New Years 2009 Cupcakes

chocolate andes mint cupcakes
creamed cheese frosting
garnish: black & white chocolate piped designs

the plain cupcakes... pre-decorating
I even jacked a donut box from Safeway to make it look legit.

design piping
took a cold cookie sheet and just piped melted chocolate onto it

martini glasses, champagne glasses and fireworks designs


frosting timeeee!

yay the finished products
the family was quite impressed

This was basically my first time attempting "fashionable" cupcakes. I think it turned out quite well. Piping was REALLY hard at first but then I got the hang of it and it's kind of fun actually! I think it gives the cupcakes something extra special. What's really hard is keeping them from breaking after they were solid... They're so freakin fragile! I broke so many martini glasses and "2009"s... Ahhhh. Well worth the effort though. Definite success for my first attempt at this style of decorating though.

Future Goal: Cake decorating class so I can learn to pipe!

Christmas Creations

Andes Mint Chocolate Cake

Starshaped

This cake is exactly what the name says it is. Chocolate cake with Andes mint. Suuuuuper moist... It had chopped up Andes mints bits in side of it and then garnished on top too. It was for a Secret Santa Potluck with my favorites on Drake Circle. I got silicone bake ware and a WALL-E plush from Will!

My Signature Cookies

For my secret santa receiver, I baked her 50 of my signature cookies that she loves so much...AND made a huge pillow replica of the cookies. Jo likes to call them "Tiffany's 'The Shit' Cookies".

Basically they're oatmeal-peanutbutter-darkchocolatechip-cookies. Yummy! Sounds like a lot, but son, its gooooood.

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I also made my big bro at Pi Alpha Phi some pillows for Christmas... Yes, aside from baking and cooking, I love making pillows! As you saw from Jo's Signature Cookie pillow, food kinda runs as a theme. Here's the set I made:

Chicken Nugget Pillows!!

Complete with Sweet & Sour Sauce (Trevor's favorite)
AND IT OPENS UP TOO!

This definitely took a couple days to make. Cutting out the letters was the most tedious part, but it definitely took a lot of brain power to think up how to make the sauce. I had to use a different kind of stuff to keep the structure looking "cube"ish. It's made from felt, two different kinds of stuffing, and a lot of hot glue.

The story behind this one? Trevor works at the Nugget Market and was ALWAYS working during Fall quarter so I barely ever got to see him. My retaliation? Make fun of him by making him a set of pillows of nuggets! Haha. He loved it. Also, I kind of felt bad that the pillow I made him during Crossing Night was super tiny compared to everyone else's pillows for their big bros.

They've definitely come in handy though. One time, I was studying with the big bro for midterms the next day and it was like, 3am. Freakin A I was sooo tired and didn't feel like driving back to South Davis, so I just crashed on the couch with a couple of those nuggets! WIN!

Can't wait to make more pillows. Don't know when the next opportunity will come up, but once a light bulb turns on in my head, it's pillow fight timeeee!