Winnie the Pooh Birthday

Occasion

My niece, Grace Nelson, turns one this week!  She loves Winnie the Pooh, so he was selected as the theme of her birthday party.  Maria made the mini-Pooh cake for Grace to eat, and I provided honeycomb cupcakes for the guests.  The idea for the honeycombs came from the book What’s New, Cupcake?

Cupcakes: White Almond Wedding Cake – you can never go wrong with this recipe when trying to please 30 people!

Frosting: Vanilla buttercream

Decorations: The honeycomb is made out of a white sugar cookie (Pillsbury premade sugar cookie dough, mixed with flour to make it thicker).  The cookies were rolled and then cut into a honeycomb shape before baking.  The bumble bees are chocolate covered almonds, with almond sliver wings and yellow striped frosting; the stingers and nose were black frosting.

Changes for Next Time

• The design turned out perfectly, but to save time I would go to the hardware store and buy some pliable, thin metal to make a cookie cutter.  I cut these with a knife around a paper stencil, and it took a fair amount of time.
• On a positive note, the work in these cupcakes (honeycombs and bees) can all be done ahead of time.  This made the assembly go quickly and the overall process pretty enjoyable because it wasn’t rushed.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Occasion

This weekend is my mom’s birthday!  Anna came over to my house and picked out a cupcake that she wanted to make as a surprise.  The winning selection was a sunflower from Hello, Cupcake! made out of Red Velvet cupcakes.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
2 1/4 c flour
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 c butter, softened
2 c sugar
4 eggs
1 c sour cream
1/2 c milk
2 t vanilla extract
Red food coloring- lots

Mix dry ingredients and set aside.  Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  Mix in sour cream, milk, food color, and vanilla.  Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until just blended.  Do not over beat!  Bake 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.

Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounces (1 package) cream cheese, softened
1/4 c butter, softened
2 T sour cream
2 t vanilla extract
16 ounces powdered sugar

Decorations: One Oreo cookie (halved) with a ladybug made out of red M&Ms and meticulously decorated with spots by Anna and a bag of chocolate.

Changes for Next Time

• Cream cheese frosting is delicious, but not meant for decorating.  It is much to runny to hold its shape.  We decorated about half of the cupcakes before calling it quits and starting over with buttercream frosting.  We still used the cream cheese for the bottom layer to stick on the oreos, but next time it would be better to use a cupcake recipe that is good with buttercream instead of cream cheese.
• To give the petals more definitions, we ended up refrigerating the cupcakes after the bottom row was added.  Waiting for them to harden before adding the second row helped maintain shape and keep even the buttercream from blending together.
• A variation of large and small Oreos/flowers would add for a nice touch.  We didn’t have any small Oreos at the time, though.