Make Your Own Cupcake Wrappers/Liners

Oh. My. Gosh.  I have had WAY too much fun crafting this evening!  Just call me Martha!  Why?  Well, in the next couple of days I will be making cupcakes for a friend of mine.  We are having a Girls’ Night Out to celebrate her 7thwedding anniversary.  A fellow military wife, J suffers what we must deal with on a regular basis.  Her hubby is out on the ship with mine and is not here to celebrate their anniversary together.  Not only that, but she is VERY preggo and will be giving birth before her husband returns home. 

Needless to say, I wanted to do my own little part to make this a special day for her even though she is celebrating it sans husband!  After talking to her about making a cake, the hamster wheel in my head started turning and I decided I wanted to have a little more fun with it.  I changed my mind from a cake to cupcakes and decided to go the full mile when it came to making them super cute.  So tonight is the first post related to the anniversary cupcakes.

Okay, enough of the background…what did I do tonight, you’re asking?  I made homemade cupcake liners, or wrappers, or whatever you would like to call them.  I have seen the super cute wrappers in the store but just haven’t been able to bring myself to spend the money on them and really, none of them have been EXACTLY what I wanted.  So I decided to take on the task of creating them myself.  I did a little research online and found a few other ladies who have tried the same thing.  Why reinvent the wheel?!   This template that I found on Skip To My Lou is the one I used to begin my own.  However, I extended the top of mine another centimeter or so because I wanted the wrappers that extended above the top of the cupcake.  I also inserted a tab so I would not have to have tape on the outside of my wrapper.  With the tab, I was able to put the tape inside.  I also did not print the wrappers directly onto the colored paper.  There are only two templates on the given paper.  I cut one out and traced it four times on larger paper.  This, of course, was a little bit of an added pain (multiply by 24), but saved paper and came out the way I wanted it to look.

***important suggestion – use paper that is colored on BOTH sides.  It does not look nearly as nice when you have white paper on the inside.  Even if you are cutting the paper to normal size, the white will still most likely be seen.

After tracing the templates onto the paper I used an exacto knife to cut them out.  This requires a steady hand, but it is important to know it does not have to be perfect.  It is going to be wrapped around a cupcake for goodness sakes!  The last thing people will be checking is if it is 100% symmetrical!  The first couple were definitely rough around the edges, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and started to breeze through the cutting process.  Since the only two sided paper I had was plain, I decided I would use my stamping materials to embellish the paper.  SO FUN!  Put some paper down (or you can stamp prior to cutting) under the cutouts and make sure the stamp overlaps the borders of the paper and especially both ends where the tab and insert are.  This helps hide the imperfections of the cutting job!

Insert the tabs, tape the inside and voila!  Homemade cupcake wraps!

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Tags: Cupcake, Cupcake Liners, Homemade, Marissa, Paper Craft, Stamp, Wrappers

Super Mario Bros Cake

Today marks the completion of my most elaborate cake yet!  I had such an awesome time working on this!  The creation went off really without a hitch.  I did burn one cake because I forgot to put the timer on.  This, of course, went in the trash.  I also made several fondant pieces in advance but did not put them to dry on a curved surface.  I had a feeling this would be a problem, but tried anyway.  The result was a whole lotta fondant that was flat and stiff as a board.  With the inability to flex around the curved edges of the cake, it went in the trash too.  I am still a little worried that Mario might pass out and fall backwards on the cake.  Heat exhaustion maybe!  Really, he is definitely top heavy in the back of his head and I will be very happy to find out that he stays standing all day tomorrow! (see bottom of post for more pictures)

Other than those minor things, it really was an enjoyable experience.  I learned so much about my own abilities and different techniques working with fondant.  I used two different types of fondant – rolled fondant to make the creatures and marshmallow fondant to actually cover the cakes.  I have found that the rolled fondant works much better when it comes to molding things than the marshmallow.  But the marshmallow tastes so much better (in all the opinions of the people I have polled) so I prefer to use it to do the covering.  As usual, I made all of the fondant myself, which I still prefer doing as well.  The extreme heat made it difficult to work with the fondant at times.  I felt like the Cake Boss when the edges of his Empire State Building were falling off in the heat.  My A/C is already working double time with it being 104 degrees outside though, so there was little I could do about it!

