PetitsCakes Launches!

This past February I took the big step to launch my own (very small) cupcake business! After working on the design and website for awhile and coming up with a strategy for the launch I decided to sell cupcake gifts for Valentine's Day to co-workers and friends in the Louisville area. Everyone was so supportive and the launch went very successfully!

It took me a few trials to get the fondant hearts to work with me and I learned a lot about working with fondant in the process, but thankfully everything right before and even during the launch went well. Now the plan is to keep expanding my repertoire and continue to look for ways to advertise and promote myself while maintaining the website. It's a lot to have on one's plate, but it is a wonderful creative outlet and I love that I can actually have an excuse to continue developing this addicting hobby.

To check out my website click on the new PetitsCakes Website tab on the top of the page. Otherwise, here are some photos from the launch!

Projects 2010

Projects from 2010

My lovely co-worker Elizabeth's baby shower. It was my first shower and Martha was a big help for ideas. The mom-to-be chose the colors brown and pink so I took that into the theme. May 2010 

Table arrangements- I hung bunting with "Congratulations Elizabeth" off the chandeliers, put down pink glass pebbles along the table and made flower party poppers out of tissue and cardstock filled with candy.

 Cupcake tower with some personalized cupcake picks. I have to say these cupcakes were some of the yummier ones I've produced. (I think strawberry and chocolate both with Strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream)

 Brown and pink plates with pink polka dot napkins. I also tied ribbon around the utensils to add some pizzaz.

 Haha, I hung ribbon at random from the chandelier to give it some color.

From Tree to Stomach- An apple crisp story.

We went to Huber's Farm to do a u-pick apple outing (their peaches were AMAZING and the apples were better than average). These were some juicy fujis. October 2010.

Gruesome death. (my pampered chef apple cutter came in handy!)

Cinnamon is your friend. 

Hot out of the oven. The best part is the crisp crumble on top. Yummmm. 

 Yes, we cheated with cool whip, but ice cream would have been better. The perfect Fall treat!

Having tackled one baby shower, I was inspired to take on a bigger project...dessert tables. Far too inspired by this amazing work I sought to do my own mini and amateur version. Dessert tables are now my new obsession because they take the best of everything- sweets, design and celebration. Plus everything is just so adorable! Greg said I was actually overly obsessed and talked about it far too much, but I was excited! The prep was spread out over two weekends, and overall I am really happy with the way it turned out. October 2010.

Prep work. Greg overheard me congratulating myself on my ingenious marshmallow pop drying rack made of a cardboard cutout. (Generally these small congratulatory sounds are similar to an evil sounding wahahaha or wheee)

 My second attempt at meringues. The first try was during HS or college without my dear Kitchen Aid and were completely unsuccessful. I was scared these would go the same disastrous route, but surprisingly they came out well! (These are the blue ones made with the larger tipped piping bag with minis b/c I had extra meringue I wanted to use up. They have not yet been baked thus the pretty shiny look.)

 Who doesn't love decorated pretzel rods? Blue candy coating with white chocolate drizzle. I loved how they were a bit more periwinkle b/c of the pretzel underneath. The only struggle was making sure the candy coating stayed melty and making sure to keep liquid out so it didn't seize up.

I didn't want the hassle of cupcakes, so I did mini brownie bites instead with just the regular white buttercream tinted blue. Brownies from a box are one of the best inventions ever. And I got to use my cute white sprinkles which Greg assured me did not look like eggs. 

 I love cute small desserts!

The final product! Tada! (Yes, I should have ironed...). Above the table there was a bunting sign that said "Welcome" but it didn't make it into the pic. Cade=Caedmon

I love cute glass containers.

Not too bad in a vase, huh?

Yes, that is rice, an old trick of the trade.

These oreos were such a pain! I tried to make them colorful and sparkle by piping the edge with buttercream and rolling the sides in blue sprinkles, but the frosting was so stiff it didn't pipe easily. Amazingly they took some of the most effort and my hand got sore from fighting with the piping bag. Never again.

I was a little sad the flag were more of a blue and the frosting was more of a turquoise, but flag in cupcakes are so cute I had to put them in.

Me and Mama Stephanie


If you can't tell, I have a small obsession with acorns. I think they are adorable. In Sacramento Greg and I would go walking and collect acorns en route. I saved them to use as vase filler but thought the room needed more acornage. Thus these guys were invented. Acorn on a string (strange, but cute).
I polished them, drilled a hole in the top and glued in the ribbon and the acorn bottom.

Final product along our stairway.

Back to food! Cake balls are a pain to make, but I had some frozen ones I busted out for a quick dessert. Fondue with lemon and chocolate cake balls, strawberries and marshmallows. October 2010.

My friend was telling me about a wonderful dessert they had at Extraordinary Desserts in SD and I was inspired. This dessert was supposedly made for ballerina Anna Pavlova which made me want to give it a try even more. Pavlova with fresh whipped cream topped with kiwi, black berries and strawberries. I was a little hesitant b/c it is mostly a meringue type crust, but it turned out perfect and didn't stick at all. Yay for Allrecipes reviewers and their tips! August 2010.

This shot makes it look like we have an SLR Camera. I wish!

Cream Puff Cake made for small group. I have this awful baking guilt where I feel bad for using cool whip and hershey's syrup, but it was still tasty. I love the way the crust turns out in the springform pan! March 2010.

Fall can only mean one thing (besides acorns), pumpkin everything! I tried my hand at a Sprinkle Bakes recipe for Thanksgiving and it turned out really well! In honor of Starbucks it was a Pumpkin Spiced Latte Cheesecake, but Greg said he couldn't really taste the latte part which is the topmost layer. I'm glad I didn't go the cheater way and made my own whipped cream. That in itself could be dessert!

