Some of my Hello, Cupcake & What's New, Cupcake creations

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Karen and Alan -- authors of the incredible Hello, Cupcake and What's New, Cupcake books. Those designs are soooo much fun to make - and they're not difficult at all. Most, if not all, of the ingredients are things you can find in your local supermarket or CVS. If you have the opportunity to take one of their workshops, DO IT!! I drove my sister, mom, and dear friend Kemely all the way to NJ near the PA border for this class!! It took us 3 hours to get there and 4 hours to get home, but worth every minute of our trip!! I'll have to dig out some photos from that class!

My absolute favorite design is in the What's New book... LoMein. It was so much fun to create that my daughter incorporated it into her birthday party this year. We had lots of teens over creating their own lomein cupcakes and t hey had a blast!! My local Chinese restaurant gave me these beautiful soup containers to use and the disposable chopsticks!

The popcorn was the first one I did - and they were time consuming, but looked amazing in the plastic boxes from Target's dollar spot! The spaghetti and meatballs was a breeze -- I've made them several times and was recently asked to make them as favors for an Italian-themed Sweet 16. For the "sauce", I don't like strawberry preserves, so I tinted some caramel with red coloring and rolled the "meatballs" in it. FYI - the meatballs are Ferrero Rocher candies. The "cheese" on top is grated white chocolate. I use a peanut butter butter cream frosting for the spaghetti so I don't have to "color" it.

The tv dinners were a HUGE hit! Slightly more difficult to make - but they really did come out great! The corn-on-the-cob were easy - but finding those shades of yellow/cream jelly belly jelly beans was a chore!

The koi fish is absolutely ADORABLE!!! And super easy to make using 2 circus peanuts, an apple jacks cereal and m&ms. The pies are really neat, too. If you use a muffin-sized cupcake, you'll really see the detailed m&ms look like cherries (or blueberries). Again, you can use peanut butter butter cream so you don't have to tint the frosting to the right "shade".

So now you see that cupcakes can be fun or classic, cute or sophisticated. If you love the creativity in the designs above, hurry up and buy both books!! You won't be disappointed!!