Red Velvet...Anything!

Hi Everyone!!
I hope you're all doing well. I'm doing great. I have a wonderful assignment I'm excited to talk about, but without pictures yet. So I'll just show you some Red Velvet pictures to go with the post :) A post with no pictures is no fun at all!!

So a girlie I know called me and asked if i can bake her some healthy cookies with low calories. So I came up with some ideas, found some recipes from my trusted books, and this weekend I am hitting the kitchen. I have 5 recipes I want to try, but I'm not sure I will bake them all. I mean...I will get stuck with dozens and dozens of cookies. I was thinking of maybe baking 2 of them, see how she likes them, and then try another 2, and then keep the 5th one for later? I guess we'll see :)
But don't you love this whole expiremental thing? I feel so much better if I'm doing it for a customer rather than just baking in the kitchen to try new things on my own (with my fiance as a test subject, who eats everything anyway!)

But anyways, who likes Red Velvet?? I remember the first time I ever say a Red Velvet recipe I was amazed. I mean...a RED CAKE?? I did give it a try.. it seems like forever ago. I wasn't selling my baked goods back then, I was only doing it for special occations. That's when people started telling me that what I baked was too yummy to go to waste.

This is my 25th Birthday Cake. The inside is a Red Velvet, and the frosting is a Marshmallow frosting I found online. Let me tell ya! Even though people loved it, I found that I had over baked the cake so it was a bit on the dry side, and the Marshmallow Frosting wasn't the greatest match. But i had some cousins visiting from England, and they tried this and LOVED IT! They even told me they found a bakery they go to just for this cake. Btw...the flowers are real. I didn't know where I could find sugarpaste to make sugar ones...speaking of, that's a whole different story, but the first thing I ever did in my life that has to do with confectionary, was the sugar paste roses! I must've been 5 or 6 years old.
What do you think? Not too shabby eih? It was the very first time EVER I had frosted anything!

2 Years after the above picture, I decided I wanted to give it a try to go a bit more pro on this whole baking thing. I made a pricelist, added some of my best recipes on there, downloaded a software that helps you price cakes, and started giving out my menus. I had a tasting event (paired with a birthday party) and my 2nd order was a Red Velvet Cake. Remember this one? That was a whole lot of chaos!

Then I baked one for my neighbor, of which a have a picture of what the inside looks like (but during the cutting of the cake, the picture wasn't all that great) Here it is.

And then, I baked some more Red Velvet Cakes :) But it doesn't stop there. We have all heart of Red Velvet Cupcakes (or most of us). I baked some of those, too. One time, I didn't have enough color, so they seemed like they stayed out in the sun and faded out.. I don't think I have a picture for that (like I'd post it!) Then some other time, I baked them...and I photographed them as if they were models on a catwalk!!

Don't they look pretty? I think they do :). And even though you see it's a Red Velvet on the Cupcake Liner, I had to cut it up so you can reeeeally see the inside.

You know what happened next, right? Well I couldn't take it to the customer like this! So I just had to eat it! (I actually only had 1/4 of it, my fiance the other 1/4 and we took the half to my brother-and-sister-in-law to-be (that's a long word!) so they can try it. Well the rest were for the order I had so I couldn't take them a whole one. It's ok, they understand :)

BUT, the most versatile Red Velvet anything I ever baked was...Red Velvet (drum roll please....) BROWNIES!!! I KNOW, RIGHT? So moist with Cream Cheese Frosting on top.. yumm!!! I baked these for my Valentine's Bake Sale, but I hadn't taken a picture before I put them out on the table. My aunt remembered these and ordered them for a meeting she was having, so I took the chance to photograph them. They are how you see them: moist on the inside, crispy on top, covered with Cream Cheese Frosting. AND, they are Brownies! So there's melted chocolate inside there!

This is it you guys. Many pretty pictures for you to look at until next time :)

Don't forget to like Fairy Cakes on Facebook, too.

