Tag Archives: buttercream

Orange Soda Cupcakes

If you haven’t heard, you are about to have your mind blown!

With just a box of cake and a can of soda, you can make cake (or cupcakes)!! That’s it, no other ingredients necessary! Okay maybe you need more ingredients if you want frosting, but STILL, this is exciting!

I have seen it with Dr. Pepper, Coke, 7-up… but who loves orange soda? I love orange soda. I do I do I do-ooo! I grew up on it, and I am just fine – so please don’t judge me or my parents for raising me on the single most sugar-filled kind of soda out there – Sunkist! 🙂

I had a 2-liter instead of a can, so I just measured out 12 oz of orange soda and added it to my box cake powder, and mixed until it was combined. I decided to do cupcakes because they are easier to share… and I recently bought these cute little snowflake cupcake liners…

You can see the batter got a slight tint of orange. 🙂

For my frosting I used my regular buttercream recipe, but I substituted all of the milk and vanilla for orange soda. Most of the orange flavor in these came from the frosting. Yumm!

I added a little sugar to the top for a sparkle!

I had the hubby taste one for me so I could get a bitten-into picture.

The cupcake was sooo moist! Craziness I tell you, this soda non-sense. Can you image the possibilities?

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California Capitol Cookies

This is my second round of building cookies. I made Washington Capitol cookies a while back, and these were a little similar. I actually used the same cutter, with just a few tweaks. Here is the cutter..

cheapcookiecutters.com

For the California Capitols, I cut off the little nob on the top of the sides, and extended the bottom about a quarter inch.

(Let’s pretend that I didn’t take my one-and-only photo of the unfrosted capitols with the only cookie I forgot to cut a nub off of front and center!)

I outlined the base and divided it up into the different sections, then filled every other section.

After it dried a bit I filled in the rest of the sections.

After it dried, I reoutlined the sections and added column and window detail.

Then I squirted a small blob of frosting on the tip tops, and dunked it in gold sugar crystals.

I waited as long as I could before doing the black domes. I was so worried it would bleed into the white buttercream that was touching it. (I got lucky and not a single one bled!)

I used buttercream and a big tip, and piped it up and down to create the line definition on the cookies.

I also made California’s to pair with the capitol buildings. I added stars on the capital of course..

My husband was a geography major so he wanted to make sure I got Sacramento in the correct spot. He used a toothpick to poke a hole in the correct place for my star.

I had to carefully bag them so that you could see both cookies.

All ready to go!

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Anniversary Cookies

I recently acquired a full set of alphabet cutters. Just in time, because a romantic boyfriend wanted to give his lady a unique gift for their anniversary. Each letter of “happy anniversary Sunita” would be its own cookie! Her favorite color is purple, but besides that he had no ideas.

I decided to do two different shades of purple to add a little more pizzazz. Then each and every cookie got its own unique pattern. I had a lot of fun making these! They came out really cute, and looked awesome once they were laid out for their special message.

I also did a couple little hearts in between the words…

 

 

 

On the Y in anniversary I wrote the date…

And on the S in Sunita I did an i ❤ you.

These were a lot of fun, and I hear the lucky lady enjoyed them!

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Tea Party Teacups

A tea party theme for a little girl’s birthday – how cute is that! I’m so happy I was able to participate with cookies. Happy Birthday Julia!

Decor colors were pink, purple, blue, green, and yellow – basically amazing. I did a few teacups in each color, and different designs and cup/handle styles for each. Every cookie was completely unique!

                       

All of the tea cups together…

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Yankees Cookies

These were the hardest cookies I have made so far.

And they didn’t go exactly as I had planned.

The request was for Yankees Pinstriped Jerseys, with the birthday boy’s last name across the back. He was turning 30, so that is the number for the jersey.

I have to say – I am not a Yankees fan. I had to google images to make sure I got the design right. The pinstripes go up the sleeves and then down the back. And where they meet, there is no line. That made these especially challenging. Here is how I did the pinstripes:

I had originally planned on doing the pinstripes in food color marker, but I was unable to find a dark blue marker. The one I had was a sky blue and that is not acceptable for Yankees!

After I let the stripes dry, I piped on the name and number 30.

Here they are all ready to go! They were stacked in a white metal bucket for display.

These took a loooong time and my hand was killing me, but I pushed through and made these cookies happen!

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Halloween Treats!

