New Year's Eve Lobster Cake

Welcome to my new blog! I have a number of cupcake recipes that I hope to try over the coming months, and I thought that having a blog to record my cupcake-baking experiences and cupcake-related pictures might be fun.

But before I describe my most recent baking adventure, let me introduce my trusty sous-chef, Eli, who has been involved in cupcake-baking with me since the tender age of 12 weeks. Here he is in early January 2011, exhausted after baking two dozen red velvet cupcakes with me. You may note that he has some confectioners sugar on his fur!

Now a big, almost grown-up one-year old, he's super-excited to join me in welcoming you to this blog. Perhaps he'll even have a blog post of his own from time-to-time.

Back to the topic of this particular blog post. Why a lobster cake, you may ask? Well, we have a fun New Year's Eve tradition of getting together with our friends K and M to enjoy a memorable dinner, cocktails, and the company of dear friends while ringing in the New Year. Last year, we roasted an entire suckling pig, which we fondly named Vincent Ham Gogh, after he lost an ear in an unfortunate incident. This year, we'll enjoy a New England style clam bake and lobster boil, so I thought it would be fun to try to create a lobster cake. Initially, I'd contemplated linking together a bunch of red cupcakes to make a lobster, but I decided to branch out and bake a cake instead. And so that's how it happens that my first blog posting on this cupcake blog is actually about cake instead!

So, with Eli at my side, we embarked on our cake baking adventure early this afternoon.

Never having baked a lobster-shaped cake before, I wasn't quite sure how to proceed, but after deciding not to buy the $350 lobster-shaped cake pan I found online, I opted to use a football-shaped cake pan as the lobster body. I used my regular red velvet cupcake recipe and added a few drops of yellow food coloring to give the batter a reddish-orange lobstery color, then mixed in some chocolate chips and baked the cake for just under an hour.

I wasn't quite sure how much cake I'd need for this endeavor, so after the football/lobster body came out of the oven, I prepared not one, not two, but three 9 x 13 cakes.

While the cakes were baking, I made some cream cheese frosting, and then I tried to use the right mixture of food coloring to make the frosting lobster color. My first attempt failed, and instead of a nice orangey-reddish-brownish color, I had a big bowl full of a substance that looked as if it would be more at home at a toxic waste site than in the kitchen.

Thankfully, R, who has a great eye for color, came to my aid, and after adding some drops of blue and green food coloring to the frosting, the color was much less alarming. Once the cakes were out of the oven and had cooled sufficiently, it was time for the fun to begin, as I began sculpting the cake into a lobster. At first, the cake looked like a fish.

Soon, R and I realized the cookie sheet I'd initially placed the cake on wouldn't be big enough, so in a difficult and rather risky maneuver, we moved the cake over to a big cutting board. After I added the legs, cut from the edges of one of the 9 x 13 cakes, the fish began to look somewhat like a lobster.

Next up: the claws! I had made some which we deemed "wimpy," so R went to work creating a more substantial set of claws. He practiced on one of the cakes that we'd realized we didn't need, and then he went to work carving the actual claws for the lobster cake. I think you'll agree his results are pretty impressive!

Then, it was time to frost the cake. Believe it or not, this process took close to 90 minutes! Between all sorts of angles on the cake and lots of crumbs coming off of the cake while I was frosting it, it was a tricky process to say the least. Yikes! Here is the cake partially frosted.

And here is the cake with the claws frosted as well. You can see what a mess I made as I was frosting. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to clean wax paper!

I bought red Twizzlers to use for the antennae and legs, and R had the great idea of using some Twizzler segments on the tail to give it the striated look of a real lobster tail.

Rather than taking the time to make black frosting (which I guess I'd do by mixing together red, yellow, green, and blue food coloring), I piped some store-bought black frosting through a pastry tip and used that to create the lobster's eyes.

For the final step, I added the Twizzler antennae and legs. And here is the New Year's Eve lobster cake!

Once we arrived at K and M's house, we got a little creative and took one more picture of the cake.

Happy New Year, everyone! May your 2012 be full of health, happiness, fun adventures, peace, dreams come true . . .and lobster!

