Gum Paste Letters

With this spare few minutes I have at work, I thought I'd post the results of my cupcake blitz this weekend. My friend Monica referred a friend of hers to me, who wanted cupcakes made for a pre-wedding party. His only request was "Maybe a good flavour (not chocolate) with G & B's or something on them?"

That's when my brain kicked into creative overdrive. G and B? Gold and Blue! Lucky for me, blue was one of the wedding colours. What flavour would go with gold and blue? Why, Lemon and Blueberry, of course!

I had some Wilton Pre-Made gum paste on hand from the Gum Paste course that I've enrolled in but has been canceled twice (*shakes fist in the air*), so I dyed some gold and blue, and added some cocoa to the gum paste to make a truer black. Using the Fox Run Mini Alphabet cutters I picked up from Golda's Kitchen, my helpers and I cut out Bs and Gs, and little triangles to make bow ties. Then the letters were painted with a little vodka (some for us, some for the letters!) to make the sparkles stick.

Voila!

A HUGE thank you to Laura and Victoria--fellow Pavlov's Dogs--for the extra hands. These gals earned the heck out of their brunch of Blueberry Cream Cheese Bread Pudding and Mimosas!

Cup Size

Courtesy of ILoveDoodle.

Much ado about nuffin'

This blog really should contain...


...and instead it contains...


At least, nuffin' since August. Boy howdy, the deadlines at work have been KILLING me. SRSLY. They are, however, all over now, so no more excuses!

I have been baking here and there when I've been able to, so let me dig up the ghosts of baking past.

Over the summer a work colleague was charged by the grandma-to-be with the task of hosting a baby shower that was more of a "classy tea party" than the "guess-the-poop diaper games" variant of the baby shower (yes, I've actually been to a baby shower in which melted chocolate bars were smushed into a diaper and we had to guess what the "poop" was for prizes. This is a thing that happened to me!). She didn't want cutesy or cheesy at this party, as most of the guests would be some older ladies who mightn't appreciate seeing baby bums everywhere.

This? Fine by me. I'm one of the silliest people I know, but when it comes to baking I love pretty things. Denyse gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted with 4 dozen mini cupcakes but hinted that she loved my lemon luxury cakes, so I made some "Silver and Gold" mini cuppies. Half were chocolate cupcakes with Raspberry buttercream sprinkled with silver dust and silver dragees, and the other half were lemon cupcakes with light and fluffy lemon cream cheese buttercream, sprinkled with 24k gold dust (edible gold, how I love thee) and topped with a gold dragee.

Speaking of gold dragees, those babies are HARD to track down outside of Christmastime! Bulk Barn didn't carry them, nor did 3 other bake shops that I patronized. My Wilton cake decorating class instructor bailed me out by selling me some from her shop (thanks Lynn!) Now that it's November and our lords will soon start a-leaping, I say do yourself a favour and STOCK. UP. NOW.