A bit of bubbly....

Happy almost New Years everyone!

The decade is almost over, and I'm so thankful for whats happened in the past ten years. I graduated high school, started college, got a good paying/stable job, met the love of my life, got married and I'm now beginning my dreams of Cupcakes by Coley. It's going to be a lot of work, but in the next ten years I hope to have a running bakery, graduate college with my Masters Degree, watch my husband graduate from Art Center in Pasadena, start a family, and hopefully buy a house of our own.

To celebrate 2010, I decided to make "Champagne" Cupcakes.

This cupcake has a lot of "firsts" for me. The cupcake is a yellow cake, a new recipe I tried. I think it called for too much salt. I wrote a note in my new book, I got for Christmas (Thanks Aunt Debbie!) to cut back on the salt. It only asked for 1/4 teaspoon worth, but it was over powering for my taste.

The original recipe calls for the liqueur of my choice, such as Grand Marnier or Kahlua. I didn't put anything in it actually, I wanted to see how the cake tasted first. So the next time around I'll add a little something inside. =)

So not only was I dealing with a new recipe, but my 2nd "first" that I dealt with was to make a poured fondant glaze. Glaze? Didn't know that even existed until now. It was very easy to make, very hard to deal with, very messy-- so be sure to have something underneath your cupcake while drizzling this stuff on. It's sticky and gets everywhere. It also dries very quickly so you have to work fast. It's made of water, light corn syrup and lots of powdered sugar. (the glaze is very sweet!)

Then for another "first" I went out and bought tiny pearly dragees, which is a bead like sugar coated candy. Man oh man were these things tiny and hard to deal with. After my first cupcake, I went and grabbed tweezers to place them on the cupcake. Since the glaze stiffened up, the pearls wouldn't stick to the cupcake and they would just roll right off the darn things. I eventually got the hang of it, and went on about my business. I also used edible glitter for the first time. That stuff is expensive! It was about $4.19 for a little containers worth. It was a container that resembled what you might get eye shadow in. Very small, very expensive. Hehe my husband inst a fan of the glitter, kind of got all over the place and we have a running joke that it will be stuck to the floor for the next ten years or so =) Sorry hunny!

I think these cupcakes would be perfect for a New Years Eve Party, but because they were a lot of work I'm pricing them at $1.50 each rather then my standard $1.

Please contact (818)620-7535 to place an order.

Photography: Travis J. Premo

Hung with Care

I made this particular cupcake more of a "I have an idea" sort of thing. I made it well before Christmas, but I'm just now having the time to blog about it.

I tried to make this look like a traditional Christmas ornament. Its a fairly simple cupcake, white cupcake with a butter cream frosting. For the decorations (I just used whatever color I had that day) and piped on some simple designs. For the hanger, I used a mini Reese's peanut butter cup and my original idea for the hook was to be part of a pretzel. But it was my genius husband who suggested it to be a candy cane instead! Much more tasty! (More festive at least) I wish I could have decorated it a little better, but it really was a practice run, and it gets the point across.

Santa was very impressed =)

Photographer: Travis J. Premo

Peppermint Cupcake

My second cupcake of the night is a little fancier then the last. I figured I owed you a little something extra.

This cupcake is also a vanilla cupcake, but with a twist....with the suggestion of my hubby I crushed mini candy canes into the batter.

Without having a clue of how they would turn out, I'm pretty pleased with them. Travis thought they were pretty good. It made the cupcake gooey, with a slight crunch.

To decorate the cupcake, I frosted the top of it with a white butter cream, and piped the peppermint design in red butter cream frosting, with the help of Travy of course.

These are also available for my standard price. $1 each or $10 for a dozen.

Photography: Travis J. Premo

Seasons Greetings!

Tonight, this cupcake is no difficult task by any means. Just a simple cupcake meant for the simpler times in life.

This is your standard vanilla cupcake with a butter cream frosting piped on, with festive holiday sprinkles!

Available for purchase. $1 each or $10 for a dozen.

Please contact me for ordering: (818)620-7535. Cupcakes are made to order.

Photography: Travis J. Premo

Christmas Wreath

Well I finally did it. The vanilla cupcake recipe finally worked for me. Thanks to a bigger and better oven. (Cupcakes by Coley should have never had to use an apartment oven, blah!)

I truly believe the cupcake came out better, because of the heat distribution. My husband said, "Much better baby!"

As I said this is a vanilla cupcake, with butter cream frosting. To get in the holiday spirit, I made them to look like holiday wreaths. I first frosted a layer of white butter cream for the base and then used a special tip to pipe on the wreath shape, and then a smaller tip to pipe on the red "holly berries" as I like to call them.

These are available for purchase for $1, or a dozen for $10. Please visit me at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Santa-Clarita-CA/Cupcakes-by-Coley/143205672827#/pages/Santa-Clarita-CA/Cupcakes-by-Coley/143205672827?ref=nf

or

http://www.cupcakesbycoley.com/

for more information.

WOW! How exciting! I had my first caller for Cupcakes by Coley, a woman called saying she found my website on Google and wanted to place an order for a dozen cupcakes, sadly she wanted them now, and there was no way I could have pulled that off, but I told her to keep me in mind for any future events. Didn't make any money off of it, but at least I know my advertisement is working and my name is starting to leak out into the world. =)

Photographer: Travis. J Premo

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Well hello my fellow cupcake lovers! I'm so disappointed in myself that last night was my first time making cupcakes since my witches hats' in October! Most of the month of November was spent traveling for work and my husband's 25th birthday. In addition to traveling Travis and I moved back into the San Fernando Valley after a year of being in Santa Clarita. So last night I had enough of my cupcakes supplies to begin baking once again. What better time to get back on the wagon than the holidays. This next cupcake was inspired from a website I found. I made a few adjustments but the idea is still the same. The cupcake is my chocolate cake recipe, and the frosting is all butter cream. To decorate the cupcake, I first frosted the entire top with white butter cream frosting, then my loving hubby piped on Santa's hat in red butter cream. To make the beard look like it had texture I used shredded coconut, and to top off Santa's hat the puff ball is made up of a mini marshmallow. These cupcakes are now available for purchase at $1 a piece. It came out pretty good for a first run, I'm sure I'll be making them again to tweak it a little more. But this made me think of a whole line of cupcakes. So stay tuned for that. On the business side of things, Cupcakes by Coley now has an OFFICIAL website. Please visit me at www.CupcakesbyColey.com It is a work in progress but it's up and running and all mine! (Thank you Travy for such a wonderful suprise and putting the site up for me) Photography: Travis J. Premo