Owl Pull-Apart Cupcake Cake

I absolutely love how this pull-apart cupcake cake turned out, and it wasn't hard to make at all (bonus).  There are lots of inspiration photos online, this is how I made mine and I think he's adorable. You could easily change the colors and candies that you decorate with tho if you want him to be different - use your imagination! I will say that I think the extra individual owls are a little scary looking, I might not make them in the future - or maybe decorate them another way LOL. 

Bake whatever flavor cupcakes you want, the owl as shown took 14. Make a batch of buttercream frosting (see below) - spoon out a small portion to leave white for 4 cupcakes making the eyes and feet, and tint another small portion orange for the 3 cupcakes in the center of his body. Add cocoa powder to the remaining frosting and frost the rest of the cupcakes. Arrange the cupcakes on a large tray like in the picture above:
top row - 2 white cupcakes
second row - 1 chocolate, 1 orange, 1 chocolate
third row - 1 chocolate, 2 orange, 1 chocolate
fourth row - 3 chocolate
bottom row - 2 white

Put the cupcakes tightly together, then blend all the edges adding more frosting as needed to fill in gaps around the cupcakes - making it look more like a whole cake instead of individual cupcakes.

To decorate as shown:

•  chocolate wafer cookies for the wings, base of eyes, half pieces for the eyebrows
• gummy life savors for the second part of eyes, topped with an M&M
• cut an orange gummy candy into triangles for the beak, and yellow gummy candy into strips for the feet. 
• sprinkle coconut and mini chocolate chips over the body. 

The remaining baked cupcakes can be turned into individual owls as shown by using half pieces of wafer cookies for wings and smaller pieces for the eyebrows, smaller triangles of orange gummy for the beaks, skip the feet. Or if you don't need that many owls you can always freeze the unfrosted cupcakes for later!

Buttercream Frosting:

-1 stick soft unsalted butter

-4 cups confectioners sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-pinch of coarse salt

-milk or cream (a couple tablespoons, add a little at

a time until you get the right consistency)

cream the butter until smooth, add the

remaining ingredients and beat until smooth

and fluffy.

6/19/17: how to distress jeans
6/19/16: gnocchi with tomatoes and snap peas

Island Cupcakes

One of Dave's ukulele groups celebrated their 17th anniversary last Saturday and they had a potluck - in fact they were so excited about having the potluck they decided to not even bother playing their ukes... they just ate instead hahaha. Gotta love it, that made me laugh - my kind of ukulele group!

I made a cross between my pina colada cupcakes and the coconut cream cupcakes that are still Dave's all time favorites. I've posted a different recipe in the past for pina colada cupcakes but that isn't how I've been doing them now - I've simplified by adding pre-made pina colada mix.

For the cake: I doctored a yellow cake mix by adding an additional egg, substituted pina colada mix for the water and replaced the oil with butter. Bake according to package directions. I made 12 large cupcakes and 24 mini ones (with enough batter left over to make a small 3" cake on the side).

For the filling: Stir together one small package of coconut cream pudding with 3/4 cup water and set aside. Whipping about 1/2 cup heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the pudding and put in a piping bag fitted with a big open tip. Set aside until the cakes are baked and cooled completely.

For the frosting: Beat 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter until fluffy. Add 3.5-4 cups of powdered sugar (add small amounts at a time or the powdered sugar goes flying out of the bowl), a teaspoon of vanilla, pinch of salt, and 3 tablespoons of pina colada mix. Beat until fluffy and the right consistency to frost the cupcakes, add additional pina colada mix if needed.

To assemble: once the cakes are cooled - for the regular size cupcakes I cut a small circle out of the top and piped some of the filling into the hole, then replace the circle of cake that was removed. You want enough filling so it'll be obvious that it's there but not so much that you end up creating a volcano effect with filling bursting out the cupcake. For the mini cupcakes I inserted the frosting tip right into the top of the cake and squeezed some filling right into the cake without making a little hole first. Once you have them all filled, frost with the pina colada buttercream frosting - sometimes I pipe it on with a decorative tip but this time I just frosted them with a pastry knife and added sprinkles and island-y little paper umbrellas.

oops, this is what happens if you pipe in too much filling!

Check out yesterday's post about transporting a single cupcake, if there are any leftover that is!


3.13.18: shamrock sun catcher
3.13.17: shamrock butterflies and paper garland (why did I post two that day? hmmm...)
3.13.16: crock pot corned beef (yep, I'll be doing it this way next Sunday!)

Happy moment ~ grocery cashier gave me a free bag instead of making me pay for it - he said, and I quote, "you don't have to buy one - you're very pleasant and I'm going to reward you" LOL! 

Noah's Chocolate Birthday Cake

Chocolate cake is not my favorite thing. Is it yours? I feel like it tends to be dry and just doesn't interest me. So when I asked Angela what flavor Noah would like for his birthday cake I cringed when she said "chocolate or strawberry". I would have normally gone with strawberry but he's 4 and likes firetrucks and I thought the pink cake would clash with the truck. So that leaves chocolate - sigh. I started by telling you that so you'd understand that when I tell you I ate an entire piece of this cake, it is seriously not a normal thing for me! This one turned out so moist (gross word but best cake texture), rich, chocolatey...and even though it weighed a ton (I think 'cuz of the cars on top!) the cake was very light - not easy to do with a chocolate cake. I'm pretty sure that, once again, the secret is filling it with stabilized whipped cream (are you tired of my mentioning stabilized whipped cream yet? HA!).

I made a doctored up boxed triple chocolate chip cake mix (extra egg, scoop of sour cream, dash of vanilla, small box of chocolate pudding) in 2 9"pans. Let them cool; meanwhile, make 2 cups of stabilized whipped cream (click here for the recipe) and buttercream frosting. Divide the buttercream so you can dye a small portion red for the name, leave enough white to frost just the top of the cake, then add cocoa powder to the rest to make chocolate frosting.

After they cooled completely, put one layer on a serving plate and tuck small pieces of parchment or waxed paper under the edges all the way around to keep the plate clean while decorating. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a big open tip with the chocolate buttercream frosting and pipe a fat circle on top of the cake layer around the top edge. This creates a dam to keep the whipped cream inside the cake. Then spread lots of whipped cream inside the frosting circle on top of the bottom cake layer. Top with second layer and frost the top with white frosting, and the sides with chocolate buttercream.

To decorate I searched for a firetruck but of course couldn't find one...I did find this set of little trucks tho and one is a firetruck so I changed my plan a little. Using a smaller round cardboard circle to mask the top of the cake and keep it clean, I sprinkled crushed chocolate wafers around about 1.5" of the outer top edge - then lifted off the cardboard and piped his name in red frosting using a small pastry tip. To finish I piped big swirly stars in a pattern around the top and bottom (using them to hold the trucks from tipping off the cake - the cookie crumbs made it so the cars wouldn't stick!), then put thin oreos around the bottom (they reminded me of tires)...of course when Noah saw the cake the first thing he did was pull oreos off hahahah.



PS: I washed the trucks before putting them on the cake!

PPS: I added some seedless strawberry jam to the top of the bottom layer of cake before the whipped cream to tie in the second flavor he likes, but everyone said they couldn't taste it at all and wouldn't bother adding it next time. Did it help make the cake so moist? Maybe, but you really didn't notice it so...I'll leave it up to you if you want to add it!

Buttercream Frosting:

-1 stick soft unsalted butter

-4 cups confectioners sugar

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-pinch of coarse salt

-milk or cream (a couple tablespoons, add a little at

a time until you get the right consistency)

cream the butter until smooth, add the

remaining ingredients and beat until smooth

and fluffy.