Have a great day :!) -xoxo-

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Hello everyone!
I woke up this morning and I couldn't wait to tell you about my news!

It's been a while since I last posted any yummy cupcakes, so I decided I will share my NEW flavor with you. I have baked this before, but the thing is I was afraid to put it on the menu. Then a new customer calls, who found me through my Facebook Page, and asked for 3 flavors of Cupcakes, but nothing with chocolate...hm...no problem but most of my Cupcakes have some kind of chocolate something in them..!! Thinking to be done: Vanilla Cupcakes? Sure, a classic, we can put those in. Then no Chocolate Cupcakes, but how about Nutella Cupcakes? Well the cupcake is Chocolate with Nutella filling so again, no. How about Banana Cupcakes?? But I make them with a Chocolate Frosting so ...NO! I did the Red Velvet ones for her because you can barely tell there's cocoa in there. We should have a voting...the cocoa is only there for the color, right? I should do a blog post discussing Red Velvet! Then the other option was Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Frosting but the customer did mention these were going to children in school so not a lot of children care for lemon-anything. So that's out.

You know what comes next...right? I had to put the missing flavor into play. I thought, who doesn't like crumbled cookies? ON TOP of their Frosting? Young ones or old ones? If I could, I'd smash the Cupcake into the Digestive Cookies (I'd use Graham Crackers if I lived in America but *sniff* we don't have those), only if it wasn't for destroying that beautiful swirl of the Frosting. I loooooove crust anything, so you know I love the idea of this Cupcake.

Am I keeping you in suspence? You want to see the picture, right? Ok ok here's the picture, we'll chat more below it.

See the strawberries at the bottom? And the crumbs on top? Ooooh Heaven!!! (...ok just don't tell my nutritionist I had one of these.. I will find a different excuse for not loosing all the weight I was supposed to...like an alien forced me to eat it or something?)

I did 2 Cupcake deliveries right after I finished assembling these...and then went on to a BBQ and took some with me to see what people think. I am getting to the part where I didn't clean the kitchen afterwards and now it's bugging me. So off I go to work, and then straight to the kitchen cleaning..and living room cleaning (that's where the picture taking took place).

Oh oh and one more thing...I had some time on my hands yesterday so I took some really nice pictures of the Cupcakes I baked for my new customer. I will be sharing soon because I am REALLY escited with the result! You'd think a professional photographer took the pictures. Can't wait to share :)

Holy Cow Cake

Hi everyone!! As promised, this is the picture of the complete cake from this post. I'm hoping to have the professional picture emailed to me soon by the photographer at the baptism so I can show you :).
As you can tell the theme was "Cow" and I decided that instead of making a 3 tier cake with a cow print, to make the top one a little different. Like a cow in a medow.

Everything is edible on the cake exept the cow. I thought it would be nice for the mum of the baby to keep the cow as a souvenir from the baptism, plus it was too cute of a cow to bypass!
The inside of the cake is a round version of my hedgehog bars, what many also call "fridge bars" or what we call here in Cyprus "doukissa."

If you can sneak a peak in the back of the cake you can also see the book I used as inspiration for the giant daisy where the cow is sitting "The Art of Cupcakes."

I also baked some Vanilla [medow] and some Chocolate [cow] Cupcakes to match the Cake:

I received good reviews for the Cake. It was a great experience..one I would deffinately like to go through again.

Are you Fasting?

Easter is right around the corner, and many people are fasting in preparation for this holiday. And the Greek Orthodox way of fasting is a little stricter than the one my friends used to do when I lived in Los Angeles: they picked 1 thing and stopped doing it for the 40 days of lent.
For example, if they thought they ate too much chocolate during the year, they would completely stop eating anything chocolate for 40 days (Don't panic, this is an example...I do not know anyone who gave up chocolate!).

