Princess Cupcakes

Recently I made some pretty pink princess cupcakes for a 4th birthday party :)

I stuck with vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream as those tend to be the favourites with a younger crowd.  I used my favourite Vanilla Bean Cupcakes from My Baking Addiction for the cupcakes and the classic Wilton Buttercream recipe (sans shortening) for the icing.

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone had a Valentine's Day full of friends, family, and love!

Marbled Vanilla Bean Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!  Hopefully yours isn't as white as ours, it has been snowing off and on for over a week now.  I guess those jokes about Canadians making their costumes so they fit over a snowsuit are true after all :)

A few days ago my sister and I decided to make some cupcakes and deck them out for the big spooky day.

We didn't have any specific plans, we just dyed some buttercream and let our imaginations take over. 

Pretty cool eh? Have a safe and happy Halloween!

August in Pictures

This August was a pretty fantastic month! Here is an iPhone summary to give you a small taste of how fabulous it really was :)

Banana Caramel Cake - I still dream about this cake 

Baby room reno's are coming along!

A Wedding Cake and Cupcakes

This past weekend a great friend of mine married her perfect guy.  The wedding was so much fun, with lots of tasty food (how can you go wrong with a Ukrainian wedding?), great friends, and an awesome reason to celebrate!

I was so honoured when they asked me to make the wedding cake and cupcakes! The wedding colour was orange, and while the bride requested vanilla and chocolate for the cupcakes, I was given free reign with the wedding cake flavours.

Chocolate Cupcakes w/ Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Brown Butter Glaze

Remember these doughnuts and how they blew my mind because they were just SO good and the brown butter glaze was insane?

I found another use for that tasty tasty glaze :)

I had some leftover in my fridge after the doughnuts had disappeared, just taunting me to dig in with a spoon. But I held strong! Instead I made some chocolate cupcakes, topped them with some vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream, drizzled them with the remaining glaze, and BAM, proceeded to shoved them in my face.

So. Good.

Camping-themed Baby Shower

In May one of our closest friends gave birth to an insanely cute little boy, Emmett!  This little dude is so awesome; we couldn't be happier for the new parents.

My friends and I eagerly waited until we could throw little Emmett and his mom a prime baby shower.  Since our friends spend almost every weekend in the summer camping all over Alberta, we decided that a camping-themed baby shower would be perfect!

We served all sorts of camping themed food such as mini burgers and mini hotdogs

Weddings Galore!

Despite the noticeable decrease in activity on this ol' blog of mine, I have been keeping quite busy in the kitchen this summer.  It seems like almost every weekend I end up with some sort of event or party to bake for. There have been a ton of weddings, showers (wedding and baby), stagettes, birthdays, etc etc that I have been whipping up something sweet for over the last few months. It has been a blast!

Cupcakes still seem to be a huge hit for weddings, so my cupcake pans and stand mixers have been getting quite the workout! At the end of this month I will have my biggest challenge yet, a 2 (or 3 maybe!) tier cake AND cupcakes for up to 400 guests! Oh dear, wish me luck! I think my stand mixers might to into hiding when they find that one out.

Happy Canada Day!!

Happy Canada Day everyone! I hope it is full of fun, food, family, and fireworks!!!

Here are some tasty Maple Cupcakes with a Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream to help you celebrate!

Vegan Chocolate Spring Cupcakes

For this past mother's day I made some cupcakes for a birthday brunch that one of my girlfriends was having with her family.  

Black Forest Cupcakes With a Twist

Hello Internets! I know I've been a bit flighty lately and I do apologize. I am still working on that whole work/pilates/curling/baking/blog/life balance and it is slowly getting better :)


How about some tasty cupcakes to make up for my decrease in posting? I am a firm believer that cupcakes make everything better!

Strawberry Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream

It is no secret that Strawberry Cupcakes rock my life. I seem to use this recipe whenever I can, and people request it about as often as I get requests for the standard vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.


There is just something delicious about pairing a sweet and tasty cupcake with the amazing flavour of fresh strawberries. My mouth is totally watering right now.

Oreo Cupcakes = Delicious

Hi folks! I just realized that I haven’t posted since last Friday, oh dear! Once again, things are busy. At what point can I expect my life to slow down a bit? Not a lot, just a little bit? Never? Oh, and it’s all by my own doing? Yeah, probably.