I would have to say that Mario was the most difficult to make (go figure, the one I wanted to have the most detail!) and I had the most fun making Yoshi and the mushroom head guys.  My 8 year old was ready and willing at all times to tell me what creatures I should be making, what they should look like, and what I was doing wrong with them!!! :)  Credit is also due to my husband who thought of making the warping pipe (the green thing off to the side).  I had extra cake and didn’t want it to go to waste!  It became a cute way to show that little E is turning 5!

So now that I have sufficiently de-Crisco-d my kitchen, I can officially say I am done!  The cake is ready to go to its Super Mario home tomorrow and I am sure little E will love it.  His mom came over today and she thinks he will too.  That is the most important part and I cannot wait to find out. 

Since I was covered in Crisco every step of the way, I wasn’t able to take pictures of the process.  Probably a good thing since I tried to get the messy parts out of the way while my husband was gone!  The last thing I need is proof of how the place looked!  I will give you a quick run down of how it all went.  We estimated the entire process took about 16 hours from start to finish.  I used:

• 4.5 bags of powdered sugar
• 2 bags of marshmallows
• 1 container of glucose
• .5 containers glycerin
• A LOT of Crisco (makes everything not stick to everything else until you want it to!)
• The equivalent of 4 cake boxes (but I made mine from scratch)
• A lot of icing color
• 1 box of unflavored gelatin
• 12 eggs
• a few cups of oil
• I think that about covers it

I modeled the figures by their colors.  I started with red and made the heads of the mushrooms and the backs of the turtles, etc.  Then picked the next color that I would need on the most things that had red so I could build onto those pieces.  So on, and so forth.  Then I baked the cakes and let them chill before making the icing to top the cake.  I put a crumb layer of buttercream icing on all the layers before putting them together and chilled them until the icing was set.  I then colored and put the marshmallow fondant on top of each layer.  Here is where I built the layers, putting measured and cut plastic dowel rods into the bottom layer which then supported the tiered plastic plate holding the top layer.  After the layers were built I started placing the figures, really wherever they would sit!  By the way, these were all dried by the time I did this.  If I had ten people working for me, I would have tried to do this cake in a matter of hours, unfortunately that is not possible as a one-woman crew!  After it was all done this evening, into the refrigerator it went!

I really do hope little E thinks it is the best cake ever and I hope to get many more opportunities to make such awesome cakes!

I should also say my husband is happy the cake is done because he has felt neglected this week when it comes to my baking.  Apparently, the 36 scones I made him the other day have not been enough to put an end to his baked goods hunger.  Sheesh!

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Tags: Baking, birthday, buttercream, Cakes, fondant, icing, Mario, Marissa, Super Mario Bros

Making a Cake Rise Evenly

How in the WORLD have I never done this before?!  For at least a decade, I have baked a million cakes of all shapes and sizes.  I make the batter, whether from scratch or a box, grease and pour it into the pan, and stick it in the oven to cook for half an hour.  When the cake comes out of the oven it tastes delicious (usually).  If I am baking it to just keep at home I plop some icing on it without thinking twice and savor the taste.  If I am baking it to decorate and give to someone else, at least one more step is usually involved. 

When you bake a cake, the edges of the pan cook first and the batter stops rising up the sides.  Of course, this means the only place the cake can rise is in the middle.  I am pretty sure everyone who has baked a cake has gotten a nice dome in the middle, more often than not.  The fix to this problem when it happens is to level the cake by slicing the dome off the top.  The end result is a shorter cake and a whole lot of wasted scraps that you usually just have to throw out.  I cannot stand it when I have to throw food out!

