What a Hoot of a Baby Shower!

My Sweet Little Sister loves owls, so naturally her baby shower was covered in them.  She is having a girl who will be named Daisy. Baby Daisy will love owls too, or at least she will be surrounded by them since a lot of her gifts were owl related. There are some really cute outfits out there with owls on them. I should incorporate more owls into my wardrobe.

We had owl sweets, owl fruit salad, owl rubber duckies, and owl decorations scattered everywhere...it was a hoot! Even my Sweet Eddie got in on the owl baby bingo!

For the sweet treats, I focused on the owl theme but also incorporated daisies, for my future niece.
I made large onesie cookie favors for all of the lovely guests. Sweet pink owls perched on a branch with a daisy, I love them.

I felt the urge to try out all of my baby themed cookie cutters to make a platter of cookies for the celebration.

Tiny baby onesies make me happy

A sweet baby Daisy face

And of course, there were more owls

We also had an assortment of mini cupcakes in raspberry with coconut frosting and lemon with lime frosting flavors. The lemon had teeny owl fondant toppers. My sister loves cupcakes in ice cream cones, so we had ice cream cone chocolate cake balls. Those mini ice cream cones have changed my life. It is the perfect size for just a sample of ice cream and an awesome way to serve cake balls.

Finally, I made a cake. It was a raspberry and lemon checkerboard cake with coconut swiss meringue frosting. The owl on top was a rice krispie treat with homemade fondant covering. Ooh la la.

Congratulations to the beautiful couple! They are going to be amazing parents. 

 I am so excited to be an aunt and meet baby Daisy, because as we all know I have baby fever.  I think it is contagious, because all of a sudden my Sweet Eddie has the fever as well. It was probably from all the time that he spent with this little bundle of cuteness at the party.

Oy Vey. I think my ovaries exploded.

Happy Baby Shower!

A Farewell to Summer

The sun fades a little earlier, leaves fall from trees, cozy sweaters are pulled from the closet, and I have pumpkin on the brain. Before I swan dive fully into a vat of cinnamon and pumpkin, I thought I would share a few last summery cupcake flavors

Every time I visit my parents and the family store, I try to bring up a sweet treat for them and their employees. The kids always seem to like it and I like to share. Otherwise, my Sweet Eddie is stuck eating a dozen cupcakes all by himself!  The poor thing. I shared both of these flavors with the crew up in Rockport.  The first farewell to summer flavor was full of lemony goodness.

Lemon cupcake, lemon curd filling, lemon curd Swiss meringue buttercream, fondant lemons and daisy toppers

I added the lemon curd into the frosting on a whim and I am happy that I did. It provided an extra oomph of creamy tang that worked really nicely with the smooth Swiss meringue. 

My second farewell to summer flavor focused on plump, sweet, little blueberries. The blueberries were baked right into a fluffy vanilla cupcake and I frosted them with a swirled blue/white vanilla Swiss Meringue buttercream. I topped each one with a tiny pink fondant flower, which pushed them slightly into a baby shower vibe. I thought they were cute and it gave me a chance to pull a joking "Guess what..." on my poor mother. :-/

I love summer flavors like lemon and blueberry and I love their colors too. Eddie also likes blue and yellow (Swedish pride!) so we are using those as our wedding colors. Aww. I think it will be lovely.

I am looking forward to the fall and all the warm spices it will bring. It will be the perfect time to snuggle with my Sweet Eddie and Buffy. I hope everyone in internet land enjoyed their summer. I will help you welcome fall with a big comforting hug and a wish for health, happiness, and love.

Koki Owl Cupcakes

My little sister, Kourtney (Korn, Koki, Kohn, small brother) recently celebrated a big birthday. Let's just say  she is still a young lady but she might be receiving correspondence from AARP soon. ;)  Her sweet husband put together a nice birthday surprise dinner complete with Kourtney photo masks. We held them up and creepily skulked up behind them when they arrived at the restaurant. She was surprised!

Kourtney is an amazingly talented photographer and an amazingly loving and supportive sister. Also, she is a big fan of owls. For the grand celebration I decided to make two flavors of cupcakes with two different fondant toppers to represent the birthday girl. 

Cameras and Owls!

I started off making full bodied owls, but I thought they were too hefty so I decided to make cool owl heads with big wacky eyes instead. I did keep two full owls, one marked with a "K" and one with a "30" (shhhh. pretend we didn't see that number.)

HoOoooOoooo

High tech, top notch cameras!

