The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Cake Balls

(Image courtesy of morrantico chique)

As any Twilight fan knows, Tuesday was the midnight premiere of the long awaited third installment of the "Twilight Saga,"- Eclipse. In order to celebrate the movie, I have created a Twilight-inspired dessert.

In the third book, Eclipse, the rivalry between Edward and Jacob comes to a head, as they are forced to work together to protect Bella from Victoria and her army of newborn vampires. I'm sure most of you have a favorite, are either Team Edward or Team Jacob, but I say, why can't we have both?

Here are my Edward vs. Jacob cake balls!

Edward:

(Image courtesy of amylynn24o's photobucket)

-Red Velvet Cake Balls filled with maraschino cherries and topped with white chocolate and red fang bites. Go Edward!

Jacob:

(Image courtesy of fanpop)

-Triple chocolate cake balls filled with crushed Andes and topped with mint-chocolate and paw prints. Go Jacob!

Here is the Set!

Eclipse Celebration

As most of you know, the third installment of the twilight movie series comes out this upcoming week. In order to celebrate this, I am going to share some amazing twilight/ vampire cupcakes that I have found. Be looking later this week for my edward vs. jacob cake balls!

-I have seen these a number of places, but these particular ones come from Annie's Eats. They usually are white cupcakes filled with cherry filling and topped with marshmallow frosting.

-To be fair, I've included some werewolf cupcakes as well. These come from the book "Hello, Cupcake," and are pretty scary.

-This is the full series of Twilight cupcakes. It includes all of the book covers. (Courtesy of Cake Freak)

-The Cullens, Jacob, and the Volturi vampires (courtesy of Sweet Avenue Bakeshop)

-Pretty much everything having to do with Twilight (courtesy of Ivy Bakery's Flickr)

-Delicious pink Twilight cupcakes (courtesy of The Sweet Tooth Fairy Gourmet Bake Shop)

5 Things I Want to Try

Here are five techniques that I really want to try:

1. Luster dust/ glitter

(Taken from CupcakeDD's flickr)

-Apparently, it is possible to use glitter on cupcakes and have it be edible. I am really looking for a reason to test this out, because I can think of few things better than sparkly cupcakes!

2. Edible Ink

(Courtesy of Bakerella)

-Another thing that I can't believe is edible: ink. I love cupcakes that have images printed on them, but I am pretty sure they require a different ink, and probably a different printer altogether. However, this technique allows just about any image to be transferred to cupcakes and cookies!

3. Fondant

(Courtesy of pinkcakebox.com)

-If you've ever seen figures on cupcakes, chances are they were made with gum paste or fondant. I really want to master this technique, but fondant is pretty hard to produce and very expensive to purchase. Fondant is becoming more and more popular in the world of cupcakes and cakes alike.

4. Pie Pops

(Courtesy of scoochamaroo's blog)

-These aren't related to cupcakes, but I have to try them. I love miniature things, and these adorable mini-pies look delicious!

5. Cake Pops

-Okay, I have tried cake pops before, and have come out with relative success, but my cake pops don't come anywhere close to these beauties! I refuse to let these cake pops beat me, and will continue to work on perfecting the technique. Bakerella (the maker of these cake pops) is the queen of cake pops. These Mr. Potato Head cake pops, celebrating Toy Story 3, are amazing!

5 Cool Cupcakes

As much as I would love to make a different dessert every day, that is not possible. So I am going to also include in my blog different cool things that are happening in the world of desserts (primarily cupcakes, but also other desserts). Today, I want to show off 5 super cool cupcakes, as well as talk about 5 different techniques or recipes that I want to try.

5 Cool Cupcakes

1. Princess and the Frog Cupcakes

-These adorable cupcakes come from Cupcakes-A-Go-Go on flickr. If you have seen this movie, I think you will appreciate the bright colors and choice of characters that were used in making these cakes. They are simple, yet they demonstrate the whimsical feel of a movie which I really enjoy.