I remember my grandmother wrapping these silver things around the outside of her cake pans when I was young.  I had no idea what they were for back then, and as I grew older I didn’t put any stock into something like that affecting my cakes.  How could a silver wrap change my cake? 

Turns out, A LOT!  Those silver wraps are called Bake Even Strips (though other companies produce them as well).  Their one and only function is to make the cake bake evenly all around the pan and to eliminate that dome top.  The strips range from about ten to twenty dollars and are sold in small and large sizes.  You wet the strips and wrap them around the cake pan and the result is a level cake.

HOWEVER, if you are like me, the last thing you want to do is spend $20 on some funky strips.  Another option for this is to create your own and it takes two seconds.

Homemade Even Baking Strips

Get an old bath towel (or anything terrycloth) and cut a slit in it about 2 inches wide.  I did this going across the short side of the towel.  Use this slit to rip the the towel the rest of the way (it just takes longer to use the scissors to cut all the way across).  You now have a two inch strip of towel between two and four or five feet long.  Wet the strip with cold water until it is soaking wet and wring it out just once.  You want it to be thoroughly wet, but not dripping.  Wrap the wet cloth around your cake pan and secure it with a large safety pin.

Place the pan in the oven as always (make sure the excess towel isn’t hanging down onto the oven coil or anything) and bake at recommended time.  This might increase your baking time.  I have had to add ten to twenty minutes onto the few cakes I have already used this method on.  I wish I had a picture of a domed cake to compare with the LEVEL cakes, but that will never happen now.  There is NO WAY I will ever go back to baking without the towel around the edges.  It is far too  easy and simple and takes no time at all for beautiful cakes! 

WOW!!!  What a difference!  The cakes shown here were all baked with towels around them.  I didn’t cut the sides off or level any of them.  The result is a beautiful evenly baked cake all the way around!  Also, these are reusable, so just re-wet them next time you are baking another delicious cake!

Tags: Baking, Cakes, Even Baking Strips, Homemade, Level Cake, Marissa

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 23

Can I please tell you how excited I am that this thing is almost over?  I cannot even believe I have made it this far.  I really am not that interested in tasting my creations anymore.  I think there is a reason why it isn’t too uncommon to find thin bakers.  It’s because it doesn’t take long to not want to even SMELL sugar anymore, let alone eat it.  If I owned a bakery, I don’t think I would ever be able to eat a cake again!  Phmph.

So, now that my venting is out of the way, another day of technique it is.  I was going to try to do butterflies and calla lilies.  The butterflies were a bust and the calla lilies were a success.  At least I am one for two!  I have learned something every important this month about my trusty marshmallow fondant.  It isn’t so trusty.  There is a reason why cake decorators don’t use it.  It doesn’t set well.  It is fine for basic decorating and covering cakes.  But once you get into the more extravagant things such as calla lilies and Mario Bros figures, you really need something that is going to stand on its own.  I have stayed away from using gum paste because it tastes horrible and I don’t want to put something disgusting on one of my cakes!  I may have to give in to this at some point if I want to continue with the decorating aspect though!

So, back to the point of all of that.  I tried to make 3D butterflies but the fondant just would not set, so the butterflies were just a floppy mess!  The picture here does show the proper way to dry butterflies so they will be 3D!  I would have put their bodies and antennas on and decorate them a little after drying.  So much for that!

The calla lilies, however, were fairly easy to do.  I use d a heart cookie cutter to cut out white fondant.  I  wrapped the heart around a paper cone (pointy part of the heart is the top of the flower, not the base) and left it out to dry (never really did).  I rolled up a couple pieces of yellow fondant to insert later for the stamens.  The results are below.  They are so easy to do considering how nice they look when they are on cakes!

Tags: Cake Decorating, Cakes, fondant, Marissa

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 22

  I LOVE raspberry.  Raspberry drinks, raspberries in parfaits, just plain old raspberries out of the plastic container.  I tried pretty hard to find a raspberry cake, with no success.  Lots of cheesecakes and layered desserts with cool whip.  No cakes.  So, I decided to use one of my “from scratch” recipes and put a raspberry twist on it. 