Are you ready for the Greek Orthodox way? You go VEGAN for 40 days!!! Now if you are vegetarian or vegan, you don't mind, but if you love meat, and CHOCOLATE and all those great sweets that use milk and butter...then WHAT?? (P.S. for those of you that don't know what vegan is..-I recently found out myself. I only knew vegetarian- vegans are those who choose NOT to eat any meat products or products that come from animals such as milk, butter, eggs, etc. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). But don't panic! More and more people are becoming vegan nowadays, so the ideas are starting to flood the internet.

So going back to where many people are fasting...since Easter is around the corner? Ok there. Many are asking for vegan sweets. And the 2 things I have suggested before were my Pecan Bars that I can turn into a Pecan Tart, and the Crumb-Topped Apple Pie. Simple modification: Instead of butter for the crust, you use shortening. But these are what people are ALREADY having for the fasting, so they want something else, something different. So I stumbled upon a Chocolate Cupcake Recipe in one of my books, that looked a little like this:

These Bad Boys?? ALL VEGAN!! Even the frosting! There's some basic things that change in a vegan recipe. Instead of butter, you use oil/shortening, instead of milk, you use soy milk or almond milk (depending of the flavor you want to give your cupcakes, too). And of course milk chocolate changes for dark chocolate, since the latter doesn't contain milk.

The frosting came out bright white since it had no butter. I used shortening and soy milk along with powdered sugar and a bit of vanilla.

I made these for my mum's birthday. She wanted to treat everyone at work, so I made mini cupcakes for her. She said people were fighting over them. I'm glad to hear that. My fiance ate about 8 of the regular size cupcakes of these. I guess it's a success!

Carnival Bake Sale

It's true. I did 2 bake sales in 1 month. Actually, less than 2 weeks apart from each other!
After my Valentine's Bake Sale I was asked by one of my customers if I could have a bake sale at her private school. Of course I didn't mind! I love to bake! I love to sell. I love to bake sale :)

Our early discussions were of an Easter Bake Sale, but thought that the Carnival which was much closer was going to be more fun. So in a heartbeat, I picked a few things I thought would be a hit for a Bake Sale for ages 6-12.

The problem was that I didn't want to bake decorated cookies (or decorated anything) to keep the cost down for the young ages I was going to be serving. I did have some really good ideas for masks and clowns but I had to stay away from them. I sat down and thought...what reminds me of the Carnival? My main conclusion was many colors. So here is what I came up with:

These are my Hedgehog Bars. Everyone SUPER likes them, and they are simple enough for kids to like, too. The only thing is that I usually add walnuts. I remember that as a child, I disliked any kinds of nuts in my sweets. So instead, I put Smarties (since they are colorful, too). They were the biggest hit of the Bake Sale. Completely SOLD OUT before the event was over. Colorful and deliscious!

Next up are my famous brownies. I was between these Fudgy ones or the Swirly Cheese ones. I picked these for 2 reasons: first, these cost less than the cheesy ones. And second, I wasn't sure the kids were going to like the taste of the cream cheese.
Again I adjusted the recipe to make it more festive. I added some chocolate frosting and sprinkled it with multi-colored non-pareills to add the carnival element to them.

I couldn't be missing the Chocolate Chip Cookies! Everyone likes those! I needed to add some color to them though. That's when I thought of m&m's. They are Chocolate, and they are Color. So instead of Chocolate Chip Cookies, I had m&m Cookies.

The last thing I took with me was, of course, Cupcakes! Instead of making the kiddos choose between Chocolate or Vanilla, I decided to do a twofer! Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting. Why not Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting? For the Color of course. I wanted to be able to have colored frosting. I picked purple and orange.

I was there for a little over 3 hours. I had so much fun with the kids! Some of them were way over adorable, some were cute, all were dressed up for the carnival! 

Thank you u-Learn Education Centre! 

The Making of: Glittered Heart Cookies

Hi Everyone!! I'm back! Well I wasn't gone, I was here. I was just getting prepared for my Valentine's Bake Sale and I also have many orders coming through so I'm busy busy busy.

