Cupcakes, Cakes, and Costco

 I have had quite a bit of baking in the last two weeks which has turned out to be fun and challenging!  Last Saturday, I had an order for three dozen mini cupcakes, but each dozen was a different flavor.  Red velvet, chocolate-chocolate, and strawberry...all three are favorites of mine!  Since one batch of batter makes forty-eight mini cupcakes I ended up with A LOT of extra cupcakes....my husband and Jed love when that happens:)  I even posted on Facebook that I had extras and for friends to stop by and get some if they wanted.  I had four or five eager takers!

           These are the red velvet before frosting.

          The dark chocolate before frosting.

           And, the strawberry sans frosting.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting, but here are the other two as finished products.

   Red velvet with a white chocolate cream cheese frosting

  And, strawberry cupcakes with the same white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

    This past weekend I was challenged with my first cake order!  The request was for three angel food cakes.  I did quite a bit of research and some experimenting before tackling the actual three cakes that would be the final products.  This is how the final process went (for the most part)....

 Many, many egg whites were used in the making of the three cakes!  This is the batter at the beginning of beating.

     This is the batter at the end of beating....a huge increase in volume!

                       Cooling...

                   And, completion!

         I will never again buy an angel food cake!
I am hoping to have the photos of the decorated cakes for you sometime next week....they were for a French farmhouse themed baby shower. (so fun, right!?)

   I usually make a weekly trek to Costco, and this week my husband and Jed were with me when I went.  Roaming up and down each aisle is one of my favorite things to do, and on a previous trip I had seen two cake stands that were very cute.  I thought they would be great for displaying cupcakes!  I just happened to "wander" down that same aisle with Kyle and Jed and, what do you know, there were the two cute cake stands.  BUT wait....on my previous visit I saw that they came in white, but that night they had one box that had the two cake stands in a milky green color!!! That made me even more excited and the next thing I knew, the box was in out cart and Kyle said, "Well, that's one thing I can mark off your Valentine list." WOOOHOOOO!!! So here is a photo of my new favorite cupcake displays.

  More baking to come next week!