a rustic wine barrel, and later had some fresh flowers arranged at the base.  So beautiful, this cake was definitely one of my favorites from the season!

I am making a list of ideas for my next video tutorials... if anyone would like to see a demonstration of the technique I used, leave a comment below!

Happy Caking :)

Cake in Transit!

I am finally winding down from the busiest wedding season I've experienced yet!  I am behind sharing my cakes with you all... And I really wanted to get some photos posted today, but even without cakes to work on, there don't seem to be enough hours in a day!

I WILL get some photos up this week... but today, I just wanted to let you all know about a product I have up for sale!

Several weeks ago, I posted this photo on my Facebook page as I was getting ready to leave for a delivery.

It's a magnet that I created at the beginning of the summer... I was sick of the frustration I felt when driving slow and cautiously with a cake on board.  I'm sure you've all experienced it, going super slow around a corner, on a one lane street... breaking for bumps and slowly going around pot holes.  Or being on the highway and in the SLOW vehicle lane, and being tailgated, when the person behind you could safely pass if they wanted to!  Ugh, it was so frustrating and I felt like yelling out the window, "How would you want me to drive if this was YOUR wedding cake?!"

So, I created this design and got myself a magnet for my car.  It says "back off," while still being lighthearted with the fun font :)  And, I have to say, it has made a HUGE difference in my experience for cake deliveries! People tend to stay far back, or politely pass me if they can.  No more evil stares and tailgating (well almost none).  I would use this for any cake delivery, but I feel  like people are more likely to be understanding if it's a "wedding" cake, so I chose my wording with that in mind.

It really is great, and I get lots of people passing me, smiling and waiving, or trying to peak in the window to see if they can catch a glimpse (they can't, I box all of my cakes for delivery).  And, I have a magnet with my business name on the side of my vehicle, so it's a little marketing too!

Anyway... this was a long way of saying... people liked my magnet!  People said, they wanted one!  I know, I searched the web to see if I could find one before making my own.  I only found a few and they weren't the image I wanted to portray so I made this.  And, since I like it and so many of my followers liked it... I decided to find a source for fulfillment!  

I am happy to announce that I've just posted this design for sale!  You can buy it here or by clicking the "Shop" tab above or on my Facebook page!  If you order one, I'd love to hear what you think!  Does it ease the pressure during cake transportation?!

Happy Caking :)

Cinderella Shoe Tutorial, Live on SugarEd Productions!!

Drum roll please.....

My much sought after isomalt Glass Slipper tutorial is now available!  After I posted pictures of the Cinderella Sweet 16 Cake I made back in March I was contacted many times about the instructions.  And, I promised a tutorial would be forth coming...

 Well, in the spring I was contacted by Sharon Zambito (yeah... I know, crazy cool, right?!) about a new online sugar arts school she was launching this summer.  She wanted to know if I was interested in being a contributor and would I put together my glass slipper tutorial for her.  Umm, YES!  Of course I would!!

 

It took me some time to fit it into my schedule, but I was able to get the instructions to Sharon over the summer... And guess what, SugarEd Productions is now open and my tutorial is featured on the homepage this week!  I am so excited, I literally squealed when I saw she posted the link on Facebook to my tutorial!! (hence my over-use of exclamation points in this post, lol)

SugarEd Productions, Online Sugar Arts School is a member only site chock full of awesome tutorials, recipes and videos.  There is also an inspirational member gallery and a great community developing on the forums.  I joined several weeks ago and I have been busy exploring the site in my free time (mostly between the hours of 2am and 3am, lol!).

New content is added weekly!

Here are just a few of the exceptional features waiting for you: 

• library of high definition video tutorials 
• photo tutorial library
• huge printable recipe bank  business, photography and decorating articles 
• member tutorials and recipes 
• member photo gallery 
• professional advice and message forums (chat with Sharon Zambito and other members)
• games, contests and other interactive activities 
• valuable resources 
• special SugarEd store discounts for members only 

 

And, as if the phenomenal instruction by Sharon isn't enough, she even has celebrity guest instructors!

I am loving the content, and I know you all will too!  If it's by Sharon Zambito, you know it will be superb, quality content!  I am absolutely stunned and amazed that she asked little old me to be a contributor.  I am SO excited to see my tutorial up, and glad to finally be able to share with all of you, who have patiently waited for me to get this together!

Go sign up for SugarEd Productions, Online Cake School to see my Glass Slipper Tutorial and many others!!

Happy Caking :)