The End of a Cupcake Era!

...which from this instance and beyond will be known as the Cupcakera. Don't smirk. It was either the Cupcakera or Christine's Cupcake Kingdom, to be shortened into Cupkingdom... which sounds like a fun place to be if you ask me.



From September 24th of 2009 to today, June 10, 2010, I have baked cupcakes with reverence and love. I have worshiped at the altar of Wilton and created, in my mind, at least, - amateur masterpieces of confection. (Does that sentence even make sense?... sorry over-caffeination has rendered me a bumbling idiot.)

It started as a gift to myself, Hello Kitty cupcakes for my birthday when I knew that no one else would bake me one. Then....  it became a small treat for my kids, which later progressed into cupcakes for all occasions!

As far as I could tell everyone loved them. My only pet peeve was when people called them muffins. Muffins are similar but are seemingly healthy and not iced. The icing of my cupcakes was the best part!

Enjoy! (Is it sad that I just discovered Picasa slideshow.. only to have it taken away when I'm no longer in America! China has this baby blocked!)

Mud Pie Cupcakes!

Crushed oreos + icing + Devil's food cupcakes = The second day in a row that I had to bring cupcakes to work. I was exhausted, so I knew I wasn't going to have a repeat of the cakes from the day before! Ta-Da.

Cupcake Crazy

Last week I had multiple events where I needed to bring in food. One of those days was our team's Spring Fling. Now, I know when I said Spring Fling, you thought dance. In a way, it's a dance but with food, which mainly involved ribs, chicken, and tons of barbecue and butter based side dishes. I love the South. Of course, I wanted to impress the team, so I baked some cupcakes and really put some time into it this time.

First, I couldn't decide what colors to mix with the icing... so I made a lot of them. I mixed the icing in cups, so they're easy to sort and cool as I'm working with them.

While I was sorting through my icing tips, I realized that I had one that makes petals!

 Gorgeous right? I added a bits of green, then placed the petals just so.. and Voila!

Here's a random sampling of some of the prettier mini-cupcakes!

(click to enlarge)

Perfect Easter Cupcakes

The best part of Easter cupcakes is that they're perfect for the occasion. Instead of white cake, I decided to go a little crazy on these cupcakes, which from now on will be known as crack-cakes.

Three types of chocolate plus chocolate chips, some marshmallows and more chocolate sprinkles covered with cream cheese icing. EAT your heart out before passing out.

These are the biggies and babies NAKED, where you can easily see which ones are "normal", jammed with chocolate chips, and have big marshmallows floating within them.

I tried to make many corresponding biggies and babies. These are the blue pair.

I just thought this one was very pretty... and incredibly heavy on the icing.

One of the benefits of having a chocolate base is that you can make your cupcakes into sunflowers!

Hello, small basket next to big basket.

I've hit a mini-wall with how to design cuter cupcakes. The rest of these images are just overviews of the volume of cupcakes that I made and decorated, then brought the following day to my co-workers :)

I think I could have put these on lollipop sticks and made them into a cupcake bouquet... but then I would have had a transport issue taking them to work.

I did pull out the sprinkles on these last ones to provide some delicious chocolate cracked out variety.

Totally yum, totally worth it. If you like what you see, hopefully my Castella cake for my supper club on Sunday will turn out just as well.

Cupcake Chronicles

These cupcakes were too pretty not to post more pictures. Miniature cupcakes = 10x cuter than regular cupcakes. AND I get to feature the new plates from Anthropologie that I spotted in store at Christmas, which are now on sale. All I had to do was wait three months and $12 became $4.

Carrot Cupcakes

These were made* pre-icing tips, pre-Martha Stewart, right on the precipice of 2009.

Cream cheese icing with candied carrot strips

A carrot wreath!

Twirly twirls

Does that look like a mirror R to you?

Naked!  :)

*Baked with Heather!

(55/365) Creativity in 2010

Since starting my new job, I've realized that I need a continued creative outlet. A cheap, creative outlet that doesn't take up much room. I've made headbands, mustaches, and now... I've decided that I'm going to throw my hat in to bake cupcakes in 2010. Cupcakes, the cake in a cup - that I do not necessarily actually like eating... AND I can give them to my co-workers as well! They don't have to sit around and I've already bought the Martha Stewart cupcake holder.

As you can see above, I've started! It's carrot cake!