Ballerina Cupcake

Last night, I baked lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting and buttercream toppers.  The recipe I used for the lemon cupcakes and lemon frosting was: http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2014/03/perfect-triple-lemon-cupcakes/ but I didn't want to use the lemon curd, so the cupcakes were "double lemon" instead of "triple lemon cupcakes."  I used the star tip when piping the frosting and a smaller size star tip to make the tutu look as if it was made of tulle.  I used this recipe for the buttercream toppers: http://www.craftymorning.com/easy-snowflake-cupcakes-diy-toppers/ and this template in order to make the toppers look like ballerina tutus: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/ae/8e/b9/ae8eb9df463fde74707d4b7e7192a680.jpg.  I simply used a little bit of red food coloring to make the buttercream toppers pink. I then piped the buttercream frosting on to a piece of wax paper on a tray with templates of the tutu that I printed and placed under the wax paper.  Unlike the SF Giants cake, I didn't have to make sure that the template was backwards before piping the design since the tutu is pretty symmetrical.  I used a star tip when the frosting on top of the cake once again because I feel that the star tip is best at adding ridges to the frosting.  I also used a star tip when piping the tutu, but this star tip was much smaller so that I could be more exact.  One of the major problems I had when piping the tutu was that buttercream melts extremely quickly, so the first few tutus came out extremely well, with the ridges appearing, but after a while, the buttercream started melting in the bag because of the warmness of my hand and the ridges no longer appeared.  As a result, I had to continually refill the bag while dumping out any excess buttercream that became overheated.  In addition, I discovered that I had to transfer the tutus onto the cupcakes quite quickly so that the heat from my hand wouldn't melt the tutu before I was able to place it onto the cupcake.

My next goal is to try to make something other than cupcakes to see if I can decorate those too and to expand my pastry making knowledge and skills.

Total Estimated Time: 2 hours
Total Time Logged: 16.5 hours

My Neighbor Totoro

Yesterday, on January 28th, I baked buttermilk chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.  I used this recipe for the buttermilk chocolate cupcakes: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/buttermilk-chocolate-cupcakes and this recipe for the vanilla buttercream frosting:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/quick-vanilla-buttercream-frosting-recipe.html.  However, I reduced the sugar for the chocolate cupcakes from 1-1/2 cups to about 1-1/4 cups and I reduced the sugar for the vanilla buttercream frosting by one cup (from 3 cups to 2 cups of confectioner's sugar).
The inspiration behind the cupcakes is the character Totoro, from the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro.  (For a picture of Totoro: http://www.imgbase.info/images/safe-wallpapers/anime/my_neighbor_totoro/35735_my_neighbor_totoro.jpg).  Totoro is a lovable, fluffy character who lives in a tree, so I chose to bake chocolate cupcakes to make the trunk of the tree and dyed the buttercream frosting green to represent some bundles of leaves of the tree.  The bundles of leaves are surrounding Totoro on the final cupcakes and Totoro is sitting on top of the "tree," just as he would be when sleeping in the tree in the film.  The Totoros on my cupcakes were made out of marzipan using this recipe:  http://candy.about.com/od/marzipancandyrecipes/r/Marzipan.htm.  I simply dyed some of the marzipan gray, shaped the marzipan into Totoros, and placed some marzipan that had no food coloring for Totoro's stomach.  I used a toothpick and some black food coloring and drew on Totoro's eyes and "mustaches" on his stomach.

The next task will be for me to once again try to bake another type of cake that's not chocolate (red velvet is essentially chocolate cake).

Total Estimated Time: 4.5 hours
Total Time Logged: 14.5 hours

Here are a few pictures of each of the sides of a single Totoro made of marzipan:

Here are some pictures of 3 of the cupcakes (I tried to take pictures of the cupcakes from all angles):

Snowman

I decided to decorate a cake as a snowman.  I used the same red velvet and cream cheese frosting recipes as before (there seems to be a recurring theme with red velvet cake, but I assure you that there will be different types of cakes soon).  I used a snowman head silicone mold that I stumbled upon after Christmas, and I used the basic, 10-inch diameter pan for the body of the snowman.  The cake ended up being a single-layer cake.  I simply dyed the cream cheese frosting orange for the carrot nose and black for the eyes, buttons, and hat.  I placed a small gummy butterfly on the snowman's hat to add a little bit of playful character to the snowman.  To add texture to the snowman and to make the snowman seem as if he were made of actual snowflakes instead of a smooth, unrealistic texture, I placed coconut flakes on top of the cream cheese frosting.  I found that doing so was somewhat difficult, as alot of the coconut flakes wouldn't stick on to the frosting.  In addition, trying to separate the different colors of frosting was very tedious.  Furthermore, when I tried piping on the eyes, mouth, nose, and buttons, the icing wouldn't really stick and kept coming up off of the cake when I lifted my piping bag, so I had to use a toothpick to separate the icing from the tip.

The nex task will be to try to expand my baking skills by baking another type of cake other than red velvet cake.

Total Estimated Time: 3 hours
Total Time Logged: 9.5 hours.

Enjoy the rest of the winter season and I hope you all are as happy as the snowman!