But to be honest I don’t know if I would want my life any other way! Things are good :)

In addition to the usual things that keep me busy, (in no particular order ;) work, blogging, dogs, actually seeing my husband at some point in the day, family, friends, a cousin staying with us for a while, cakes and cupcakes for friends and their life events, a new camera to play with, and who knows what else) I have also decided to take on the Joseph Pilates Challenge at Embody Pilates, a Pilates studio in my neighborhood. 

Hello Kitty Cupcakes II

I made Hello Kitty cupcakes a year ago for a 1-year birthday party, and this year I was asked to do another set for another little girl's birthday! I will be a pro at drawing Hello Kitty faces before I know it :) I still have to google Hello Kitty images each time I need to make something like this, I am so out of the loop on what is 'in' for kids these days.  Rainbow Brite is still cool, right? No? huh.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Here are some mini cupcakes I whipped up a couple of weeks ago for our neighbour's annual Christmas party.  There were both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes and I topped them with some classic vanilla buttercream. Yum!

The beautiful lights at the Alberta Legislature Grounds

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Christmas season! Ours has been busy as busy can be, but a total blast at the same time.

My Aunt/Godmother and I at her Christmas party

At John's work Christmas party

From Christmas parties to Christmas baking to shopping and everything in between, this Christmas is gearing up to be a fabulous one!

Decorating can be so tiring!

From our family to yours, I hope you have an absolutely wonderful Christmas this year! Thank you to each and every one of you for making this year so amazing :)

Christmas Confetti Cupcakes

You know what is a fun dessert? Funfetti cake! You know what else is fun? You can make your own funfetti cake at home and customize it for whatever you need!

For the baby shower the soon-to-be-momma asked for lemon funfetti mini cupcakes. To make these I used the vegan lemon cupcake recipe, and added about a ¼ cup of rainbow sprinkles right before piping the batter into the cupcake liners.  It worked out fantastic!

One thing I will warn you about is to not mix the batter too much after the sprinkles are added.  The sprinkles (I have used both jimmies and non pareils and they each work awesome) will start to dissolve in the batter and mixing will greatly increase the rate that they dissolve.  I just threw the sprinkles in after the batter was ready and give it a few quick folds to distribute the colours.

I tried this technique a second time for some Christmas cupcakes that I made for my aunt this week.  I added a scant ¼ cup of Christmas jimmies (red and green mix) to the batter, gave it a quick stir, and then filled my muffin cups and baked it up.  And taaa-daaa, Christmas Confetti cupcakes!  I know that I am not the first person to figure this out, but man I am still excited about it.  The possibilities are endless! I think it’s time I stocked up on some more sprinkles…

So as a general guideline, I would recommend adding a scant ¼ up of sprinkles for every 12 regular cupcakes that the recipe makes.   Have a fabulous weekend!

Oh, and here are the other cupcakes I had made for my aunt :) Chocolate cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream frosting, topped with holly sprinkles and some silver draggees.  

Happy holidays to you!

Vegan Carrot Cake Cupcakes

These are the delicious vegan carrot cake cupcakes that I had also made for the baby shower for my friend.  I never used to even like carrot cake, now I love a chance to make it!  The warm spices are perfect for a winter dessert.

I find that I usually have trouble making mini carrot cake cupcakes, maybe it is because there is so much ‘stuff’ for the batter to hold together in the tiny cup? So to try and avoid that this time, I chopped up my raisins so that they were more manageable are and I shredded the carrots extra small.

These small changes seemed to do the trick! After the cupcakes had cooled they came out of the cupcake wrappers much better than previous attempts. Whew! 

Since I couldn’t get my hands on any vegan cream cheese I made a vegan buttercream frosting and added a bit of butter flavoring to complement the carrot cake.  I think the flavor combo came out quite  nice.

And the little ninja still hasn’t made an appearance! I’m getting impatient :)

The original recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes take over the World.  I modified it a bit to work with the requests for the shower and what I had available in the house.  This makes 12 regular, or 3 dozen mini cupcakes.


