Groundhog Day: My new favourite holiday.

First of all, most sincere apologies for being such a negligent blogger. I've been baking significantly less cupcakes lately, and blogging even less than that. But I am determined to be more diligent in this new year! So without further ado...

In my post about the snowman cupcakes, I joked that Groundhog Day would be a valid excuse to make cupcakes. I thought nothing of it after I wrote it, and to be honest I only even remembered that I wrote it about 30 seconds ago upon rereading the post.

Well, yesterday was of course Groundhog Day, and I of course found myself making groundhog-themed cupcakes! They were ugly enough to be called "charming" but fun enough to drag me out of my blog funk to share them with you!

I only took pictures of the finished product, which look terrifying and nothing at all like we had planned. So a brief introduction slash instruction...

Make a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. Scoop a little hole out of the center of the cupcake and keep the scooped-out part aside. Put the frosting on the cupcake. Take your reserved scooped-out cupcake-ness and sprinkle it on top (to look like snow, with a little dirt on it from where the groundhog came up. Get it? ahh, so clever.) Make groundhogs. (haha! don't make them the way we did!) Stick the groundhog in the little hole you dug out. Laugh.

Hints: (which I clearly did not respect)
- use mini m&ms and not the normal-sized ones.
- use the gummy watermelons instead of the peaches for noses.
- they are not supposed to look scary.

I am fully aware that this one looks like a turkey. At least I've got my next Thanksgiving cupcake all planned out.

Are you ready to see what they were supposed to look like?
*hides head in shame*

I found this by google images -ing "groundhog cupcakes"... note the mini m&ms and watermelon noses!


Can't wait for next year! I'm sure these little critters will be a thousand times cuter!

In other cupcake news...

It's obviously 1:45 am over here, and I'm obviously still awake... so naturally I'm doing what any normal person would do on the internet at all hours of the night: look at things that are cupcake-related. (I wish it were still socially acceptable to say "duh" right now!)

I came across a handful of cupcake tattoos, and I have to say I have mixed feelings on them. Although I must say that this one by Conor Blue Eyes won me over - great concept and very well done.





And Oh. My. Gosh. Adorable. Nothing more needs to be said about this.


I want to put everything I own in these storage bags from KangaRoom!

Cute cute cute!

Freakin' Cute Snowmen are Comin' to Town

As cupcake fanatics, we clearly look for any and all occasions where cupcakes would be appropriate-- the neighbour's birthday, Groundhog Day, Labour Day, Thursday... So when a valid holiday like Christmas comes around, we're jumping for joy at the thought of having a bona fide excuse to go cupcake crazy.

Our creation which graced the table at 2008's Christmas dinner? Why, cute little snowmen, of course!

They were as much fun to decorate as real snowmen; perhaps even more so since it didn't involve any kind of freezing outdoors in Montreal's arctic winter temperatures! Mini chocolate chips, orange Smarties for carrot noses (or if you have these!), Oreos (and mini Oreos) for hats, Fruit by the Foot for earmuffs, scarves, mittens... These babies are all about the accessories. (So is this girl, and if I may, her blog is fantastic.) Just roll a white cupcake in coconut flakes to make him look snowy, do the same with a mini cupcake, stack 'em, and go wild!

Without further ado, here they are!

The nose gives him a vaguely Tim Burton-esque jack-o-lantern look, doesn't it?



We managed to find a pink Smartie that was kinda heart-shaped, so that became a sort of button for this guy on the right!


I love this photo because they look like a little army of snowmen, ready to attack! Note the mittens on the one with the pink button.



Definitely our first real success! Right?

See Ya Later....

For my nephew's first birthday, my sister and I took on a vaguely absurd project-- making an alligator out of cupcakes! I won't lie; this one was probably our biggest flop-- but I figured I'd post it for comic relief!
His "skin" was supposed to be a much brighter green, and have scales. We figured that was a bit overzealous for a one-year-old (who ended up sleeping through cupcake time anyways!) so we just spread it, leaving our alligator looking somewhat amphibious. His eyes are smarties stuck to the end of two halal marshmallows and his teeth (yes, those white things around his snout are teeth) are little chunks of said marshmallows. I haven't been close enough to any real alligators to know what the black things on his back (Oreo snack things, the 100 calorie bag... don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about) are supposed to represent. I also didn't know they had yellow fingernails.

Take a look:

It's too funny for words.

I tired really hard to take a photo of him looking as menacing as possible. Note the green nostrils.




This is Noah, ready to dig in... Not sure where to start!

Note: I'm working on making vegan marshmallows! As soon as I am successful, the whole world will know.

Knock 'Em Down.

While browsing the cupcake cookbook isle at Chapters (we all do that, right?) I came across this beauty entitled Hello, Cupcake! and I knew that this book and I were a match made in heaven. No human should ever have to go through life without this book. It's filled with foolproof tricks and overzealous projects, and I could just eat it up!

Not the type to shy away from overambitious endeavors, Kim and I set out to make bowling pin cupcakes- complete with a bowling ball- for our grandmother's birthday. They consisted of a big cupcake topped with a mini cupcake topped with a donut hole dipped in icing. A lot of icing. And a lot of sugar.

For a first attempt they weren't so bad, although I'll admit that they were mistaken for snowmen, R2D2 and everything in between.

While they were setting in the freezer (icing = glue) they looked like this.


When one fell on the floor it looked like this. (Don't worry, we trashed that one.)



While they were being dipped in icing (harder than it sounds-make sure it's melted really well!) they looked like this.




And when they were done they looked like this!

Kind of impressive, right? Right?

Thanks.


Note: These cupcakes are not vegan, but could easily be so. (We had some technical difficulites with the vegan version- mostly because we tried to use a box mix but they ended up falling apart.) Try this recipe for the cupcakes and this one for the donut holes. The cupcake recipe is the one I use- they're a bit more dense but très très yummy. I've never tried the donuts, but they look promising! Vegan icing is easy to find, and the red stuff is Fruit By the Foot. Enjoy!

Cute things you must see now.

One might think these are crazy wicked cupcakes, but they're actually bath bombs from Bubbles Variety Shoppe. Check them out, they have tons of majorly adorable and yummy soaps, candles and other rad stuff.

These measuring spoons make me want to measure everything in the world by increments of fractions of teaspoons and bake it all together into a big bowl of cute. I found them on Bakerella, and if you haven't checked it out yet, you are majorly depriving yourselves! Get on it!

Welcome, Cupcakes.

Cupcakes are kinda my undoing. My weakness. My soft spot. My kryptonite, if you will. If you will. And oh, I will.

After two consecutive posts about cupcakes on my regular blog, I realized that only fat girls write about cupcakes on a blog which is not about cupcakes. Skinny girls have entire blogs dedicated to cupcakes, thus rendering the cupcake obsession cute versus grotesque.

If cupcake were a language, my sister Kim and I would speak it. We self-admittedly have mild obsessions with cakes in cup form. Hence this blog.

So welcome! Be prepared to be bombarded with photos of our mediocre-but-commendable cupcake experiments and adorable cupcake-related paraphernalia.

Dig in and enjoy!