Cupcake Capers

Well it's that time of year again...yeah, Christmas is coming and time for all the baking!
I love baking! It's my therapy. I don't eat much of the confections I create but I love to make them. Are you kidding me? I would never be able to shed these extra baby bumps if I ate even a fraction of the amount of baking made in my kitchen. Thank goodness for my husband's Thursday night fire practices.
And I am especially thankful for bake exchanges...It's my chance to try out some new recipes and cookbooks. I have been itching to reproduce one of the amazing designs from the Hello Cupcake! book that I received for my birthday. (I dabbled with a simple technique in a previous posting!)





So I was very excited to learn that I had another opportunity to make some creative confections. I love how the cupcake book breaks down the techniques so that they look amazing but are still easy enough for anyone to accomplish. But they can be time consuming...more so than I anticipated when having to create eight cupcake creations. I really had my heart set on making everyone a beautiful white wreath with the hand painted white chocolate leaves, but after two hour of painting mint leaves and then trying to peel all those fragile wafers from their fragrant stencils, I gave up. I was also out of mint leaves and paitence! So I decided that the one and only wreath I created would be my sharing treat for our exchange night and I would pick a simpler project to swap! (But the wreath did turn out amazing if I say so myself.)





So my next pick were the gingerbread cupcake people! I decided to make them with mini cupcakes instead of the regular size ones so that everyone would get two people with seven minis in each. They were so fun to create and decorate. Especially when drawing the expressions on their faces...so cute! And pretty easy once you get a system down.





The cupcake people went over very well with the goodie exchangers and nobody wanted to be the first to eat my winter wonderland wreath (they eventually broke down and dug in). And here are some of the goodies that we received from the exchange...yummy yum yum! Jackson got to taste them all. Thanks to all those from work who participated in this year's exchange! Jackson said his favourite was 'More!'