Since a lot of the desserts I found with raspberry in them also involved lemon, I decided to fill the cake with lemon curd.  I heated a small jar of lemon curd, just until spreading consistency, in a small saucepan.  It was just the right amount of filling for the middle of this cake.

Not one to waste materials, I used my marshmallow fondant from yesterday for the topping.  I cut squares out of the fondant using a cookie cutter.  After they were cut I dipped them in sprinkles and made a checker pattern on top.  For the side I used the lemon buttercream icing that I also covered the whole cake with (not the filling) for a crumb layer.  There is a reason why I am only showing you the top of the cake though and that is because it does not look pretty everywhere else!  I didn’t take any special measures like piping a trim around the edges of the cake to make a smooth transition from fondant to buttercream.  Since you are the only people who are going to see it, I didn’t think it would matter much!

I am not going to taste this dessert tonight because I am going to wait until my husband can share in it with me!  I’ll let you know how it tastes tomorrow!

Raspberry Lemon Cake

• 2 1/3 c. unbleached flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 c. white sugar
• 1/2 c. oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. milk
• 1/2 c. raspberry syrup (I buy mine from Starbucks)

Lemon Buttercream Icing

• 4 cups sifted powdered sugar
• 1/2 c. butter, softened
• 1/2 c. shortening
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp milk

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.  Mix in oil, then eggs, then milk, then raspberry syrup, mixing only until blended each time.  Our batter into 2 greased 8” round pans and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Spread lemon curd as filling in between cake layers and top with lemon icing.

For lemon icing: cream together shortening and butter. Add lemon juice.  Mix in powdered sugar until well blended.  Add milk until you reach desired consistency.

******UPDATE*******

The raspberry cake was actually pretty good!  I finally tried it today and was presently surprised by its tastiness!  I am, however, torn on whether I LOVE the lemon curd filling, or HATE it! :)  I think I probably prefer the cake all by itself, so next time I will be putting them in cupcake form with a simple cream cheese icing on top.

Tags: Baking, Cake Decorating, Cakes, icing, Marissa

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 21

 The Great Chocolate Melt of 2010!  Today was what I would pretty much call a dud.  I wanted to continue with my “technique” work.  Turns out it didn’t work so well.  For the sake of ease and productivity, I used the cupcakes I had previously frozen from the pink and green day.  After I defrosted them I covered them with store bought cream cheese icing. Tough, I know!

The special part of today was supposed to be the toppers for the cupcakes.  I thought I would practice free form chocolate melting.  I went online and found a bunch of typical clipart pictures.  Things like shells, hearts, animals, stars, etc.  I printed the pictures out on a couple pieces of paper and taped them to a cookie sheet.  Over the top of the pictures I taped a piece of wax paper.  The idea was that I would trace the outlines of the shapes with a piping bag filled with chocolate, creating the shape to put on the cupcake.  Easy enough, right? 

Well, the chocolate melting went fine.  The tracing even went fine after I practiced a bit (I do not have the steadiest hand for details like that).  I chilled the chocolates and took them out to put on the cupcakes.  I literally could not get more than one on a cupcake before they all started melting!!!  I tried sticking my hands in ice to keep them cold.  I put the spatula on ice that I was pulling them up with.  It didn’t matter.  Even when I perfected the method to get them off the cookie sheet and onto the cupcake, they still continued to melt.

I think the best thing to do to try to remedy this would be put the ICED cupcakes in the fridge before ever putting the chocolate on.  That way, the chocolate will stay cold as soon as it touches the cupcake.  But still, doesn’t that mean the cupcakes will ALWAYS have to be cold?  Won’t the chocolate still melt as soon as you take it out to sit for an event?  Anyone have the answers for me?

I am also attributing the melting to the fact that the chocolate is so thin.  But that is the whole point of the free form melting.  Oh well.  As you can see in the pics, the chocolate pieces I tried to stand on their ends melted and kind of flopped over.  If I laid them flat on the cupcake it seemed to work better…for the most part!

