Elvis Cupcakes

I'm sure you've heard of Elvis cupcakes, cupcakes inspired by his love of grilled banana and peanut butter sandwiches. Well....I Did It My Way! We are having a party at work and I thought these would make the Jailhouse Rock! OK, I don't work at a jailhouse but he didn't sing Medical Software Rock. I'm All Shook Up with excitement about these. Alright alright, enough of that. :)

These cupcakes are banana cake with peanut butter pudding inside. Topped with chocolate and peanut butter swirled icing. I cheated and used bought chocolate frosting tonight.

Banana Cake (from Paula Deen) makes ~26 cupcakes

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

3 large eggs

2 cups mashed ripe bananas

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Put paper liners in your muffin pans.

In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar. Beat at medium speed until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk. Start with flour and end with flour. Fold in bananas. Spoon batter into muffin pans - filling 2/3 full. Bake for about 18 minutes. A wooden pick inserted in the center should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Once the cupcakes are cool, use a melon baller and scoop out a well in the center of the cupcakes. Put the peanut butter pudding in a pastry bag and fill the hole. In another pastry bag, put peanut butter frosting in one side and chocolate frosting in the other side - so that both comes out of the tip. Pipe onto cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Pudding

1 small box vanilla pudding

2 cups of milk

8 tbsp peanut butter

Prepare the vanilla pudding with the milk. Melt the peanut butter in the microwave. Add to the pudding, stirring well.

Basically I put in 2 tbsp of peanut butter per vanilla pudding servings.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1 stick butter, softened

4 cups confectioner's sugar - sifted

1 cup peanut butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

half & half or milk

Beat the butter, peanut butter, sugar and vanilla together. Add half & half or milk to get it to the desired consistency.

Baby Shower Cupcakes

I made these for a baby shower. The order was for a mix of chocolate cupcakes and yellow cupcakes all with cream cheese icing. Decorating was up to me...yay! I've been wanting to do cupcakes with cookies on top for some time...so here was my chance. I made tiny sugar cookies with a baby theme, decorated them and used them as cupcake decorations.

The baby's name is Alexis...hence the "A" on some of the cookies.

I was so excited about those cookies! I think I just love little things.

Here's a closer look:

Baby's name done in tinted white chocolate
Baby bottle with initial
Yellow ducky
Baby carriage
And because they are just so darned cute....here they are all together again

Tiny The Cat

This blog post is dedicated to the cat I love!

Tiny was my Mom's cat...he lives with us now. He looks like an ordinary yellow cat, but he's the funniest cat I've known. I'm not positive he knows he's a cat. He meows for us to open the pool gate for him even though he has ways of getting in. He thinks its ALWAYS dinner time. He'll follow us around like a dog. Lays out by the pool - in a lounge chair! Joins me and Frank when we sit by the pool. Sits up like a person. Is the star of a computer game - and I'm serious, it's called Tiny's Adventure.

Today we found him sitting up in one of the patio chairs and of course I snapped a pic. I decided he deserved his very own blog post.

Sleeping in box w/wood cutouts		Sitting up
Curled up in a planter - and Jeremiah		Watching a movie w/me and Jess (looking like a little old man)
Today's Pic		Tiny's Game

Jessi's My Little Pony Cake

Well, I was wrong...Jessi had a My Little Pony Cake for her 1st birthday, not her 2nd. She suggested I scan pictures of that cake in and post them since I just remade the cake for Kason. So, here they are Jessi. And just in time for your birthday coming up. Wow! This was 21 years ago, seems like yesterday. Nothing like a walk down memory lane...........

Here's a picture of the cake:


And here you are in Aunt Kathy's lap:
You were soooooo adorable!

My Little Pony Cake (Old School)

My niece's little girl's birthday (now that's a mouthful) was coming up and she (my niece) asked me to make the cake - a little last minute if I might add. Kay, if you're reading this - last minute was ok. :) Anyway, we settled on a My Little Pony cake. I haven't used that pan since Jessi was 2 and she's about to turn 22! I dug it out, washed it up and was ready!

