Cupcake Palooza

Had my first Pulmonary test yesterday.

Let's just say, the past few weeks I've had Spring Break-Itis and didn't study as much as I should have. That, or I just don't understand how the lungs work. Probably a mixture of the two. C = MD, right? I just probably shouldn't have a career in pulmonology.



(If you didn't know...I'm blonde.)

I spent the beautiful day yesterday (after my test) doing the things I am obsessed with love: crafting and cupcakes. Everytime I make cupcakes, I always bring the leftovers to my classmates. Now, I have roughly 180 classmates and I only ever make 24 cupcakes at a time. Therefore, a lot of people feel left out. So, I finally did it. I never thought I would, but it wasn't as hard as I expected.
I made 175 cupcakes.

(That's not even all of them. Also, I never got a picture of all of them iced.)

It took me 6 hours to bake and ice them all and two of my girl friends helped me deliver them to school last night. Because no one wants to carry that much at 7:30 in the morning.
In between baking, we girls crafted, watched a movie, and ate some Mellow Mushroom.
Basically, last night = bliss
Here's to hoping Spring Break gets here fast

Happy Time-Warp Tuesday

Strawberry Cupcakes

Now that the VDay hype is over and I've bored you to death with all of those projects, I can tell you my recipe for my cream cheese icing I use on my strawberry cupcakes. 

One of these days I'll learn how to make strawberry cupcakes from scratch (because that would be delicious) but for time's sake, the ones from the box will do. This is probably my favorite boxed cake mix.

They aren't kidding about the moist part, either. I also discovered that if you cook them for the lowest amount of time it recommends, they are typically more moist. Nobody likes dried out cake.

Now, for the part that really matters, the cream cheese icing. I don't think there is any icing that goes with strawberry cake better than this one. And did I mention it's super easy?

Ingredients:

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)

8oz package of cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups of confectioners sugar

*3 cups is a rough estimate, I always just judge by stiffness (for piping)

Beat the butter and cream cheese in a bowl

Mix in the vanilla

Mix in the confectioners sugar a cup at a time

If you want to make them pretty, I typically pipe the icing with the large open star tip. Then I add some of the pretty sprinkles I got on sale after VDay one year. Lastly, I stuff my face (after I take pretty pictures of them).

Now, go make some cupcakes and eat 1 (or 2 or 3). :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Between all the sweets from my classmates, coffee, and facebook, it has been exceptionally hard to pay attention in class this morning. I can officially show you all my VDay projects I've been working on since I finally distributed them today! But first, I wanted to show you my valentine's "mantel" ....since I never really got around to doing that and I'm kinda proud of it.

I made the topiaries last year and I got the little bears from Hobs Lobs during their VDay clearance on year.

The letters are just chipboard letters covered in paper and stickers

The banner I made from cutting hearts out of paint chips. Paint chips = free!

Last night, I got my Betty Crocker/Martha Stewart on and made some sweets. One of the desserts I made is for VDay dinner with the fiance. So, I can't show you that yet. But, for my classmates, I made strawberry cupcakes (from a box, of course) with homeade cream cheese icing. I'll post the recipe another day.

I also made special valentines for my close friends. I saw the idea on some craft blog a while back and I thought it was perfect for med school. Because it's something that we all use everyday to study. It's a little bit cheesy, but that's okay. 

Highlighters!

This weekend, I bought some Samoa girl scout cookies while I was out with the fiance. I know he likes them, so I figured I'd incorporate a few into his VDay gift. I thought up a super cheesy saying to go along with them (since everything else I made was cheesy). I probably wasn't the first to come up with it, but I thought I was funny so I'm going to pretend I did. Don't judge.

 

For all of the gifts, I just packaged them in ziplock bags, rolled down the tops, cut a strip of festive paper to fold across the top and pinned it all together with a wooden clothespin and my handwritten message! I feel like that's enough Valentine's Day stuff thrown into one post to make anyone want to gag. So, I promise I'll stop now. (But mainly because there is nothing left to show you). Hope everyone is having a great day with the ones they love (whether it's a special someone, friends or family!)

