snowcone cupcakes + lemon bars

The best thing about these cupcakes is that my co-workers all thought they were really snow cones.

How awesome is that?!

I saw the idea for this on justJENN’s blog and just tweaked it a little for my liking! I only used two colors and I didn’t add the straws – the spoons were good enough! The trickiest part of these cupcakes were trying to find the little styrofoam containers – I ended up getting them at Smart & Final for less than $2! You need the 4oz food container size – the cupcakes will fit in there perfectly after you bake them. The wooden spoons I just bought on Etsy from the Lemon Drop Shop.

Recipes I used: white chocolate strawberry mousse (skipping the last two steps) and these vanilla cupcakes.

Okay, onto decorating!

I used the same “cut a hole in it” technique that I used for the caramel cupcakes. Nothing fancy. Just use a knife to cut out a good sized hole.

Then stick the filling in! These were vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate strawberry mousse.

Yes. It is as delicious as it sounds.

Stuff the tops back on and then place the cupcakes in the styrofoam cups.

Continue reading “snowcone cupcakes + lemon bars”

caramel cupcakes with honey sea salt

At the end of June, our friend Chris flew into town from Tampa to spend a couple of weeks with us. For some reason that I don’t remember, I promised him baked goods on his first night in town. I was going to make red velvet cupcakes since I had some leftover buttermilk but then I thought I should try something else. I stumbled upon this recipe for triple caramel cupcakes and was instantly smitten. Had to make them! Stat!

These. Are. The. Bestest. Cupcakes. Ever.

The cake base uses a ton of brown sugar in it to give the cake a sort of caramel flavor to it. Then it has caramel stuffed inside of it. Then there’s caramel frosting on top!#!@!

Swoon.

It’s dangerous to make these. But you can bet that I will be making them again soon.

Kind of looks like a little hat, doesn’t it?

Continue reading “caramel cupcakes with honey sea salt”

baby shower!

I’ve been having some very busy days lately and last weekend was no exception! So short post today mostly recapping Alyssa’s baby shower!

Alyssa used to write for this blog, back when she had time to do so. I miss having her posts on here! Now that she’ll be a mom in a few short months, I think it’s safe to say she’s not coming back (though I’ve known that for a long, long time). We celebrated the future birth of her baby boy with a little baby shower, hosted by her old friend Christina. All I did was set up and do desserts, so most of this is Christina’s lovely handiwork.

The spread, from the view of my desserts! I finally bought myself a Dessert Tower. I’ve been wanting one forever but didn’t really feel that I needed it. But I’m over that now. I need it. I want it. It makes cupcakes look so pretty.

A bit of a close up – red velvet cupcakes on the first three levels and lemon ricotta cookies on the bottom. The overflow of cookies is on the cake stand to the left, with some vanilla meringues from Trader Joe’s. The little sugar animals are from Do it With Icing in Clairemont (I love that place).

Continue reading “baby shower!”