First Birthday's are Big Ones!

On Wednesday I received an order for 48 cupcakes and a cupcake cake.
On Thursday I went to "town" to buy all the stuff I didn't already have.
On Friday... I baked!


















Check out my new pan! Holds 24 cupcakes! Make me feel semi-professional :)

















































































































On Saturday I will deliver.

Also, other orders of business... I have officially created a Facebook page. Saying that, I am pleased to announce that I have FINALLY came up with a name for what I do.
Are you ready?
Drum roll please.....

LOVE IN A BOX

Watch out. It's gonna be famous one day ;)

So, this is going to be one of my last posts totally dedicated to baking. Hey- I've got a 2 year old daughter I need to start bragging on ;)

Somebody's Turning 6 Today!

I'm assuming she is a fellow chocolate lover!

The order: two dozen chocolate cupcakes with strawberry buttercream and two dozen chocolate cookies-n-cream cupcakes.

I hope she's has a very happy birthday and is as pleased with her cupcakes as I am :)

As American as...

apple pie....cupcakes that is!

This recipe is 100% original.

I started off with a graham cracker crust (graham cracker, butter & sugar).























On top of that goes the apple pie cake batter (butter pecan cake mix, a can of apple pie filling, cinnamon, eggs, vanilla).

















Post baking:























I frosted these with a cinnamon vanilla buttercream.



















It was the first time I had tried the basket weave technique. It was surprisingly simple! I tried to make each cupcake look like a mini apple pie :)























I tried to make each cupcake look like a mini apple pie :)























































The official score (as rated by my husband) for these cupcakes was a 9/10. I thought they were really good. Very buttery (in a good way) and screamed for a glass of milk. These are for a party this evening, so hopefully everyone else will feel the same!

Happy 3rd Birthday Evan!!

I was more than happy to make cupcakes to celebrate a special boy's 3rd birthday.
















The party was construction themed. Lots of hard hats and bulldozers!















Good party, good friends, good food. Just the way it should be :)

Margarita Cupcakes

My list of cupcakes to try keeps getting shorter and shorter. I can now mark off Margarita cupcakes. I followed a recipe I found online via Google. You basically just substitute margarita mix for water. The frosting is lime buttercream. I only used the juice of one lime and biting into these cupcakes creates an explosion in your mouth! The top is sprinkled with sea salt which makes these cupcakes contain 3 of the 4 tastes your tongue can detect (sour, sweet & salty). The hubs said they were the perfect balance of sour and sweet. We were both disappointed with the cake's consistency. It just tastes like box cake. Oh well.. below are my pics.


















































P.S. Happy 5th Anniversary (tomorrow) to my official cupcake tester! I LOVE YOU

More is More

Well... I just got back from a trip "home". Happy to report while on vacation, I made 6 batches of cupcakes. The only new ones I tried were S'mores by request for my sister-in-law's birthday. I'll definitely be making them again soon. I only photographed the last batch I made because I really liked how the piping turned out on them. Flowery. Take a look!





























The kids liked them too.













Cousin Fry




























My angel, Aubree

MINT Chocolate

I've been wanting to try this frosting technique for awhile now. I finally got around to it and had an epic failure on my hands. The first few times I tried dipping the cupcakes, the tops and/or frosting just fell off into the melted chocolate. Then I tried freezing the cupcakes before dipping them which seemed to help some.



















All-in-all I was disappointed in more than the process. I indulged in one of the few that did manage to stay in one piece and all that added chocolate just made the top way too heavy for the cake. Luckily, most of the cupcakes I made were normal (as in cake on bottom frosting on top).





















Each time I bake I consider it a learning experience. This time around I learned that mint extract is stronger than most other extracts. I used half of the amount I usually use and thought it was too much. I didn't want to feel like I was eating a big mound of toothpaste. I was also reminded of how concentrate gel food coloring is. That stuff is potent- baleedat!

Things I Love to Bake With

In random order:

1.) Pillsbury Cake Mix. I have no clue why it's the cheapest of the 3 major brands, but it is by far my favorite. It doesn't give me wrinkle tops or an random amount of cupcakes like other brands.

2.) Egglands Best Eggs. I never knew there was an actual difference in eggs, but after a big streak of finding "bad" eggs I tried EB. I have yet to encounter something disturbing which makes this non egg lover happy :)

3.) Kitchen Aid Mixer. I make large quantities of frosting when I bake. I can't imagine managing without it.

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese

Can you believe these red velvet cupcakes started out as a German Chocolate cake mix? Shhh... don't tell everybody! It's a delicious recipe that includes some vanilla pudding and sour cream as well.



























Luckily, the recipe made 30 cupcakes and the order was just for 24, so I got to sample :) They are really, really good!

Polka-dot heart blanket is what Aubree calls it

To quote my husband "Your gonna be great at all those womanly things when we get old, babe" What he meant was sewing and cooking basically. Why sewing you ask? Well, because of this:



















If you remember, my only other sewing experience is with these (which I made 2 more pairs of this weekend). I can now thread my sewing machine and fill a bobbin without reading directions! I have the itch for sewing all of a sudden and have all these ideas of things I want to try.

First on my list is pillowcase dresses. If you have never heard of them (where have you been?), here is a picture of one:


















Cute, huh?

My friend, and all things homemade expert, Candace has already agreed to have a "sewing date" with me and tackle them.

Also, I found this adorable blanket. It looks super easy too! I'm gonna wait and start this after we get back from vacation (which is only 18 days away!).

Yay for a potential new hobby that is calorie free!

Yes, more cupcakes

Do you know what those are?


Wanna guess?


Those are Samoa cupcakes.