As I promised, I was going to do a series of "The Making of" posts for my Valentine's goodies. Let's start with the Glittered Heart Cookies. They went on here:

This is my Strawberry Cupcake with Strawberry Frosting. I use fresh strawberries, unless I cannot find them ANYWHERE. It just tastes better this way!!
I saw this picture and I LOVED it, so I wanted to make something like it for Valentine's Day.
The thing is, I couldn't find the iiiity bity plain nonpareills in only red or only pink. So I went online, searched for them, and found them in Los Angeles. (Ironic, right? I used to live there and never looked for anything like it while I was there). So I thought to myself "I can order them...if they get here on time, I can make the cookies. If not...then well I have to find something else to do with the cookies." And they came right on time ;)

I also made a sketch of what I wanted the Cupcakes to look like. I like to keep all my ideas in my sketchbook in case they need altering. Plus, they are all in one place, so I can look at them at any time, brainstorm, and add more.

After I baked some heart shaped Sugar Cookies, I outlined them with a baby pink Royal Icing. And then filled them with the Icing, too. I didn't fill them with the sprinkles until they were partly dry. I had pink and red sugar in there, too, and if I filled the cookies with the sparkly mixture I made, the sugar would've gotten wet.

I am deffinately getting better at this than my first or second time outlining and filling cookies with Royal Icing. First of all, I made sure my icing wasn't too stiff or too wet for the outlining.
And then I used the 10 second (.....right? At least that's how many seconds I waited) rule...you know, where you run your knife through the icing and wait 10 seconds until the line is gone? That one. I used it... last time I decorated cookies, I didn't even know this rule existed.

What do you think? These were my favorite, especially pared with the Strawberry Cupcake, from my Valentine's Bake Sale.
Oh, and did I tell you? I created a Facebook Page.

Test Kitchen

Goodmorning Everyone!!
I hope you all had a GREAT weekend. Mine was the usual: Work on Saturday, bought some birthday presents after work (I get off at 5, shops close at 7), went to my friend's house for coffee Sunday morning, had some good-tasting lunch at my in-laws' to-be, and spent the afternoon in my kitchen testing recipes :!)

First of all, I have to tell you. I do NOT like coconut. Not the smell or flavor itself, but the texture. I try to omit it from my recipes. But see, my fiance? Well that's his FAVORITE flavor!! So he's been asking me to make him some Coconut Cupcakes since...forever! (Especially after our Christmas Cake was a Coconut Cake really). I had never made them before, so I thought I'd give it a try.

He LOVED them! Especially the Cream Cheese Frosting (I added a bit of almond extract this time - since I was testing - to see the difference from it being plain. My conclusion: Too strong of a flavor).

So, since I made him the Coconut Cupcakes that he REEEeeeeAAAlly liked, I should make something I REEEaaally like too, right? YEAP! I'm a sucker for Strawberry desserts! So the other day I bought some strawberries from this girl (you know, those that sell fruit on the streets, or come by your work? Well she came at the shop where I work and they looked really good, so I grabbed a pack). I had them in the refrigerator for 3 days and didn't know what to do with them. So I asked my friends on Facebook, and they suggested the Strawberry Mousse (it was either that or Strawberry Cupcakes with Orange Frosting-recipes I've made before and love, I just couldn't choose all by myself).

 

After I took the pictures, I realized I never left a strawberry behind to decorate! I haven't had one yet. They needed to set and cool in the refrigerator, so I will have one today. I'm pretty sure that they are reeeeeeeeally tasty :) Because they have strawberries in them! You can tell from the picture that this is homemade and not the packaged kind: You can see the strawberry bits!

Other than testing in the kitchen and making yummy gooods, I also baked a Red Velvet Cake for an order (I also baked brownies, but I didn't take a picture of those for you).

This also falls under Test Kitchen because I had many people try it and tell me what they think. Everyone said it was reeeally good...I wasn't all that pleased with it. I think it's because I like the cupcake version much better....due to the fact that cupcakes have a higher cuteness factor!