Here all all the Halloween treats I made. These were for our annual Halloween party and for my work potluck. Cookies also went to my husband’s work per special request. They always see pictures, but hadn’t had the chance to taste them until today!

I made Cake Pops… (These are funfetti, with some leftover green frosting from the Pumpkin Cupcakes I made a few days ago. The result was a green center to these little pops!)

Chocolate dipped marshmallows…

… and of course lots of cookies!

Pumpkins…

and I did some on sticks for testing purposes… I ended up having to do a double cookie, with the stick in between. I roll thinner than most people, and without the second cookie it was way to much of a ‘bump.’

Ghosts…

Spider Webs…

Tombstones…

Frankensteins… (who are happy!)

Bats…

Witch shoes… (which are my version of this idea from Sugar Belle)… my laces ended up soaking up some of the black from the shoes. 😦 Oh well, you get the idea…

Candy corn…

Skeletons… (from my gingerbread man cookie cutter by the way)

Cauldrons…

and a couple Boo!’s 🙂

Here is a photo of the tray my husband took to work with him:

Halloween is one of my favorite cookie holidays… I just wish I could have had a little more time this year. Moving + holiday is a lot of work! Thankfully I will have a minor lull before it gets cRaZyCrAzY for Christmas!! Which is in less than 2 months for those who are trying to block it out! 🙂

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Pumpkin Cupcakes

Halloween cupcake time! These were for kids attending a Christian school, so they couldn’t be anything scary… No jack-o-lanterns, bats, spiders, ghosts, etc. Instead we did just regular pumpkins, without the faces.

I used the same technique for these pumpkins as the paw prints from my Puppy Cupcakes. This time I wanted to add some sprinkles. (Kids love sprinkles!)

Outline the pumpkin…

Fill it all in…

Swish it all around with a toothpick to make it smooth…

Cover it in sprinkles, and shove a little topper in it…

These are the giant confetti sprinkles I used for the toppers. My husband broke them perfectly for me so that they would look like stems.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I got very excited about these 🙂

I found these awesome cupcake boxes at the baking store.

All packed up safely ready to go to school!

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Princess Cookies

Katie is 3 and wanted a princess party!

What better dessert than matching princess cookies!?

Castles..


Glass slippers..

and crowns with her very own name on them!

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These were so fun, I love the girly colors!

Thank you to miss Katie for letting me make these for you 🙂

Birthday girl enjoying a cookie (a day early because she couldn’t wait!)

And older brother too of course!

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Puppy Cupcakes

I got an email on a Monday wanting to confirm that I was still making puppy cookies for Wednesday. Uhhh I don’t remember ever being asked to make puppy cookies! I was slightly freaking out, not knowing how to respond… I politely said I couldn’t find any correspondence regarding puppy cookies.. and she realized she had forgotten to ask. 🙂 phew!

It was too late to try and make cookies, so I offered to do cupcakes instead. Puppy was the theme, and she asked for them in fall colors. Since I was crunched on time I couldn’t do anything fancy like with fondant or something.. this is what I came up with:

I melted dark chocolate candy melts and loaded it into a squeeze bottle. Squirted it onto wax paper into little circles, smooth it out and then let it harden (which I seem to have no pictures of… except in the corner of the one below!) This was easy peezy!

Then I colored my frosting half orange and half yellow, loaded it into the piping bag a blob at a time of each color. Then it came out all swirly! (It kind of just looks orange here but trust me on the swirly.) Lastly I peeled the circles off the wax paper, and placed them on top the cupcake.

Overall I think the technique worked well and I will definitely be doing it again!

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Cookies: Z, 6, and Super Mario!

Hello. Today’s blog is brought to you by the letter Z, and the number 6!

That’s right, Zachary is 6 years old! He is the son of a close family friend, and I was lucky enough to get to make his birthday cookie favors.

It is his mom’s tradition to always do Z and his age, so this year was Z and 6.

His birthday party was Super Mario themed, so I there had to be Super Mario cookies as well!

These Marios took me forever. Note to anyone wanting Mario cookies – do not even attempt to ask for more than a dozen. I will not do it. Sorry. Instead of killing myself with a ton of Marios, I decided to do some mushrooms and stars also.

Aren’t they cute!?

Bagged and ready to go…

I am still hoping to get a couple pictures of the birthday boy enjoying his cookies, so when I get them I will add them here!

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