bee cupcake tower....!

...so i'm pretty much ready for spring!...i love winter and all....and on the east coast it's been pretty mild (if you take out that freaky october snow storm)....but i'm ready for spring.....we even had a quick vacay to orlando....universal studios and legoland...btw both very cool!...but just our luck we hit a cold front and had chilly weather in sunny florida....go figure...

.....and these cupcakes were made for someone special's baby shower which definitely put me in the mood for warmer weather! Bees were the theme...as b's are super special to the mom to be.....honey vanilla cupcakes with honey buttercream with some bee cupcake toppers.....

....the bees are made from jelly belly jelly beans....we just happened to have one of those big vats of jelly beans from costco....why? i'm not sure but i did not make that purchase!.....just pick out the yellow hued ones....the spotted ones looked great for this!.....

....melt some black candy melt in a zip lock bag....snip off a small end and pipe on some bee stripes....if you can't find black....i'm sure you can use brown and it would look fine too.....oh and don't worry if the candy goes over the jelly bean....when dried it made it look like "feet" on the bee or whatever the technical bee term is....do bees have feet?

....add a blob of black candy melt as a head and pipe pairs of "wings" with white candy melt onto wax paper or parchment and let harden....i just did sloppy ovals and then attached with more candy melt....

...and you get a bunch of edible bees!....

.....the cupcakes are a doctored golden vanilla boxed mix....add an extra egg, 1 cup of buttermilk for the liquid (i added about 1/4 cup of honey to this too), and the same amount of oil as on the box.....

...the honey buttercream is this recipe...with about 1/4 cup of honey added as well....you may not need the milk or add more powdered sugar to get the consistency you like....

....pipe like "hives" onto the cupcakes....(my bestie kitchen helper!)

....and add the bees randomly on top of the cupcakes.....

....all packed up for travel to the big event....(love costco boxes for this purpose!)....

...since this was for a baby shower....decided with a 2 layer 9-inch cake topper (same cake/buttercream flavor)...with letters done in candy melt from a letter mold and attached to popsicle sticks (it says ba-bee boy if you can't make it out!)....and with a candy melt bee on top as well from the invitation (please ignore the bee monobrow!)....

.....and you get a cupcake tower with some realistic looking bees!...so really doesn't that make you ready for spring???....and it's extra special since it was for my nephew!....

.....welcome to the world baby Elliot Michael....born February 6th...8 pounds 14 ounces!!!!....and a huge woohoo to mommy for the natural delivery!.....

....sharing over at these fun bloghops too....pop over to see what else in going on there....!

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death star cake and star wars cupcake tower....!

...so my oldest turns 7 this month....!...i'm not sure how that's possible as it seems like he was just a tiny little thing not so long ago.....

...i've been making his cakes since he turned one......and he's definitely a huge star wars fan (probably because we have a 40+ year old star wars freak in the house too)....so the request this year was for a star wars cake....originally it was for a 3-D standing jango fett cake.....needless to say i quickly talked him down from that....because some 3-D cakes are not my friend....but a death star "ball" i can handle....

...plus i've been meaning to do some star wars characters for awhile now.....and there are so many to choose from that it's fun to try doing them in edible form....(note: some turn out better than others!!)...

...the toppers are made from candy melts/wafers....same technique as i always use....print out some images (i got mine from mighty muggs since they are all about the same size and cartoon like so it was easier to do them in the candy melt this way (if anyone needs just the heads in a word doc, email me as i have this and can share it).....do all the detail first (stock up in black candy melt at halloween time as it comes in super handy....if you don't have black, just use dark brown....nobody will really care....well maybe those super star wars freaks like my 41 year old kid :) ...and let the detail dry about 5-10 minutes....

...then fill in with the other main colors....have some toothpicks handy so you can smooth out the candy and get it into any tiny crevices....

...simple enough right....?......

.....here's captain rex, boba fett, darth maul, and r2d2.....

.....and yoda, chewbacca, the wampa, and commander cody....

....and luke skywalker, general grievous, lando calrissian (i <3 lando), and c3po (i have found 3po is tough in food form!)....

.....and admiral ackbar (he may be my fav), an imperial guard, princess leia (she is NOT happy!), and a storm trooper.....

.....and darth vader, darth maul (sorry i was in a rush and forgot who i included in the pics already), jango fett, and wicket the ewok.....

.....and luke (again!), han solo, a scout trooper (or maybe a ghost!), and captain rex (again!)....

...the death star is made from the wilton sports ball pan...which i already had....and iced in vanilla buttercream.....

.....and then sprayed with this stuff in silver....

.....there have been some bad reviews of it online....but it worked out great for me.....and saved me a ton of time!...although i'm not sure a can would cover as much as it says it does on the label....or maybe i just used a lot for this project....

.....the detail was done by hand with icing tinted 2 shades of grey.....(arm was killing me the next day....this one seemed to take longer than the brobee cake piping....!)...

....and you get a star wars cupcake tower with a death star top for a pretty awesome 7 year old...!

....happy birthday jack!...you're the best kid ever!.....i hope one day you'll look back and read this blog when you're all grown up and know that i love you more and more each day...it's amazing to watch you grow and experience things for the first time and to see what a great person you are and will continue to be....and you are an awesome big bro to your brother and sister! (hopefully all of this won't be new news to you!).....love you lots....xxoo, mom

tidy mom works for me wednesday

cupcake tower wedding "cake"....!

...so this was my first attempt at a cupcake tower for my aunt's wedding a couple of weeks ago....with a 6 inch 4 layer cake on top....

...roses piped on with a wilton #1M tip and then topped with large pearl non-pareils.....

.....the cupcakes are iced with vanilla buttercream tinted green, pink, or left plain white (make sure you use clear vanilla or you'll get off white buttercream)....some were also iced with chocolate fudge icing (store bought and mixed with about 2 cups of the vanilla buttercream).....all iced with the same wilton #1M tip.....

...for anyone who may need to make a ton of cupcakes (i made about 150), this was my plan of action....started baking batches (30-40ish) of cupcakes that monday (wedding was on saturday).....as soon as the cupcakes were cool, put them into large zip lock bags (get as much as the air out of the bag)....then immediately freeze....did this on tuesday, wednesday, and thursday too...on wednesday, thursday, and friday made the icings.....i batch for each color (this ended up being the perfect amount...1 batch iced about 35-40 cupcakes).....on friday defrosted all the cupcakes and then immediately iced and topped with the same pearl non-pareils as on the cake....

.....these had to be transported about 2 hours so the best "container" i found were those big costco cardboard boxes they give you to carry all the bulk items home....pack the cupcakes tight so there's not a lot of room to slide....i finished icing all the cupcakes on the friday before the wedding so covered the boxes with plastic wrap and stored in our cool basement area overnight....

....i used a cupcake tower to display them on and assembled everything once we got to the location....the cupcake tower is just sturdy white cardboard...the edges are not finished so i covered it in ribbon (secured with white pins).....pretend you don't see the ribbon coming off the edge in the pic below! oh and if you are going to re-use the cupcake tower just know that the cardboard may get some stains because of the cupcake liners or if any of the frosting gets on it too....(think it's fine tho because you just cover the stain up the next time with more cupcakes!)

...this was a lot of fun and for me it wasn't too stressful to make so many cuppies since i planned it pretty well and i wasn't up til 3 am frosting cupcakes (that said if i needed like 300 i may have been a lot more stressed!)....and most importantly....

CONGRATULATIONS SUSIE AND EBB!!!

thanks for letting me play a part on your special day!....(last photo by PB n' J Photography....they were AWESOME!)

tidy mom works for me wednesday