Reindeer Cupcakes

I can't remember if I told you this or not (so I'm going to tell you again), but we have had several pharmacology cases over the past few weeks.

And for some reason, I decided it was a good idea to bring cupcakes for my group every time we had a case. So, since we had another one yesterday, I brought more cupcakes.

Except, this one was our last, so I decided to make them festive for the holidays. And, once again, everyone was impressed for some reason.

So for this post, I am going to show you that you don't have to be cupcake-competent to make these little babies.

What you need:

Box of chocolate cake mix

Chocolate icing

Hard pretzals

Vanilla wafers

White candies for the eyes (I used York pieces)

Red and brown candy pieces for the nose (M&Ms)

Black icing for the pupils and a small round tip to attach

Steps:

Bake your cupcakes (follow the box directions - not hard, promise)

Let them cool

Frost with a butterknife (also not hard - no fancy frosting tip needed)

Add a vanilla wafer to on side of your cupcake

Dab a little frosting onto the side of the M&M with the writing on it and stick it on the middle of the vanilla wafer (disclaimer: this may be the hardest part....)

Add two white candies for the eyes

Take your black decorating icing and dab a small spot on each white piece for the pupils

(I made them all a little different)

I think this may tie with the nose step for the hardest part...

Then, add two pretzals for the antlers and you have some cute, festive cupcakes that everyone will be amazed by!

Oh, for the record, at the time I was making these, I honestly thought there were 12 reindeer and that I was being super creative for making only 1 Rudolph. (Don't ask me why, but I honestly thought this for a decently short time). But once I sang the song (AFTER I had made them), I realized there are really only 9. So, whatever. Knowing how many reindeer there are doesn't exactly take priority on my knowledge list. Maybe it will after my test Friday.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

On Halloween, I made cupcakes for my study group/friends and my ICM group.

(ICM is our Intro to Clinical Medicine course where we learn how to take patient histories, communicate effectively, etc.)

Anyways, those cupcakes turned out to be a big hit, even though they were just boxed funfetti cupcakes with store-bought icing. So, for this week's meeting, I decided to make some homeade cupcakes to show them some real skills.
Okay, not really. I had just been eyeing a recipe I found online for these carrot cupcakes (mainly because the pictures of them are so pretty), and I finally decided I wanted to try them. 

Oh, and classmates make the perfect guinea pigs for taste-testing.  Well, they are more like vultures really.

You can probably imagine the amount of people that want to be my friend for a day when I bring cupcakes, especially since I have ~180 classmates and only 24 cupcakes - you do the math.

I just followed the recipe (linked above) and this is how they turned out

You'd be amazed at the number of med students who get impressed over "pretty" cupcakes and tell you that you should have opened a bakery instead of going to medical school.

Honestly guys, it's not that impressive. It's just some measly sprinkles.

I will admit, however, that they tasted pretty good.

But, no carrot cake will ever be as good as my grandma's.

:)

Happy Tuesday!



Happy Halloween!

Hope everyone eats lots of candy today!

:)

Harry Potter Party

In honor of the last Harry Potter movie ever, I thought it would be the perfect time to throw a party.

So that is just what I did. 

The idea came up about a month in a half ago when I came across this post on iVillage.

I got serious about it about this past Tuesday.

So off to Walmart I went to buy supplies.

Then, I spent the next two days making everything from gryffindor cupcake wrappers to pretzal wands.
Just wanted to share the results with you guys!

Warning- You are about to see a TON of pictures. :)

Here is the view of the room the party took place in    

Dinner

Potter's Pizza = Hungry Howie's Pizza

Granger's Garlic Bread = Self-explanatory

Truth Serum = Garlic Butter

Gillyweed Greens = Salad

Butterbeer

Drink = Cream Soda

Foam Recipe



Cupcakes

Cupcakes = Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake mix

Icing = Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Chocolate

Wizard Hats = Packaged sugar cones dipped in baking chocolate

Lightning Bolts = Vanilla Icing with yellow food coloring

Cupcake Wrappers = Cut out with Cricut Cupcake Cartridge

Cupcake Tower = Boxes wrapped in black gift wrap

Wording = Harry P font, cut out yellow letters with exacto knife

(Idea from iVillage)

Honeydukes Treats

Magical Wands = Chocolate covered pretzal rods with sprinkles

Honeydukes Quidditch Treat Bags = Brown paper bags filled with chex mix and a chocolate covered pretzal (Idea from iVillage)

Ron's Reeses = Reeses Cups

Mad Eye Moody's M&Ms = self-explanatory

Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Beans = Tropical Jelly Belly Mix

Some of the party-goers :)

And to go with my muggle shirts, I made stamped metal necklaces
I still can't believe its all over! :(

Hope everyone enjoys the movie if you go see it!

