Sugar Rush Revelations

Chocolate Whiskey

For the Whiskey Lover in you! Chocolate and whiskey, separately are two wonderful flavors but together create a synergistic symphony on your palette. These cupcakes were a hit and most importantly my husband LOVED them! After twisting his arm he reluctantly accepted the task of testing my new line of Alcoholic Cupcakes - or Cupcake Cocktails, haven't decided what to call them. My first recipe to try: Chocolate Whiskey Cupcakes and let me tell you, they were AMAZING!

The chocolate cake recipe was pretty basic. The cupcakes came out of the oven tasting SUPER moist and very soft! I almost wanted to stop there because they were so good. However, there wasn't a drop of whiskey in the actual cupcake so I had to continue on. The next phase of the recipe called to make a whiskey simple syrup, finally the good stuff. For those of you who don't bake often simply syrup is a syrup made by cooking 1 part water and 1 part sugar until the sugar dissolves. This is then used by bakers to brush onto the cake before decorating to moisten the cake. I don't personally use simple syrup very often, my cakes are usually moist enough and to make it any moister the cake would not hold up. The whiskey simple syrup was then brushed over each cupcake to allow the whiskey flavor to soak into the cupcake. YUM!

The cupcakes were almost ready and I had to keep my hubby away from the cupcakes until I could finish the icing. Most of my cakes use a butter cream icing, it seems to be the best tasting and the favorite! This icing recipe was definitely not butter cream but used a lot of butter. The eggs where whipped into a frenzy and then I cooked sugar and water until soft-ball stage and slowly added the thickened syrup to the eggs. A whole lotta butter later it was time to add the whiskey. Four tablespoons of whiskey in the icing, but it was just the right amount. The subtle whiskey flavoring in the icing was a perfect compliment to the chocolate cake. All in all, it was so yummy! This recipe has been tested and tried and approved for Sugar Rush's Cupcake Cocktails. Up next Jack and Coke cupcakes. Yummy Never Looked So Good!

Nerf Wars

Cyrus and his Nerf cake at the party

Cyrus is my oldest and he turned 10 in January. Quite honestly, there is something very sobering about your oldest hitting double digits!

When we started planning Cyrus' birthday party he originally wanted a casino themed party. That was fun trying to design a cake for a 10 year old's Casino party; What's appropriate? How will other parents feel about gambling? And the questions just kept coming. So after brainstorming a bit with my little man we came up with Nerf Wars! Every kid, both boys and girls alike, likes to battle it out with Nerf guns. So the theme was set, the invitations were created (thanks to my very good friend Kara Miller) and delivered and the RSVP's were rolling in. Next up... Design the cake! I found a lot of inspiration out there on other websites and when Cyrus saw THE cake he knew he had to have it.

Everything made of fondant

This particular cake was a lot of fun to make because Cyrus helped me with some of the baking and fondant details. The evening before the party we started creating the Nerf darts for the target and sides of cake. Cyrus was very particular in how dark I tinted the fondant orange. He wanted it to be perfect! So after kneading and coloring enough orange fondant we were ready to make the darts. We simply rolled out some fondant and cut it to length using a real dart for accuracy. Every time we'd roll one out Cyrus would pick up the real dart and inspect our fondant dart. It took much longer than usual for me with my helpful Quality Control Manager! In the end we created 15 darts. Once we completed the rest of the details we let them set over night to harden.

We were expecting a lot of people to come so we decided to bake a 12 in square yellow cake the morning of the party (I always like to have a fresh baked cake). Once the cake was baked and iced, Cyrus helped color the 10 cups of butter cream yellow, we began assembling. The largest target was placed over the top of the cake that had the most flaws in the icing (a cake decorator knows the first rule of cake decorating is hide your mistakes). We used floral wire to secure the darts to the cake.