I think it turned out cute - I mean you can't go wrong with a pink and purple pony - I don't care who you are. I just wish I could master the writing part. My writing on cakes always looks sloppy to me.

This is Kason smiling for the camera...she doesn't smile that way all the time....just for the camera. ;)
Yum...chocolate cake with cream cheese icing....Kason likes the cake.

Graduation Party

Today, we had a graduation party for Jessi. It was supposed to be a pool party, but the weather had other ideas. We had 30 people and it got fairly loud but it sure was fun! Some of my aunts came that I haven't seen in a while and that made it extra special. Jessi said I did too much, but I think she was pleased.

The graduation cap pop idea came from Bakerella. They really turned out cute. At first, nobody would eat them because they were so cute. Funny.

I made the cake and as soon as I had finished decorating it, Frank messed up a corner. No worries. A little icing and its all good. I wasn't even upset (and for me - I thought that was real progress). All fixed and ready to go in the fridge - oops - the fridge door started closing on me - I messed up the very same corner - worse than before. I'm out of the plain icing - all I have left is a little bit of black and red. This time there were tears - but only about 3 or 4 (still progress on the uptight scale if you ask me). I repaired as well as I could and got that sucker in the fridge!

Jessi and Blake graduated from UGA. Billy graduated with his masters from North Georgia. All on the same day.

Graduation

Our baby graduated from UGA on Saturday. We are so proud of her! She graduated Cum Laude with a degree in finance from the Terry Business College - with honors I might add. Did I mention that we're real proud? ;)

With no more children in school, we are now entering a new phase in our family. I think I'm feeling a bit nostalgic right now. I didn't cry at graduation and I'm not exactly sad...yeah, I think nostalgic is the right word. I definitely feel blessed.

Jessaroo - way to go!!!!!!!!!!

Lizards and Graduation Cookies

Frank called, "Nancy, you gotta come out here and see this!" I was amazed at how close the lizard allowed me to get!


Yesterday we went to the Edwards' for a graduation party for Blake. Here's the cookies I made for that. Blake and Jessi pitched in Friday night to get them finished.

Monster Truck Rally

Monster Truck Cookie Rally that is! These were for a birthday party for 2 little boys. I had intended to put more detail on them, but it actually seemed the fewer lines the better.


Here they are waiting to be filled in with color. Frank called it the GN factory (General Nancy). :)



I piped the lines on the cookies with black royal icing. Then, I flowed the colors in with royal icing thinned with water.

What's Up Doc?

Carrot cake with a bunny on top....what could be better? A friend's church is having an auction and she asked me to make a cake for it. Since it was so close to Easter I thought carrot cake dressed up for Easter would be a good idea.

To make these little bunnies, I use a pan that makes little "egg" cupcakes. Once they are iced I give them fur with tinted coconut. Little cinnamon candy for eyes and a bit of orange frosting for a nose and a "puff" of white frosting for the tail. The hardest part is finding that fruit striped gum...and then unwrapping them! Just cut the sticks into ear shapes and stick them into the cupcake.

Here's a group waiting for me to take them to work. Notice the "hippie" rabbit...yes, rainbow colored. I couldn't help myself.

02/13/2009 - update - I found out today that the Bunny Carrot Cake brought $95 at the church auction. Now that tickles me silly!

Making Monogrammed Cookies and Summer Time Cookies

I had an order for monogrammed "G" sugar cookies. I usually just pipe the monogram on the cookies free hand, but I was worried about doing a pretty "G". So, I used a template. This worked really well. I spent TOO much time in MS Word looking at G's in different fonts until I found one I liked. Then, I printed a sheet with 15 G's on it. I placed this sheet under waxed paper and piped over the pattern with royal icing and sprinkled little white nonpareil sprinkles over them. I let the G's dry for several days and then just removed them from the waxed paper and placed them on freshly iced cookies. This would work great even if you aren't using sprinkles...and of course for any letter or shape. :)

A couple of tips:
* Put the sheet of letters in a cookie sheet with sides so that the extra sprinkles aren't lost.
* Only pipe a couple of letters at a time before you sprinkle them, otherwise they aren't sticky enough to hold the sprinkles.

