Hot!

On a hot and humid day like today, it's hard to get motivation to do any sort of cooking or baking in a kitchen without any air conditioning. I ended up braving the heat to make some double chocolate cupcakes for my family, more specifically my grandma.
I decorated the chocolate cupcakes with a fudge-like frosting with just a swirl for a minimalistic feel (which can also be described as: the point at which the heat was just getting to be too much!). Regardless, there's nothing like a classic chocolate cupcakes to put a smile on everyone's face (including my brother who has piano practice tonight; aka his least favourite activity in the world).

Congrats Faith and Luke!

Happy Monday! This weekend was a busy one full of baking, a dance recital, a wedding and work. Although busy, I had such a great time.
On Saturday evening I attended a wedding at Enoch Turner Schoolhouse for Faith and Luke (my best friend Maia's sister). It was such a gorgeous wedding! Everything from the flowers, venue and decor inside was perfect! I wish I had taken more pictures but I completely forgot!
For the rehearsal the night before I was excited to have been asked to make the desserts. I made cupcakes, sugar cookies, cheesecake and a flourless chocolate cake. The cupcakes were a vanilla based cake with a vanilla swiss meringue buttercream icing. I decided to get into the wedding spirit and made mini "wedding cakes" using three different sized cupcakes and stacking them to represent the tiers. I thought the result was great! I also made swirl cupcakes with a single royal icing flower placed on the top. The sugar cookies were made using a wedding cake cookie cutter and decorated with royal icing.

The flourless chocolate cake (I used this recipe) turned out delicious (a little piece was stuck to the pan that I just had to sample!). This dessert is perfect for individuals with gluten intolerances (as the name of the dessert suggests, this dessert is indeed flourless!). Just be sure to thoroughly butter the springform pan and follow the instructions with regard to whisking in 1/4 of the whipped egg whites into the chocolate mixture before folding in the remaining egg whites. This ensure that during the folding process the two mixtures have a more similar consistency which maximizes the volume of your final batter. The result is a moist and and decadent dessert!

Simple Elegance

This weekend I started my summer job at a cupcakes shop and I absolutely love it! Best summer job I have had by far.
Because I worked all weekend (10 hour days!) I was not able to make any of my own cupcakes so instead I am posting a couple of pictures of cupcakes I did when I first started getting decorating. Although the design is quite simple, I think the concept of "less is more" really works. I just used a star tip to pipe stars all over the tops of the cupcakes. To get the yellow and purple combination, I simply used a paintbrush to brush a stripe of purple gel food colouring on the inside of the piping bag and filled the bag with yellow buttercream. I loved the result!

Spring has Sprung

With all of the rain here in Toronto over the past couple of weeks, the only positive thing I can really think of is how gorgeous and green everything looks! There is such a great contrast between the colours of the flowers, the dark soil and the almost neon coloured grass.

The cupcakes in this post I donated to a bake sale at the Highland Creek Heritage Day Parade. Seeing as it was spring at the time, I figured some lovely flower cupcakes would be great. My favourite in this selection are the cupcakes with the grass and the flower on top. All together the cupcakes really looked like a garden! I was told they were a hit and sold out very quickly!

Note: Please excuse the quality of the last photo. I somehow lost the pictures on my camera and this picture was the only one left and it was on my Blackberry.

Ice Cream Shoppe

Here is another one of my favourites!

These cupcakes weren't for any event in particular (just for my friends and family to enjoy!) but I wanted to make them special nonetheless. I made these just a couple of weeks ago when the sun was starting to shine and I could feel summer trying to break through what seemed like endless days of rain. What better way to celebrate summer than with ice cream! Or in my case, ice cream shoppe inspired cupcakes.

These cupcakes feature my favourite swiss meringue buttercream icing (its not too sweet like most buttercreams) with my "airbrush" colouring technique. I put quotations because I don't actually air brush the cupcakes with colouring but to me it looks like I did! I topped them off with some maraschino cherries, old fashioned striped candy sticks and chocolate ice cream cones on sticks. Enjoy!

BBs Cupcakes

I have set up this blog to display all of the cupcakes I have made in the past and hope to update as much as I can over the summer to document all of the designs I will create!

My very first post includes a picture of one of my favourite cupcakes I have ever made It is simplistic in design but manages to incorporate some glitz at the same time, perfect for any girl's birthday bash!

My favourite

Also, please feel free to browse my flickr set (as shown at the bottom of the page) to see cupcakes that I have done in the past. Although I plan to do a post on each of these cupcakes on this blog to document them, this is your chance at a sneak peek! Enjoy!