96 is Higher than Eli Can Count on His Paws

Eli and I are nothing if not intrepid. Well, he is anyway, so when he suggested it might be fun to bake eight dozen cupcakes for the attendees of a holiday concert given by our beloved R and his singing group this weekend, I couldn't say no. Eli really can be quite persuasive. It's something about those big brown eyes that gets me every time!

And that explains how it is that I ended up at Safeway late on Saturday afternoon with a shopping cart full of cupcake-baking ingredients. The checkout lady said, "Hmmm . . .it looks as if you're going to be doing some baking." I worried that if I told her I planned to bake 96 cupcakes, she might call me crazy. And if I told her that Eli planned to help me, she might really think I was off my rocker. So instead of going into detail, I smiled and said, "Yes." And left it at that.

I think Eli wasn't 100% sure that I'd actually make the 96 cupcakes after I told him I would, so he was quite pleased when I arrived with several bags full of groceries, and he agreed to help me get everything organized before we began baking.

Eli and I had debated a bit about what flavors of cupcakes to bake. He is a big fan of red velvet, because red is his favorite color. (He insists he can see red, even though most information I've seen suggests that red is one of the more difficult colors for dogs to perceive. But what do I know?) So, Eli gave the hard sell for red velvet, and we decided to make two dozen red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. After much back and forth, we also agreed to bake two dozen German chocolate cupcakes, two dozen lemon cupcakes, and two dozen cappuccino chip cupcakes with mocha buttercream frosting, which are MY favorite.

After getting all of the ingredients unpacked and organized, I was ready to begin baking. Eli, however, was otherwise occupied, happily munching on a bully stick.

Finally, I convinced him to leave his bully stick munching for later, and he jumped right into the project, happily inspecting the lemon cupcake batter I'd put together. Thankfully, he gave the thumbs up (as much as a dog can give the thumbs up, not having true thumbs), and I put the cupcakes into the oven.

For the next several hours, we baked and baked . . .and frosted and frosted. As midnight approached, I was getting very sleepy. Fortunately, Eli was still wide awake and provided lots of encouragement.

Finally, at about 1:15 this morning, we finished all eight dozen cupcakes! Eli was insistent that I share pictures with you of the fruits of our labor. Honestly, I think it's a bit over the top to show you this many pictures, but far be it for me to deny Eli, especially after he was so helpful with all of the baking and frosting. So, here are 24 lemon cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting topped with lemon zest.

And 24 cappuccino chip cupcakes with mocha buttercream frosting, topped with mini-chocolate chips.

And 24 red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting topped with mini-chocolate chips and red sugar. Eli wants me to remind you that these are his FAVORITE!

And finally, 24 German chocolate cupcakes, which are my least favorite to make because the frosting requires 20 minutes of uninterrupted stirring with a wooden spoon. I have no idea why. One time, I couldn't find a wooden spoon. So I used wooden ruler to stir the frosting. Don't worry! I washed it first. I thought that was pretty creative of me, but Eli is sitting here shaking his head and looking at me rather critically. I think he disagrees.

And here are all eight dozen cupcakes, loaded into carrying cases to take to the concert later today.

I'd like to mention that sometime between when I packed up all of the cupcakes and finished doing all of the dishes, my faithful sidekick disappeared. I wasn't quite sure where he had gone. Then I found him.

I was a little disappointed he abandoned me before this cupcake baking extravaganza reached its close, but can I blame him? Nope! It's almost 3:00 in the morning, and he is only one. Probably I should be reported to ASPCA for keeping Eli up past his bedtime. He definitely has the right idea. Good night!

Turkey Cupcakes

I cannot tell a lie: I've back-dated this blog post. It's actually January right now, but Eli loves Thanksgiving (he thinks it may be his favorite holiday, due to the giblets), and he specifically requested that I tell you about my turkey cupcakes, even though he wasn't there when I baked them.

Because he wasn't there to help me, what started out as a fun project soon became sort of difficult, then frustrating, challenging, and almost a lost cause. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

My good friend, N, sent me a picture of some cookie/candy turkeys she'd seen and suggested they would make great cupcake toppers. I'm not 100% sure she was serious, but my mind was made up as soon as I saw the picture. I had to make these little turkeys!

The first step was procuring the ingredients, which was no easy feat. Have you ever tried to find candy corn post-Halloween? I don't know about where you live, but where I live, it's next to impossible. So, what did I do? I did what any twenty-first century woman would do: I ordered candy corn online. You didn't know this was possible? Don't worry. Neither did I.