So, what did you guys do this weekend? Anyone baked something new??

Christmas Baking Please!

Let me tell you a little something that you might not know: if you're Greek, you come with a name day! A name day is celebrated on the same date every year. If you have the same name as someone else, they celebrate that day with you. Since each day has a set date, it is easier to know when someone's name day is, rather than remember their birthday. Therefore, people give treats for their name day more than they do on their birthdays. Makes sense so far?

One of the most popular male names here in Cyprus, is Andreas. And the name day for that was yesterday. I had TONS of orders for that!!! I hadn't slept in 4 days! Up baking all night, waking up early to finish up! I delivered my last order yesterday afternoon after work, bought some more supplies (getting ready for Christmas), came home and stayed in my PJs! Made me a cup of hot white chocolate (I have to tell you the recipe for this one day.. it's delicious!) and rested.

NOT REALLY! I kept thinking about Christmas!!! So I sat by the fireplace with my hot chocolate, brought out all my books, and started to pick out the recipes I will bake this year along with which Christmas Cake I should pick.
I have my grocery list ready so I can start, and I'm attempting to do a Gingerbread House from scratch! If it looks good, I'm sharing. If it doesn't...well then we all have to laugh together :) I'm also making gingerbread baubles for my Christmas tree. Those I will share, too.

So get ready for some Christmas Baking!!!
Here are some of the cupcakes I whipped of up St. Andrew's day:

Not-so-Sweet Cupcakes

Remember the Cupcake Platter I made? Well.. the same person asked me to make some more for her, but she wanted a less-sweet frosting. Hmm... how are you to do that? Less powdered sugar will make the frosting droopy...right? AND she also wanted a mixed platter again, but only a few cupcakes. So I suggested that I make a Chocolate Cupcake with the Vanilla Frosting. Mixed :) She agreed (or else I'd have to make 3 batches of different flavors.. 3 frostings, and get stuck with most of them.. and then I would eat them all and be fat!!!).

I baked the Chocolate Cupcakes. I tried one....(yes, I tend to do that when I have extra). They tasted goooood! And then with the frosting... I did my regular frosting but I added a couple of drops more milk. (Yes, I put milk in my frosting..it tastes good, promise). I also used a round tip when I frosted instead of the star one I usually use. I figured that the star-shaped swirl would drip more due to the detail it has.
And of course, I added little chocolate starts to show that the base is chocolatey...
And I made the frosting PINK.

Cupcake Sample Platter

I have a friend and neighbor at work, who always tells me "bring me whatever you want to bake for me, and I'll pay you for it." But I never knew what to take her...so one day she pops in at work and says: "OK. I want cupcakes, but I want more than one flavor. I want to try them all."
At the moment, I only have Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting on my menu, but I also have Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting and Nutella Cupcakes in my repertoire. So I thought I'd make a batch of each flavor and each frosting, and take her a Cupcake Sample Platter.

I spent a whole morning making these...it was so much fun!!!
First, I baked the Chocolate Cupcakes.
Then I baked the Nutella Cupcakes.
Finally I baked the Vanilla Cupcakes.

Nutella Surprise Center

This is what I didn't do for the Witch Cupcakes.

And the most fun part of all, the frostings!
First, I whipped up some Chocolate Frosting.

I always use my mum's ancient Kenwood Mixer. She loves being in the kitchen, too, so she has all the attachments for food and dessert! Gotta love your kitchen-addicted mum! Thanks mum for letting me use your mixer and not making me buy a new one :!) xx

Then I did the Nutella Frosting.

And the last one was the Vanilla Frosting. I left this one last because I like to add color to it and play :) Ok it's not very grown up of me, but what can I do? I can't resist!
I decided I was going to make them Yellow this time around.

The very last thing (before boxing them up of course) was adding all the edible sprinkles and sparkles and such!
Colored non-pareills for the Vanilla, Orange pearls for the Chocolate, and Chocolate Stars for the Nutella.

Voia-la!!! A Cupcake Sample Platter!

