Happy February Birthdays

Wow, its been a while huh? Sorry blogger-land for not keeping up with cupcake adventures...February has been a busy month!

Anyhow, I wanted to share some pictures from my MomDadGrampsSisters Birthday party:

My mom's favorite cupcake so far are dark chocolate raspberry. She makes a version and they are just divine. The cake is very dark and chocolate-y but not too bitter, and the raspberry frosting is tart and a bit sweet. While at Spun Sugar I found this awesome dark cocoa and I knew I had to get it to make my mom her favorite cupcakes for her birthday. Of course I wanted to surprise her so I didn't tell her or ask her how to make her specialty cupcakes, so I just winged it.

The cake batter was SO dark, definitely was black in color. It worried me a little to be honest. =) After they baked they were still dark, but luckily lightened up in color, and looked more appetizing. The Raspberry buttercream was giving me a run for my money. I had a hard time trying to achieve the right piping consistency while trying not to lose the raspberry's tartness. It took a while, but I think I did ok =) Whaddya think?

See how the cake is realllly dark? Verdict: Ok in my book. I like my moms better though :P The cake was a little too sweet for a dark chocolate cake...it was more of a dark colored chocolate cake. When I got home I looked at the label, and that is exactly what it is: dark colored chocolate powder. Well, its actually "toasted" to achieve that dark color, so boo! Its not a "real" dark chocolate cake! But nonetheless, people seemed to enjoy it:

My Mama and nephew Luca-Suca enjoying their cupcakes:

I also made two other cupcakes to try and satisfy all the birthday celebrants, which were the Burnt Almond cupcakes and Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Only thing is since it isn't berry season the strawberries in the strawberry shortcake cupcake were SO sour! Just wait until they are in season, oh they are gonna be scrumptious!

Strawberry Shortcake:

Close up of all three:

Yum. =)

On another note, my most recent cupcake adventure wasn't all that successful.

So I bought this awesome mini doughnut pan from Sur La Tab and was really excited because I wanted to make a policeman cupcake (coffee cake topped with a mini doughnut...like my name for it? heheh) for my favorite girls from the Optometry office I used to work at. We always used to have one of us make a starbucks run before our saturday shifts and even on some regular days so I knew this cupcake would've been perfect for them. Sadly it didnt turn out. It as a bit of a fiasco...

First, I stuck my butter in warm oven to speed up the cooling to room temp process. Fail, because I forgot about it and it dripped down to the bottom. When I went to put the cupcakes in, the oven was so smokey! I dont know what I was thinking lol. Then, I decided to try and clean the oven (on self clean) to try and clean up in there, fail#2 because I guess that takes like two hours. Once the cupcakes were finally done, I wasn't happy with their texture. Argh!

Then, on to the toppers. The doughnuts were so cute!...Too bad I forgot to add the butter I melted in the microwave, so they were a bit dry. But they were just too cute to not eat...with their sprinkles and glazed frosting. Lesson learned: do not try and multi-task baking cupcakes you never have before while trying to entertain friends. =) I will perfect these! And when I do, my VG girls will be the testers okay?

Hehe, ok that's all for now...Thanks for reading!

xo,

Treen