Afternoon Tea Cupcakes

I was introduced to Afternoon Tea/High Tea about 7 years ago now and always love going to different hotels that serve Afternoon Tea with my girlfriends to munch on delicious mini desserts and sandwiches while talking about girly things.

When I got asked to make Afternoon Tea cupcakes, my first reaction was, oh my gosh... these are so delicate and detailed! I had no idea how I'd do them. But as time went by, I started thinking more about it and then was determined to try making them because they were so cute.

With the help of my friend, we took on the challenge to make mini desserts out of fondant for cupcake toppers for 2 types of cupcakes:

1. Chocolate buttercream on Chocolate Cupcake
2. Strawberry buttercream on Vanilla Bean Cupcake

Jammie Dodgers

Bourbons

Swiss Roll

Red wafers

Chocolate Dipped Shortbread Cookies

Black Forest Gateau

Digestives

Eclairs

Custard Creams

Croissants

Jammie Dodgers

Macaron

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I have always loved peanut butter on my toast and bagels.  So why not on cupcakes as well? My friend asked for an order of chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. Another perfect match made in heaven.  For those who love Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, you would love this cupcake combination.  

Close your eyes and start drooling...  a moist chocolate cupcake with a creamy peanut butter ball filling, topped with peanut butter cream cheese buttercream that melts in your mouth. Top that off with a mini Reece's cup drizzled with melted chocolate.  

 

Cupcakes for Soma Chocolatier

So I get my super yummy cocoa powder from Soma Chocolatier.  More often than not, when I get more cocoa powder, I can't resist a scoop of their pistachio gelato too. mmmm...

Because I get so much cocoa powder from them, I thought I'd give the King street location a batch of cupcakes for them to enjoy... chocolate walnut cupcakes with vanilla buttercream using of course, their Soma cocoa powder.

Baptism Cupcakes

One of my best customers had asked me to make cupcakes for her son's baptism this past weekend.  We decided to have a mix of fondant toppers with the cross, and some paper toppers with a 'God Bless Marcus Xavier' message.

I made 2 types of cupcakes for this special event:

1. Chocolate with toblerone fudge filling, topped with vanilla frosting
2. Chocolate with Skor bits filling, topper with blue vanilla frosting and more Skor bits

Thank You Cupcakes

My friend asked for some cupcakes to give to the nurses that helped to take care of his son in the hospital.   He asked me to make some recommendations so I suggested three of the recent popular ones:

1. Red velvet cupcake with white chocolate cream cheese (and edible red glitter)
2. Vanilla bean coconut cupcake with mango frosting and shredded coconut
3. Chocolate toblerone cupcake with strawberry frosting and toblerone crumble

The icing was made using fresh pureed fruit. And who says cupcakes can't be healthy?? :)

Teacher Cupcakes

School is wrapping up and its time to celebrate and thank teachers for their hard work.  I had received an order for cupcakes to give to a few teachers. There was some flexibility on what flavors to make, so I decided to make a chocolate cupcake with raspberry buttercream, and also chocolate cupcake with cookies and cream buttercream.

For the decoration, because there were some text involved, I thought easiest to have a mixture of paper 'Thank you' toppers as well as fondant toppers of school accessories... rulers, notebooks and apples.

German Chocolate Cupcakes

Ever since Christmas, I've always wanted to make German Chocolate cupcakes. I had tried them in a cupcake shop in Nashville and loved it. We had a department meeting at work and I thought this would be a good testing ground for this recipe.

The base was the classic chocolate cupcake using Soma chocolatier coco powder, but the frosting was very different. The frosting was made with a mixture of coconut and pecans in a melted butter brown sugar mixture.  It turned out perfectly and the crowd loved it. I'm sure I have said this before in a previous post, but I love anything coconut. :)

Elmo Cupcakes

The same friend who asked me to make Very Hungry Caterpillar also asked me to make Elmo cupcakes for his daughter's party at home.  There were many variations for Elmo cupcakes out in Google land and I decided to use fondant for the facial features.  The red vanilla icing was created using the 'grass/fur' decorating tip, and it was added on top of red velvet cupcake.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcakes

My friend asked me to make some Very Hungry Caterpillar cupcakes for his daughter's birthday party at daycare. Apparently a lot of kids parties now a days have this caterpillar theme based on the book.  A lot of the pictures I saw had the caterpillar shape made out of cupcakes so I decided to give it a try.

I made red velvet cupcakes with vanilla green icing. The feet, leaves and face were made out of fondant. There were more leaves that my friend added when they assembled the caterpillar at day care. I tried to make the 2 shades of green for the icing, but the colors kind of molded together so it became 1 shade of green instead. At least all the kids liked it :)

Baby Shower Dessert Table

I had the honor to organize a baby shower for one of my best friends last weekend. I thought this would be a great opportunity to see if I could create one of those beautiful dessert tables that you see in stuff like Martha Stewart.  I decided to make 3 types of cupcakes and 3 types of cookies and then bought everything else.

The cupcakes were personalized to the flavors that the 'soon to be' mom and dad liked the most:
1. Pistachio vanilla bean cupcake with pistachio buttercream
2. Chocolate Toblerone cupcakes with Toblerone fudge in the center
3. Classic red velvet with white chocolate cream cheese

The cookies were a mix of flavors:
1. Skor chocolate chip cookies that were big, flat and so soft and chewy
2. Chocolate walnut cookies that were more shortbread texture and would go well with tea
3. 'Gourmet Oreo' cookies that were made of 2 chocolate shortbread cookies with white chocolate buttercream filling