Maxie's (or Mets) Cupcakes

My sweet Maxie (a non-cupcake lover/eater, imagine that) turned 6 on June 8 and today he got to celebrate with his kindergarten class. He's a huge Mets fan and requested baseballs with a M on them. Actually, what he originally asked for was "a big green wall on each cupcake, with a baseball flying over it," but since he wasn't a paying customer I steered him in the direction of a ball with an M on it:)

Max and I agreed that there may be some people in his class who aren't Mets fans, including his teacher, so we told everyone, it's M for Max OR for Mets.

The circles and Ms are made from gumpaste, and I painted on the stripes with some powdered orange food coloring mixed with vodka. Have been looking for a reason to use the striped liners I got last year at Surfas, and I think these are a perfect combo.

Ready for their trip to kindergarten

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made these for my son's Valentine's Day party at school. Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. Simple and yummy. Gumpaste decorations. Striped wrappers from a recent Surfas shopping spree. I unfortunately finished them after Doug left for work, so the photography is my own.

Happy (early) Valentine's Day. Go squeeze someone you love today, tomorrow, everyday... because life is just too damn short!

My latest purchase

I've been making a lot of my favorite cocoa-nib brownies recently and besides the nibs the secret ingredient is really great cocoa. I've been buying Valrhona cocoa by the pound from Surfa's (amazing, amazing store, btw - I hope to visit in person soon!) but it wasn't pricing out to buy a pound at a time. Long story short - the other day Mr. UPS man dropped off a 3 kilo box! Did a lot of online research and ended up ordering from Chocosphere - great price, reasonable shipping. I just want to stare at it all day!