Cake Mix Cupcakes? Get out!

Stumbled across this new site called Cake Mix Madness. Mostly cakes, but it's easy enough to convert cake mix recipes to cupcake recipes. This could really cut down on the time it takes to whip up a quick dessert for the kids' parties!

Cake Mix Madness

New Chocolate Cupcakes Website

There's a new chocolate cupcakes recipe website called, appropriately enough, ChocolateCupcakes.net.

The site features several delicious recipes and seems to be adding new ones daily, including:

• Chocolate Mint Cupcakes
• Chocolate Mocha Cupcakes
• Simply Chocolate Cupcakes

and lots more. There are also links to chocolate manufacturers and recipes for frosting/icing. If you are especially interested in chocolate cupcakes and chocolate cupcake ideas, this looks like the site to bookmark!

Fun Halloween Cakes

Want a great idea for Halloween cakes? You can get as fancy as you want with the incredible Halloween cupcake ideas on the web. Halloween cakes can either be traditional sheet or layer cakes, or you can try making a cupcake cake, which makes it easy to divvy up pieces.

If you want to make a Halloween cupcake cake, decide on a design. For example, check out these nifty Halloween cupcake ideas.

Make a batch or two of cupcakes and then arrange them into the general shape of the character you want to make. For example, using the bat design from Cupcake Ideas Now! you can either make a round cake with the design on it, or use the shape of the bat as the shape of your cake.

You'll probably want to buy or make some fondant, gum paste, or sugar paste for layering on top. You can find a recipe at Kimberley Chapman's web site. The gum paste makes a nice flexible layer that will sit on top of a bunch of cupcakes, without falling apart or breaking along the spaces between the cupcakes.

Take your time and start simple, adding the big layers of color first. Then add details when the frosting has firmed up a little.

Free Cupcake Designs Guide

Cool FREE Halloween Cupcake Ideas

Hey there! I found this really cool Halloween cupcake ideas guide. Some of the pictures are really insane! But, it gave me some good ideas for cupcakes. Here's one of their designs (and they have step by step visuals too). I don't think they'll mind that I put it up there. After all, it's free.

The PDF guide has a recipe for something called Royal Icing, which is pretty interesting. Instead of a regular buttercream frosting, it's made with egg whites or something called meringue powder (I found some at a cooking store).

The meringue makes the frosting really smooth and it dries slightly hard, so you can layer colors on top of each other.

Also, I went to the website for the cupcake ideas and there were a couple of cupcake recipes that look pretty good. I'll probably try them out this weekend.

And I started having cupcake parties with my friends, and it's really fun. So instead of sitting around watching TV, we listen to music, make cupcakes, and talk. We've had three different parties in the last month and every time we get better at making our designs. It's fun to see who can come up with the best designs! Give it a try.

FREE Halloween Cupcake Designs Guide

Series of Halloween Cupcake Ideas!

Halloween isn't far off, only two months, but you still have time to try out some of these excellent cupcake ideas. I'll add a few posts with different ideas. Sure, if your child loves some character and you're hosting a party, by all means make the cupcakes to celebrate that character or story line. You can turn almost any character set into a Halloween theme!

Harry Potter Cupcake Ideas

Today, let's talk about Harry Potter cupcake ideas. Now, you can either go with a kit or recipe plan like the one offered by ThePartyWorks.com, here:



Or you can create your own. If I was running out of time, I'd definitely consider the Harry Potter Cake and Cupcake Decorating Kit at ThePartyWorks, but if I had more time, here's what I'd do.

Read through the books (I just finished rereading "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," myself!) and make a list of the various Weasley Brothers' products. You can make dozens of cool cupcakes and other morsels based on some of these ideas. If you don't have time to read the books, check out the list on Wikipedia.

Weasley's Wheezes?

How about cupcake Nosebleed Nougats? Get some plastic noses at a toy store, wash them well, and make red or green Jello noses, then place them on top of the cupcakes.

Or how about Puking Pastilles? A nice bunch of crushed walnuts in a beige sugar cream frosting, with maybe some corn kernels scattered about would be utterly disgusting!

Or whip up small mini-cupcakes and decorate them with wildly colored frosting, eyeballs, and gummy worms and call them Skiving Snackboxes!

Last but certainly not least, create cupcakes with black frosting and use bright green frosting to create the Dark Mark on top, as shown in the upper right of this page. That's sure to get everybody screaming!

Ok, more ideas to come soon!

How Would You Like to Teach Cake Decorating?

How would you like to teach cake decorating? If you're a cake decorator (or a cupcake decorator!) check out Wilton's site. They are always looking for decorators and actually have a fairly detailed online application form.

The application is a little scary (it's big!), but don't let it stop you. Just take your time and fill it out over a couple of days, if you need to. I'd print it out and fill it out by hand, then enter it in later.

Wilton's also has a pretty good book on cupcakes called Cupcakes Fun! with over 150 how-to cupcakes & treat designs for every occasion.

Oh Yeah, Let's Not Forget the Japanese Cupcake Ideas

I've seen this one around the Web for awhile, but it's always worth a second look. Check out the lovescool.com site for more info, and for one of the commenters suggestions on how to microwave cupcakes using boxed cake mix.

I haven't had the courage to try that yet, but if you do, let me know how it is!

And, if you're interested in some Asian baking (not Japanese, but really cool!) get a hold of this cookbook:

A Collection of Fine Baking: The Recipes of Young Mo Kim

Young Mo Kim is a Korean baker whose work is just amazing!