Remember?


Chocolate cake, caramel filling, coconut frosting. Yep. Pretty awesome.


I used caramel ice cream topping and it was too thin to use as filling, but the commissary on base was closed or I would have probably whipped up some cream to add to it. Oh well.. that's the beauty of experimental baking... you figure out how to make it better the 2nd time around.


As for Derek's opinion. He left me a note on the computer that said: "Well, I had to eat another cupcake after you went to bed and now I declare them the BEST cupcakes that you’ve made…..they are the best in every way. The caramel soaked into the cupcake makes it super moist and more flavorful, the icing is fantastic, and the toasted coconut gives added flavor and texture. They are the best yet!!!"


:) Sweet husband and even sweeter cupcake apparently! :)


Next on my agenda is Mint Chocolate with a super cool frosting technique I've never tried before.


Stay tuned!

My Favorite Cupcake Ever

My favorite cupcake thus far in my 28 years of life has yet to be named by me. At this cupcake shop in town I'm pretty sure they call it Hazelnut Heaven, but it's a little different than mine. I make a chocolate cupcake, fill it with Nutella and top it with maple buttercream (they use Praline). I'm pretty sure I've blogged about it before, but I'm just too lazy to go through the archives and check. Anyway, they're having Family Day at Derek's work today so if you or your husband is part of JSF you will have a chance to try one of these:


















Their not so pretty. Need a little garnish. Maybe some shaved chocolate that I don't have on hand. Anyway, I was watching Cupcake Wars on Food Network last night and got a WONDERFUL idea for a cupcake. The guy did a play on the girl scout cookie Caramel deLite (or Samoas). If you know me, you know there's nothing I'd rather do than turn desserts into cupcake form. Basically it's a chocolate cupcake filled with caramel, topped with coconut buttercream, sprinkled with toasted coconut and drizzled with more caramel. (Boy, was that a run-on sentence or what!) It's pretty much all my favorite things rolled into one. I CAN'T WAIT TO TRY THEM!

Cookies-N-Cream Cupcakes

I made these for a friend's husband's birthday. I wish I would have used chocolate cake instead of white, but initially I thought it might be overwhelming with the richness of the frosting. Now I realize it would have been a lot prettier. This was a very easy recipe and I love the Oreo-on-bottom surprise :)

FORE!! Or...28 Actually!

Happy (Early) Birthday Derek!

If I had a cupcake portfolio these would definitely be in it! The whole reason we are celebrating Derek's birthday early is because he's playing golf on his actual birthday. As soon as I saw these cupcakes, I knew these were going to be his birthday cupcakes! I got the idea from the awesome book What's New, Cupcake. I just hope they taste as good as they look!

Cupcakes for a Baby Shower

The day has come. My first *real* cupcake order! These are vanilla cupcakes with strawberry filling and chocolate frosting. Can you tell their for a pregnant girl? :)

Mum Cupcakes

I've been wanting to try this technique, courtesy of What's New, Cupcake for awhile and finally got around to it.














So... what do you think?

My Flavors

I've been getting some more orders for cupcakes. So instead of e-mailing everybody a list of flavors, I thought it would be smart of me to list them on my blog and then e-mail everybody the link instead. See, sometimes I have good ideas ;) Anyway, here are the current flavors I offer. Check back often as I will update this frequently.

Cake flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Lemon, Red Velvet, Coconut, Peanut Butter, Mint Chocolate, Pistachio, Cookies & Cream, Mocha, Margarita, Chocolate Cherry.

Buttercream Frosting Flavors: Chocolate, Vanilla, Mint, Mint Chocolate, Mocha, Coconut, Lime, Banana, Orange Cream, Maple, Strawberry, Raspberry.

Cream Cheese Frosting Flavors: Regular Cream Cheese, Lemon, Strawberry.

Other Frostings: Cookies & Cream, Rocky Road, Peanut Butter.

Fillings: Nutella, Blueberry, Strawberry, Red Raspberry, Peanut Butter Cream, Peach, Blackberry, Cream Cheese.

Some Favorite Combos:
*Snowball- Chocolate Cake frosted with Cream Cheese Frosting topped with Shredded Coconut.
*Almond Joy- Chocolate Cake iced with Coconut Buttercream topped with Slivered Almonds and Shredded Coconut
*Creamsicle- Vanilla Cake topped with Orange Cream frosting.
*PB Bomb- Peanut Butter Cake frosted with Peanut Butter Frosting topped with Salted Peanuts.
*Margarita- Lime Buttercream on top of Margarita cake sprinkled with Sea Salt.

Please feel free to call or e-mail me with any questions or orders. brookecrismond@gmail.com (661)258-7655

Getting my Ducks in a Row

I have an order for baby shower cupcakes. The theme is Rubber Duckys. I was just playing around getting some ideas. I don't think I'm gonna go with these unless I can really polish them up. Either way, I thought I'd post them.

My First 10!

The lovely cupcake above earned me my first 10 from the ol' hubs. Most of the time his complaint is with the sweetness but the tart raspberry filling mellowed out the sugar in these Vanilla Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting.


I also made cake pops!























Let me say this was my very first time making these. There's a lot more time into these than you would think.

















The pink ones are Birthday Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. The chocolate ones are Vanilla cake with a-Hint-of-Coconut Buttercream. I could have made these look fancier if I would have bought a cute matching container to put them in and hid the styrofoam they're sticking in, but I just used something I had here at home and after baking 3 cakes and 3 batches of homemade frosting I was pooped! I didn't even bother grabbing my camera to take pictures during the process. All in all, I think I have about 8 hours invested in the trio!

Good thing I enjoy baking :)