easter egg birds nest cupcakes

Easter is coming up soon, so I thought I'd share these easter egg cupcakes that I made last year! I've always loved those Cadbury chocolate mini eggs, so I knew I wanted to use them to decorate the cupcakes, and I decided to make them extra chocolatey desserts by making them chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting!

For the cupcake batter, I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (you can find it in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), except I used coconut milk instead of regular milk. This is a great way to make this cupcake recipe dairy free, since the recipe also uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I often do this when I'm making cupcakes for my friend Reggie, who's daughter Rachel is allergic to dairy. 

Of course this specific cupcake was not going to be dairy free, because of the chocolate cream cheese frosting and Cadbury mini eggs, but if you still wanted to make these cupcakes you could always use a whipped dark chocolate ganache (and use coconut milk again instead of milk) and jelly beans for the easter eggs!

After the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I started on the chocolate cream cheese frosting (the recipe for cream cheese frosting is also in my book, you'll just need to add melted chocolate to taste!) Then to form my frosting "nests", I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a small round tip, and piped circular rings of frosting all over the top of the cupcake.

Be sure to pipe more frosting around the perimeter of the nest, so that you can nestle your chocolate eggs in the middle of the nest!

Done! Super simple, and super tasty!

When I served these at my mom's house, my daughter actually went around to everyone asking for their chocolate eggs! So you may want to bring extra chocolate eggs for the little ones!

Happy Easter!

unicorn cupcakes

Sometime last year, my friend Monica asked me to make unicorn cupcakes for her goddaughter. She wanted pastel swirl frosting, topped with little fondant unicorn horn toppers. We decided that I'd make chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and I bought gold cupcake liners to match the gold unicorn horns!

About a week in advance, I started making the fondant toppers, in order to give them time to dry out. I tinted my fondant with gold gel-based food coloring, and then brushed on gold luster dust to give it a shiny gold sheen. I also made little ears for the unicorns, using a petunia flower cookie cutter (similar to this one) and then cutting out the petals to make ears.

Then when it was time to bake the cupcakes, I made my favorite chocolate cupcake batter (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and baked them in my new shiny gold cupcakes liners. Once they were cool, I whipped up some cream cheese frosting (recipe also in my book!) and divided it into three portions. Then I tinted each portion with yellow, pink, and green (with a teeny bit of blue in it, to give it more of an aqua feel).

Then I fitted a pastry bag with a large star tip, and when filling the pastry bag, I filled it with all three colors of frosting, to give it that swirl effect.

These colors make me so happy!

Then it was time to add my fondant decorations. I placed a unicorn horn in the middle, with ears on either side.

 

 
Cute, right?

 
I hope Monica's goddaughter enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed making them! Happy Birthday!

baseball cupcakes

My oldest son Matthew started Little League baseball earlier this year, and it was so much fun! He had a great time making new friends and being part of a team, and we had a great time going to all his games and eating concession stand food! (My new favorite guilty pleasure is chili cheese fries - so good!)

Part of the Little League experience was interacting with the other parents, and taking turns being in charge of "team snack" at the end of each game. When it was our turn, we decided to make baseball cupcakes, along with mini ham and cheese sliders, and goodie bags filled with snacks, fresh fruit, and juice.

For the cupcakes, I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and topped them with cream cheese frosting. My method for creating uniform domes of frosting is to use a piping bag fitted with a large round piping tip, and do kind of an up-and-down pumping motion when piping the frosting from the center of the cupcake. The up motion releases more frosting, while the down motion kind of pushes the frosting outwards, forming a nice round dome. (You can see more of this in my basketball cupcakes post).

Then I used red frosting and a small round piping tip to pipe the lines on each baseball, similar to how I pipe my baseball cookies (see here and here).

Overall, we had a great baseball season, even though we lost more games than were won!

Little League season ended in the beginning of summer, and then when school started my son decided to try out for his middle school baseball team (he started 6th grade this year). To our surprise, he made it! 

Here's to more baseball cupcakes in our future!

yin and yang kung fu cupcakes

My two older kids are learning Kung-Fu, and last summer (or was it the summer before that? I'm really behind!) for the annual picnic I signed up to make cupcakes. When it came time to actually make the cupcakes, I had no idea what to do! Piped Kung-Fu frosting figures on the cupcakes? Chinese characters? And then when I looked at their Kung-Fu uniform, it came to me. Yin and Yang cupcakes. (It was printed on the sleeves!)

So I started by baking up my favorite chocolate cupcakes (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), as well as my favorite cream cheese frosting. I added dark cocoa powder to half of the frosting, and left the other half white, and then used a disposable piping bag fitted with a small round tip to pipe my Yin and Yang design.

I added the dots (chocolate dot on the white site, white dot on the chocolate side) to complete it.

The cupcakes were a hit, although when one of the Si-fu saw them he asked, puzzled, "Yin and Yang?" I just smiled, but I wanted to say "Yes! It's on your uniforms! I didn't know how else to decorate cupcakes for a Kung-Fu picnic!"

Anyway, all the cupcakes were eaten, so that's a good sign. Ha ha! The End.