Princess Themed Cupcakes

You've heard it once from me before and you'll hear it again, I love decorating cakes or cupcakes for little girls.  What's not to love about candy floss pinks, tiffany blues, sunshine yellow and so many more shades of pink?

You really don't have to twist my arm to come up with ideas for a girl's party.  So when I was asked if I could make cupcakes for a little girl turning 1... oh YEAH!  A was planning a Princess themed party for her little princess turning 1 and I was more than happy to help.  She liked the marbled effect for the cupcakes like the ones I did for my daughter's cupcake tower when she had her 2nd birthday party.  At first I was a little hesitant as it's easy to make sure the portions are right for a standard sized cupcake but for a mini it is a bit more challenging to get it right.  I have to put 3 portions of batter into that tiny paper liner and we don't want to put too much otherwise the cupcake will swell too high and it'd look odd among it's fellow cupcakers. 

I don't know, I just want the cupcakes to be as uniform in size as possible.  I decided to give it a go in the end and there were some that were slightly overfilled but they weren't too obvious so they got in line just fine.  

 Here they are just swirled and waiting to be baked.

 Fresh out of the oven

  It looks so pretty inside, I just want to eat it!  Actually I did.

 

I topped them with little fondant blossoms cut using the PME Flower Plunger Cutter.  These little babies are a pleasure to use as the spring function allows you to push out the flowers after they are cut instead of using another thin implement to try to push them out and sometimes when you do that, you get odd little marks on the flowers which I hate.

 

To complete the whole Princess theme, I made a little Tiara with diamente and a little scepter/wand for the birthday girl.  Unfortunately I did not manage to get a picture of both the Tiara or the little scepter/wand but you can see it in the picture below that A kindly sent me.  A rented the cupcake stand from me and arranged the lovely display even though I am sure she must have been quite busy getting the paty ready.

A better picture of what the tiara would look like is below which was made by a friend from my cake decorating class: 

The Tiara is actually extremely delicate as A will attest to.

Here's the birthday girl enjoying her cake.  I couldn't resist, she just looks so adorable!

More cake please?

Baby Joy with Mini Cupcakes

Last week I got funky with scissors, glue and toothpicks to design a customised cake board to display 36 mini cupcakes ordered by K to celebrate the arrival of her daughter Baby Baek with her colleagues.

I got this order while I was on holiday and you can sure I was thinking of all the things I could do with buttercream to create a theme for a little girl. Colours are important too of course and I didn't want it all pink. I thought of a few ideas including safety pins, flowers, alphabet cubes but decided on a ballerina/tutu, booties and a ribbon.

The Little Pink Tutu

The booties were inspired by the Wilton Baby Booties which had a few steps to complete. They are relatively easy to do but requires quite a steady hand for the tiny ribbons and ruffles. It was really nice seeing them come together. Piping the tutu was a technique I learned in one of my cake decorating lessons where I piped ballerina bears. So that was certainly useful here and did I mention I love making ruffles with leaf tip #67?!

The Baby Booties with a pink ruffle and ribbon

The cake board was an idea I got from having seen some simple but colourful storyboards/themes from Marth Stewart's Cupcake book as well as the Australian Women's Weekly Cupcake book. These are two books I highly recommend for both recipes as well as ideas on decorating not just with icing but with sweets/candy, non-pareils, cachous, sprinkles etc...

Simple and beautiful.

**Customised cake boards are at an additional charge, based on size and quantity of order. Pplease enquire by email at orders@buttersugarcream.com**

My First Cupcake Stand at the SIWA Coffee Morning

4 days ago, I went to the Seoul International Women's Association Coffee Morning and set up a table to sell my cupcakes. I am a member of SIWA and was encouraged to sell some cupcakes there to get some publicity for my little cakes. I hadn't done this before but really relished the idea.

Here's Yoko helping me set up

Here we are all good to go

When I was in school, we had Canteen Day once a year where each class would bring things to sell in a sort of bazaar where parents and students buy coupons and use those to buy whatever goodies they wanted to during that day. I used to love bringing food or drinks and selling them. I think that started my appettite for sales which grew into a enjoyable career for me.

These were how the individual cupcakes were packed when someone bought one

I found these small chubby tumblers in Saero in Bangsan Market

I did a lot of work to prepare for it including scouting for packaging items for my mini cupcakes and getting durable (and nice looking) boxes that can hold 1 and 2 cupcakes. Yoko a friend who lives 3 doors down came to help me prepare the night before and also helped out at the event. She was fantastic! I think I made more sales when I wasn't even at the table!