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Tags: Baking, Cake Decorating, Cakes, chocolate, Cupcakes, frosting, icing, Marissa

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 20

 I took a departure from baking again today to do some more decorating practice.  I have a friend whose son is having a birthday soon and she asked me to make the cake.  Her boy is a fan of the Mario Bros and is having a party with that theme.  Since I have never made Mario Bros figures before, I thought this would be a good place to practice.

Please ignore the colors!  This was a practice in MOLDING not in COLORING!  I really didn’t want to waste my icing colors on pieces that will never actually get to sit on a cake.  Especially since these need to be some pretty intense colors.  Bright red not pink, beige not brown (skin), black not blue (Bullet Bill) and I know Mario’s hair should be darker.  Those of you who color icing, you know how much it takes to make black and bright red!  So for all intensive purposes…pretend!

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For the most part it was just a matter of shaping the figures by rolling the fondant into balls and molding it the right way to make it look like the character.  I was able to take a few shortcuts.  To make the clouds I used a flower cookie cutter and cut the flower in half.  To make the bullet (which is blue here, not black) I used a football cookie cutter and just cut one end off.  Last but not least, of course, a square cookie cutter for the question mark block.  I know Mario looks like a monkey disguised as a trucker.  In my defense, I had problems with the fondant being a little too malleable when I made him.  The balls that create his head and body kept sinking and making him way too short and fat. Easily remedied, but I wasn’t going to redo him tonight!

Overall, I am pretty happy with the little buggers and glad the first time making them went so well!  I know I need to get some play doh to practice or something, but a lot of my issues are usually just in how to make the FONDANT do what I want it to do.  It would be pointless to practice with something else that doesn’t act the exact same way.

Tags: Cake Decorating, Cakes, fondant, icing, Marissa

30 Days and 30 Nights – Day 17

Instead of an evening of experimenting with recipes, I decided to take tonight to start practicing some technique.  I have kind of been putting off dealing with icing…fondant in particular.  It isn’t the quick and easy recipe like the cookies I have been making recently.  It takes time, messiness, and a decent amount of work.  Quite frankly, a lot has been going on and I haven’t really been interested in investing that sort of time in my baking ventures.

Luckily, I had some leftover fondant from the cake I baked for the fourth of July, so I was a HUGE step ahead of the game!  I popped a batch of cupcakes in the oven, butter recipe.  I didn’t have enough fondant to decorate all of them so I put half of the cooled cupcakes in the freezer to decorate again in the next couple of days.

I used a couple of my kids’ drinking cups to cut the right size circles out of the fondant and place them over the cupcakes.  I do need to point out that I wasn’t 100% correct yesterday.  I did need to use some crisco on my Pampered Chef cutting mat today.  The fondant wasn’t sticking a lot, just enough to need something. 

I have a couple of cutouts in various shapes and used them to cut stars, hearts, etc.  Usually, I try to make something all super complicated and end up wanting to throw my creation up against a wall.  This evening, my aim was to do a few simple things and just try to make the cupcakes look cute.

I think I was successful and it was a pretty quick process.  They aren’t anything extravagent, but I thought they were cute.  I think next time I make some fondant I am going to make enough to save for a later project.  It keeps well in the frige for three weeks.

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 16

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

I hope everyone is having a terrific day celebrating the independence of our wonderful country!  I would like to take a minute to thank all of the service men and women who work so hard to maintain that independence for us and afford us the liberties we often take for granted each day.  A special thanks to those who are away from their families while we celebrate such times.  You are always in our thoughts!

We have coordinated a block party on our street to celebrate the holiday.  We’re setting up tents and grilling, putting the sprinklers and games out for the kids, and waving glow sticks and setting off fireworks.  I am expecting it to be a blast!  Since it is a block party we told everyone to bring their own meat to grill and drinks to drink and a side or dessert to share with the group.  Naturally, I will be bringing a dessert!  Yay!  I don’t have to know on people’s doors to hand out my baked goods for the day!  I can just bring it to the party!

