The "Dude" Cake

We had a unique problem this weekend at Hey Cupcake. I had promised a young man that I would make a birthday cake for him. He as seen some horrible things in his young life and when he asked me to bake him a birthday cake, I was honored. He only had one request, and that was for his cake to be a "dude" cake and not girly at all. Okay --- a dude cake shouldn't be that hard...right??? Houston we had a problem...

Our problem was like an octopus...it had many arms...first I had injured myself the previous week, breaking a toe which made standing difficult. Second, I had had micro surgery on a molar in my mouth the day before, as well as 5 fillings and some reconstruction on my front teeth---translation: I was down. The last two problems were probably the most problematic of all---it was 104 degrees in Sunny Northern California yesterday, making the kitchen were we work in a hot box---not at all the primo conditions for fondant work. The last problem was we didn't have a clue what to make!

After scouring the internet for pictures of what could possibly be considered a "Dude" cake, we sat staring at each other without a clue. I had baked and frosted a 3 layer chocolate cake, it was waiting for us in the freezer. Meg made two batches of fondant...it sat waiting to be colored on the counter. Finally a thought came to us...something not "Birthday" at all...something silly and fun. How about a hamburger...we did have a 3 layer cake, although it was frosted together at that point. We did a bit of cake surgery and split it apart. We both dyed the fondant the appropriate colors and set to construction. It went amazingly well, the fondant was very warm and sticky towards the end...but all in all I think we did a great job.

Happy Birthday Dude!!! Have some cake!!

One Million Little Cakes

In all honesty it was more like 400 little cakes---but after filling, dipping, dipping again and then finally decorating...it felt like a million.

I catered a Ladies Tea two weeks back. Our menu consisted of Crustless Quiche, Petit Fours (lemon, double vanilla & strawberry), fresh fruit, mocha truffles, cupcake bonbons and butter cookies. I found a new love in candy melts---they coat like a dream and are available at my local grocery store in bulk. One problem with them is you cannot use gel or liquid coloring on the white melts---they will sieze---HORRIBLY, I might add. Michaels carried the 3 colors that I needed, other colors are available online. We also made all the top fruit decorations out of fondant. It was tedious work, but they made the petit fours look so much nicer.

After the tea was over, I sat back for awhile and rested, knowing I had completed a job well done...then 4 days later I slammed my foot into the metal leg of our futon...and broke my toe.

Cinco de Mayo...Hey Cupcake Style

Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, I thought I would do something silly and make cookie tacos.

The shells were made from pizelles that we hung over dowels and as they cooled the bent into the taco shell form. For the meat I made a simple chocolate brownie cookie, ground it in the food processor and then added some vanilla butter cream to make it hold together.

Every great taco has lettuce, cheese, sour cream and tomatoes...for the lettuce I rolled green gum drops out with my hand crank pasta roller, the sour cream was marshmallow cream, the tomatoes were cut up Swedish Fish and the cheese was vanilla candy melts dyed with orange coloring gel.

Amazing they were very well received!!