For the flavors, I went with the birthday girl's favorite: chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache center and raspberry Swiss meringue butter cream. The charming pink hue came purely from the raspberry puree I added to the butter cream. Naturally lovely and delicious!

Since I am never satisfied with just one flavor, I also made vanilla cupcakes filled with Nutella and frosted with a fluffy Nutella butter cream. I think both flavors were a hit! Hooray!

The lovely birthday girl was so happy with her sweet surprise. 

Happy Birthday, Kourtney!!!

What a Peach!

If you were to ask me what my favorite summer time fruit is, I would definitely say cherries. If you were to ask me my second favorite, it would probably be watermelon. If you asked me my third favorite, there we would find a lovely ripe peach. However, it is the number one fruit that I want to smell like and the name of the character I would always choose in Mario Kart.

Peaches are so wonderful when they are perfectly ripe with the beautiful pink, red, orange, yellow hue and they fill the air with peachy aroma. I wanted to capture the lovely color and taste in cupcake form.

 I used a basic vanilla recipe for the cupcake ( I really dig this recipe from Annie's Eats)  and a silky Swiss meringue buttercream to which I added peach puree for the frosting (about 1 cup.) The cupcakes were also filled with a combination of the frosting and diced peaches. I then topped them with cute little homemade fondant peaches. The frosting was so smooth but the flavor was a bit light. The diced peaches in the center were a good addition, but for a more peachy flavor, I think next time I would like to add ground dehydrated peaches to the cake batter and frosting.

We took this peachy opportunity to do a photo shoot for my new profile picture for here and facebook. My sweet Eddie was the photographer/director and we had a lot of fun.

 And now for my favorite part:

Sweet Eddie's:

"One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail."  Pablo Picasso


Great artists take notice of even the most minor details – and this includes Sugar Buff.  Initially I found it difficult to look past the beautiful fondant-sculpted peaches, but like everything Sugar Buff creates the peach was but a detail.  Delicious.  
Besides official taste-tester, I earned myself a new role this week – Cameraman! Sugar Buff is a model baker, or is it a baker model? Either way you look at it, simply beautiful.


I hope the rest of your summer is full of peaches and fun with some loved ones :)

Happy Mother's Day

My mother got me a sweet set of butterfly cookie cutters and is a fan of the new cookie recipe I am using, so what better way to honor her than to make a butterfly cookie bouquet. 

I attempted to identify the butterfly shapes and make them true to life, but it was more fun to just base it on the colors and let the icing flow. 

I really like the cookie recipe that I am now using. It makes a soft fluffy cookie, but it still holds its shape well. I also tried it as a chocolate version and that was rad too.

Sugar Cookie recipe  adapted from Cookie Crazie

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup sour cream
2 1/4  cups flour (for chocolate version, substitute 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder for 1/4 cup of the flour)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add in the egg, vanilla,  and sour cream. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to the mixture.  Roll out cookie dough and let chill for an hour. Cut out shapes and chill on cookie sheet for 15 minutes while the oven preheats to 325 degrees.  Bake for  10-14 minutes depending on size.

Since I did the vanilla and chocolate versions of this recipe, I had a bounty of cookies to decorate and bring to my mom.

Of course I also had to make some cupcakes for that lovely lady who gave me life. Her one request was for chocolate butter cream frosting.  For the cupcake itself, I used a funfetti white cake recipe that has a subtle taste of vanilla and almond. Instead of sprinkles in the batter I used mini chocolate chips in pink, yellow and semi-sweet.  They came out pretty cool. 

Happy Mother's Day to my mommy and all the other moms out there in the world. You give life and love, support and strength,  hugs and hope. Thanks mama. :)

Fire Engine Red

Happy 2nd Birthday to a sweet little boy!

I had the pleasure of making 60 cupcakes and 24 cookies in fire engine red and bright yellow colors. It was a lot of work and a lot of red gel coloring, but it was fun and I hope all the treats were enjoyed.

The cookies were individually bagged and tied with ribbons. I kept the designs simple with mostly dots and swirls so that the colors would really stand out.

 

For the cupcakes I did chocolate cake with bright red vanilla buttercream and yellow sprinkles.

I also did a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and red/yellow sprinkles.

 60 cupcakes felt like a daunting task, but it was good experience for my sister's wedding in the fall (potentially 100 cuppys and a two tiered cake!) Fortunately I got some bakery boxes with cupcake inserts to transport these sweeties. I have had way too many anxiety filled cupcake transportation moments in the past. The boxes made life so much easier.

My fingers might be permanently tinted red.