Blue Flower Mini Cupcakes

Hello Sweet Readers~ I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. Are you ready for December? I cannot believe it is already here. It's such a special time of year, isn't it?

I wanted to share these mini chocolate cuppies I made for an order. They were for a birthday lunch for sweet little girl. Her grandma told me that she liked blue and chocolate, so I came up with these pretty little bites. They are dark chocolate mini cupcakes topped with chocolate ganache and a creamy buttercream frosting. The flowers are fondant with edible pearls and blue nonpareils.

Thanks for stopping by - have a wonderful week!

Bare Cupcake Cake

Hi Sweet Readers! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are enjoying the time with your family and friends!

These are some photos I took of the cupcake cake for Abby and Sam before I embellished it. Just wanted to share these photos with you, too. It looks pretty "bare", too, doesn't it? I love the speckles of vanilla bean in the frosting. Ooh, what goodness (even after a day of eating, this has to look good to you :)

Breakfast Buffet

I wanted to share with you the breakfast buffet that I did for our church's marriage sunday school class. I had fun making some yummy harvest goodies for everyone.
Here are some vanilla bean cuppies filled with yummy apple filling and topped with apple cider buttercream and caramel drizzle (as well as some candied apples, chocolate cookie leaves and candy acorns).
Some maple iced pumpkin cookies...
Some little baby lemon cakes with lemon glaze...
and a sweetened condensed milk cake. I also served some fresh fruit and my coconut cream filled macaroons. Yum!

Birthday Surprise for Me!

Me, Surprised!


This is my sweet hubby walking me into my surprise 40th birthday party (a whole month before my actual birthday!) that he planned with the wonderful gals below: Nancy, Rachel and Debbie! Thank you all so , so much!
Here's me enjoying some more sweet friends-Karen and Nan. I love you , ladies!Kami, Rachel, Kelly and Michelle! Thank you so , so much for making my birthday so special!My sweetest friend and cousin, Krista. She has been with me these whole 40 years (yes, that would mean that she is younger!) She came from the Bay area and totally surprised me, too!Here's my sister-in-law, Ellen. She traveled the longest distance..from SoCal. Thanks so much! Krista and my neighbor Mary Lou are in the photo, too! Below is Michelle and the birthday girl!
My oh-so-delicious chocolate fudge birthday cake!!! Yummmm! And part of a gorgeous favor my friends hand made for me! (The cake is one of my favorites from Freeport Bakery in Sacramento)

I had such a fabulous time and it was so neat have such special friends there. I will remember this as long as I can :)

Cookies For A Friend

Good morning, Sweet readers!

Just wanted to share some simple gift packaging with you. I made some cookies for my sweet friend Debbie and packaged them up with this tag I made. I love combining crafting and baking!

Embellished Cupcake Cake and Accessories

Good morning! Here is the cupcake cake that I mentioned Monday. I made this to go with the flower cupcakes. Isn't is so pretty! I just love how it came out. On one side, I put Abby's name and age and on the other, Sam's. I also included a picture of the cupcake accessories I crafted to share with them.

Thanks for checking in today!

Flower Cupcakes

Good Morning, sweet readers! I hope you had a wonderful weekend (I did!) and that you got your share of sweet things (I did:) I wanted to share these pretty little cupcakes with you. I did these for an order - Abby and Sam's birthday party cuppies. I heard they were very pleased with them! Strawberry and chocolate were requested and I made these to match their invitations. I love how they came out! Soon I will post the incredible cupcake cake I made to match the cupcakes - my favorite so far! Everything on the cuppies is edible.



Here are the cupcakes all packaged up and ready to go, along with a little bday gift I made for the girls. Sweet!

Cookie of the Week #30 -Cream filled Coconut Macaroons

Hi sweet readers! Here is my hubby's choice for cookie of the week this week. They were sooo delicious! The filling was a creme of coconut filling that was simply divine and the crunchiness and chewiness of the macaroon just added more to the bliss. Everyone was very happy with these with the exception of my youngest who apparently doesn't care for coconut. Maybe someday he'll come around. He doesn't know what he's missing!

On a different note, I have a very special post coming up to document how very blessed I am...stay tuned!

Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Hello Sweet Readers!

I have had another fun, creative and busy week with orders, so I'm hoping to post some photos for you soon. Here is the first installment. :) These are salted caramel cupcakes topped with some yummy caramel buttercream and drizzled with homemade caramel and a homemade chocolate cookie leaf. I wanted to get some more interesting and artistic photos of these, but, alas, time did not permit. So here they are in their presentation boxes. (BTW, I'm excited to get my new presentation boxes next week~ they are crisp white and they have inserts made just for my precious cupcakes.. so every cupcake will arrive at their destination safe and sound)

These cupcakes were very moist, and extremely flavorful. As I'm sure you have guessed, yes, they were sweet, but they did come from Smiley's sweets, after all!