The Lookbook was created to give people an idea of what I can do so it was filled with pictures of the cakes and cupcakes I have made in the past

This is me posing with my cupcakes. I was conscious that people were watching while I was taking numerous photos of the table (I was the only one doing it) and then of myself. How vain right? But I wanted to capture the moment

The cupcakes got a lot of attention and I think we had the prettiest table amongst the other 20 vendors who were there simply by the nature of what we were selling. I created 3 flavours and made a dozen of each. A new creation was the Chocolate Cherry Truffle cupcakes which was a Valrhona Chocolate cupcake with a Chocolate Cherry Brandy Ganache center and frosted with a Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate Buttercream. It was then topped with hand-shaved chocolate curls and a red rose petal dusted with sparkle. It was decadent, rich and so SO fragrant. The Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting was very popular and the Strawberry cupcakes weren't too shabby with a large floret buttercream frosting and a shiny pretty butterfly sitting on top.

Chocolate Cherry Truffle Cupcakes

I also had 6 boxes of 6 mini cupcakes which sold out. They were Chocolate with Chocolate Buttercream, Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting and Vanilla with Vanilla Fluffy Frosting. People thought they were "so cute" in their little egg carton boxes so they were gone in a flash. They make great gifts and favours as well. I can always customise the flavours to suit your occassion in case whoever is reading this may be interested in ordering. Hee hee.

These are the adorable mini cupcakes with the sample box on top

My OH, Maddog said I should have made more just the night before. But that was 11pm and I didn't have the time or energy. Like Donna Hay says, "Beautiful food tastes better." So I hope it was fantastic for everyone who took some home.

**The Mini Cupcakes Nesting were featured on the CutestFood blog on 23 September 2010**

Mini Cupcake Tower for a 1st Birthday Party in Seoul

2 weeks ago I had the opportunity to be a part of a little boy’s (Super J) Doljanji (1^st birthday party). Instead of just the traditional Korean rice cakes for the occasion, his mother wanted some mini cupcakes to be a little different.

Since it was a kid’s party, I wanted to go for something colourful, so we worked out the colours of the cupcake liners and frosting colour to pair it with so that it would compliment the colour theme for Super J’s party. The cupcakes were Vanilla with Fluffy Vanilla Frosting then topped with sprinkles or 100’s and 1000’s. I also made fondant letters spelling “Super J” which I planned to put on top of 6 cupcakes on the top most tier.

When I got to the party with my Mom and my 1 year-old, I quickly got to work assembling the 3-tier dessert stand and arranging the cupcakes. While I was trying to do s, my daughter was being very unco-operative and insisted on having a cupcake. She already had 6 the night before and 5 that morning!!

To appease her, I had to give her one and my Mom had to try to distract her with the balloons (that lasted a minute) so I could get back to the cupcakes without toppling the whole display. It looked very attractive when it was all set up but I must admit I was a little nervous arranging the cupcakes. The pressure was on as there were already some guests there and they were watching. I was chanting in my head, “Don’t drop the cupcake. Don’t drop the cupcake”.

These little babies are just nibbles. I saw several people having 3. They just pop into your mouth and they’re gone. We erred on the side of caution and more then doubled the amount of cupcakes to the number of guests and I think we estimated well.

Frogs are Officially CUTE!

My Frog cupcakes got on the Cutest Food blog. Yay!

http://cutestfood.com/2206/frog-cupcakes/

Kids Birthday Mini Cakes Now Available to Order in Seoul

Not so long ago, at my wedding, I had a fantabulous Cupcake Tower as my wedding cake. I noticed that sometimes even adults don't finish an entire cupcake so arranged a batch of mini cupcakes made especially for the kids at the wedding (there were a few!). They were such a big hit! Big MWUAHs to Alex and Angela at The Cupcake Bakery at Paddington in Sydney who rolled out some of the best cupcakes I've ever had.

This is the cupcake tower which was my wedding cake. Simple but rich swirled buttercream with pink sugar sprinkles and topped by a flower. The mini tower of mini cupcakes sits prettily next to it.

Now you can get it here in Seoul too! Vanilla or Chocolate mini cupcakes with buttercream frosting piped with sprinkles on top. Choice of 3 buttercream frosting colours.

Mini Cupcakes by Gerry

KRW65,000 for 3 dozen (minimum order)
KRW1,500 for every additional mini cupcake

If you are interested to place an order or would like to customise the mini cupcakes, do drop me an email at orders@buttersugarcream.com

Please indicate:
Date
Quantity
Preferred Flavour
Frosting Colours (up to 3)
Occasion

Piped and Sprinkled. These mini bite delights will disappear in a flash

As a guide, a child (age 2 and above) on average eats 2 cupcakes or more. Adults can just keep gobbling these down.

* Cupcake cases/liners used may vary in colour. ** Stuffed bear does not come with the cupcakes, he was just helping me with the picture.