You can kind of make out the lighter latte layer. But I was really glad I didn't get any cracks and it didn't sink but had a good texture. In fact, looking at the pics I might eat the last slice tonight!


I cooked. Amazing huh? Not baking, but cooking like with salty food and meat and no sugar or flour. Crazy or as my friend would say, "What the monkeys?!" Our houseguest this past summer was sharing how he first became interested in his wife when she served soup in a pumpkin so I thought, even though I already snagged a hubby, why not try to impress him? It didn't take much work and I was sooooo glad the pumpkin didn't disintegrate in the oven. I only felt bad that I had to kill him who was serving so well as coffee table decoration. November 2010. 

The End (for now)

Cupcakes!

Ever since Jade's wedding I've been on the cupcake bandwagon. Instead of sorting these by date, here's an assortment of almost all the cupcake creations I've made (in addition to the ones in previous posts). One of my favorite parts about cupcakes is that they are adorable and easy to gift (instead of cutting a piece of pie or cake). They are also a lot of fun to make with people (I have extra piping bags and tips just for the occassion) and many of these creations I made with girls from our youth group (and most were made to give away since there is no way Greg and I could polish off two dozen cupcakes!). Please also excuse some of the bad photography. Unfornately I tended to bake after work so I would have to rely on electric lighting as opposed to natural light. I always have a few cupcake ideas floating around in my head, but unfortunately never enough time and occassion. Thankfully Lauren and Chase got me this book which has been so inspiring! Perhaps one day you will see this guy on this webpage. And eventually I am determined to pull off a salted caramel cupcake. 

Oreo Cupcake- cookies and cream cupcake with vanilla buttercream, oreo sprinkles and an oreo garnish. There's also an oreo baked on the bottom of the cupcake but I forgot to take a pic of it!

Chocolate Caramel- chocolate cake with caramel center, vanilla buttercream and caramel drizzle (and no, the caramel is not made from scratch... candy making scares me...)

I love this cake stand from Williams-Sonoma. It makes whatever is in it so much cuter! 

Chocolate Excite-mint (haha I only made creative names for some of my cupcakes)- Chocolate cake with mint buttercream and mini-chocolate chips. This one makes me smile b/c I love mint-chip ice cream and for once my mint creation didn't taste like toothpaste. 

This was my second cupcake commission. I was way way way too ambitious (thanks to spending too much time on: http://cupcakeblog.com/) and tried to tackle a piped whipped chocolate ganache. Greg and Oby said it looks like something rather unpleasant, but I'm glad the raspberry kind of distracts from the look. And the cupcake itself was pretty tasty as it was a brownie/cupcake from scratch. The ganache gave me trouble though and was overall way to liquidy even after being in the fridge for awhile. Piped ganache is still something I haven't mastered, but I would love to be able to make this.

Ganache Hostess "Cupcake"- At least I was able to do dipped ganache! These are chocolate cake topped and filled with vanilla buttercream with a glaze of chocolate ganache and buttercream embellishments. Personally I think the flower looking ones and cupcake swirlies looked the best.

Filling! Just like a ding dong!  

Irish Creme- Chocolate irish creme cupcake with irish creme buttercream and chocolate shavings. I like the way this tip pipes and actually I don't use it quite enough. Also, to be honest, I was trying to do chocolate curls but they came out as shavings so I just went with that. I have yet to be able to curl chocolate well.

 Peanut butter Cup- chocolate cake with a reese mini baked in, peanut butter buttercream and a reese quarter on top. The best part of this recipe is that the frosting uses a lot of peanut butter which means less butter/shortening, always a good thing!

Lemon Mini Cupcakes- lemon cupcake with lemon buttercream with lemon zest. This was for a baby shower and I made some blue royal icing baby rattles to put on top, but I guess I forgot to take a pic!

Red Velvet- so Sprinkles in LA has made red velvet THE ultimate cupcake so I thought I'd give it a try. They look nice, but honestly, I'd rather just have a chocolate cupcake. Who needs to eat so much red dye? Although I have to say this was the perfect project for those wonderful snow days that come too far and few between. The best part was that this introduced me to cream cheese frosting. Now that is YUM. I also took one of the reject cupcakes and crumbled it up then baked the crumbles to make the red velvet sprinkles/crumbles. Unfortunately some of them burned so I had to sort through charred red velvet crumbles!  

Strawberry #1 cupcake- made for my mom's ladies retreat. White cupcake (what flavor is "white"?) with strawberry filling, vanilla buttercream adn strawberry drizzle. 

I REALLY wanted to make sugared flower petals but ran out of time. One of these days...

I like how these cupcakes were a lot lighter and the buttercream was a lot lighter too.

Strawberry #2- strawberry cupcake with vanilla buttercream. You can see I was testing out my pampered chef egg slicer on that strawberry garnish too.

Using the above strawberry cupcake base I had my first attempt and Itallian Meringue Buttercream. It was messy and sticky, but I really like the light texture and the strawberry flavor really stood out which is what I was going for. This was for my co-worker's baby shower. In the future I think I won't print out the picks on the computer b/c colors aren't as strong. I guess I'll have to be old fashioned and use scrapbooking stuff.

 OLI- Olivia Leigh Irvin
I love the bits of strawberry in the frosting!

Somethin' Pumpkin (yes one of my more clever names)- pumpkin cupcake, cream cheese frosting with either nutmeg, cinnamon or pumpkin spice on top (I can't remember!)

We're just jumping around all the holidays here! So obviously this is a boxed cake, but I do love funfetti cake mix and had been thinking about this combo as a fun valentine's cupcake. Funfetti cupcake with vanila buttercream topped with a conversation heart.

 "fax me"- conversation hearts are getting way to technical!

And I love how this one says "do good". A little demanding for a love note, huh?