The Making of: Witch Cupcake - Abstract

I thought to myself...I posted the pictures of the finished product. I also posted the pictures of my drawings...but that was long time ago. So I figured it would be nice if I posted them side by side with a few pictures before the product was finished, so you can see the process I went through :)

First off, my ultimate favorite (I know, I shouldn't favor one of my designs more than the other....) Ok ok I love you all the same!!! I just feel a pull towards the Witch Cupcake.

Hat Idea:
The base was going to be an Oreo cookie (which it was). Now for the top of the hat, I had designed a version with a Hershey's Kiss and a version with a dollop of Chocolate Frosting. Why? Well....I prefer the kiss..it's easier and saves time, too, but we don't have Hershey's out here in Cyprus, AT ALL!! I was lucky because my friend sent me a few packages of Hershey's Kisses from California, so I had them on hand. I also used Royal Icing in a thick consistency for the Orange Ribbon on the hat.

I never thought they would turn out to be even better looking than the drawing! This was actually a hat alternative. The first idea was for a chocolate ice cream cone, but I thought it'd be way too high.

The Witch:

The reason I took this picture, is because I think I finally have down how to do the swirling effect with the piping bag. (Yes, I'm proud of me...it takes practice!) I had to make sure the frosting was sturdy, so that the hat didn't fall off. I didn't make it any denser though, because then it would taste like icing sugar instead of Nutella. I just added extra swirls on the base of the cupcake to keep the top up. The reason why I chose Nutella was because the other cupcakes didn't have frosting. And Nutella is a big hit out here, so I knew everyone would love it. I used a Nutella Frosting on these with some food coloring to turn it green like my sketch.

Very similar right? I'm sooo proud of the design. I knew I would do something that looked like the drawing, but I never thought I'd be so close!

The reason for the "abstract" is because I had another Witch Cupcake that wasn't voted on the top 10, which had eyes (with the chocolate cone I mentioned earlier). This one was more literal that it was supposed to be a witch, so when I came up with the second one, I thought it was more abstract.

Both are cute, but as I said, the abstract one was my favorite one from all my designs for Halloween :)

Spooktacular Bake Sale

SOLD OUT!!!! The best thing I have to say about my bake sale! Everything was almost gone since early on, so I figured that I'd have some cookies left over but nope! Everything was gone!
So let me start from the beginning:

If you've been reading my blog, or follow my group on Facebook, then you know that I had a little contest going on. Every couple of days I posted a small story about something related to Halloween, and then drew some sketches that had to do with that story. Those sketches were of a cake, a cupcake, a cookie or whatnot, related to Halloween. People voted for their favorites, and I was going to bake the top 10. I was also going to have many surprises....but that never happened.

See, my mother ended up in the hospital on Friday night (the big night I was supposed to stay up and bake, so I can decorate on Saturday) so I never had the chance to bake all the top 10, or all the surprises I had in mind. But I will still share them with you :)

I must admit, that from everything votes, MY favorite, was the Witch Cupcake (I had drawn 2, one abstract because there were no eyes, and one with eyes. The abstract one was voted, and that was the one I wanted to bake either way ;p). I have a tendancy to put my everything in thing I like better than others.. (not such a good thing I guess), so I baked Nutella Cupcakes for this, since I loooooce Nutella.
I also have to let you know that I was rushing to get everything done, I was sleepless from the night at the hospital....AND I FORGOT THE NUTELLA! Nutella Cupcakes without the nutella! Haha well I made up for it. Since the Cupcake ended up being a chocolate cupcake (I was going to make holes in it and then add a nutella surprise center), I ended up making a Nutella Frosting... GREEN! It was...OMG! My fiance was running after me to get the frosting bag after I was done!

