Strawberry season

This summer, Josh and I agreed that when strawberry season hit, we would live off of them. After eating many, many shortcakes, chocolate shortcakes, and fresh strawberries, I decided to try two new recipes: Martha Stewart's frozen strawberry soufflé and strawberry cupcakes with strawberry buttercream. The cupcakes were a bit drier than I had hoped they would be, and the frosting had a strong butter base so the taste was not as whole as a regular buttercream that uses shortening as well. Chocolate strawberry shortcake, complete with chocolate syrup and cocoa whipped cream

Frozen strawberry soufflé

Strawberry cupcakes with fresh strawberry buttercream

Holiday baking

I've been away from this for a bit but haven't stopped the baking! Over the holidays I tried my first cake with homemade marshmallow fondant. The fondant is difficult to color, and so most colors come out lighter than expected. This one was the first try. The colors are a bit "ninja turtle", but I was proud of the result! This was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream crumb coat and a marshmallow fondant.

The next cake I tried was a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream crumb coat. The colors turned out much better this time.
I bought strawberry cutters and used edible pearl dust to decorate the cake.

For a dinner party, I made these vanilla sunflower cupcakes from my new cookbook, Hello Cupcake! They were very easy to make.



After the holidays were over, I decided to try a recipe from scratch out of my new cake decorating cookbook. These cupcakes are chocolate fudge cupcakes from scratch with a brown sugar cream cheese frosting.


Next, I was enticed by the craftster forum to make these Hostess inspired cupcakes. They are a devil's food cupcake from scratch stuffed with a light vanilla filling, and topped with store-bought frosting.



While I realize this isn't cupcakes or cake, but I had a terrible craving for monkey bread. I improvised a bit and added a maple glaze. It was delectable!