One Fine Party & Bakeshop, LLC: February 2012

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

King Cake Cupcakes for Mardi Gras 2012!!

Today is Fat Tuesday and I thought it would be fun to celebrate the start of the Mardi Gras season with King Cake Cupcakes!! King Cake is a traditional dessert with a hint of cinnamon, sometimes filled with cream cheese, served during the Mardi Gras celebration. In fact, there are parties that are entirely centered around this cake! The The cake is tratitionally baked in a bundt style and drizzled with a glaze that has been tinted the traditional colors of Mardi Gras; Purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power. Once baked a small baby which is supposed to represent Baby Jesus is hidden in the cake and the tradition is that whoever gets the peice with the baby in it, will get to host next years King Cake party and of course make the cake! This is a high honor for the person who finds the baby!! While researching the cake, I thought it was interesting and I never knew this before, that Mardi Gras actually has religious roots. It really never occured to me that it happened at the start of Lent and ended when Lent was over. I guess you learn something new every day!

Compostion of the Cupcake

My interpretation of the Mardi Gras King Cake in cupcake form is a southern buttermilk spice cake topped with Cream Cheese frosting swirled on top with all three Mardi Gras colors.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

Another cupcake order! Yesterday I made a batch of cupcakes for a birthday party! I usually try to use my own recipes, but these ones are actually an adaptation from a recipe I found in the July, 2011 Martha Stewart Magazine. I saw them, thought they were adorable and since I have a love affair with chocolate chip cookies, I had to give them a try! They were amazing!!! The only thing I really did differently was add chocolate chips to the batter and use my own buttercream frosting recipe.

Composition of the cupcake!

These cupcakes have a delicoius chocolate chip cookie bottom, the cake is a white cake which I added some semisweet mini chocolate chips too, The frosting is my own Very Vanilla Buttercream. The cupcakes are topped with a mini chocolate chip cookie. The result is a perfect cupcake for chocolate chip cookie lovers!

Devil's Food and Marshmallow Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I had the priviledge of donating some cupcakes in the form of a gift certificate to a silent auction raising money for the Panreatic Cancer Action Network! I was so excited to hear from the person who bid and got them! She had a dinner party for her very close friends birthday this weekend and my cupcakes were dessert! These cupcakes are devil's food cake filled with marshmallow. I iced half of them with Marshmallow frosting and the other half with dark chocolate frosting. Each cupcake was topped with a piece of molded Ghirardelli chocolate! I was very happy with the way these turned out...So rich and delicious!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Queen of Hearts Party - Valentines Day

One of my all time favorite stories is the one of "Alice in Wonderland"! Though my favorite part of the movie is of course the Mad Hatter's tea party, I have not yet been given the opportunity to do a party in that theme. Valentines Day, however gave me the perfect opportunity to put focus on the part of the story of the Queen of Hearts! Once I had everything finalized and put together I was very pleased with the results and would love to share what I came up with. There will be more pictures of this party to come! Some of the activities, of course involved croquet, "pin the heart on the queen" and decorating foam valentine hearts.

Setting the stage For the Guests

I discovered another wreath with this same kind of idea from larkandlola.blogspot via Pinterest. I thought it was so adorable that I decided to make my own and put my own creative touches on it.

The Treat Table

Red Velvet Cupcakes

An Invitation for Tea and Croquet with the Queen

Presenting the Queen of Hearts!!

Party Favors

I found these little clear paint cans at my local craft store and filled them with red heart shaped candies to give to party guests.

Alice and the Queen

Garland

made out of playing cards and red grosgrain ribbon

Table Top Decor

Milk glass vases filled with roses and playing cards. I don't sew, so I made the table runners out of felt and fabric glue in the colors of the queen dress. You can see in the next photograph that I trimmed them with red ruffle ribbon.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Baby Shower (Boy)

Baby Shower

Boyish Shabby Chic

2012 Copyright, One Fine Party & Bakeshop, LLC

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Baby Shower (Girl)

Todays Project was a Chocolate Chip Kahlua cupcake topped with Dark Chocolate Ganache...So rich and delicious!! This cupcake was ordered for a girl baby shower and the colors for the event were brown and bright pink. When I make a chocolate cupcake, I usually choose to go with a brown cupcake wrapper so I don't have to worry about the color of the wrapper changing. I like to place the finished cupcake inside a loose cupcake paper in a color that coordinates with the theme of the event. Since these cupcakes were so dark and rich, and sort of lacked that delicate baby shower appeal, I chose to spruce them up a bit to make them appear more feminine. I've recently started working with fondant and found that I absolutely love the versatilty of all you can do with it! I chose to create a monochromatic bright pink flower to adorn the top of these cupcakes!