Vegan Carrot Cake Cupcakes

• 2/3 cup flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup soy milk 
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup grated carrots
• 1/2 cup chopped raisins

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line you muffin pans with paper liners. Lightly spray the liners with baking or cooking spray
2. In a large bowl, mix together the soy milk and apple cider vinegar and let sit for a few minutes to curdle and thicken up
3. Add the sugar, vegetable oil, and vanilla, and mix well
4. In a second bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and all spices
5. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet
6. Add the carrots and raisins and mix until well distributed
7. Fill the prepared liners and bake for 26 - 28 minutes (regular cupcakes), or 12 - 15 minutes for mini cupcakes
8. Let cool before frosting
9. Enjoy!

Jungle Baby Shower Sweets (Vegan Sugar Cookies)

Last Saturday I attended a baby shower for one of my best friends! She is due in the middle of December, and her family decided to throw her a Jungle themed baby shower. So excited!


I was asked to do the desserts (yay!) and was given free reign with the design. The only request were "mini cupcakes (carrot cake and lemon funfetti) and ninja cookies".  The ninja cookies are kind of an inside joke, just go with it.

Oh, and everything had to be vegan. After making these sugar cookies I have to admit that this is the best sugar cookie recipe that I have come across so far. I love how they rolled out, baked up, and tasted! I am also really happy with this vegan icing (ie: no meringue powder could be used!) that I used to decorate the cookies, one batch was enough for 3 dozen of these! Since cookie decorating isn't my forte, I think I will stick with this icing recipe for now.

In addition to the cupcakes and cookies I decided to make a jungle-themed cake to highlight the main baby shower theme. It is sometimes hard display a theme with something as small as mini cupcakes and I had some fun ideas for the cake.

The cake was an 8" vanilla funfetti cake that I topped with chocolate fondant.  This was the very first time that I was able to completely cover a cake in fondant with NO rips or tears!! I happy-danced all over the kitchen over this one.  

I then rolled out two different colours of green fondant and cut it with a variety of cookie cutters. I realized quickly that I only own two different leaf cookie cutters! A maple leaf and a tiny 1" leaf.  Oops.  So I used a funky heart cookie cutter and a snowflake cookie cutter as well to add some extra shapes. Since I was going to be layering the leaves I wasn't too worried about people noticing snowflakes and hearts on the jungle cake :)

The animals were also made completely out of fondant.  I think the Elephant and the Giraffe are my favourites! My idea of Lion needs some work though... I still can't believe I was able to make something like these out of fondant.


I hope everyone enjoyed the desserts at the shower! I had an absolute blast and I CANNOT WAIT to meet this little ninja!


This cookie recipe made 3 dozen ninja cookies. The original recipes for both the cookies and the icing are from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

Vegan Sugar Cookies

• 2 1/3 cups flour
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup margarine, room temperature
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp additional extract (could be lemon, maple, almond, more vanilla, etc. I used maple)
• 1/4 cup soy milk

1. In a large bowl whisk together the flour, corn starch, salt, and baking powder
2. In a second large bowl cream together the margarine, shortening, and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add the vanilla, other extract of choice, and the soy milk to the sugar mixture and beat well to combine
4. Add half the flour to the wet ingredients and mix well
5. Add the remaining flour and mix until a soft dough just begins to form
6. Divide the dough in half and press each half into a disk that is 1" thick
7. Wrap each disk in plastic wrap, and then place in a ziploc bag and set them in the refrigerator
8. Let the dough chill for a few hours, or overnight
9. When ready to roll the dough, preheat the oven to 350 F and line your baking sheets with parchment paper
10. Flour the counter, and then roll one disk (keeping the second disk in the refrigerator until you need it) until it is about 1/4 - 3/8" thick
11. Cut out the desired shapes and place on the prepared baking sheet
12. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes until the edges just start to turn golden brown
13. Repeat with the remaining disk of dough
14. Let cool completely before decorating
15. Enjoy!

Vegan 'Royal Icing'

• 4 cups icing sugar
• 4 tbsp soy milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• Food colouring (optional)

1. In a large bowl sift the powdered sugar until no lumps remain
2. Whisk in the soy milk and vanilla until smooth
3. Divide the icing into several bowls and dye the icing any colour you like
4. Using a pastry bag with a small round tip, or a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off decorate the cookies until your heart is content
5. Let dry completely before storing (they can be stacked with layers of parchment paper between the cookies)
6. Enjoy!

I'll post the vegan Carrot Cake Cupcakes and the vegan Lemon Funfetti Cupcakes recipes later this week :)