My first baby shower: An experiment in normal(ish) looking cupcakes

Last March marked one of the first times I felt like a professional baker. Not because it was my first order or anything (I'd already cupcake-catered a few birthday parties and dinners by that time), but because it was the first order that wanted normal looking cupcakes. 

Typically, my draw is the interesting designs: the Legos, butterflies, popcorn, or even leather jackets. This time, they just wanted simple (but still cutely decorated) cupcakes for a baby shower.

Weirdly, this was more nerve-racking for me than the other, more complicated, cupcakes I've made over the last year. I mean, with interesting (usually cartoon-y) designs, I feel like people might be more forgiving of tiny errors because the cupcakes are still so fun! With regular cupcakes, however, you don't have that cushion. 

Anyway, I'm rambling now, so let's just skip the rest of this and get to the cupcakes themselves:

Despite my concerns, I think they turned out pretty well. 

I've got another baby shower in two weeks with a slightly more complicated design. Get excited!

Before and After

Long time no blog, huh? Well, fear not, citizens, for while I have not been good about updating the website, I have still been baking!! 

In March, I was asked to bake cupcakes for a couple's three-year anniversary. Now, as everyone knows*, the three-year anniversary is considered the "leather" anniversary, so of course I was asked to decorate them to look like leather. 

After a while of brainstorming with the wife and not knowing how to make normal cupcakes look like leather, we finally decided to go for a little before and after:

Maybe it is a little crass, but I'm okay with that.

Ignore the tissue paper. It's only there to take up space, since the couple only wanted 6 cupcakes.

Unfortunately, I'm terrible at photography (especially at phone photography), so the jackets don't really show well in the pictures. But believe you me, I think even the Fonz would have been tempted to wear these cupcakes. 


With the Three-year "leather" cupcakes behind me, I've started wondering how I'd do some of the other anniversary cupcakes. I mean, how would you even decorate a 10-year "tin" cupcake or a 14-year "ivory"? Ah well, I suppose I have some time to figure those out.

*To be clear, I had no idea the three-year anniversary was represented by leather until the couple told me. Even then, I didn't fully believe it and used Google to confirm.