Delightful Birthdays

In every flavor, filling, and frosting.

Say I Do To Poppy Cakes

With whimsy and wonder or elegance and grace.

Celebrate New Family Members

For girls and boys of every age.

Reminisce About Your Childhood

With familiar friends.

Punch Up the Party

It's not just about the commercials anymore.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Here in my office we have what I would call a "friendly" rivalry involving Major League Baseball. Some of us love the Seattle Mariners, and others live and die by the Cleveland Indians. In keeping with this playful banter about who's team is better, we've also made a bet regarding the post season odds for each of our teams. (Never mind that the Mariners haven't made the playoffs in eons and the Indians lost in the Wild Card playoff last year.) Regardless of our (and by our, I clearly mean the Mariners) chances, it's still fun. The loser will have to wear the opposing team's hat and take all of us winners out to a fancy dinner.

When two of these teams biggest fans share a birthday, the cupcake design was clearly a no-brainer. I topped yummy chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream dipped in white sprinkles, followed by red icing "laces." A few pennants printed and attached to straws later, we were done!

When you don't have much time to devote to decorating, it's amazing how far some quick signs or banners will take your cupcakes. Especially with using baseball as your theme, these toppers can easily customize them with little effort.

The Mariners are facing off against the Indians this week and based on Game 1 of the 3 game series, I'd say the Cleveland fan in the office is going to be in big trouble come October.

Go Mariners!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

"We Are All Witnesses"

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that on Friday Lebron James announced he was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Not being from Cleveland myself, I'm having a hard time figuring out why the city is welcoming him back with open arms. He left them for a title, money, and fame and yet they still squeal in excitement at his return? If A-Rod decided he wanted to leave the Yankees and come back to the Mariners (assuming this would have been while he was still a good player), I'm pretty sure I would have at the very least kicked a few things and still booed him at games.

But regardless of feelings of joy or hate, these cupcakes I made for a coworker's birthday seemed appropriate. Now I should note that she has nothing to do with Lebron or Ohio, but instead just has a nickname around the office of "Witness." Simple chocolate cupcakes can be topped with frosting in any color, but if you're celebrating you should probably stick to red and white and stay away from anything close to the Miami Heat!


Happy baking and best of luck to the Cavaliers next season!

Friday, July 4, 2014

Happy 238th Birthday America!

If you're anything like me, you've probably procrastinated on the dessert portion of today's BBQ festivities. When I'm in a pinch, the first place I usually turn is to Martha Stewart. Her flourless chocolate cake recipe is easy, quick, and involves few ingredients!

Ingredients

    • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for pan
    • 8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
    • 6 large eggs, separated
    • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
    • Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
    • Sweetened whipped cream, for serving

Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees with the rack in the center. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Set aside.
  2. Place butter and chocolate in a large heatproof bowl and microwave in 30-second increments, stirring each time, until completely melted. Let cool slightly. Whisk in egg yolks.
  3. In a large bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add granulated sugar, and continue beating until glossy stiff peaks form. Whisk 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture; then gently fold in remaining egg whites.
  4. Pour batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Bake until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and is set in the center, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack; remove sides of pan. Serve at room temperature, dusted with confectioners' sugar. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.
 
Now I skipped the whipped cream and served with ice cream because that just seems more summery to me!
 
Happy Independence Day from our nation's capital!
 
 

Friday, May 2, 2014

Leftover Easter Candy: Jelly Bean Edition

Happy May!

If you've been to the grocery store, the drug store, Target, or really anywhere lately, I'm sure you can't help but notice the MASSIVE amounts of Easter candy marked down to practically nothing. And for these prices, you'd be crazy to pass up pastel M&Ms, jelly beans, and those weird speckled Peeps. But then you get home and think - what on earth am I going to do with this truckload of cavity-inducing sugar bombs? Don't worry! We've got lots of ideas for those extra Easter candies.

First up, we'll take on the quintessential Easter candy - Jelly Beans.

I'm pretty sure every candy manufacturer out there now has its own brand of jelly beans. Used to be you could only find the weird generic ones with no real label or Jelly Belly brand. Now you can buy Starburst, Jolly Rancher, Cadbury, and pretty much whatever else you can think of brand jelly beans. My personal favorite this Easter season was the Jolly Rancher bag - strawberry, orange, blue raspberry, watermelon, grape, and green apple.

With our leftover jelly beans, we'll be making sushi roll cupcakes! In addition to jelly beans, you'll need some black fondant, shredded coconut, Starbursts (or an orange-y pink fondant or other candy), and of course some baked cupcakes and white frosting.

After your cupcakes have baked and cooled, go ahead and frost them with a white frosting of your choice. Next, open your bag of shredded coconut and pour it into a shallow bowl. This will make covering the cupcakes in coconut much easier because you can dip your frosted tops into the bowl without making too much of a mess.

