Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Avocado Cream Cheese Frosting

Okay, I know what you are thinking... How could that be any good? Well, I would have to say: sugar.

The vegan chocolate cupcakes come from an old recipe used often in the depression. An oldie and a goodie! You can find it under "Crazy Cake." I'm pretty sure they didn't have avocado frosting back in the depression... maybe in California or Mexico? I honestly think using an avocado cream cheese frosting is more for the wow factor than anything. It's good, but not amazing. I rather use my high-priced fruit/vegi on tacos or chips.

Avocado Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

8 oz. Cream cheese, softened
½ cup butter, softened
1 Avocado, peeled, pitted, pureed
13 oz. powdered sugar
4 tsp. sour cream
½ tsp. pure vanilla extract

Candy Birthday Cake

Devils Food Cake with Cookies and Cream Mousse and Vanilla Buttercream
fondant accents, lollipops, and gumballs

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cake with Cream Cheese & Butterfinger Frosting

This year I had the pleasure of making my Grandma's birthday cake. Thanks mom for hiring me- I loved to be able to do this!

This cake was a little time consuming, but so worth it. Each component was amazing. The peanut butter cake was tasty, the chocolate/peanut butter ganache was delicous on it's own, and the cream cheese frosting wasn't too sweet and it was super fluffly. It will be my always recipe for cream cheese frosting.

Thank you Bon Appetit for an amazing recipe.

Lightining McQueen cake from the Disney "Cars" movie

This was a fun cake! I made it for Gunnar's 5th birthday. I bought a blank costco cake and decorated it. Everything is edible excpet for the flags, car, and candles of course. The grandstand is rice crispy treats covered in frosting. It was a lot of work, but I'm happy with the results.

Where would I be without the love and support of my family? Thanks Mom for all of your help!

KT's cake

My sister is going to The Republic of Korea for a year!!! I'm so going to miss her. I'm sure she will have a great time teaching the little Kindergarteners English and experiencing Asia. But, I will so miss her!Her trip inspired me to make my first hibiscus out of fondant. Dave and I also painted the stamen and the pedals to make it look more realistic. FYI the hibiscus is the Korean flower. I also practiced my piping skills with the paisly/henna.

whoa!

Number 1 is a week away from Kindergarten. Totally crazy. She'll learn math and science in Spanish and if we keep it up she'll be bi-lingual by the 6th grade. Totally more crazy.

I joined the YMCA or just "The Y" today.

Everything is twice as much here than in Tucson. Sucks.

Dave and I have a hot date planned this weekend. It's our 6 year wedding anniversary.


My attempt at a Hazlenut Chiffon cake with Mocha Buttercream Frosting. Will have to try it again. The sign says, "Happy Birthday You Are Craptacular!" The frosting was the shit. haha

Speaking of cake. I signed up for the 3rd and final Wilton class. Starts on Friday. I'm looking forward to it!

Celebration Cake

I'm personally not a fan of traditional birthday cakes, so for my birthday I made a celebration cake. Vanilla cake, raspberry buttercream, chocolate hazelnut piourettes, fresh berries.

Wilton Course 2 Final Cake

The last class for the Wilton course 2 was a few days before Easter, so I was able to provide dessert for Easter :) However, I was at the begining stages of a sinus infection, so I wasn't able to go to the last class where we would have learned basket weaving and some other techniques. I will make up the portion I missed at a later date.

The flowers are made of royal icing, which is rock hard and not very tasty. Well, they aren't bad if you like the taste of sugar. The flowers were made over the course of three weeks. Those things can sit out that long before they are eaten. Ewww.

Anways.. I'm taking a small break from cake decorating classes. Hopefully in May I will start again.

Tonight was "Final Cake" night for course one. I decided that I am going to continue on with class two. I wasn't sure if I wanted to at first, but to my delight we will only have to bake/frost one cake in the course! Baking and frosting the cake took a lot of time away from the day-to-day...

Cake #2-- Drop Swirl Flowers

There's a story behind this cake, but I'll spare everyone the details. I'd like to think that the end product turned out pretty okay.

There are two secrets I've learned to make the frosting smooth.

1. After you've cleaned of the spreader/knife get it a little wet.

2. After you're done getting it as smooth as you can with the knife, wait until there is a "crust" of frosting then pat it down with parchment paper on the top and sides.

I think I'm going to practice writing and add the girls' names... They'll think that they're pretty special! :)

I'm obsessed with cakes!

I told Dave that it's like a dream come true that I'm taking this class. Every free moment I get I'm looking at cakes online. I've also traced circles on drawing paper and came up with layouts/designs/color schemes for cakes.

My love of cake must have rubbed off on the girls. Today they had their well check appointments and when the doc asked K what her favorite food was she replied, "cake!"

So far my interest has only been in decorating, but I'm sure with time I'll be concered with the actual cake and want to make the homemade kind.

For lesson #3, I had the AWESOME idea of baking cakes in tin cans. You know like pouring batter into soup cans and then baking. I want to do mini cakes for class so this seemed logical. I haven't found much info on it online because I suppose you can buy special cake pans for mini cakes. But I'm more of the "I can get the same result by being more creative (cheaper)." So coming soon you will find my "bake cakes in a can" keyword rich blog post.

In my search of amzing cakes I came across this cute food site: www.epicute.com. I will be looking here often for cute food ideas!

Cake

Being I love food and being creative with food, I enrolled in a Wilton Method cake decorating class. I'm such a dork, but I've always wanted to learn how. I'm loving all aspects of the class. I love the teaching method, the people, and how it lets me be creative and thoughtful. I'm also happy that I will be able to make cakes for the people I love and be able to make them a little more special than Walmart.

Below is my first attempt at stars. We had various design options to choose from. I opted to use one of my cookie-cutters so I wouldn't need to mix so many different colors of frosting ;o)

I'm having fun thinking of what I want to do next week. There are so many options!!

The only complatint I have about making a cake every week is who i going to eat them all?!