More Cupcakes

We've got pumpkin spice cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting....

(and I was trying out my new decorating tip)

and...

Vanilla cupcakes with brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream and holiday sprinkles :)

Cookies, Apples, Bread, Oh My

Today was a busy day in the bakery known as my kitchen.

First we have some cookies n cream cupcakes, only I made some swiss meringue buttercream frosting and added cookie pieces. Now, I don't actually like Oreo cookies. The cream freaks me out. So for the frosting, I scraped off all the middles of the oreos and just crushed up the cookie part. Lindsey (our neighbor) had brought me some cookies from Wegmans, so I used those

I put one half of the cookie in the bottom of each cupcake liner

Next up were some Applie Pie Cupcakes. I put a little dap of SWBC, but I think when I make these for Thanksgiving, I'm going to put whip cream.

Yum

These cupcakes are filled using the cone method. Here's a cupcake missing it's cone.

Filled and ready to eat

And I discovered a website last night totally devoted to bread. Could life get any better. They probably had a recipe for Challah bread on there, but I got out my bread machine recipes and decided to make Challah bread. I've never had it nor had a reason to make it, but I felt like being adventurous. Although, if that is my definition of adventure, I lead a sad life.

Anyways, here is my first try at Challah bread. Other than over-flouring my work space, it turned out pretty good.

Teddy Bear Beach Day

I made some chocolate cupcakes..delicious..and decorated them to look like a beach scene. Complete with sand and inner tubes

He is sticking his toes in the water

Pile of inner tubes and a bear laying out-although he looks dead. I though after I stuck him on that he needed a beach towel

Honey Oatmeal Bread

I made this from the Kitchen-Aid mixer cookbook. I've never made bread outside of the bread machine. I started to make the recipe and realized that I was short 1 egg white for the egg wash pre-baking. My totally awesome, rocks-my-world-husband volunteered to go to the grocery store to get me some eggs.

As the bread is rising on the stovetop the doorbell rings. Our neighbor-Jimmy of the J cupcake-brought us a cartoon of eggs so I can make them some more cupcakes. He got them free at Wegman's-they just opened here. So now I have 24 eggs :). I'm on the search for some cupcake recipes to make for them. He told me that he would be my taste-tester.

Our oven works quickly so the bread was a little crisp. I froze one loaf and enjoyed the other..mmmmm...delicious

Vanilla Cupcakes with SMBC Frosting

Saturday night I made some vanilla cupcakes using a recipe from the Magnolia bakery. I made some vanilla swiss meringue buttercream frosting using this recipe.

The cupcakes are delicious-although I may be biased. But since I generally don't like vanilla cake, I would eat these. Which is why I'm giving some away-or I would eat them all. I took our neighbor two cupcakes-one for him and one for his wife. I put jelly beans on them, but apparently that distracted from the texture of the frosting and cupcake.

Flower for Lindsey

J for Jimmy

I am going to be using the people at Mike's office as my taste testers, so I decorated the cupcakes for them. He works at Verizon. Unfortunately, I made the "red" icing before I realized that most of the VZ logo is black. Oh well. And I couldn't get the icing red, so it's a dark pinkish color. You can see Gumby's legs on the cbainet handle. Mike stuck him there to watch over things in the kitchen

See the Z goes under the letters, like the logo :)

They aren't the prettiest cupcakes, but they were fun to make. Next up.. Honey Oatmeal Bread and some fall inspired cupcakes

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

I started out with a recipe for Pink Lemonade Cupcakes from Wilton's Cupcake Fun website. I made 24 instead of 18, although I should have stuck with 18 because none of the cupcakes came up over the top of the liner. These are going to be my test-out-decorations cupcakes. They are quite tart.

I decided not to decorate these, because well they aren't very good, and I didn't want to waste my homeade icing. So I made some from-scratch vanilla cupcakes and will ice those tomorrow. I will take pictures of the completed cupcakes!