So lately, I’ve not been doing a lot of photography but have been baking up a storm! With Christmas just around the corner a friend and I did some Christmas baking this weekend. I started with my candied nuts and homemade turtles.

Before this I made some chocolate red velvet cupcakes for a friend’s 40th, here were the results:

I used a fondant mold to make the cake toppers. The icing was a creamcheese with vanilla bean.

I added some shimmery edible luster dust.

Not everyone enjoys the taste of fondant so I did a few just with a small touch.

Due to the large number of sad bananas in my house I also made some banana bread this weekend.

So here is the first batch of candied nuts. I like to give these out as part of my homemade Christmas gifts.

This is sort of a long posting. I’m going to try and start doing regular postings again – hopefully this will get me back into more regular photography and other hobbies that have fallen to the side with all the baking.

For Cupcake Friday last week I decided to make 2 differennt kinds of cupcakes. The first was a vanilla bean with cherry cream cheese frosting and the second was cocoa-chocolate with Manner chocolate glaze. I used silver ball and colored sprinkles to add a decorative touch.

I was very happy with both. I made them as minis and full size for a family birthday party on the weekend.

This week I challenged myself to make gluten-free cupcakes and I wanted to make carrot cupcakes. So to make the gluten-free cupcakes I searched out gluten-free flour. Fortunately, my supermarket now carries a wide variety of gluten-free products.

I made a basic vanilla cake recipe but added 1 tsp. cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg and 2.5 cups of shredded carrot. I also used my homemade vanilla extract which I really like. I put the batter into the mini cupcake trays and cooked them for 11 minutes.

While my cupcakes were cooking I made a vanilla bean cream cheese icing. I used 1/5 of the PC blue line cream cheese package, 1/4 cup butter and approximately 4.5 cups of icing sugar (make sure if you want glueten free that the icing sugar uses corn starch and not wheat starch).

I also toasted pecan slivers in my toaster over for 4 minutes.

I was very pleased with the outcome and would definitely make these cupcakes again.

So recently I’ve been doing a lot of baking for the GCWCC, a charitable campaign at my work, and I’ve been making mini cupcakes on Thursday nights for Fridays at work.

Tonight I’m going to really challenge myself and try making French Macaroons, these are gluten-free which is something I’ve been trying to accomodate.

I will be taking pictures and will post about the French Macaroon process.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So I’ve been pretty busy on the cupcake front. A few weeks ago I did some fun peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes.

More recently trying a new lemon-cranberry recipe (using fresh lemon and cranberries) which were pretty yummy I think.

I have also opened an Etsy shop, mainly because I’ve been making homemade lip balms, tote bags etc…which I want to sell but I thought I would start with a series of photographs to raise money for the relief efforts in Japan. So far I’ve raised over $100 and I’m hoping that selling more photos will bring me closer to raising much more money for the Red Cross.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/em102?ref=pr_shop_more

So it’s Friday – another week has flown by. This weekend we will be hosting a World Cup soccer finals party. I’m very excited as LP and I have gone shopping to get Spanish and Dutch inspired beverages and food. Tomorrow I will be working on some food preparation and cupcakes for the party with LM and LP. Of course, one must have soccer cupcakes for a soccer party. I’ve come up with some ideas for the cupcake toppers and hope we can skillfully execute them.

I will post some photos once they are complete!

This past weekend I needed to “quickly” make some cupcakes…when I say need I actually mean wanted to as I was bringing them to a birthday party we were crashing…now, how old was the birthday girl? 1!

I needed to make cupcakes that would be whimsical and that didn’t use red food coloring (a common allergy color). So I came up with chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream icing.

First, I iced all the cupcakes with the vanilla buttercream icing that I mixed in a pale teal color. This is a cartoon-y yellow flower that I made.

I made a bunch of white daisies. I cut out teal and white circles to act as a base for all the flowers.

The flowers took about an hour and a half  to make which is definitely quicker than I used to be. The circles were really quick and the icing took maybe 15-20 minutes. So I think the decorating took about 2 hours give or a take a few minutes which I think was pretty good.

I was very pleased with how these cupcakes turned out and was happy that I’m getting more efficient and quick at making different fondant flowers and shapes. I loved the look of the cupcakes and think these are the kind of cupcakes that I would be tempted to re-do in different colors for different events. I think everyone really enjoyed them and that’s always what’s most important.

Today we celebrated my aunt’s birthday with “Life is Sweet” cupcakes. I have to say that they were amazing! We got several different kinds. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is here! And I’m very excited! I’ve been busy planning for wedding photos, my fall vacation and expanding my portrait portfolio.

Read the rest of this entry »