Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Wow the summer has sure gone by fast so far. My little sister has decided that she wants to do three different kinds of cupcakes for her wedding, a white, a chocolate and a fun flavor. For her fun flavor she is currently thinking Strawberry Lemonade, since it is a summer wedding and that's a summery flavor. So that means time for me to experiment.

I took two tries at making the Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes. I think it's going to take a few more tries before we get the perfect combination. The first one I made was a lemon cupcake with a little bit of strawberry filled with lemon curd and topped with strawberry buttercream. This one turned out very dense and quite lemony. The lemon was a bit too overpowering. So it was on to try number 2. lol.


(Strawberry lemonade cupcake Take 1 outside)


(Strawberry Lemonade cupcake take 1 inside)

Take 2 is much closer to the cupcake my little sister is wanting for her wedding. I made these and took them to our church's Vacation Bible School for treats for the teachers and they were a huge hit! :) I decided to practice my rose frosting on these, too. Learned a few tips on how to get them to look right from the beginning next time. ;) This time I started with a white cake base and added lemonade concentrate in place of the water along with the strawberry puree. The filling is a strawberry lemonade mousse and is topped again with a strawberry buttercream. The cake was very moist and light with a great crumb. The mousse was the perfect blend of strawberry and lemon. I think I'm going to try to tweak this recipe a little bit more to see if I can get a bit more strawberry flavor in the cake, then it will be just right. :) I also like the appearance of this second one much better than the first, too.


(outside of Strawberry Lemonade cupcake Take 2)


(Inside of Strawberry Lemonade cupcake Take 2)


Next up is a birthday cake for my grandfather's 75th birthday this weekend. :)

Hunter's Cake and Template Freebie

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day yesterday. :)

Last weekend we went camping for Hunter's birthday. Man, what a wet weekend it was, too. :P By the time we came home on Sun we no longer had a black & white Shih Tzu. Instead we had a black one. :O Thankfully on Saturday when we had Hunter's birthday party with his friends it was dry until it got dark. We had the pleasure of setting up and taking down in the rain, too. lol. Unfortunately with all that rain that meant no sitting around the campfire at night too. Good thing we had packed games in the campers to play instead. The kids had a great time as usual, though, so it was all good. :)

For Hunter's birthday we decided to go with a Super Mario Bros. theme. I made funfetti cupcakes with red, green and blue frosting for his party with his friends and a funfetti cake for his family party. The decorations on his cake took me quite a while to make, but I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. Everything on it was edible except for the Mario figurine on the top.











This week I'm thinking about trying a strawberry lemonade cake and cupcakes. I found a recipe that sounds pretty good and it's a flavor Lisa would like to try for her wedding. So I'm going to give it ago. Will try to remember to take pictures so I can post them here. :)

I'm hosting the Tuesday Template challenge at ScrapMatters today. :) You can snag this free template from me in this thread. Since it's the end of May, you have until the end of June to get a page completed!



Here is the page I created using The Design Girl's Fairytale and Erica Zane's If You Give a Girl a Castle that inspired the template.



It's been a fairly productive month scrapwise for me, too. Here are some of the other pages I managed to scrap. :)


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I've got some fun things I've been working on the last couple weeks, hopefully if all goes well I can show them to you soon. :) Until next time...

Happy Scrapping!

Well here it finally is...My round 4 kit. But first the inspiration for it. :) Know now I mentioned in the post about the birthday cakes how much Kailee is liking frogs. Well that was my inspiration for this kit. :) This summer the kids found a little bitty toad and Kailee went absolutely nuts over the little thing. She couldn't get enough of it. She kept having to look at it in the bucket and trying to pick it up. The only problem with that was it since it was so tiny that she could squeeze it between her thumb and finger. :O They also found a furry caterpillar and she let it crawl up her arm.









So there it is, the inspiration to create this fun kit. :)



Making these last couple kits has really gotten the ideas flowing. I can't wait to get started on another one, but unfortunately it may have to wait awhile because I'm busy working on something that will be revealed to you very soon. That and Michaella's volleyball and dance schedules have really shaken things up around here. This next weekend she has a tournament on Saturday 1/2 an hour from here. On Sunday she has a dance competition that is 4 hours away. Unfortunately they aren't scheduled to dance until 5 pm, so it will be a late by the time we get home. Thankfully she doesn't have any of the state tests at school on Monday.

One last thing before I sign off. :) Check out these cupcakes I made for my grandma to take to their church sale. They are Neapolitan cupcakes with Neapolitan frosting. My little sister decided after seeing Michaella's birthday cupcakes that she wants me to try and do 3 colors of frosting on her cupcakes for the wedding. So what better time to give it a try than on a frosting that is made up of 3 different flavors! I discovered that when I do it the next time that I need to have a larger piping bag than my little 12" ones. With all that frosting in there at one time it was a bit too full. oops. ;) Sorry for the bad picture but I forgot to get a good one with my camera before my grandma came to pick them up. So I only have the picture I snapped with my phone to send to my sister. Next up I need to make 2 different types of frosting for one of my aunts to try. My cousin is graduating from high school this year and she doesn't like buttercream frosting, so she is looking for a whipped frosting to use instead. May have to try them for Easter. :)



