Happy Valentine's Day!

Good Saturday morning! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend with their loved ones. Unfortunately, my sweetie has to work today and is having quite the difficult time waking up this morning. Or maybe that's fortunate because then I can finish up some things without being distracted by him! (It's always a welcome distraction, though.) I have a few Valentine's Day projects and tid=bits to share, though. You know, in the spirit of the holiday. Although, according to our mom, every day should be Valentine's Day- you shouldn't need a special day to tell someone you love them! Anyway, this is how we started this morning:

After waking up at 6:15 this morning because of a rogue alarm that was set for the school week, I started attempting to write today's post. One thing led to another and I decided I wanted to make something sweet for my sweetie. Since it was a spur of the moment decision, I went with a coffee cake crumb muffin (and it sort of works for Cupcake Saturday, huh?!) They made the apartment smell delish! And he got a good chuckle out of it, which definitely made it worth it!
I have a few more ideas for the rest of the day, and a few more cards to work on. The rest of the projects will be posted in the coming days. So much for posting more consistently... I promise I'll try a little harder with getting the projects posted, especially because I've been working on some cute new designs, including an attempt at some lucky St. Patrick's Day projects!

Cupcake Saturday!

Happy Saturday! We hope everyone is having a great weekend! We are using our first weekend of fall decorating the apartment a little and catching up on sleep (a lot!) We also decided to spend a little time in the kitchen and our favorite day of the week is making a comeback! We originally had another project planned that was supposed to be posted, but this is much better! The other night we were in the mood for some cupcakes and so we went with it. These little sweeties are pretty much fall in a cupcake!

These are our vanilla pumpkin mousse cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. We found an absolutely delish recipe for pumpkin curd, which is pretty much pumpkin, sugar, and butter (how can you go wrong?!) It's definitely one of those foods you can eat out of the jar with a spoon. Or a finger. The only thing that would make it better? Whipped cream mixed into it to make a mousse. The cupcakes are filled with this mousse. They are then topped with a basic cream cheese frosting, kicked up with a bit of cinnamon. They're a little "messy", but totally worth it! These pair quite well with some of the curd mixed into some freshly brewed coffee to make a pumpkin spice latte. It sounds like quite a bit of pumpkin, but it definitely isn't, especially in fall!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Enjoy the weekend!

Cupcake Saturday!

Good morning!! We hope everyone is having a superb start to their weekend so far! It's another gorgeous day out here. It's a perfect day to open up the windows and do a little pre-summer cleaning and then enjoy the outdoors. We'll see what ends up happening :)
Anyway, it's been a while since we've had a Cupcake Saturday to share with you. The wait was definitely worth it, though! We made these for our birthday cupcakes but are sharing them a few weeks late.

We found these birthday cake M&M candies at Target and decided to make some treats with them. They are a vanilla cupcake base with a chocolate frosting. We didn't want to fill it with anything to keep it from being too sweet. Then we chopped up a handful of candies and top each with that. The hardest part of these cupcakes?? Trying to chop up the candy. We were so happy when we remembered the handy dandy coffee grinder we had- it made life much easier without having to chase M&M's all over the cutting board, etc. These were gone quite quickly.
Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

Cupcake Saturday!

Welcome back to Cupcake Saturday!! It has been quite a while since we've made cupcakes, and they were totally missed. O our first Saturday back, we made a cupcake perfect for Valentine's Day. These are strawberry cream cheese cupcakes:

They are strawberry cupcakes, with bits of strawberries in the batter. Each is filled with a little of the cream cheese frosting, and topped off with some more. Luckily, we didn't make a lot of them because they were all gone in a few days (although there was a tiny bit of help eating them).
Thanks for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

Cupcake Saturday!

Happy Saturday! We know it's been a while since we've popped on here, and now it's late (still Saturday, though, so it's all good!) It's been a crazy few weeks. There have been lots of random projects to work on and short afternoons after work. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to work on many of our own projects. Anyway, today's post is a cupcake in honor of the last (unofficial) weekend of fall- everyone knows that Thanksgiving weekend is the official start of the Christmas season! (Yep, it has it's own season!!) So, here they are:

These are our 'fall leaves' cupcakes. They are chocolate cupcakes with toffee bits baked inside. They are frosted with a green buttercream.

The trees were made with melting chocolate. They were a little hard to make- trees can be tough to draw, let alone make them with chocolate. We added some colorful sprinkles to them before they were set. Then we stuck them into the center of the cakes and added more sprinkles to the frosting. From the pictures, it's a bit hard to see, but some of the sprinkles are actually blue. We are fully aware that there aren't any blue leaves- but that would be pretty awesome! These would be a pretty cute addition to any fall-themed party.
Thanks so much for stopping by today! Have an amazing day!