Should you ever find yourself in the position of buying candy corn online, let me offer you a bit of unsolicited advice. The pictures of the bags of candy corn may not be true to size. The size of the candy corn bags may not be fully disclosed. Be careful. Otherwise, you, too, may be the somewhat reluctant owner of almost seven pounds of candy corn.

Okay, back to the cupcake making story! Today was one of my alternate work schedule days off, and so I thought I'd spend a couple of hours early this morning making the cupcakes. Little did I know that in addition to making cupcakes all morning, I was still making them well in the afternoon. From start to finish, this was a nine-hour endeavor! Eli is telling me not to complain and urges me instead to share with you this picture of the ingredients. According to Eli, it's hard to know where you're going if you don't know where you started. So, without further ado, here are all of the ingredients for 48 turkey cupcakes.

The first step was to put five candy corn "feathers" into each Double Stuf Oreo. I chose Double Stuf Oreos rather than the regular kind beacuse I figured the extra portion of filling would give me more room to place each feather. Just for good measure, I anchored each feather with a little dab of chocolate frosting. It didn't take me much time to have all of the feathers in place on 48 cookies. That's 240 feathers for those of you who are keeping track.

That was the easiest part of this project. The next step, fusing together each Oreo with feathers with the Oreo that was the base of the cupcake topper, was the most difficult. For each set of Oreos, I put some chocolate frosting on the top of one and on the edge of the other, and then I had to hold the two Oreos together for two minutes while the frosting began to set, for a grand total of 96 minutes, or more than an hour-and-a-half!!! I then had to let the Oreos further set for about an hour before I could do anything else. That in and of itself was tricky, but what was even trickier was that the added weight of the feathers was just too much in some cases, and more than half of the Oreos fell over and I had to begin the process all over again. Ack! Here is a picture of what the Oreos looked like once they were combined.

While waiting for the frosting on the Oreos to set, I prepared the 48 turkey bodies (mini Reeses peanut butter cups), 48 turkey heads (Whoppers), and 48 turkey beaks (the white tips of candy corn; I think they look like baby teeth!).

Once I was sure the connection between the Oreos was strong enough, I lay each "turkey" on his back and attached the Reeses peanut butter cup body with a little bit of chocolate frosting.

Then, I put a bit of frosting onto the bottom and side of a Whopper and stuck that onto the body as the turkey head. That was a bit difficult, because given that the Whopper is round, it was inclined to roll right off, so I had to hold it in place longer than I had the Reeses peanut butter cup.

By this point, it was almost 5:00 in the afternoon, and I felt I was entitled to a break from the turkey craziness.

After a brief few moments of indulgence, it was time to get back to work! Next, with a little bit of yellow frosting, I attached a candy corn tip beak onto each Whopper turkey head.

And then it was time for the eyes. I thought this would be difficult, because the black non-pareil eyes are so small, but it turned out this step wasn't so tricky after all, although you'll note that the eyes are uneven on some of the turkey faces! For each eye, I put a little dab of yellow frosting onto the Whopper head, then smushed a black non-pareil into the middle of the dot of frosting.

Then, I added a little line of red frosting under each turkey chin to make a teeny turkey gobbler. Or is it called a gobble? What are those things called? And what are they for? I have no idea!

While the turkey faces were drying, I made some cream cheese frosting and frosted the four dozen German chocolate cupcakes I'd baked earlier today.

Once I was sure the turkey faces had set, I stood up each little turkey and made feet out of yellow frosting. The lines of frosting were thicker than I'd hoped for, so the turkey feet are messier than I'd planned.

Here is the whole army of 48 turkeys, ready to march to the tops of 48 German chocolate cupcakes!

When I first placed the turkeys on top of the cupcakes, there wasn't enough frosting to hold the turkeys in place, and they fell over. Fortunately, I'd made enough frosting that I was able to add more to each cupcake, and then I jammed the turkeys into place. Here are a dozen cupcakes, topped with turkeys.

I finished the project! It was much more involved and time consuming than I had anticipated. I don't think I'll ever make these turkey cupcake toppers again. Or if I do, I'll be sure to do so at a time when Eli's calendar is open, so he can provide much-needed moral support!