My sheet of G's with waxed paper over them.

Piped G's with sprinkles. Just tilt the pan after a few minutes to get the excess sprinkles away from the monogram.

Here's a pic of some summer time cookies I made for a beach themed birthday party.

Frank's Birthday

We just celebrated Frank's birthday Saturday evening. All but Kimberly was there...we missed you Kimberly! We had a light supper...and then a very heavy dessert. This was my second attempt to make Paula Deen's chocolate mousse cake. This time I made it as a square cake and it seemed to hold its structure better square. This cake is so rich that you can only eat a sliver at a time...but it is soooo good! Just look at it...I think I gain weight just looking at the picture!

Six thin layers of cake with mousse in between and iced with fudgy chocolate! Frank didn't even want me to send any home with the kids...but I did of course. :)

Jessi gave Frank a RC helicopter and that was definitely the "hit" present. Everybody had a ball playing with it. I would never have thought to buy him one of those. It was so much fun, we have to get a RC boat for the pool this summer.

Birthday Sugar Cookies and More Birthday Cookies

I had 2 orders for sugar cookies due on the same day. They were both for 60 cookies and for birthday parties. One set were for a little boy's first birthday. His mom wanted cookies in the shape of the #1 and in baby blue. No problem...I don't have a #1 cookie cutter but how hard can that be to find. Hard! I couldn't find one by itself, only in sets with lots of other shapes. OK, I might need those other shapes sometime, right. I'll just purchase a set...but wait! The #1 in the sets are TINY. In comes, Cookie Cutter Man to the Rescue! (AKA Frank, my wonderful hubby!). We ended up purchasing a cutter in a different shape and Frank reshaped it into what I needed. Did I mention that he's wonderful? :)
The other 60 were for a little girl's second birthday. Here mom sent me a link to the cake she was having made and just asked me to match the colors...the design was up to me. For those, I ended up making about 40 in the kaleidoscope pattern to match the cake and 20 as monogrammed cookies with a piped border.

I was really happy with how these cookies turned out. I even got another order for 60 monogrammed cookies for a birthday in March. Just thought I'd share the pics.

USS Cupcake Carrier

I spent my birthday gift card at Bed, Bath and Beyond yesterday. I got several things, but the one I'm most excited about is this Cupcake Courier. It is huge, hence the title! It holds 36 cupcakes in all - 12 in each tier. There is space enough between the tiers to keep from smushing or squishing the frosting. I'm in love....with Frank of course (this is Valentines Day) but this is a close second! ;)

Here's a pic of the inside.
A big thank you to my sisters for the gift card!

Valentine Cupcake - Red Velvet Filled With White Chocolate Pudding

I always make the same thing for Valentines Day. Chocolate cakes shaped like hearts decorated with roses. I was feeling like I was in a rut. So this year, I decided to do something different. And different doesn't have to mean harder...easy sounds pretty good to me. :)

Here's the ingredients, yep, not a homemade thing on the table!
I made cupcakes out of the red velvet cake mix. Once they were cool, I used a melon baller and scooped out holes from the middle.
Made the white chocolate instant pudding, put it in a pastry bag and filled the holes. Piped the canned frosting on top, sprinkled the little heart sprinkles on...and voila! I think they turned out pretty. I hope they're good. Now I'm second guessing myself and thinking I should have bought the cheesecake flavored pudding...maybe next time.

And by the way, those little holes that I took out of the cupcakes didn't go to waste. I make single serving trifles for Frank out them and left over pudding.