Black and White and Cake All Over

It's been a little while now since I baked like a maniac. Fortunately, one of my labmates again gave me a good excuse to destroy my kitchen. We decided to go with 4 dozen cupcakes and a two-tiered cake to match! I was really conflicted over what kind of cake I wanted to do. For some reason I was just stumped. Then, it came to me. My bedroom curtains were the perfect inspiration! I have an eclectic mix of black and white striped and black and white floral curtains in my bedroom that made for what might be my favorite cake yet. I decided to add to the mix of patterns by stacking a round cake on top of a square one.

On the cupcake side of things, I went with 4 different designs to give everyone a good choice. First off were vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream adorned with pearlized silver sprinkles and gold-dusted white chocolate "J" pieces. Second were (my favorite) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing adorned with silver sprinkles and gold-dusted dark chocolate finials (generously gold-dusted by E.!). Also with cream cheese icing were a set of carrot cake cupcakes (easy as pie to make!). Finally, I went with a unique caramel cupcake with a caramel buttercream (E. and I ate all the extra out of my bowl!) and spun sugar abstract decorations on top. All this baking taught me one thing: I need to make cupcakes more often. The most difficult thing: keeping Chris away from all the cupcakes for any appreciable amount of time.

I was very pleased with how it all turned out and even more surprised we got everything to the park in one piece! I had good help with the transport. Hopefully there will be more cupcakes in the future.