Cardamom spiced cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

I'm still in love with how beautiful these turned out.  I made them for the Indian friend who gave me the cupcake book, as he was also the reason I learned how to use raw cardamom in cooking.

The color was something I made up after making the cream cheese frosting, 

playing with colors, I settled on this gentle, vintage teal shade.  

This was my first attempt at both the frosting and making a really dense cupcake.  They were delicious, but I really am not a personal fan of cream cheese frosting.  

I recommend it for most cupcakes though, it works really well (surprisingly) with spiced cupcake though!

Date: Summer 2011 

Jazz up vanilla cupcakes with semi-sweet choc-chips!

Why not?  Vanilla is always an easy go-to cupcake flavor, but when you're making them from scratch why not add something special?   I added semi-sweet morsels to half the batch of cupcakes and did a half icing job on them to indicate they were slightly different than the plain vanilla that were totally iced.

 Vanilla with semi-sweet morsels inside in 1/2 fudge frosting (top) and plain with full chocolate-fudge frosting (bottom).

Date: Summer 2011

Practice icing with random cupcake designs!

French vanilla and spice cupcakes with basic blue icing for the volleyball team dinner party.

When you have no idea how to use an icing tip, I recommend making random cupcake designs as a good and useful way to practice.  The people enjoying these didn't care what they looked like, only that they were edible, so I used it as time to get good with the smaller star tip.  

You can tell by the different shapes which cupcakes were decorate first (i.e. the third one to the left with 5 stars) because the stars are sloppy.  The closest cupcake was done towards the end when I had a better idea of the pressure and angle with which to manipulate the icing tip.

Date: Summer 2011

The Rapture came and went and I got was to eat these cupcakes.

What better way to spend the Rapture than with all of your friends you know won't be beamed up to the great beyond, some drinks, and cupcakes.

These were spiced mini cupcakes with basic red frosting.  The cake itself was tasty enough to not need any frosting, so I just pipped the letters on and left it at that.

When using spices in cakes, always put more cinnamon than they call for (by 25%-50%) (and vanilla if you can 50%-100%) but watch out for nutmeg.  Nutmeg so easily overpowers that your mouth is left tasting like a floral shop mixed with a pumpkin pie for the next twenty minutes.

Date: Summer 2011

The book that started the revolution.

A very good friend of mine gave me this little book for my birthday.  I started flipping through it and in conjunction with another cupcake book I had been given a few months prior, I decided it was time to research, maneuver, and master all things cupcake. 

One of my first attempts was taking my skills with fondant and icing mini cupcakes.  These were for my students the high school where I was doing outreach for the past two years.  Pokie helped decorate and make the random designs, some of which we tried to make astronomy or science related for fun. 

These were done in a pouring (or dipping) fondant style.  You get the fondant to a liquid state (good recipe and techniques here) and then pour or dip the top of the cupcake into the fondant.

Dipping the mini cupcakes into the liquid fondant allows for a really smooth surface while also allowing time for mixing of colors, shapes, and changing the thickness.

I recommend this to anyone who wants a more elegant, but FAST, way to decorate cupcakes give this a try.  You could also add sprinkles while the fondant is still wet, or decorate on top of it once it's dried (which we did one a few of the ones above).

Date: Spring 2011

Cookie Code Cake!

Pokie wanted something special for Mike's birthday and since he's not crazy about cake, but LOVES cookies, a cookie cake was the natural choice.


Being both a nerd and having a great sense of humor, Mike's cake became a fun project for Pokie and me to brainstorm.


We decided to write a code that I would pipe on top of the cake. 

Pokie wrote the code in my office, debugged it by inspection and when we were finally satisfied that it made enough computer science sense, I started making the cake. 


My big addition was working out all of the binary that would actually spell out "Happy Birthday Mike!" with proper binary for both the capital letters, spaces, and exclamation mark. 

Chocolate chip cookie "terminal" cake covered in chocolate frosting with blue border and green pipped icing. 

Date: Fall 2010

Viking Fury Band cake

 If you make a cake out of a plastic mold, such as the castle cake --->
... be prepared to bake a second cake!

I do NOT recommend the plastic cake baking molds, they are touchy, need a lot of oil to get all of the little pieces out, and never cook the cake evenly.


This was for the 2010 Blue River Valley Viking Fury (band) end of year party.

                        I used extra parts from the first cake to make a drawbridge, and mixed the cake crumbles with colored icing to make a "moat" around the castle.  I also used extra from the broken cake to fill the inside hole and make it raised. 

Completed cake with icing drizzle decoration for snow, blue and red icing, sugar pearls, and free hand pipping to make the Viking horns.  


Overall a really fun cake to make.  The circular cake holder also added to the look.  I recommend this type of cake for parties too because you can soak the cake or inject it with different flavors or liquors.

Date: Spring 2010