Learning to Decorate

Earlier this week, I went to an activity where we got to learn some cake decorating techniques and practice with the frosting tips on cupcakes. Here are my attempts with a few of them.

Here's our group's cupcakes, minus the few we'd eaten :)

Faceless

It's been a long time since I've seen a picture like this around here...

And I must say, the frosting is looking a TON better now. I'm finally figuring it out :) Though because I want to practice the cute swirl, I haven't done much fancy decorating on the tops.

So these guys are called faceless cupcakes because we were given the assignment at Church to bring a treat with a face. And after days of thinking about what to do, I came up with nothing. Not one single idea. So they have stripes and spots-- bodies with no faces...

But they are pretty cute, if I do say so myself :)

Black Friday Cupcakes

On Black Friday, basically everyone has to work. It makes sense. And we always have a potluck lunch. The store provides meat and potatoes, and we bring all the sides and desserts. I had no idea what to make. So I went to my default-- cupcakes :) But I didn't want to make a heavy, chocolate, or pumpkin cupcake, since we'd probably have lots of those flavors. Plus, Doug's been bugging me to make him a vanilla cupcake. So I did a white cupcake with a pretty swirl vanilla frosting. I've gotten a little better at frosting them.

Then I decided I wanted to make them look a little fancier.

I thought they turned out really good. And I love the cherry-- it almost makes them look a little more Christmas-y with the gingerbread boy liners. Hopefully they'll taste good too!

Chocolate Oranges

Last weekend, Marcus and I had a chocolate orange. Those are so good! I love Christmas time :) Well, I know it's not really Christmas time yet, but come on, I work retail. Christmas starts in October. Anyway, I was inspired for this month's Third Sunday (on the Second Sunday) dinner's cupcakes. The frosting didn't quite turn out how I planned, so I improvised. And I must say, I think I like this better.

They're orange chocolate cupcakes with orange chocolate frosting, topped with... wait for it... orange zest and chocolate pieces. Go figure ;)

YUM!

Jack-O-Lanterns

Isn't it amazing that it's already the end of October??? Seriously though. Crazy! For Halloween, I decided to make... CUPCAKES :) I never really got into the whole carving pumpkins/costumes and whatnot, but I tried to be a little festive with pumpkin cupcakes. They don't taste like pumpkin because I thought that was more for Thanksgiving, but they almost look like them:

And Marcus obviously had some fun decorating the pumpkins too

We have Jack-o-lantern cupcakes!!! Can you guess which one is my favorite???

Do you spy Jack the Pumpkin King? the pumpkin that's a basketball for Halloween? a pig? Ron Weasley? Ha.

Here's my favorite... Obviously :)

And Marcus' favorite. "He says RAWR!!!"

Root Beer Floats

Now here was an entirely new challenge... Soda in a cupcake. Seriously.

They turned out better than I thought. But I would've used more root beer :)

The frosting was an adventure too. I had to whip it up on the stove, with more root beer of course.
But it gave the little guys a very smooth look. :)

They were yummy. Very, very sweet.

Fresh Fruit

I made these cupcakes two weeks ago, and they were pretty good. Not my best, but you could taste the lemon and blueberry-- you can definitely see the blueberry too. I had never baked with fresh fruit before, so that was an adventure. Both the batter and frosting did something funny (which more affected texture than taste), and I blame my work schedule. It pushed me to go too fast in order to get to work on time :)