 I knew these would turnout great ever since I made the hats. See, in Cyprus we don't have Hersheys kisses, so my friend sent me some from California. And I wanted to use them for a special occasion. Glued them on the top of an Oreo cookie, and then put some orange Royal Icing to make it look even more witchy.
These were the first ones to go. As soon as I said "Nutella," people went nuts! I had also posted a picture of the hats on Facebook, so that people could see what they were to expect. I wanted them to know I could pull trough on my promise of the bake sale, AND the flavor. I mean, think: Oreo cookies, Hersheys kisses, Nutella cupcakes, and my love! What else does it take for delicious??

Now that I'm done with my favorite, let me tell you a bit about the first batch of cookies I made. I thought it was ok to make Sugar Cookies 3 days in advance because they last longer than cupcakes in an air tight container, and because they take forever to decorate since the Royal Icing needs to dry between colors.

So I baked the Cat Cookies. This was on Thursday (before the hospital incident), so I went ahead and made many, plus some other shapes to decorate for Halloween.

I stenciled the cats on, without a real stencil! I couldn't find that many Halloween things out here, so I ended up making a paper stencil. I had to wait after I sprayed 2-3 cookies so I didn't smudge everything all over. One of my coworkers, when I had showed them the pictures, said some of the cats looked like camels :) I could totally see it too! I made my fiance pay for those cookies that didn't look pretty enough to sell. He was going to eat them anyway, so why not help me with my first Bake Sale? :)

Halloween Dots Cookies

Keep in mind that this was the very first time EVER I had a cookie decorating experience! I had never decorated cookies before, I had never used Royal Icing before...I had never made more than 1 consistency of Royal Icing before.. never added colors...never had to wait for a cookie for almost 3 days to see the final result! I think that for the first time, I did pretty good! Practice makes perfect, so I expect that next time my cookies will look prettier and prettier and prettier :)

Flower Cookies

The Dots cookies and the Flower cookies I added on sticks to make them look like lollipops. Everyone loved the idea, and most hadn't seen it done before. The thing is that I didn't plan out the designs on these, because they were a last minute thought.

The number 1 voted creation, was the Mummy Cupcake. I used a Devil's Food cupcake base, since the name makes it more spooky, and then decorated on top. These took a veeery long time to decorate, they looked cute, and even though people voted for these, they preferred the Witch Cupcakes and THEN the Mummy ones. Of course, I also think that everyone loooooves frosting! And this was something missing from these, due to the design.

Another big hit, was the Spider Cookies. These were Chocolate Cookies with Chocolate Frosting. I baked this on Friday (before the incident) and then I was going to decorate at night, which was when I had to rush to the hospital. So I did the decoration the next day, and since I was running out of time, instead of doing a Royal Icing, I just added a little water in some confectioner's sugar. It wasn't something I wanted to do (because I personally think it doesn't taste all that great), but the whole point was to get the design down.

This particular design, I found on Bakerella. I used my own recipe from scratch (since I want to have a good design with a GREAT taste) and then I improvised on some other things. For example we don't have Trix out here, so I used m&m's.

Not quite the same, but very similar :)

I also baked a Spiderwebs Cake. This was an Apple Spice Cake, with a Brown Sugar Frosting. This was the first time I used this frosting, and it was a big hit. I had to cook it first, let it cool, and then turn it into a frosting. Whoever tried the cake, LOVED the frosting. I even had 2 people tell me they want to try it with the Carrot Cake I make.

My goddaughter brought me a Jack Skellington statue thing for the day, since I had said I was also going to surprise everyone with Skellington Cupcakes. I never got the chance :( I still decorated him though.

I used one of those cheap orange tablecloths, added a black piece of fabric on top and a white tablecloth underneath all. I had some small decorations for Halloween at home that I used, and I also found some free name tags on line that I printed, and I traced the names of the goods by hand, to make them look more Halloweenish.

It was a great success! Everything was gone, I covered my expenses and made some extra money to buy more supplies, and on top of all, I had fun and everyone enjoyed the idea and baked yummy goodies. I also sold my Pomegranate Jam that I made. I had positive comments from everyone, and they are expecting at least another one before Christmas. Let's see if I can do it :)