2. True Blood Cupcakes

-These amazing cakes come from Sweet Avenue Bakeshop. They are to celebrate season 3 of True Blood, and I am in love with them. I am currently obsessed with finding vampire themed cupcakes, and these are some of the best out there. With any vampire cupcakes, there should be an abundance of red, and these cupcakes deliver! They also include the best character in the show (Eric, of course), and the popular vampire bar, Fangtasia!

3. Harry Potter Cupcakes

-I have been looking for the perfect Harry Potter themed cupcakes for a while, and these come pretty close. I love the lightening bolts, but most of all, I enjoy the cute figures of Ron, Harry, and Hermione. They remind me of Potter Puppet Pals. I'm still looking for ones that have more of the Harry Potter elements, so if you see any good ones, let me know!

4. Spaghetti and Meatballs Cupcakes

-I have a weird fascination with cupcakes that look like other foods. I don't know why, but they blow my mind every time I encounter them. This set is particularly cool. These spaghetti and meatballs cupcakes come from the book Hello, Cupcake and are ridiculously lifelike. Apparently, they involve some sort of combination of frosting, jam, and chocolate, but they look like noodles and meatballs to me!

5. Toadstool House Cupcake

-I found this cupcake when I looked up "amazing cupcakes," and I think it is truly amazing. This cupcake comes from Zalita {away}'s flickr, and pretty much everything she does is amazing. She does a lot of work with nature, fairy tales, princesses, and basically anything else.

Parisian pastries? Oui, S'il vous plait!

I've been eyeing these beauties for awhile, and have decided that I need to try them. As soon as I saw their bright colors and simple ingredients, I was intrigued.

These french pastries, or macarons, sound a little too close to the Jewish macarOOn for comfort. I found myself picturing the dense coconut cookies of my childhood and cringing. However, these french desserts, as I found out, are far closer to a meringue than any macaroons that I have tasted.

Macarons are French or Italian pastries that consist of two meringue cookies with filling in the middle. Now I had read that, even though these desserts require few ingredients, they can be very "finicky," so needless to say, I was worried.

I decided to attempt two different colors and two different flavors. Upon choosing both, I realized that it might have made more sense to have the colors correspond with the flavors (blue=blueberry, not raspberry as mine would be), but you know what they say about hindsight. So I continued with my soon to be "blue raspberry" (because we all know blue raspberries don't really exist anyway) macarons and green lime flavored macarons.

I would like to say that I completed the recipe without any mishaps, but anyone who has ever watched me bake knows that that is not possible. After cleaning up the half of the recipe that ended up on the floor and adding more to the mix (it's not my fault that it came out of the bowl really fast), I piped the mix onto the baking sheets.

The recipe said to bake the macarons with the oven door "slightly ajar." Okay, my door does all the way open and all the way shut. So after allowing my dad to convince me that it was okay to prop the oven door open with a glass cup, I let them bake.

And here they are!

And now, a quick note about the filling. As I said, I wanted to do two different fillings for the macarons. The filling you see here:..is a mascarpone raspberry filling. Now, it is not for the faint of palate! If you are a fan of mascarpone, you will enjoy this, but it has a very distinctive taste.

For these macarons, I couldn't find a lime recipe, so I decided to make up my own. These are filled with a mascarpone/ lime filling. Needless to say, it worked out perfectly (not really). However, they ended up tasting alright. If I were to try them again, I might make a marshmallow or cream cheese filling instead.

Enjoy!

Coming soon... edward vs. jacob CAKE BALLS for the midnight premiere of ECLIPSE!!

A strawberry pie departure

It's summertime, and that means STRAWBERRIES. I cannot think of enough strawberry recipes to try! My initial goal was to make a beautiful strawberry pie made with locally picked berries. However, with all of the rain, I didn't get a chance to pick berries. I had to settle for grocery store berries, but they still tasted pretty good!

For my pie, I wanted to include some sort of cream cheese filling, and a traditional fresh strawberry filling. Here is what I ended up with:

These strawberry/blueberry pies are baked in a sweet tart crust and filled with cream cheese filling, fresh strawberries and blueberries, and a strawberry filling.