Once it was ready to go we needed to load it in the truck and take it to the party-site. When I was putting the cake in the car I sat it down at an angle and when I moved my hands the sleeve of my jacket caught the corner of the cake. The worst part about decorating cakes is the delivery because things like this happen. Fortunately, I had enough icing left over to fix the banged up corner and get it to the party! We ended up having 40 kids and 20 adults show up to the party. We sang happy birthday, blew the candles out and had to remind the kids they couldn't load the fondant darts in their guns. In the end there was NO cake left over! A Success!! Yummy Never Looked So Good!

Let's Go to the Movies!

"Butter CREAM on your Popcorn?" That's right. This is the sweetest tasting bucket of popcorn that you'll ever have. You can even eat into the bucket! Maybe this will be a trend that will catch on with the movie theaters Next time your catching your favorite flick we'll hear you saying, "I'd like a large butter cream popcorn cake and a diet soda" ;)

I LOVED making this cake. My client sent me a picture of a cake that looked just like a bucket of popcorn. Her daughter was having her birthday party at the theater and this was just perfect for her and all her friends. I never attempted at stacking the same size cake on top of each other without the tiered effect. I love a good challenge and learning new things. So the journey began...

This cake was four 9 in rounds stacked and then slightly carved to resemble the popcorn bucket shape. After icing the bucket and applying the stripes and wording I began the tedious popcorn. This took much longer than expected. And with my gift of obsessive compulsiveness and perfectionism I was actually at it for probably an hour or so. Every time I'd finish a kernel I'd step back examine it and then call my supportive, patient husband to come look at it too. I find it helps to have an honest, fresh set of eyes inspect my work. So after what felt like forever it was finished!!! YEA!

The client came and picked it up and was ecstatic when she saw it. I love the initial reaction people give when they see their cakes! I said my final goodbyes to my edible masterpiece and off it went. What I didn't know was what lied ahead was a long drive back to Niceville in the harsh Florida July heat. Not having anywhere to shade the cake from the magnified sun rays coming through the windows they decided to rush straight home and put the cake in the refrigerator until they would have to drive back to the theater for the party. I received a call from a concerned client about 20 minutes later when they got stuck in the summer traffic on the Mid-Bay bridge. This was nerve-racking knowing the cake was melting in the HOT summer sun. The got it home and I was able to give them a few tips to help correct any flaws and from what I was told the cake made it perfectly to the movie theater in one piece! Let me tell you something... It doesn't matter if I'm the one delivering the cake or the client picks it up I HATE transporting cakes. I swear I'll have a nervous breakdown one day :(

Retr-OH!

I love it when my clients give me complete creative control over their cake. When I got the call for this cake they told me, "Just do something fun. The birthday girl likes neutral colors". Wow! Not a lot of information to go by, they didn't even give me a flavor. But anyone who knows me knows I accepted the challenge. I had just designed a wedding cake a few weeks before that was a delightful dark chocolate with cherry filling and everyone loved it. So deciding the flavor wasn't that hard but I couldn't deliver a naked cake! After countless hours searching the internet, drawing sketch upon sketch and getting discouraged thinking that I'd never find a design that I could be happy with I finally decided to take a break from this cake and focus on a baby shower cake that I was in the process of completing.

I put the finishing touches on the baby shower cake and loaded it up for delivery. I must always stress the extreme dislike I have for delivering cakes! Nonetheless, the cake arrived without a flaw. I eagerly placed the cake down on its resting place and as I was turning to leave what should my eye behold? It was a divine vision I stopped dead in my tracks and the light bulb went off! It was a dear friend who was attending the same baby shower and she was wearing an amazing dress with browns and soft green and blues. It was amazing and I knew I had to translate it into a cake design. I must admit asking someone if you can photograph their dress so you can turn it into cake is a bit awkward. The picture was taken and I rushed home to recreate the cute retro dress atop chocolate butter cream. This cake was a hit with the recipient who loved not only neutral colors but also circle patterns and retro designs!

Yummy Never Looked SO Good! (Thanks Missy :) )