Now it's up to you to decide how many sushi rolls to make versus Nigiri sushi (rice with sashimi on top). For the Nigiri sushi, we'll take the orange and lemon Starbursts and flatten them into pieces of "raw fish." Place them on top of your coconut covered cupcakes and top with a thin piece of black fondant to serve as the seaweed wrap. For the sushi rolls we'll be using the jelly beans! First you will need to take the cupcake wrappers off of all the cupcakes you want to make rolls with. Next, take your rolled fondant and cut to size so you can wrap them around the cupcakes. Spread a thing layer of frosting on one side of the fondant to adhere it to the cupcake. Then, place the jelly beans in the middle of your coconut top, and use additional frosting to secure them if necessary. Just make sure you cover any additional frosting with more coconut to keep up the rice appearance. I stuck with the orange and red colored jelly beans with a scant green one thrown in for good measure.

Now I know you probably have a few dozen sets of take-out chopsticks laying around your kitchen. Snag a few of those to make the presentation even better and you've got quite the deceiving dish!


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Wishing You a Woolly Woolly Happy Easter!

Gearing up for Easter I'm sure you're all thinking about bunnies, chicks, pastel colored eggs, and the best darn Easter basket you can find. While bunnies and chicks are cute, my favorite Easter animal is a lamb. Well, more accurately a woolly (don't ask, that's just what they are called in my house). So for Easter this year, how about some woolly cupcakes?! Don't worry, they are not as fuzzy as they sound.

Ours are super easy to make and only require a few extra things that you may even have laying around the house. You can start with any flavored cupcake you want and some white frosting. While your cupcakes are baking, we'll start on the faces.

Woolly faces made from
mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
All you'll need are mini-Reese's peanut butter cups and some candy eyes from Wilton. I used a tiny dab of frosting to adhere the eyes to the top of each peanut butter cup. They may look a little funny right now, but I promise it's cute in the end!

After your cupcakes have cooled and you've frosted them, we can start putting our woollies together! Place the head in the lower half of your cupcake and add mini marshmallows in a circle around it until you reach the edge of the cupcake.

...et voila! You have some festive (and cute!) Easter cupcakes.

Fluffy and "sheared" woollies!


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Two Months Later...

...And Seattle is still celebrating!
Yes, this post is about the Super Bowl champions, the Seattle Seahawks. Super Bowl Sunday has always been more of a celebration of food and great friends than the actual game for me, but this year had the added bonus of bringing hometown pride to my borrowed city of Washington, DC.

Seattle is a peculiar place when it comes to sports. We are famous for our losses, our heartbreaks, and our almost-made-its. While our WNBA team, the Seattle Storm, has won their fair share of titles, the larger teams have pretty much stank for decades. Seattle is an expansion team city without the long storied history benefiting teams in New York or Chicago. The Mariners tried their hardest during the miraculous 1995 season, yet they have made losing an art form and still have never stepped foot into the World Series. The Sounders consistently make the MLS playoffs, only to lose spectacularly in the first or second round. I'm not even going to touch our now nonexistent NBA team (RIP Seattle Sonics).

The Seahawks have been different. They've been to the Super Bowl before (and got screwed out of winning by some bad referees). But instead of being content with getting there once like Seattleites would expect, they came back this year. And not only did they come back, they were back with a vengeance. They brought the suffering of a long forgotten sports city and beat the Denver Broncos with it. (Ok, to be fair, the Broncos didn't even bother to show up to actually play the game.)

Seattle celebrated like you'd expect. Riotously, but politely. Exuberant, but law-abiding.

And on the east coast? Well, there wasn't much time left to celebrate before having to go to bed and get up for work the next day.

Of course we made our favorite Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes in celebration - Guinness Chocolate Cake with Bailey's Buttercream Frosting. I had to skip the Jameson Chocolate Ganache this time as I didn't quite budget my time right, but they were still delicious nonetheless.

The Seahawk logo was the hardest part of this endeavor. I hand-cut the hawk from rolled out fondant and then took to it with a paintbrush and some gel food coloring mixed with lemon juice. Another alternative to "painting" would be decorating "markers." The important thing to remember when free styling your design is that it doesn't have to be perfect! A little bit of imperfection makes it your own and gives it character.


The defining characteristic of a Seattle sports fan is that we always have hope. The beginning of a season always holds untapped potential and a clean slate on which to scratch some W's. The Seahawks took us all the way this year, and instead of being content with a championship, my battered heart is full of optimism for a World Series or MLS Cup.



Friday, April 11, 2014

Something Worth Celebrating

On Monday, April 7th, the US House of Representatives passed a bill with bipartisan support. That in and of itself is a pretty spectacular feat, but this particular bill hit very close to home. The bill preserves the Green Mountain Lookout in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. More than that, this lookout is near and dear to the surrounding towns which have been plagued by the tragic mudslide in neighboring Oso, WA.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday passed and sent to President Obama legislation that will prevent removal of the popular Green Mountain Lookout, and provide a symbolic boost to recreation and tourism in mudslide-stricken Darrington.
“This bill can’t undo what has been done:  But, as the mayor of Darrington told me, it can be a piece of good news and a victory for an inspiring community that has gone through so much,” said U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who represents the area hit and cut off by the slide.
(Seattle PI article by Joel Connelly) 
Needless to say, this was a moment worth celebrating. And celebrate we did with vanilla and chocolate cupcakes featuring the Lookout and someone most of you will remember from childhood. :)