EASTER! A little cake with a lot of stuff!

I called dibs on making the cake for Easter this year.  You'd think that having a baking blog would entitle me to first dibs on all desserts for holidays but no such luck.  I'm not the only caker in this family.  So I wanted to make something simple and sortof small. I made a pretty simple almond cake - just one layer in a 9X13 pan.  And I've been wanting to make sheep cupcakes for a while so I thought it would be cute to have the sheep sortof grazing in a field. So when you wait until the day before Easter to get some supplies, you'll be sorry to find that everyone is making sheep cupcakes and has already snatched up the white miniature marshmallows from your grocery store.  Now anyone could just have settled for the multi-color minis but not this baker.  I recently saw some sheep for the first time (don't judge - I'm more of a city mouse...er sheep...er baker) and I know for a fact that they are not pink or mint green.  So I stood glaring at the empty marshmallow shelf for a while and checked out the other carts in aisle so I could start a marshmallow fist fight.  In my day dreaming of throwing down with some granny over one bag of mini-marsh, I had a revelation.  Marshmallows don't grow on trees!  They are made in factory which means I can totally make them at home.  Some phone googling showed me that it's basically just corn syrup, gelatin, sugar and water.  

When I got home, I did a full search and settled on the Smitten Kitchen recipe. I halved it and I used merigue powder instead of just egg whites or egg white powder.  It worked totally fine but the recipe didn't say how much of it to use so for my half recipe I used about 1/4 cup and a half cup of water to whip up into the stiff peaks.   I followed the recipe closely and even busted out my candy thermometer.  The only difference was that instead of pouring the marshmallow onto into a 9X13 pan, I used a piping bag to drop little round mini-marshmallows onto a powdered sugar covered pan.  The half recipe was way more than enough and my minis set in the fridge after only a few hours.  

So then it was just a small task to attach these little guys to cupcakes to make the adorable little sheep.  I just used a white buttercream on a vanilla upwrapped cupcake to make them stick.  

Then I just popped on a white jordon almond for a head and some tootsie roll feet and pink marshmallow ears.  


But sheep on a cake does not make Easter so I covered my original cake with fondant and then busted out a new toy: The Duff Airbrush Machine!


Where else would some sheep hang out except a green field full of flowers?  So first step was to spray the cake green.

Next, use leftover fondant and another new toy!  The Wilton Gum Paste Flowers Set.  The blue flower punches (in FOUR sizes!) from this set are so awesome and easy. Just like a cookie cutter that puts an imprint in the flower and then a little mat comes with it to imprint the other side too.  So fun!  I busted out over 100 flowers in less than an hour!  Then the only thing left to do was paint them.  Since my airbrush was set up and looking for some action I took white flowers to purple, pink and orange to make a fun floral collage.  

I bordered the cake with a thick bead of purple buttercream and stuck the flowers all around along with some large sprinkle dots.   And here it is!

Cupcakery Review! Indulgence Cupcakery – Haddonfield, NJ

Having no children of my own, I get to politely excuse myself when some unpleasant parenting task is about to happen.  If I’m with you when your kid acts up, I can just leave.   Tantrum?  No thanks, I think I have a wax appointment.  Explosive diaper?  Oooh – I just had a manicure – sorry!  Time for potty training?  Apparently for that one I’m totally on board.  When my friend dedicated President’s Day weekend to the trials of potty training her 2 year old, I of course volunteered my non-parenting expertise which says for everything child-rearing, rely on bribery.   If I know anything about toddlers (which I don’t) I know that they like toys, cartoons and sugar.  This philosophy also works with dudes in their twenties but for them you can also add beer. 

Anyway, for my potty training adventure, I swung by Indulgence Cupcakery in Haddonfield, NJ to pick up a dozen bribes – err – cupcakes.  I got there at about 4pm and they close at 6 so they were already out of a number of flavors.  To their credit, they did have a lot of flavors available for the day.  I got the following:  Smores,  Red Velvet, Butterfinger, Cookies and Cream, Peanutbutter Cup, Classic Vanilla, Classic Chocolate, and Black Forrest and one more flavor I can’t seem to recall but I think there was a pretzel in it. I'd guess they had 15 or so flavors of the over 45 they list on their website.   Anyway, the place was totally cute and I liked their logo:

Here are the dozen adorable cupcakes.  I can’t decide if these are mini – I guess technically they are – they are certainly smaller than a standard cupcake.  But with each having a generous dollop of frosting – not to mention additional toppings like nuts, mini chocolate chips, etc.  These cupcakes are just the right size – 2 or 3 bites  - enough for a sweet treat and it’s gone before you have time to calculate how many more sessions with your trainer this will cost you. 

I ate the Smore cupcake.

I suppose it was a “graham” cupcake with chocolate frosting and a marshmallow syrup that penetrated through the frosting and was inside the cupcake too.  The cupcake was moist and a bit like a spice cake but I can’t say it had a graham flavor – yummy nonetheless.  The frosting was thick and chocolately and topped with the graham cracker crumbs –  a nice touch.  I’m a fluffy frosting person rather than thick but this was still super good. 

One - VERY minor complaint - it took a while for someone to come up front to help me and although she was certainly friendly, she warned me to hold the box very straight because the cupcakes were prone to tipping over.   I was nervous the whole way that I'd open my box of 12 cupcakes to find one stuck together frosting/cake mash.  Maybe there's a better packaging option out there to prevent top-heavy cuppies from tipping?

And for my potty training pal - he did great!  He had the cookies and cream!