Fire Island Cupcakes

This summer we were lucky enough to spend two lazy weeks in Fair Harbor, Fire Island, off the coast of Long Island. The best thing about it is that there's nothing to do, and the worst thing about it is there's nothing to do - except play at the beach, swim in the bay, eat ice cream at least twice a day, and have a lemonade stand!

I knew in advance that our kids wanted to do the stand and I was volunteered to make cupcakes. Our rental house had little or no supplies so I bought everything with me - measured out the dry ingredients in ziplock bags, packed muffin tins, even brought a little baggie of vanilla bean paste (the best stuff ever, as far as I'm concerned).

They turned out great, even with using a basic handheld mixer, instead of my monster KitchenAid. The kids made $40 bucks which included lots of tips, and my friend Keri and I got to have a three course meal of leftover buttercream!

Cupcakes and lemonade in action

Eliza's ladybug cupcakes

Eliza turned 5 last week and wanted ladybug (lady bug?) cupcakes. The whole time I made them this song was running through my head.

Started with chocolate cupcakes. NOTE TO SELF: Before attempting to make really red buttercream at 9:30pm at night, remember to check if you have enough food coloring so ladybugs are really RED, not pink! It managed to turn out ok, the color definitely intensified overnight, but I still forget how much red food coloring it takes to make buttercream red instead of dark pink!

Hard at work. Made the black by mixing both cocoa and melted chocolate into the buttercream, and then adding black food coloring.

Almost finished, but I thought something was missing.

They needed these - orange antennae (antennas?). Orange because I love orange. Made with melted white chocolate discs (that are absolutely gross, I think, but it doesn't need to be tempered, which makes life so much easier!)

Finished!

As the birthday girl, Eliza got a bigger cupcake, the mommy of the group.

Doug's cupcakes

Note to self: I really need to start making Doug take ALL the photos of my stuff. My little camera (and my meager skills) just aren't cutting it! Moving on...

Doug's birthday was May 26, but we were traveling home from a wedding in PA that weekend, I was out in LA for BEA the next, and so on and so forth. The poor guy never got a proper SaraBakesCakes birthday celebration (the cobbler's children, etc., etc.,). I made it up to him yesterday with a cupcake of his own design. Spice cupcakes with a banana in the middle, topped with an attempt at Nutella buttercream. The problem was I tried to just flavor the vanilla buttercream I already had with the Nutella, but that just added to the sweetness and didn't provide a lot of hazelnutty flavor. Don't tell the parents, but I also dumped in a lot of Frangelico, which sort of worked but it was still way too sweet, in my opinion.

Next time I'd make an italian buttercream and flavor that one. For those who care (ha) - flavoring a powdered sugar buttercream does work really well when the flavor you're adding isn't already really sweet (like peanut butter or bittersweet chocolate).

I wish I'd taken a photo of the cross section with the banana inside, because it looked really cool. And the papers?? I just bought them when I was in LA at Surfa's - a magical cooking supply store. Next I'll bust out the orange and yellow ones - I need another special occasion for those!

a cup in a cup

We have all this old cool serving ware from Doug's grandmother. I hope to use more of it in my photos. This is from a 20 piece demi-tasse cup set.

Cupcakes for Summer Birthdays party at Maxie's school

There were four kids with summer birthdays at my son's school and right before school ended they had a party for all of them. If it's not obvious, the letters are for each of the bday kid's name. I bought the Wilton letter/number set - and made them out of gumpaste. Not a big fan of the Wilton stuff, but this did the trick. Vanilla bean cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream.

Busy, busy weekend - starting with animals

I made four dozen zoo animal cupcakes for a 1st birthday on Thursday night. I think they turned out pretty great. Shout out to the Cupcake Carrie and pastrybitch on flickr for the ideas.