Summer is Here!

One of my FAVORITE flowers is the Sunflower. And one of my favorite dunking cookies is the all-American Oreo. So why not make Sunflower cupcakes with a yummy Oreo as the center? And why not include some lucky ladybugs!

The bugs are red M&M's with piped chocolate. The cupcakes are yellow and chocolate with buttercream filling. I piped the petals on with a leaf tip after I glued down the Oreo cookie.

These were for a family reunion at my aunt's house in Indiana. They seemed to love them! I had so much fun making these happy cupcakes, I couldn't help but smile the whole time! :-)

Fun with Chocolate

Hi there! Thought I'd show you a fun chocolate mosaic cake I experimented with for my friends' summer birthdays. They are new moms and I wanted to make sure they were celebrated!

Wonder how I get my ideas? I subscribe to a couple magazines that specialize in fancy show-on-TLC type cakes. One issue had a dark chocolate mosaic cake. Mosaic, to me, is just broken pieces glued back together. Well, I LOVED the idea, but didn't love all that brown...especially in the summer. So I changed it up a bit and made it girly!

I melted down white chocolate, separated it so I could color half pink. I spread the layer of chocolate as thin as I could, swirling the two colors so it created a spectrum of pink and white. I chilled it, and had fun breaking it all up!

The cake is red velvet, one of the Birthday girls' favorite cake flavors, and I filled the middle with fresh strawberries. I accented the PINK with yellow, to help it pop.

Seemed like everyone enjoyed it, and I can't wait to make another mosaic!