Until next time...
Happy Scrapping! :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Took the kids to the zoo on Saturday for the first time this year. They were celebrating the triplet cubs' first birthday. When we woke up that morning it was so cold and windy that I decided that we weren't going. Michaella had a dance performance at the local Home & Garden Show in the morning, so we headed there and then we were going to go get her volleyball shoes since her first tournament is this Saturday. Apparently her current shoes have no grip left on them and she keeps sliding around at practice. After she was done dancing we headed to town to get her shoes. When we finished our lunch at Culver's I decided it wasn't to bad there and the wind was blocked much better there than it had been at home. So we headed to the zoo. When we got there we went right to the building by the tigers to wait for the zookeepers to let the cubs into their enclosure. The zookeepers had made the cubs 3 cakes covered in meat with the number one on top. They also made a few additional number ones to set around the enclosure. The cubs went right for the cakes when they were let in and started batting them around a bit. The kids had a great time watching the tigers interact with their cakes. From there we decided to go check out the baby monkey that had been born a couple weeks ago. The kids had fun interacting with the little spider monkeys, here. The one kept following Michaella's birthday hat she had gotten when we were by the tigers. Then it was on to the baby rhino that was born in Oct. We hadn't made it to see him yet and the kids were so excited we were finally getting a chance to do it that day. It was also our first time getting to see their new habitat, too. Unfortunately our first time though he was just laying next to him mama, so we went to the giraffes to see how big the baby giraffe had gotten. The last time we were there it was only a couple weeks old. They were still in the winter view building, so it was a nice break from the cold once again. We managed to get from one building to the other just as we were just starting to get a little chilled. The little giraffe kept watching Kailee in her stroller. It was so cute. The kids decided we should see the baby rhino one last time before we left. This time he was up and walking around. The kids were glad that we had decided to stop again. :)

For the second round of ScrapMatters Design Star contest the requirement was to make a paper pack with 8 papers (5 patterns & 3 solids). I decided to go with a zoo theme since I have so many zoo pictures to scrap and plan to keep adding to them. I really like how they turned out.



For the third round we had to make the elements. Fifteen of them to be exact. I had so much fun making the little animals for this kit. I ended up making more than I needed so I have a few that may end up in an addon at some point. :)



I'm currently working on my kit for round 4 and can't wait to show it to you. We had to do 12 papers, 25 elements and an alpha. I have a little way to go with it before it has to be posted on Monday.

I have another cupcake for you today, too. :) I made this one for my grandma to take to their church group meeting the other day. It's a mint chocolate cupcake with a creme de menthe buttercream frosting sprinkled with gold glitter and a chocolate shamrock on top. Unfortunately the mint flavor didn't come through as well as I was hoping, but they were still very good.



Until next time...

Happy Scrapping!

Cakes and cupcakes!

Over the last few months I have really gotten into cupcake and cake decorating. I think I've mentioned it before that I started doing them to practice for my kids' birthdays since my youngest can no longer have bakery cakes. It's always been one thing I'd like to learn how to do, too. In January my sister and I also took the first Wilton cake decorating course. Would really have liked to take the one that starts in March too but with Michaella's activities schedule it's not possible at this time. Hopefully I can take the one they have in June, though. Not only have I been practicing for the birthday cakes, but my little sister got engaged in November and is planning on having me do cupcakes and their cake for the wedding. So my kids (and everyone else) have been enjoying eating all my trials. lol.

For Kailee's birthday, I decided to go with a Princess and the Frog theme. She loves frogs and that seems to be her favorite movie at the moment. Whenever you ask her is she wants to watch a movie that is the one she will dig out. I was very happy with the way it turned out. She liked it too because every time she seen it she would go "ooooooooooo". :)

Michaella wanted to have an animal print themed party. So for her's I went all out. Everything matched from the invites to the cupcake wrappers. Even the cake matched. ;) She had also been looking over my shoulder when I was looking at different cake designs awhile ago and spotted the topsy turvy style cakes. She decided that was what kind of cake she wanted. No small orders for this one. It took me forever to get the decorations done on her cake, but it finally got done. I even used two colors of frosting on the cupcakes. Love how they turned out!

Hunter's already got his thinking cap on trying to decide what he wants me to do for his birthday. We'll have to see if he comes up with a more complicated design. lol. At least I have until May before I have to do his. Right now he is talking about wanting a Super Mario themed party.

So along with all the birthday cakes I've also been trying out different cupcake combinations. Whenever we have a family get together I have to try a new combination. I tried to take pictures of them but forgot a few.

In October I made a pumpkin spice cupcake with cream cheese frosting (decided I didn't care for these) and chocolate cupcakes filled with dulce de leche frosted with caramel buttercream (so yummy). For Halloween, I made purple & orange colored vanilla cupcakes with the left over cream cheese frosting from the pumpkin cupcakes.





For Thanksgiving, I did another chocolate cupcake with dulce de leche and whipped cream frosting. Christmas was chocolate cupcakes with peppermint buttercream and vanilla cupcakes with Oreo buttercream (both of these went over very well).

This one was a chocolate cupcake with a marshmallow cream filling and a whipped frosting.



Also gave making cupcake wrappers a go, too. I used my Tea for Two kit to make these.



I had never had red velvet cake before but after seeing it used about every week on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network  I decided to give it a try. So what better time than Valentine's. :)



Of course, how can you make so many cupcakes and not have a little taste tester. lol. Kailee was definitely up for the job! Now whenever I get the mixer out she is right there at the counter with her little mouth open pointing at it, waiting for me to hand over the beater or spatula. How can you say no to such a cutie? ;)



Can't wait to try some more cupcakes (and neither can my family. lol. ;) )

I also decided to give the Design Star contest a try again at Scrap Matters, but unfortunately I didn't make it past the first round this time. :( But have decided to continue to play along to work on my designing. You can find my first round mini here. Tomorrow the second round gets posted and I'm so excited to show you what I came up with.



Until next time...

Happy scrapping!