Sun Dress and Jacket

This baby sun dress and jacket was created for a little girl, size 6-12 months. It is meant to be worn with a pair of tights and could also be pared with a t-shirt.
The yarn is a soft thin pale yellow and bright white and crocheted together to make a light summer outfit.
This outfit can be customized to suit any colour palate and make a great gift to bring to a baby shower!

Luck of the Irish

I am on vacation this week and what better way to spend my time off but to bake!
My kitchen has already seen two 12 inch cakes and a dozen vanilla cupcakes this week. I was already on a roll so I just went with it. My goal for the week was to come up with my March cupcake of the month, not only did I find some recipes that completely suited the month but they turned out perfectly.




When I think of March I think of my birthday (yay!) but I also think of St. Patrick's Day. I think of green and 4 leaf clovers. Mostly I think of beer. I wanted a cupcake recipe that included beer. Beer in cooking or baking keep things moist and who doesn't like a moist cake?
I went straight to google, as always, and found some really great recipes. I settled on a Chocolate Guinness Cupcake with a Baileys Buttercream. Oh. My. Goodness.






The cupcake batter produced a moist, flavourful chocolate cake. It's a perfect pillow for the beautiful frosting to sit on top of. The buttercream came out a light caramel colour from the Baileys and tastes a little like heaven. (In my humble opinion.) These are the perfect treat to bring to any St. Patrick's Day party, or just to enjoy any other day of the year.

 The alcohol in the beer bakes out in the batter but the Baileys in the buttercream can easily be replaced with milk to create just as tasty of a cupcake that people of all ages can enjoy!

Millionaire's Shortbread

This idea started with squares. I had leftover salted caramel sitting in my fridge and was wondering what I could do with it. While cruising through some recipes I came across one for Millionaire's Shortbread, a tasty looking square built of shortbread, caramel and chocolate. Sounded delicious and I wanted to try. 

I started out by making an easy 3 ingredient shortbread recipe and baking it. While it was in the oven I started thinking about those people that have the ability to just make up a recipe. I have always been jealous of that and thought, why couldn't I? So I decided I was going to make Millionaire's Shortbread Cupcakes. Why not? (Spoil alert: After I made these I did some googling and turns out this was not an independent thought and has been made by several other people. Oh well.) 

 

Before the shortbread fully cooled I cut several slices into triangles as I knew I wanted shard type pieces to stick into the top of the frosting. 

I started with a basic vanilla batter. I chopped up about 1/2 cup of my now cooled short bread into small pieces and threw them into the batter and gently mixed them in. 

While the cupcakes were cooling on the counter I whipped up some simple chocolate buttercream. (Next time I would use a dark chocolate ganache type icing, but in a pinch the buttercream worked fine) 

I cored the cupcakes and filled them with the leftover salted caramel and then topped with a swirl of the buttercream and placed a shard of the shortbread on the top. 

It's going to be a girl!!

Who doesn't like baby showers? They are often filled with good friends/family, funny games and always good food, including a cake or cupcakes! 

I was told that the party goers like red velvet and vanilla cupcakes. 

I decided to make a dozen of vanilla cupcakes and a dozen of red velvet, but I was wondering if I could colour them pink instead. So after doing some research I found a recipe for Pink Velvet cupcakes and decided to give those a try. They turned out great! 

These cupcakes were frosted with a vanilla buttercream and a dozen were topped with baby pink sugar pearls. The other dozen had a fondant topper placed on top representing the overall theme.

Sweet and Salty

Salted. Caramel. Chocolate. Mudslide. Cupcakes. Seriously. Hands down, these are THE best cupcakes I have ever made...thus far anyways. It starts with a moist chocolate batter with a handful of chocolate chips thrown in, baked until light and fluffy. Then cored and filled with homemade salted caramel, and lastly topped with a buttercream with a hint of the salted caramel flavour coming through. 

These cupcakes definitely hit the spot for a sweet and salty treat and make a perfect compliment to any party. This recipe would even taste great as a regular cake with the salted caramel as the filling! 

 

 

These cupcakes were ordered for a gym opening, Shout out to Rise N Grind! Check them out on facebook!  https://www.facebook.com/Risengrindtraining/

 Mini's and regular were ordered. The mini's would be decorated with orange buttercream to match the gym colours and the large would also be decorated with orange buttercream, but then topped with a fondant cupcake topper representing the gyms logo.