Wednesday, January 19th: Cherry Pie Cupcakes

This week's selection from the book, "What's New Cupcake?", was the pie cupcakes. The flavour voted was cherry, thus I made cherry cupcakes that look like cherry pies. The piping of the pie crust (which is just vanilla icing with cocoa and yellow food colouring added to make the desired colour) was semi-frustrating. The tip I used seemed too big, yet anything smaller would not have looked even over the red candy. It was amazing to me that the book even suggested just using a ziplock bag with a hole in it, I can't imagine how difficult that would have been. I used red Smarties candy as the "cherries" and then piped the frosting over to resemble a pie. I've seen some other variations of this cupcake on the internet where cherry filling is actually used and fondant makes the pie crust/dough. I think I would try the style again but with those different materials. The actual cupcake is a cherry cupcake with real cherries in it. After I ran out of Smarties, I decided to decorate the cupcakes more simply; you can see the pics of those cupcakes after the jump.

Also, check back later this week for some 'special order' cupcakes I've made recently!

 Click the link below to see recipe and another way you can decorate these cupcakes.

Wednesday, January 11th: Honeycomb Cupcakes (Green Tea Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting topped with Honey)

This week I continued to recreate cupcakes from the book, "What's New Cupcake", with these honeycomb cupcakes. The cupcake itself was a Green Tea flavour cupcake with vanilla icing. I then topped the cupcake with hexagonal sugar cookies topped with yellow sprinkles. I would advice baking the sugar cookies in advance to save time. Also, try to find a hexagonal cookie cutter; I was without one and it was extremely difficult to shape the cookies with just a knife. The bees on the cupcakes were made out of black jelly beans striped with yellow frosting and sliced almonds for wings. The first few bees I made I attempted to make separate and then transfer them onto the cupcakes. However too much of the yellow stripes smudged from this so eventually I learned to make the bees right on the cupcakes. Finally the cupcakes are topped with honey inside of the sugar cookie. After, you just place the hexagons together to form a honeycomb shape. 

I love the cupcake colour!

Wednesday, January 5th: Hero Sub Cupcakes

 

This Wednesday is the first week of exploring the book, "What's New Cupcake". The book features all sorts of crazy cupcakes that look like animals, food, etc. This Wednesday I attempted to create the Hero Sub cupcake. These cupcakes were very time consuming, the cheese and ham on the sub are made out of chewy fruit candy and they were at times more difficult to work with. The book called for a long donut such as a cruller for the top of the sub, but I couldn't locate some (and I didn't have a ton of time to look), so I used a the top of a grocery store pound cake. The lettuce was the easiest part and the possible my favourite looking aspect of the sub cupcake. It is merely bran flakes with green frosting. The cupcakes are messy and harder to eat, but the initial reaction you get by people makes it worth it. They looked like subs, and while they weren't as perfect as the book, they got the reaction I was looking for!

January on CCW: Exploring "What's New, Cupcake?"

 

This month will focus less on cupcake flavours, and more on the decorating. I got this great book for Christmas, "What's New, Cupcake?", and will try to recreate some of the cupcakes from the book for January. Stayed tuned to see how these clever cupcakes turn out!