Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Our ward had a bake sale a week and a half ago to collect tubes of toothpaste for a service project. What, that doesn't make perfect sense to you?

It worked like this: people volunteered to bring baked goods or offered a service (babysitting, tutoring, tech help, etc.) for the silent auction, and then everyone came in with their toothpaste to purchase or bid on the items. Youth conference is coming up, and the youth in our ward were asked to collect one thousand tubes of toothpaste, which will be added to hygiene kits for people in Haiti and Japan.

Through a friend's blog, I recently came across a cooking blog called Annie's Eats. Let's not dwell on the fact that this woman is a doctor, a new mom, and somehow she finds the time to create and perfect her own recipes. She creates cupcakes for all of her coworkers' birthdays. Oh, and she maintains a really pretty blog, duh. My mind cannot fathom...

Anyway, I chose her Strawberry Lemonade Cupcake recipe for the bake sale. Instead of using the icing she paired with these cupcakes, I chose the one listed here. It tasted like a buttery strawberry milkshake. Henry loved it. I thought it was good, but a little too buttery for me. We still have a baggy of the icing sitting in our fridge, anyone want it? I'm not sure what to do with it.

I didn't get to attend the actual bake sale, but Henry said they sold well. One of our friends bought two. Another family came up and tried one, and then later returned to buy the remaining nine!

As for the toothpaste, I'd say the bake sale/silent auction served its purpose well; we collected 1,467 tubes!

Pink and Black Bridal Shower

We're nine days out from my niece's wedding. After what feels like many, many conversations and days spent planning, I think we're mostly prepared for the big day. All the big decisions have finally been made. All that's left is the seating arrangement cards and a few personal items for me like what shoes and jewelry to wear. Oh yeah, and the marriage license!

This past weekend my mom and I threw Laura's bridal shower.

It went something like this:

Friday--5 PM Mom and Dad arrive at my apartment.
5:15-6:45 PM I sit at the table and make lots of little paper birds. Henry hangs fuschia paper lanterns from the ceiling. I direct the placement of said lanterns.

6:45 Leave for Laura's dress fitting. Park Dad and Henry at David's Bridal while Mom and I shop at Ulta next door.
7-8:50 PM Laura tries on her dress, we debate whether one side is longer than the other, alterations lady measures and sure enough it is. Wait while the alteration people fix it. I try on the two modest dresses in the whole store. Mom tries on and purchases her dress for the wedding.
9:00 PM Head to Mimi's Cafe for dinner.
9:15-10:30 Eat dinner at Mimi's. Discuss options for bridal shower games. Choose three. Ask Laura questions for the trivia game. Look at cupcake options for bridal shower. Create a grocery list for the bridal shower.
10:45 Drop Dad off at my apartment and head over to Laura's.
11:00-11:45 Shop at HEB.
12:00 AM Come home and fall fast asleep.

Saturday is fuzzy, but I do know this:
8:45 AM-2:15 PM Henry works like a slave preparing all of the food. He doesn't even stop to eat breakfast or lunch. My husband is a superstar...or a martyr for the cause, you decide.

Somewhere in there, I created the documents for the games, took my mom with me to exercise at the gym, bought presents for Laura at Target, bought vitamins at Sprouts, showered, and cleaned the apartment as quickly as I could---with Mom's help. As I was running around like crazy on Saturday, I kept thinking that there was no way in the world that I would've been able to prepare everything without the help of my family. Even though some of us weren't the happiest about it, it was still neat to see us working as a team to get things done.

Looking back at these pictures, it doesn't look too fancy to me, but it was a lot. of. work.

I loved the fruit tray. Laura brought over her little crockpot set, and we melted chocolate for dipping.

1:1 ratio of Country Time Pink Lemonade and Sprite

Graham cupcakes with Key Lime frosting (Cupcake 32)

We ended up playing 2/3 games: bridal trivia and Laura trivia.

There was debate over Laura's actual shoe size, so she had to double check. =)

After the games, she opened her presents.

You see that mirror to the right of her? She didn't notice that it was a present. Her reaction when we told her she had one present left was pretty funny because it took her a while to figure out what we were talking about. hehe.

Once she finished opening presents, we set up my tripod and took 15 group shots. 15! I don't think any of them need to be posted on the Internet...

I think all in all it was a good party. It was just the right size for my apartment, and I think everyone had a good time. Most of us went over to Laura's apartment for the "after party" where we had our hair and makeup trials.

Here's a sneaky peek of my updo for the wedding. I'm excited about it!

Heart in a Cupcake

I made cupcakes on Friday...because I love cupcakes...and it worked out well to have company over to help eat up the dozen. 

This was my first attempt at baking a shape into a cupcake. I saw this recipe for baking a heart into a cupcake through one of the facebook pages I like and thought it looked really cute. I swapped the cake recipe from that site for Cupcake 23 from Cupcake Heaven. I don't know that I would recommend this cake without a filling because it was a little dry and dense. If you're wondering at this point why I didn't use the Bake it in a Cake recipe, I will tell you: that little half of a vanilla bean. Didn't want to go to the store (possibly multiple stores) to search for it.

As you can see in the left corner, some of the hearts did NOT stay in place

Strawberry Laffy Taffy Buttercream Frosting

Making the hearts was easy, getting them to stand in the cake batter was another story. Making the frosting required a little more effort than I normally put into frosting, but it was yummy. Note: The melted Laffy Taffy + heavy cream hardened a little while cooling in my fridge, even though the recipe said it wouldn't. I reheated it for about 10 seconds before dumping it in with the butter and powdered sugar.

When I iced them, I made sure to keep track of which way the hearts were facing. I put a line of sprinkles across the top to mark where the top of the hearts were...or so I thought...and I put sprinkles all over the ones that I knew were already messed up.

Most of the cupcakes looked like this once we bit into them:

A nice Valentine's quadrilateral. Is that a trapezoid?

But then, yesterday afternoon I cut one in half and spied this.

An almost heart!

So...I can't say I'd recommend baking hearts into a cupcake. Henry and I agreed that these were the most dramatic cupcakes ever. We may or may not have gotten into a little argument while making them. Can't even remember what it was about...but yeah. They took a long time to make, and we were both very tired when all was said and done. 

I would, however, recommend the Strawberry Laffy Taffy Buttercream Frosting. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use this frosting for my niece Laura's bridal shower next weekend. It will be on different cupcakes with nary a heart inside. 

And since it's Valentine's Day (hope you have a good one!), I want to leave you with a lovey song that makes me happy. Click here and press play. =)

Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

So I don't bake much, and I blog about what I bake even less because most of the time, let's face it, the results aren't blog-worthy.

(You know where this is going.)

Last Friday, Henry and I made some seriously tasty cupcakes that the world needs to know about: Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. That's a delicious mouthful, no?

The recipe came from the site Ming Makes Cupcakes, which is now named "Cupcake HEAVEN" in my bookmarks list. You really have to follow that link to see what I'm talking about. Henry's already asking which one we're going to make next, and he's not even the cupcake fan in this household.

I was mostly impressed with the cake portion of this cupcake. Cream cheese frosting, though yummy, is not that exciting to me, but this vanilla almond cake was perfection. Worth every penny for that expensive almond meal.

So go, check out Ming's cupcakes, and let me know if you make any. It will be hard to choose which one to try next!