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.

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. :)