Here's a piece!

Enjoy!

The Happiest Cupcakes Ever!

In an attempt to cheer up a friend, I wanted to create "the happiest cupcakes ever." I knew that that should involve bright colors, lots of frosting, and sprinkles. That's when I decided-- rainbow cupcakes! I have never before made rainbow cupcakes but have always wanted to try. Well, I needed a white batter, so that limited the type of cupcakes I could make, so to make them a little more interesting, I made a thick almond flavored buttercream frosting. I think they ended up living up to their name!

Here I layered the batter to create the rainbow effect.

The finished product (before decorating).

Some of the decorated ones (from top to bottom): whale and sailboat in ocean, mythical creatures, girly

And now, to see the rainbow!

Enjoy!

Monster Cupcakes and Super Mario Galaxy 2 Inspired Cupcakes

These two sets of cupcakes were adventures in decorating. The first set were made for a friend's birthday party. They are RAINBOW MONSTER CUPCAKES.. inspired by "What's New, Cupcake?". They were possibly the messiest cupcakes that I have ever attempted, but they turned out to be adorable!

The second set of cupcakes I made for my sister's birthday. She loves Super Mario Galaxy, and with the new game coming out, I thought it would be fun to make Super Mario Galaxy 2 inspired cupcakes. These are strawberry cupcakes topped with the most delicious strawberry frosting (Sprinkles Bakery's recipe). Each one is inspired by a different character or element from the game.

(From left to right, top to bottom)

1. Gold coins

2. A yellow luma

3. A cloud

4. A luma sitting in a field with star bits

5. Mario with a gold star

6. Happy Birthday Whit

7. A star launch pad

8. A green shell in water

9. A hungry luma holding star bits

10. Another luma with star bits

11. A red shell

12. Fire hippo from fire level

These are some of my favorites.

More Older Recipes

Here are a few more of my older recipes!

6. These are mini cheesecakes with triple berry jam. I took Martha Stewart's basic cheesecake recipe, but substituted her apricot jelly with triple berry jam instead.

7. These are rhubarb cupcakes topped with a whipped cream frosting and a vanilla bean, rhubarb drizzle (courtesy of Martha Stewart cupcakes). It is really light and delicious!

8. These are cherry limeade cupcakes. They are lime flavored cupcakes, topped with cherry frosting, a cherry, and a lime wedge. They are very moist, but have a very intense lime flavor.

9. These are York peppermint patty cupcakes. They are dark chocolate cupcakes topped with mint frosting, chocolate ganache, and a York peppermint patty. They are really rich, but the chocolate cupcake is delicious!

10. For a friend's birthday, I decided to try to make Bakerella's cake balls. I made red velvet cake balls dipped in vanilla frosting and dusted with pink sugar. They were SO good!! (bakerella.com)

Older Desserts

Because I just started this, I will attach some of my older recipes!

1. Here are my meringue cupcakes filled with creme fraiche and berry compote (courtesy of Martha Stewart cupcakes). These took 3 HOURS to bake! They were very yummy though and worth the wait.

2. Here are mini dark chocolate salted-caramel cupcakes (courtesy of Martha Stewart cupcakes). They are dark chocolate filled with a delicious salty caramel filling and topped with a dark chocolate frosting.

3. These are a variation of Martha Stewart's

Lemon Meringue

cupcakes. My family

prefers key lime to

lemon meringue, so I

substituted lime curd

for lemon. They are

lime flavored cupcakes topped with lime curd, browned meringue

frosting, and lime zest. They were really light and delicious!

4. These are mini raspberry cheesecakes topped with fresh raspberries (courtesy of Martha Stewart). They were pretty tasty, and I'm sure would have been even tastier had I used the right amount of cream cheese!

5. These are a combination of recipes. For my sister's wedding shower, she wanted blueberry cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I used Martha Stewart's blueberry cupcake recipe, and then added a basic buttercream on top tinted to be the colors of her wedding. They are in cute flower cupcake liners and topped with edible pearls.