Wedding Cupcakes!

Here are some lovely shots of my September wedding cupcakes from our photographer Zoe Collyer (zoecollyer.co.uk). Thank you Zoe!

xo

Happy Halloween!

The scariest cupcakes ever! These are chocolate with m&ms in side them with vanilla frosting. Spiders, spider webs and Boo! Very scary...

Happy Halloween :)

xo

Finally!!! A little update on where I've been...

I must apologize for the tardiness of this post! Things have been a little bit busy, and we only made it home yesterday. The cakes were a success in England :) Thankfully! And they looked really lovely on the day.

The little photos above were taken by the very talented Zoe Collyer, and there are more to be found on her blog: http://www.zoecollyer.co.uk/index.php/home/comments/ben_and_meag_cheers_to_love

Along with some non-cake related photos.

My goal is to get the recipes of these cakes up tonight on the recipe section of the blog.

Thanks again to Zoe and to all of our guests on 25th September for making the day so memorable. You were a pleasure to bake for :)

xo meag

happy father's day!

what a day! 30 degrees and sunny, can't ask for much more....except for maybe a toblerone cupcake?! these were my very own creation and they were a success! first i made a chocolate cupcake batter and included pieces of chopped up toblerone. for the frosting i melted an entire dark chocolate toblerone bar and mixed it into the buttercream and it had to be topped off with a toblerone triangle :) i went a bit crazy with the frosting but everyone got out of here alive haha

happy fathers day dad! xo

chocolate fudge!

these were some super chocolate-y fudge cupcakes that i made this past weekend for a delightful bbq! this are most likely going to be the chocolate representative in september.

travel safe tong & keith and good luck in Australia! 

xo

i (heart) vanilla and chocolate

this is not a new recipe, but it is a good one! vanilla cupcakes with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. i added the hearts even though it's not valentines, just because i love cupcakes ;) awwwww haha

xo

retire to dessert

happy retirement dad! i made these 'golf inspired' cupcakes for a party at Cirillo's Culinary Academy on Dundas West. it was a great night and the cupcakes went down really well! there were three flavors; the 19th hole (chocolate stout cake with chocolate whiskey ganache and chocolate whiskey frosting), it's a gimme (vanilla cake with raspberry curd swirl and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream with raspberry curd drizzle), and sand trap (chocolate stout cake with caramel frosting). there wasn't too much that screamed 'golf' about the flavours, just the names :) 

xo

spring/easter cakes!

here are some easter egg cupcakes, i had lots of fun using my new grass piping tip :) and my new mini cake pan! there will be more baking fun all week, i can't wait! these are chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with vanilla swiss meringue butter cream.
here's another great pic by lionel :
http://greenteaandicecream.blogspot.com/2010/03/meag-brought-over-more-delicious.html

and the winners are...

the first two rounds of voting have finished and the most popular flavors are chocolate with white chocolate frosting and the chocolate cheesecake cupcakes! round three is now up so please vote away :)

this weekend is going to be all about the mini cupcakes with my new mini pan and some fun spring/easter decorations xo

last but not least from the weekend...

i had to do something with the left over chocolate butter cream from the mini cake filling :) xo

practice makes perfect

in preparation for lindsay's arrival on sunday i made two mini cakes for us to fondant, using the techniques i learned in my course yesterday. this picture is one of them following the 'crumb coat' step, before the final mask. this time i made two-layer vanilla mini cakes with chocolate swiss meringue butter cream filling and vanilla frosting.

once she arrived we started playing with fondant! see below...

it turns out that covering such small round cakes with fondant is more difficult than i thought it would be :) good thing i had a patient instructor! eventually the cakes looked like this...

and then i was let loose on her butterfly shape cutters!!! it was a bit messy...but so fun! thanks for all the tips and tricks bevi :) xo

Lá Fhéile Pádraig!

i hope that says what i think it does :) happy st. patrick's day everyone!

to celebrate i made some seriously drunken cupcakes. they are chocolate stout (guiness) cupcakes with bailey's chocolate ganache filling and bailey's butter cream frosting and you can taste the alcohol! haha

when you make filled cupcakes the centre of the cake must be removed before you can pipe in the filling and then you replace just enough to cover the top above the filling. once you have repeated this 24 times there is a bit of cake left over from the middle of each cupcake. in the spirit of not wasting anything that has been soaked in spirit ;) i made a few cake pops out of the left over cake. this is easy and delicious, just take some crumbled cake and mix it with frosting or in this case the extra ganache, and then roll into even sized pops. melt some chocolate or melting discs and dip the pops in and top with any sprinkles or decorations and put in the freezer for a few minutes just to solidify. and then you have delicious bite sized cake pops!

doug's ice cream sandwich

my brother is in his 3rd year of the hospitality program at guelph and this semester he, along with some classmates, gets to run the campus restaurant. this is the dessert item they have chosen to serve, home made ice cream sandwiches. looks soooo good! good luck doug, wish i could be there! xo

olympic brownies!

these brownies don't actually have anything to do with the olympics, other than they're pretty much the only thing i've managed to bake since the winter olympics began. not your classic brownie, with white chocolate and butterscotch chips on top, but definitely the ultimate brownie base. in my opinion, brownies are meant to be dense and made from real chocolate not light and cakey with cocoa. the brownie recipe i've been using for a couple of years now has got to be the best, small ingredient list, simple to make and produces great results. i will post it on the recipe page later on, now it's back to the snowboarding and my brownies :)

go canada!

chocolate cheesecake cupcakes

they're an alliteration! i baked these this evening due to pressure to deliver cupcakes at work this week haha you know who you are! these chocolate cheesecake cupcakes, also known as black bottom cupcakes, are really quite unusual. chocolate cupcake surrounding a chocolate-chip cheesecake centre, unfrosted. we just sampled one for the first time and i think the cheesecake component might be a bit on the sweet, cloying side. it will be interesting to see what the reaction tomorrow at work will be...

m

UPDATE: these were much better the day after baking them, the cheesecake had set a bit better and the sweetness was dialed down. on the whole these are really a dessert cake on their own, quite heavy and filling. with this in mind i don't think they'll be in the running for september, with all of the delicious snacks people will have enjoyed before sampling our dessert i think a lighter treat would be better appreciated.

early valentine's cupcakes

here are the devil's food cake cupcakes with white chocolate buttercream frosting, so far they're getting great reviews. i made an attempt to use shimmer dust on them and have come to the realisation that shimmer dust is for fondant or royal icing applications...duh! so there is one cupcake for my valentine that has big clumps of shimmer on it ;) that is love xo

...testing...testing...

first post!

this is the first of the great cupcake recipe taste test challenge! these were vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream, enjoyed at nanny's birthday lunch :) no complaints yet. next challenge recipe will be the double chocolate, chocolate cupcake with white chocolate buttercream, perfect for valentines!

this weekend my baking exploits will include my first attempt at a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, yum! wish me luck...

m