Friday, February 26, 2010

Cupcake Catering

My MIL is having a party tonight. This is her menu of delicacies:

Meringue cookies
Wedding cookies (the ones with pecans and powdered sugar)
Hazelnut cookies (hazelnut sugar cookies sandwiched with apricot jam, one side dipped in chocolate)
Chocolate orange truffles
Fruit
Nuts
Coffee

Don't you want to eat that for the rest of your life?


I got to help with three flavors of cupcakes for the party.


Cupcake #1
Yellow cake with a little little bit of lemon zest with vanilla bean buttercream frosting and sugar sprinks




Cupcake #2
Espresso-spiked chocolate cake with tart cherry buttercream frosting and Whopper garnish


Cupcake #3
Walnut carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and lasso of toasted coconut



Can I share a dirty secret here? It's just us, right? Every time I bake a cake (I'm talking chocolate or yellow or white generally) from scratch, using like a real recipe and everything, I always think to myself, "That way way more trouble than it was worth." I made fancy chocolate cupcakes that required sifting and all this hoop-la, and they were HORRIBLE. They were bland and un-chocolatey and had a bitter aftertaste. Really? I had to throw them out. I will store this information away: box it is.

I do think there are a few exceptions. Carrot cake for one. But for the most part, I'm just going to add things in to the box cake mix if I want to fancify anything from here on out.

2 comments:

Sara said...

Oh...they look fabulous. When you told me the other day i wanted you to make them all just for me to enjoy!

The Hayden Family said...

those are too pretty to eat! but i imagine they are over the top delicious. and i love your descriptions..."lasso" being my fave.

and i couldn't agree more on the box secret!

Lucky MIL!