Happy weekend!

Surprise!!

So last Wednesday was my super cool, future mother-in-law's 50th birthday and her family decided to throw her a surprise party this past weekend.  The whole family went down to her parents' (my future grandparents-in-laws') house on Lake Martin for a full day of eating, swimming, and boat riding. It was a lot of fun and I think she was actually surprised, judging by the picture anyways!

 Seeing as it was another opportunity to make cupcakes, that is exactly what I did.  Except this time, I spent more time on the display, rather than the actual cupcakes.

I made strawberry and chocolate cupcakes, both from a box.  The strawberry were topped with a homeade cream cheese icing and the chocolate cupcakes had a chocolate mousse type icing. Every one of them were devoured, and for that I am grateful, because that meant none of them had to come back home with me! The tower is made of three different size boxes that I just wrapped in gift wrap and wrapped matching ribbon around them to make it look like I actually put effort into it.  The toppers, the wrappers, and the 50 on the middle box I just cut out with my Cricut using the Cupcake cartridge and I assembled them with a glue stick. Easy peasy. I realized after I finished making everything that it looked more like a 5 year old's birthday party than a 50 year olds, but who cares.  I think she liked it regardless, and I am so glad I could contribute to her day. :)

Happy birthday!

Doctor Cupcakes

The first day of medical school is just around the corner and today was officially my last day at work.  So, to celebrate the day, I, of course, found it to be a perfect opportunity to make cupcakes.  Even more fitting,
doctor themed cupcakes.

The first place I went for inspiration for topper ideas was Pinterest, of course.

Which led me here.

Which eventually (after 2 days of fighting with fondant) led to these:

I think they were a hit, seeing as there was only one left after only being at work for 4 hours.

But, just to give you an idea of the process...

It started as this:

Somewhere in the middle of the process it looked like this:

And 5 hours later, it finally looked like this:

Seeing as there will be 176 students in my class, I don't think I could ever make them for all my classmates.  But, I do wonder if I'll ever have the patience to make these again.

Maybe.

What do you think? :)

Sunflower Cuppycakes

So, last Thursday was my baby seester's 19th birthday party and seeing as her favorite flower is sunflowers and how she knew that I knew how to make sunflower cupcakes, she undoubtedly asked me to make these for her sunflower themed birthday party. And obviously, I was happy to oblige, because I love my sister dearly making cupcakes. :)

Also, that platter was her actual birthday present

I thought it was rather fitting 

I think I ended up making approximately 40 sunflower cupcakes and it only took a good FOUR HOURS to make them. Haha.  I rather enjoyed it though (except for the fact that our air conditioner decided to quit working that day so I spent those four hours trying to keep the icing from melting). Hopefully that never happens again.

My lovely sister with her cupcakes :)

(Although, this was actually taken the first time I tried making sunflowers)

French Toast and Bacon Cupcakes

So like I've said before, I LOVE cupcakes. And, seeing as cupcakes are becoming increasingly popular, there are all kinds of new cupcake recipes being shared in the blog world every day.  For example,
the french toast cupcake. 

I have been intrigued by this recipe for over a month now and last night I decided to be brave and attempt to pull it off.  And let me just say, I am so glad I did. They are fantastic.

I used the recipe from the website above

But I decided to use this icing 

Notice the maple extract in the picture

I actually used regular pancake syrup instead

Words can't describe how amazing it tastes

Mom enjoyed them :)

Here's my final product

The bacon is a nice touch because it adds a little salty to go with the sweet

Now go make some and enjoy!