Cupcake Saturday!

Happy Saturday! We hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend so far. It seems as if this weekend will be a good time to be outside, see some color, and enjoy the weather. Hopefully. As long as it's nicer than last weekend, it's a winner! And we'll probably spend it inside...crafting. Oh well. We've been rather busy with orders. We finished two yesterday and have another three to work on now.
We have another cupcake to share with you today. It is an apple crisp cupcake:

We were having a discussion on whether it should be considered a cupcake or a muffin. The jury is still out, but under either title, they're delicious! One of our mom's favorite (and yummiest) things to make during the fall is apple crisp. We decided to make this one in honor of her. It has huge chunks of apples, to really get the flavor. They also help keep the cupcake nice and moist. We decided to top it off with a batch of crumb topping. We were always known to be the ones who would pick the biggest "crumbs" off the pies and crisps, and anything else that you could put it on. This was no exception! (We made a small cake and topped it with a good inch of the crumble, and then proceeded to pick off the top.)

These cupcakes would be perfect for those days when you are looking for a treat, but not something overly sweet. And it has fruit in it, so they have to be good for you, no?!
Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope you all have a great day!

Cupcake Saturday!

Happy Saturday! We hope everyone has had a wonderful work week. We are definitely looking forward to the weekend, even if it’s filled with a ton of work to do! At least we have a few more days of sun and warmer temperatures before the rainy season is upon us. Anyway, since it is Saturday, we have another cupcake to share. Today’s cupcake is a very fall-inspired one: Pumpkin-stuffed vanilla cupcakes, with a pumpkin spice buttercream.

 

These are a basic vanilla cupcake filled with a little pumpkin-y surprise! These are like our valentine’s day cupcakes a while back, with a heart in the middle. The pumpkin cake is a pumpkin-spice bread mix, cut into the shape of a pumpkin. Or, what is supposed to be a pumpkin. All of our cookie cutters were much too big, so we had to cut them by hand. I guess they don’t look too shabby, for paper and a knife. The basis for the frosting is a basic recipe. However, instead of using cream and vanilla for the liquid, we had some pumpkin-spice liqueur in the fridge, so we used that. We didn’t use so much that it’s over-powering, but just enough to taste it. To top them off, we sprinkled them with a bit of pumpkin-pie spice and cinnamon-and-sugar.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful weekend!

Cupcake Saturday!

I can't believe it's already the last day of August! Where has this summer gone?! As the summer's last Cupcake Saturday, we have an ice cream treat inspired cupcake. These are root beer float cupcakes.

 

The cake is root beer flavored, with extract put into our regular cake mix instead of vanilla. Some of the flavors you can find now are pretty cool. Definitely makes it easier to change up your flavors.  The frosting is just a vanilla frosting, to be like the vanilla ice cream. These aren't quite as cold as the ice cream treat, but they are still reminiscent of Grandma's. (And the straws are just cute.)

 Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

I am so excited for today's cupcakes! We've been working on a Monsters, Inc party (invitations, banners, etc.) to put up on our etsy store. So we have some cupcakes to go with the party.

 

Here's a close up of the two. They didn't come out quite as good as I had hoped because the frosting was getting kind of warm, but they still get the point across, I think. I also wish I had a grass tip to make his hair a little more "hairy." There are two different types of cupcakes. Mike is funfetti, and Sully has a Milky Way stuck in the middle as a surprise. The frosting is all vanilla, with lots of food coloring, and candy eyes.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

I don't know about you, but this week went by super fast! We've been busy adding to our store, with new cards and banners. And we had our aunt and uncle over, which was great. It's been a few years since we've seen them, so it was nice.
It started to feel a little like fall, and by that, I mean, we had two days of rain. After almost 2 months without any rain, we had just a little. So for our first fall-inspired cupcakes of the season, we have a Spiked Pumpkin Latte cupcakes!

These cupcakes have pumpkin puree and coffee granules, and are spiked with pumpkin pie liqueur. The original recipe called for mudslide mix, but I couldn't find any, and found this instead. It works for me! The frosting is a buttercream, with the same ingredients mixed in.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

It's time for another Cupcake Saturday, and this time we made it in time for Saturday! Since football season is starting up, we decided to make some football-themed cake pops. For the Seahawks game on Thursday, we made these team-colored pops with lime green candy wafers with blue sprinkles. We used the blue frosting from Pillsbury and a white cake.

