Introducing APRON BUDDIES!!!

For those of you who have been following our mission adventures at Cove Fort, Utah, you know that we are now back home in Colorado trying to adjust to post-mission life. While on our mission, I had a lot of time to ponder about what I wanted to do with my cake business once we got home. One thing I definitely decided was that I had to spend less time doing huge extravagant party cakes, and more time doing what I enjoy-teaching. So I have decided to change up my business a bit, and add a new dimension at the same time. For my Custom Creations business, I will continue to design wedding cakes, dessert cakes, cupcakes, and cake pops. I will leave the  party cakes to the younger and more energetic bakers. 

The teaching side of my business will be known as  Apron Buddies. I will be passing on my skills as I teach decorating classes and offer cake decorating parties. I may even throw in a dinner roll/cinnamon roll or other baking class from time to time. I hope my past customers and friends can feel my excitement and enthusiasm that I have for this new venture, and help spread the word! 

Our son, Tom, has designed the new Apron Buddies logo, and I will continue to use our Custom Creations logo for our cake designs. 

Thank you all for your past support, and I look forward to fulfilling your cake cravings again.  We are open for business!

Christmas Cupcakes...

I  don't always like doing cupcakes... they are very time consuming, and are hard to keep fresh, but I saw these cute little latching plastic containers at the dollar store with red on the bottom and clear on top with a little handle, so... I couldn't resist. This is what my neighbors and a few others got for Christmas this year. I ended up making 10 dozen cupcakes... 5 different flavors of cake, with 5 different fillings, 5 different frostings, and 5 different decorations. Why can't I ever do something simple? The leftover frosting was perfect for decorating sugar cookies with the grandchildren the following day (subject for another post.) One little perk about living in Colorado in the winter... your garage can act as a huge refrigerator if you need to keep cupcakes fresh until the following day. My son with the expensive camera was visiting from California for Christmas, so he had fun taking pictures of my little creations. 

Here are the flavors:

• Dark chocolate with peppermint mousse filling and peppermint buttercream frosting
• Spice with cream cheese pecan filling and cream cheese frosting
• Dark chocolate with raspberry mousse filling and chocolate buttercream frosting
• Coconut with coconut creme filling and lemon coconut frosting
• Chocolate with peanut butter mousse filling and chocolate peanut butter frosting

Harvest Time!!

For those of you with a sweet tooth, this kind of gardening may be right up your alley. First you have to start with that rich dark soil... crushed Oreos make the perfect "soil." Just put the cookies whole into the food processor and whirl away until you have Oreo dirt. Then model veggies and fruits from 1/2 modeling chocolate/ 1/2 fondant. Use your fondant tool to add details, but mainly just use your imagination and hands to make them into fun veggie and fruit shapes, and then cut out leaves to match each kind, then shade both the veggies and leaves with a little petal dust. Push aside a little of the "soil" on top of each cupcake, so the veggies and fruits will stick to the chocolate buttercream underneath. No need to water or weed this garden. The produce will be gone soon enough.

Dolphin Cupcakes

If you follow my blog, by now you know that I don't care much for cupcakes, but... I must admit...these turned out pretty cute. A past wedding cake customer ordered these for a friend's bridal shower. They were having a beach theme, because the bride and groom are planning on getting married in the Bahamas or Virgin Islands, or somewhere tropical (I can't remember for sure) and the bride especially loved Dolphins and flowers. So, I looked for patterns online for dolphins and ocean waves, and with a little help from my Cricut Cake, this is what I came up with. The flavor was lemon with lemon curd filling and cream cheese icing. 

Looks like a pod of dolphins swimming their way into your tummy

Cupcakes...

Did I ever say how much I dislike doing cupcakes...especially for weddings? If you don't know by now, I really don't like doing cupcakes, especially when I'm working on a large catering order, and the bride wants cupcakes instead of a cake. Cupcakes rank right up there with sheet cakes in my book. They actually cost about the same as a nice cake, but...

• You need to do them the day of the wedding so they will be fresh
• They take allot of time
• They need to be placed on a special cupcake stand to look pretty
• They can be messy to eat

From now on, when I have a large catering order and the bride wants cupcakes, I'm sending them to my friend Shelly, who enjoys decorating cupcakes.

So last Saturday, I was still working on the cupcakes when we should've been leaving for the catering job. They turned out pretty, yes, but they were a pain in the ...  These cupcakes were four different flavors...fudge marble with Bavarian Creme filling, Swiss chocolate with coconut pecan filling, vanilla with raspberry mousse, and carrot. They all had cream cheese frosting. Some were decorated with fondant flowers, while others were decorated with air-brushed fondant and edible lace made from Sugarveil. I decorated an 8 inch round to place on top of the cupcake stand for the bride and groom to cut for pictures.

Happy New Year!

I received an order for 5 dozen cupcakes for New Year's Eve day. I'm not a huge cupcake fan, but wanted to do something a little special for this order. First I went to my "Paint" program, and came up with a design that I thought would work,  then printed it out enough times to use as a pattern. 

Then I melted both dark and white chocolate and piped each of the designs. After the designs cooled and hardened, I brushed them with gold highlighter dust.

Since I wanted the frosting to be somewhat festive, I decided to stripe my decorating bag with liquid paste color, so that the icing would come out 2 tone. I iced the yellow cupcakes with blue and the chocolate with purple.

Here are the finished products...