peanut butter & jelly sweeties!

PB&J- a classic favorite...but in a cupcake!?

Along with the cookies (see below) I was asked to make some cupcake favors for baby Jane's welcome to the world party. Jane's mom was interested in doing a peanut butter and jelly cupcake because her husbands name starts with a P, her name starts with a B and their baby Jane is obviously the J! How cute is that to have perfectly put together initials that spell a delicious treat like peanut butter and jelly!? Once I heard that I was pretty excited cause I like cute stuff like that but I was a little concerned how peanut butter and jelly would turn out in a cupcake format. I mean, it can't really go wrong- but will it be just right?!

Well let me tell you- it was ALL kinds of right. This cupcake seriously tasted JUST like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!! I actually surprised myself with this one and I was super excited when I knew I hit the mark! I ended up making a classic moist vanilla cupcake, then piped strawberry jelly directly into the cupcake and topped it with a peanut butter-cream cheese frosting! I still felt like it needed a little more jelly so I ended up piping the top with some extra jelly for some added flavor! yum yum yum!

On another note- while making this cupcake I found myself asking everyone which kind of jelly they liked best on their PB&J. I'm a grape jelly kind of girl- how bout you?

welcome to the world, baby!

These cookies were made for baby Jane's welcome to the world party! We were deciding on whether to just do "J" cookies for each of the favors but then decided to do baby Jane's initials, JMK. Obviously, three cute little cookies are always better than one! Jane's favorite colors are light green & light pink so we went with that color scheme and made them extra cute with polka dots and stripes. These were really fun to do and just looked so cute sitting together!

ps-totally forgot to take a picture of the cookies all packaged up but I promise to document next time!

baby animal cookies!

Animals are cute but baby animals are on another level of cuteness!

A friend of mine asked me to cookie favors for her sisters upcoming baby shower which of course I was happy to do. I always like making cookies because you can really go crazy with colors and details (those things make me pretty happy)! Her sisters theme was baby animals so we decided to do a couple different animals for the favors. Here's some pictures of the elephants, giraffes, lions and sheep! Hope you enjoy!

pina colada sweeties!

Mmm, pina colada's! Who doesn't like pina coladas!? If you don't, well then... I don't know if we can be friends!

Speaking of friends, every year me and my 7 best friends and I take a mini vacation down to Ocean City, Maryland. We've taken this mini vacation since we graduated college, ahem.. 4 years ago and each year I treasure it more and more. I was put in charge of bringing a dessert so and I was trying to think of something good to make but also something that would suit the weekend. I love coconut cupcakes and was going to go in that direction when suddenly pina coladas just popped in my head! I knew I had to do it! I took my basic coconut cake recipe and decided that it needed to be more coconut-y, so I added coconut milk and some rum (um yum!) For the frosting, I had originally wanted to make a fresh pineapple frosting but I couldn't find any good lookin' pineapples so I decided to go with a rum spiked cream cheese frosting which turned out to be better than I ever imagined! The cupcakes were like little tropical treats and since they were pina colada cupcakes, I just had to top them with a cherry and a straw!

cheers! ps- those are my pretty friends!

beach sweeties!

These fun cupcakes were for a family friend of mine who's daughter was having a tricky tray event at her school! I was asked to make 225 (omg!) beach themed cupcake favors which of course I was thrilled to do! The cupcake was easy enough- just vanilla cake with a vanilla buttercream frosting but the fun part was being able to create a beachy vibe for these cute little cakes! We decided to do half water, half sand (crushed up graham crackers) topped with a cocktail umbrella. The finishing touch was a white chocolate starfish that i just couldn't get enough of- so cute! Overall the cupcakes were a hit and I was glad to get some beach work into the mix!

ps- please excuse the quality/lack of pics for this post- I was knee deep in hundreds of cupcakes! ;)

change is a comin'!

ok i admit it- i'm a slacker. I have been slacking all summer long with my baking treats :( partly because i have been wanting to make some changes with my logo/layout/design but since that takes time i'm going to just keep it moving! So, on that note I am going to back track a bit with some recent orders and try to keep this as current as possible! Until then, enjoy the posts and stay tuned for some new changes!

xo jen :)

Samoa Sweeties

Those cute little girl scouts get me every year. "Would you like to order some girl scout cookies?" Of course I do!

I ended up ordering 3 boxes of cookies.. one box of the new flavor- thank you berry munch, a box of tagalongs and then of course my favorite-SAMOAS! Yum yum yum! While I was patiently waiting for my order to arrive, I ended up buying ANOTHER box of samoas from the sweet little girls selling outside of the pizza place near my house. I couldn't say no and I was SERIOUSLY craving the samoas!

But in the middle of my romance with these cookies, I thought it would be a great idea to come up with a samoa cupcake. A soft but equally delicious version of this cookie almost made me lose my marbles. I decided to make a yellow buttermilk cupcake layed with caramel, chocolate ganache, toasted coconut and then a drizzle of some more caramel. THEY. WERE. DELICIOUS.

Once all of the cupcakes and cookies were gone, I pledged to myself that I would never order all those cookies again....that is...until next year! hah :)