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