quickie Cupcakes

More goodies for Teacher Appreciation Week.

These were for the teacher's lunch. I didn't have the energy to make something fancy, but I could let them go with out making them pretty! Luckily, I had leftover butterflies and flowers to stick on them - whew!

My husband took the other half of the the batch to work and there was favorable responses all around! (including some interesting stories of 'prairie-dogging' in cubicle-land at hubby's work)


Lemon cupcakes with Lemon Curd buttercream filling and Cream cheese frosting.

Mocha-Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream filling and Chocolate Ganache frosting.

Royal icing (sugar) butterflies and flowers.

so good!
I'm becoming a cupcake-convert.

Teacher Appreciation

I made these for my daughter to take to her Kindergarten teacher. I made them small so that they are easy to share. The idea was inspired by so many scrapbook pages that I have seen. Anyway, I just thought that they were cute.

it's a Ladybug soccer game

These were supposed to be soccer team snacks for my daughter's game last Saturday, but it was rained out. Their team is the Ladybugs, and I thought I'd try small ladybugs on the soccer balls this time. In previous years, I've done separate soccer ball and animal/bug cookies. Here's what the cookies looked like before the ladybugs landed:

I used pink and grey to make the cookies "girlie" and to be a contrast to the bright, black and red ladybugs. I piped the ladybugs out on wax paper first and let them dry. After they had hardened, I stuck them on the soccer balls with more royal icing. The benefit to doing this is that the ladybugs stay flat and don't follow the bumps in the lower level of icing. (it also prevents mess-ups) I tried to do a little too much this weekend (see previous three posts), so these didn't come out as clean and neat as I would have liked. They still make me smile though.

Daisy Tea cookies

My daughter is having her last Daisy (Girl Scouts) meeting on Monday, and they are having a Mother's Day Tea Party for the Daisies and their moms. I volunteered to bring cookies (surprise!). I made mini cookies (1 inch) so that they are easy to eat for little ones. Also, since I had so much to do this weekend, I made them pretty simple, bright and fun.

whimsical birthday reprise

This was for twin's second birthday. It is a copy of my mother's birthday cake - which was one of my favorites, so I was only to happy to copy it!

The interesting thing about this one was that I made it all out of vanilla white cake and black raspberry buttercream. This made the cake so much better. The last one was so soft that it sagged.

It's a good size cake, but the smallest "Topsy-Turvy" style cakes that I could come up with. It's a 3.5" round, a 5" round and a 7" round cake. It's entirely fondant, with gumpaste daisies.

Derby Day!

These were for a Kentucky Derby party... which sounded like so much fun!
I choose 5 different styles of jockey silks from the Kentucky Derby website. Since I was doing 60 cookies, I didn't want to hand cut them all. I couldn't find a cutter, so I made one from some left over stainless steel that I had for that purpose. (unfortunately it wasn't long enough and I still had to cut a small part by hand.) I thought about making a cutter for the hats too, but decided that it was too much work. Instead, I just used a round cut in half.