 The football shapes were covered in milk chocolate, and white chocolate lines on them. This was the third time we've tried cake pops, but these were definitely the best ones. The first ones had too much frosting, the second ones weren't crumbled enough, and these worked out pretty well. Now we just have to work on the decorating part.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday (on Sunday again)

Good afternoon! We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far. We've finally (maybe) got over our super early morning the other day and got back to work on our projects. So, like we said yesterday, our Cupcake Saturday was pushed back a day. Today's treat is a jelly-filled donut cupcake.

These are cinnamon-sugar and vanilla cupcake, topped dipped in a cinnamon-sugar mixture. Once they were cooled, we cored them out and filled them with jam. They can be filled with any type of jam. These were filled with a huckleberry jam (which was surprisingly delicious!) but a strawberry would probably be awesome, too! And paired with a cup of coffee, these would be a perfect breakfast, in our opinion : D
Thanks for stopping by and joining us today. Enjoy!

Cupcake Saturday! (On Sunday)

How come Monday is so far from Friday and Friday is so close to Monday?! We had quite a busy weekend but needed to get our Cupcake Saturday in. I almost forgot about it yesterday, but on the way to pick up E & S from the airport it hit me! So here's this week's Cupcake Saturday Sunday.

This week, we made Mississippi Mud Pie Cupcakes. It's a good thing we did so much walking around yesterday, since these cupcakes are definitely not low anything, except gluten. We spent the day seeing just about everything they wanted to see in Seattle, which meant several hours of walking. Since S has Celiac disease, we needed to make sure that they were GF so she can enjoy them too! We started off with Betty Crocker's GF cake mix, put marshmallows and chocolate frosting in the inside, cooked them, and BAM! They made such a mess oozing out. The pan will need a heavy duty soaking tonight.

After prying them out of the pan, they were topped with more chocolate frosting, chopped pecans, and a mini marshmallow. Like I said, definitely not low-anything, but at least this week we have help eating them!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

I'm so excited to share these cupcakes today! The other day, we showed some of the adorable Baby Pooh things we are working on, and these go right along with them.

These honey pot cupcakes were so easy to make, but look awesome. These are just plain yellow cupcakes, frosted with lemon yellow buttercream, and stuck into a terracotta planter. They are decorated with paper cutouts saying "hunny," just like Pooh spells it. There is cupcake underneath there, but they're way too cute to dig through!

It could definitely be painted, or drawn on, but I'm much neater with paper. The honey around the top is just a strip of paper, trimmed to look like it's dripping down the sides. Again, could definitely be paint, but I'm just not that artistic, either.

No honey pot is complete without a buzzing bee or two flying around!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

Welcome to another edition of Cupcake Saturday! Like we promised yesterday, today’s cupcakes are our Independence Day cupcakes we made for our family picnic. Before we begin, we would like to clarify- it was been 90-plus degrees out, so our cupcakes don’t look perfect. Unfortunately. But, like they say, don’t judge a book by its cover!

These are vanilla cupcakes with berry frostings. The blue frosting is a very berry flavor and the red is a strawberry frosting. We wanted to get the three colors onto our cupcakes, and I would say we succeded in that! We were looking online for some decorating ideas, we saw something similar to this. So, the first step is to cut the tops off the cupcakes and use a small cookie cutter to cut the shape out of the middle (or, in our case, a turkey baster. Ingenuity at its best.) Then you take some frosting and top the stump with it and then put the top back on. If needed, you can use a piping bag to fill the hole in some more. Our next issue was trying to cover up the cut in the cupcake. At first, we took the opposite color and made a ring around the cut. Within a few minutes, it started drooping, so we had to do something to cover it up. Fortunately, we had sprinkles we could use to make it look nice! These are nice because they aren't super-sweet. There isn't a whole lot of frosting, but just enough to add some pizzazz!

On a side note, we would like to thank everyone who reads us. Or at least clicks on our blog three or four days. Or those darn spammers (OK, not really them.) We have had 17,000 pageviews. It may not seem very exciting, but it makes us feel good! So, thanks! 

Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope everyone has a wonderful day! Try to stay cool out there!

Cupcake Saturday!

It's been a couple of days since we've updated our posts. We left the West Coast last Sunday and made our way back east this week. Sure, we could've flown and been here in a few hours, but if you ever get the chance to drive cross-country, I strongly suggest it. We have done this trip a couple of times now, but each time is a little different. What's not different is the feeling you get when you get a big giant hug at the end of the trip from your family! We didn't tell our parents that we were coming out here, party because we knew mom would worry the whole way, and partly to give them a big surprise. Well, it definitely was a big surprise. It took them a minute or two to realize what was going on. It was definitely worth it.
Anyway, enough about our trip, today is Cupcake Saturday! It's nice when we can make a batch of cupcakes and not have to worry about what to do with all of them, (or eating all of them ourselves.) We have help this week, which is awesome. I asked mom what they like, and she said "bananas and chocolate." Of course with these two flavors, we needed to make a Chunky Monkey Cupcake!