Cake before baking it

I thought a lot about what to do for this fun event and decided on a watermelon shaped cake.  I also chose to try to make the inside watermelon flavor too.  I made a watermelon pound cake that I adapted from another fruit flavored poundcake.  The recipe calls for the actual fruit, not an artificial flavor.  The hardest part was the fact that watermelon is SO juicy.  I tried to take account for that in advance by draining the watermelon and then letting paper towels soak up some more of the liquid before putting them into the recipe.  This certainly seemed to help, but the cake was still INCREDIBLY moist.  I was a little bummed about this because I was hoping to stand the cake up on its side so it would look like a slice of watermelon standing on its rind.  Unfortunately, I think the integrity of the structure was too comprimised!

"Red" icing for the middle of the watermelon

 I decided to keep the watermelon laying flat on its side.  Here I have started with the fondant icing.  First I covered the cake with a crumb layer of buttercream icing that I dyed with red food coloring.  I always use the rolled marshmallow fondant because people continue to tell me time and time again how much better it tastes.  It is definitely more work because of how sticky the marshmallows are, but worth it!  I didn’t want to waste fondant, so I only laid the “red” part of the watermelon exactly where it would be showing, rather than covering the whole cake.  It also drapes down in the front of the cake.

 I rolled the green fondant out into a straight line about four inchese thick and covered the edge of the cake with it.  I did all of the rolling and measuring on my AWESOME new “gadget” that I got for my birthday…a Pampered Chef pastry mat!  Thanks Jen!  It has changed my world of rolling out fondant!!!  I didn’t have to use any cornstarch or even crisco to keep the fondant from sticking to the surface I was working on.  Usually I am fighting with the dang icing the entire time and using everything I can to keep it from sticking!  It made it so easy to measure how much I need to roll out and to cut the circle to do the red part of the watermelon.  I will never be able to go back to working with fondant without it again.  Since its Pampered Chef, I am also sure it will last forever.  I am so THRILLED! 

To finish the cake off, I used chocolate chips as the seeds on the watermelon.  Just stuck them in the cake in a few places and TA-DA!  Fourth of July Watermelon Cake!  Have a great one!

30 Days and 30 Bites – Day 6

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Marissa!  Happy birthday to ME!!!

What better way to spend your birthday than BAKING?!  Go figure though, it wasn’t a cake for me.  This weekend one of my sweet little neighbors is turning five.  Though her mother is also a fantastic baker, she, for some reason, requested I make her daughter’s cake!  Little M requested a princess cake so this is what I came up with.  I searched online for a while looking for inspiration but didn’t find too many things.  I did, however find the idea to use the ice cream cones as spires, so that was a big bonus. 

To assemble my cake I used two cake mix boxes (chocolate) and with those I filled a 9×13 pan, an 8 inch round pan, a 6 inch round pan and 6 cupcake holes.  I stacked them, naturally, large to small and then used the cupcakes to support my ice cream cone spires.  I used some inexpensive $1 bag spiced gum drops from Walmart for the edging and then also added some piped stars in purple for another accent.  The cupcake part was hubby’s idea.  He’s so clever.  He even volunteered and did a little icing this evening to help me out since I was decorating, cleaning, mowing the lawn, etc.  Gotta love him!

I put the all important crumb layer on the entire cake and let it set in the fridge before frosting, but for some reason it didn’t do all that great of a job keeping the crumbs away.  Also, since my crumb layer was white I definitely had some issues with it come through the pink.  It’s not a perfect cake, but hopefully little M won’t care about the imperfections and she will be so happy to have a castle.

I made my husband use our Blockbuster free movie coupon to get Julie and Julia.  I thought it was appropriate given our new endeavor here.  He told me I better never talk to him the way Julie spoke to her husband when she got frustrated!  He said that would be the end of 30D30B.  Guess I better watch my manners!!! :)

So here we go.  Happy birthday M!!!