neapolitan cupcakes

While I made this tokidoki unicorn cake that I made for my daughter's 5th birthday party, I still had to make cupcake for her class party at school! And after seeing these neapolitan cupcakes from Cooking Classy, I couldn't get them out of my head! So I of course had to make them for my Melodie!

Two different batters were made for the cupcake - for the bottom a moist chocolate cupcake, and for the top a fluffy vanilla cupcake.

During baking, the chocolate batter must have bubbled up to the top to make little spots in the vanilla batter, an unintentional effect which I actually thought was really cute because it reminded me of leopard spots!

Instead of the strawberry frosting in the original recipe, I decided that I wanted a light and fluffy strawberry whipped cream for my frosting, which I loved because it ended up tasting like strawberry ice cream! So I whipped up some heavy whipping cream, a bit of confectioner's sugar, a few spoonfulls of strawberry jam, and a few drops of strawberry extract. And some vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.

I used this Wilton star tip to pipe on the frosting in a cute and swirly design.

Look how cute they are when unwrapped!

Cut in half, you can see how the chocolate batter must have bubbled up into the white batter. But no matter, I still thought they were adorable.

And the taste? They overwhelmingly reminded me of neapolitan ice cream sandwiches, especially because of the strawberry whipped cream!

Happy birthday my little Melodie! Hope you enjoyed your birthday cupcakes!

tokidoki unicorn funfetti cake

My daughter's 5th birthday was back in mid-December, and since she is currently obsessed with unicorns, I decided to make her a unicorn cake! I had recently become enamored tokidoki while giving a cookie workshop at Hello Kitty Con in October, so I decided to make a tokidoki unicorn cake!

For the cake itself, I decided I had to make it a funfetti cake of course, since my girl loves sprinkles and anything with rainbow colors.

I baked up two 8-inch cakes, and sliced them in half horizontally to give me 4 cake layers.

Then I filled them with freshly whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

To cover the cake, I whipped up a big batch of cream cheese buttercream, tinted the majority of it pink and covered the top and sides of the cake with it. For the sides, I used a star tip to pipe on a swirly ruffle design (similar to this cake and this one, done in Nikole Herriott's signature piping style).

Next I made a paper template of the tokidoki unicorn, placed it on top of the cake, and used a toothpick to draw the outline. Then I used the toothpick to draw on the details freehand, and piped the outlines and details with black frosting and a small round tip.

Finally I filled in the details of the unicorn with a small star tip, and filled in the eyes, hooves, and stars with a small round tip.

And then it was done!

It turned out so cute! I couldn't wait for my little girl to see it!

Here she is at her party, with her best friends from school.

And here's a shot of the inside of the cake!

Happy Birthday, my Melodie! I love you!