Have a happy Friday and a fabulous weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Sweet Competition!

Hi sweet readers! I just had to post these pictures with a funny story. My church puts on a fun Halloween alternative called Treat Street every year (kudos and applause to Debbie who did a phenomenal job at it this year, as always). They have all kinds of wonderful carnival type games to play in addition to many other great things for the kids to do. One of the games is this donut eating contest. Without using their hands, the kids are supposed to see who could eat the donut the fastest. Kinda hedonistic, I know... Anyhow, my kids are, shall we say, used to eating sweets now and then and I was certain one of them would "win" this game. Well, after it was said and done, my older son came in second and my youngest son, third (my oldest is third from the left and my youngest, first on the left). Since I am always behind the camera, I sometimes miss some of the action. Such is the case here, where clearly there was some, well, inappropriate hand use, during this important competition. I didn't notice it until I got home and transferred the pictures to my computer! Too funny. My kids actually won :) So, it's good to know that my kids are so great at eating sweets... or is it? :)

Have a great week, sweet readers and thanks for stopping by!

Fall Acorn Cupcakes

I made these for an order Friday with the cute little candy/cookie acorns on top. I like the two color frosting, too.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a sweet weekend!

Cookie of the Week #29 - Chocolate Sandwiches

Yeah, it's back! This is my older son's choice for cookie of the week. Ah! I have been so bad about the COTW lately. The last new cookie I made was in the first week in October! I have made several others and a bagillion cupcakes since then, as you know, but I was doing so well at the COTW every week! And I fell off the wagon for a bit. So, if you want to see one each week, feel free to keep me honest about it and shoot me a comment or email if by Thursday of each week you haven't seen one, k?

This cookie was tasty, but not one of my favorites. The chocolate cookie part was slightly chewy and not crunchy. The two cookies together slightly overpowered the very delicious white chocolate ganache sandwiched in between. I could eat that stuff all by itself! The family liked it, but again, not one of their top picks.

Thanks for stopping by, sweet readers!

Visions of Cupcakes

Good morning, sweet readers. I wanted to show you the assembly of my many many cupcakes for various orders and events last week. There were quite a bit as you can see. I did tons of different flavors, fillings, frostings and toppings. Some of the cupcake flavors included red velvet chocolate chip, candy stuffed vanilla, dark chocolate, pumpkin, cappaccino chip, coconut, chocolate peanut butter cup, and vanilla sprite cake. They were all yummy, but I think my personal favorite was the pumpkin.

The first photo above was before any fillings or ganaches were added to the cupcakes. In the second photo, you can see that I added chocolate ganache to some, caramel to others and coned some to fill them with delight! :) I added frosting to all of them except a few of the peanut butter cup with the chocolate ganache. I think I could handle it, but it might be too sweet for most.
So here you can see a close up of some of the frosted and decorated cuppies. I made some fun purple, green and orange frosting, as well as chocolate, vanilla, and cream cheese buttercream. The orange ghosts are fondant with some luster dust to help them shine, and I made some candy spiders, ticks and bats.

Here are some more photos that show the different cuppies. I used many different tips for the frosting for interest and fun . It also seems that I collected quite the array of holiday sprinkles and goodies for the tops of my cuppies. :)

The photos above showcase some of the orders that I had go out and the fun arrangements I was pleased to make. I just loved how all the colors looked together. And, last, but not least, here is part of the largest order all boxed up and ready to go. I packaged it with a gorgeous ribbon and a faux metal stamped cupcake image I made.

All in all, it was very fun to do and I love the way they all turned out. Thanks so much for sticking around to check it out!

Have a great day!

Happy Cupcake Truffles

Hi! I hope you are not sick of my Halloween creations yet. I just wanted to show you all the fun things that I did for orders and parties last week. These were some fun ghosts, pumpkins, mummies and yes, eyeballs that I created . Fun, huh? They are tasty, too. Very rich and decadent.

Haunted Mini Cupcakes

Hi patient readers! I am getting back in the swing of things after a weekend away and actually baked more cupcakes today for my family. These, however, are some delectable mini red velvet cuppies with yummy vanilla bean cream cheese frosting that I made for an order last week. They were for a halloween party at an architectural firm. It's hard to see in the photo, but I made some candy bats and haunted houses for the tops (sorry about the lack of detail photos..I was covered in frosting and candy for three days!). I really liked how they came out, but mostly I am pleased that my client was pleased with them.

As a side note, I had considered making "election" cupcakes today, but didn't quite get to it. I hope you all had a chance to cast your vote and enjoyed the process!