It is a chocolate-banana cupcake with chocolate filling, with banana whipped cream topping and chopped nuts. It's definitely a chunk-ifying cupcake, but so worth it!
Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

Ahhh, another Saturday! This week seemed to be go by really slow. Hopefully that means the weekend will feel extra long and be super-productive, but I doubt that. We do have a cupcake to share with you today, that tastes like summer! It is a Raspberry Creme Brulee cupcake! Sounds fancy-schmancy, but was really easy to make, and delicious.

It is a vanilla cake, baked, cooled, and cored. The inside is a raspberry creme brulee filling. We made the creme brulee with raspberry jello powder instead of sugar, and baked it according to the recipe directions. When it was cooled, we filled the hollowed out cupcakes with the filling. To top it off, we took vanilla frosting and put some more of the Jello powder in it to give it a raspberry taste.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

Good morning on this absolutely gorgeous Saturday morning! We hope everyone is having a great day so far! Ours is looking to be busy, but hopefully we'll be able to relax a little tomorrow. Anyway, the cupcakes we are sharing with you today are the ones we made for our birthday last weekend. At the beginning of May, as we were watching the Harry Potter Weekend on ABC Family for the umpteenth time, we decided that we really wanted to have a Harry Potter themed birthday this year. Honestly, who wouldn't want to live in a world full of magic and mystery?! (And who says 27 is too old for a birthday party?!) We had a whole bunch of ideas to work with , but unfortunately, life got in the way and we didn't get around to it. But, we did make cupcakes to celebrate! These are our butterbeer cupcakes, in honor of Harry Potter:

We took a shortcut with these, and used a butter cake mix. Instead of adding water, we added cream soda to the batter (it was kind of difficult to find the cream soda. Not too many stores out here sell it. Who knew??) Once the cupcakes were cooled, we took white buttercream frosting and added a package of butterscotch pudding to it. We mixed it to make a butterscotch buttercream. (This would probably have been better looking if it was a homemade frosting, but it tastes delicious!) These were exactly what I would imagine a mug of butterbeer to taste like.
If the cupcake form isn't quite your thing, there are a ton of other recipes out there for drink versions. We've tried the one from this website, which was surprisingly good. It's not the heathiest drink out there, and drinking a tablespoon of butter may not be on your top list of things to do, but it is tasty in small portions. (That's in the mug.) We also found a butterbeer frappuccino 'recipe' here for the coffee drinker who frequents the corner Starbucks. I wonder if the one at Safeway would make this for us. There are also cream soda-based recipes, too.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a magical day!!

Cupcake Saturday

It's that time of the week again. My favorite day- Cupcake Saturday! And this weekend is even better since it is a long weekend and our birthday weekend! Very excited to not have school on our birthday this year, just saying. :)
Anyway, here are today's Cupcake Saturday cupcakes. In honor of Memorial Day, we knew we would have to make something patriotic.

We just took white cake batter and dyed half red and half blue. After they were cooled, we cut them using the pop holder, and layered them with vanilla frosting. The final touch was the stars and stripes sprinkles on top!
We found these cute little push pop containers at Target yesterday (and they were on sale, so even better!)

They're perfect for a picnic this weekend or later on at a 4th of July party. Either way, they look and taste great.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Satuday!!

We're back! It has been a few weeks since we've had the time to make some cupcakes. But, between work and orders and everything else that seems to take up our time, we found a few minutes to make these! This week's cupcakes are Nutella cupcakes with strawberry jelly frosting.

 These are kind of a mix between two recipes. The cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes with Nutella mixed in. I was a little surprised when they came out because there wasn't much of a Nutella-y flavor to them, even though I added more than the original recipe called for. But it might have added to the softness of the cupcakes. A lot of other recipes pipe some Nutella into the middle of the cupcakes, but I'd rather just eat it out of the jar (as you can kind of tell). Once the cupcakes cooled, we topped them with a strawberry jelly buttercream. This was a definite risk, but I think it worked out. It was a lot sweeter than we would normally make, but it balances out the cupcake nicely, especially if you make a sandwich out of the cupcake.
Anyway, we hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and that you get to do something fun and exciting! Thanks for stopping by!!