My blog has moved! Redirecting...

You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit http://www.honeybeebakeshop.net/wp/?page_id=5 and update your bookmarks.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Mod Cupcakes

Mod Cupcakes
August 2008


This is the summer of cupcakes and cookies. I think people feel less guilty snacking on a cupcake or a cookie on a hot summer day, as opposed to a "huge" slice of cake. This is the latest from the oven. Yummy.

Cupcake Details:
  • Cake: Dark chocolate with white chocolate chunks
  • Icing: Lemon-Vanilla buttercream swirls
  • Decorations: Piped buttercream and silver foil wrappers

Monday, August 25, 2008

Carrot Cupcakes

Carrot Cupcakes
August 2008

Eat Your Veggies. Seriously. If all veggies tasted this good I could swing being vegetarian.

These carrot cake cupcakes were an experiment. An experiment in what? Well, carrot cake is usually in full cake form. I was nervous that baking them into tiny morsels would allow for too much moisture to escape. No one wants to eat a dry, crumbly cupcake full of carrots. Yuck! Lucky for me Martha had a fabulous recipe for mini carrot loaves that adapted beautifully. I even used a new frosting recipe with no Crisco (gasp!).

In my mind there are two kinds of carrot cake. The dark molasses heavy/sticky kind with big walnuts and the lighter spice cake style that favors raisins. I chose team raisin. So I guess you could say these are fruit and veggie cakes... So go eat your veggies.


Cupcake details:
  • Cake: Carrot cake with freshly grated carrots and juice
  • Frosting: Cream cheese frosting with fresh lemon juice
  • Decorations: Orange-tinted chocolate wafers (my preference over marzipan carrots)

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Orchid Cake

Orchid Cake

August 2008

This weekend I was at home watching the Olympics (Go USA!) and decided to use my couch time to work on sugar flowers. I tested out a new orchid and this cake sprung up around that.

The first step in “growing” flowers is to roll and cut the petal and leaf shapes which are individually attached to thin wires. After the pieces are dried (overnight/several days) they are arranged in the shape of the flower and bound with floral tape (the green stretchy-sticky stuff). The porcelain-like flower is still pure white at this point.

One the flower is assembled and fully dried, the color is applied using pigmented dusts. First the base colors are added to the center stamen of the flower (yellow for pollen).



Next I used a pale green on the throat and placed the darker dotted pattern on with a fine tipped food color marker. The main petals also got a pale pink all-over.


A warmer pink lines the edges because when you look closely at photos of orchids there is a LOT going on in terms of color variety and shading patterns. The two onthe right have been shaded while the right hand flower is still pale.
The final step was to shade with a dark hunter green that was also applied to the leaves and then coat the whole flower with a shiny petal dust that gives it a slightly moist look.

Since the flowers have a pink and green influence I baked a pistachio pound cake recipe that I have been dying to try and covered the top with the pale pink rolled buttercream that I had left from the baby onesie cookies.

This vanilla frosting was a new experiment, but it wasn’t as thick as I like when decorating. Luckily, the focus here is really the flowers, so the borders can be simple. Win some, lose some! All in all, I am happy with this tasty experiment. The finished product:



Cake Details:
  • Cake: Pistachio pound cake
  • Filling: Chocolate ganache
  • Icing: Vanilla icing with pink raspberry rolled buttercream on the top
  • Decorations: Hand-made gumpaste flowers

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Baby Onesie Cookies

Baby Onesie Cookies

August 2008

Wow- what a baby boom! I am so excited for all of the new babies this week that I mixed up a large batch of onesie cookies to bring to hospitals, showers, and gatherings. Some are even heading into the mail.

These adorable onesies are made with cutter kits from Country Kitchen, which some CASANOVA (that would be the Cake and Sugar Artists of NOrthern Virginia) members discovered at the ICES convention and demo'ed for us last month. I think they are adorable!




Here is a wedding cake I am playing with as well. I do love the food color-markers.


UPDATE: Packaged cookies- ready for delivery.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Twilight / Breaking Dawn Cookies

Twilight / Breaking Dawn Cookies


August 2008

OK, I admit that I am addicted to the Twilight books. Some combination of the romance-suspense-thriller plot, the crazy cast of characters and the "bizarrely moral vampires" (what's not to love?) I am hooked. It is also possible that the ink used to print them emits an alluringly addictive substance that captures the mind into a euphoric trance. But maybe that's just me...

Or not. Because I keep reading stories like this one from the MTV movies site, and almost all of the TwilightMoms (all over 25, both married and single), who are perfectly rational adults swept away to rainy little Forks, WA to keep company with the "vegetarian" vampires in the Cullen family.


These are not short books, and reading the 700+ pager, Breaking Dawn, at its midnight release required both caffeine and appropriate snacks.



Lemon shortbread apples provided all of the "temptation" of Twilight's cover. This batch is sweetened up with rolled buttercream icing and red shimmer dust. Because it MUST dazzle in the sunlight. A few bites and I feel a lot better about being human.