Merry (Belated) Christmas!

The Sweetshop is officially closed for the holidays, but there's one customer who shows up anyway! He travels all night in the cold, touches down on the lawn, and shimmies down the chimney. Then he starts looking for cookies, and you'd better not disappoint!

And because we didn't want the big guy to forget just how good we were this year, we left him these:

Happy Birthday Natalie!

Natalie is turning 2! Her birthday party had a Moon and Stars theme, and I got to make the cake and cupcakes.




The cupcakes are Yummiest Yellow Cake Ever with Vanilla Buttercream frosting and fondant embellishments.


The cake is also Yummiest Yellow Cake Ever, filled with Chocolatey Chocolate Buttercream and covered in Vanilla Buttercream with fondant embellishments.

Happy Birthday Dhillon and Alex!

Dhillon and Alex are friends who just turned 7! For their joint birthday party, they wanted a Star Wars themed cake.


This was the Sweetshop's Yummiest Yellow Cake Ever filled with Chocolatey Chocolate Buttercream (a very popular choice lately!) and covered with black fondant. The stars and words were made with white fondant.

** Once again, I have to apologize for the quality of my pictures. I swear to you that this cake was not lopsided though it appears to be so in the picture. I think I need to get another lesson from my sister Laura who is an actual photographer!**

Happy Birthday Mason!

Mason just turned 4! Mason's mom and I have been friends since our boys were really little, and his birthday is always kind of bittersweet for me. He's growing up, and he's only two months older than A-Train, so that means that my little guy is growing up, too.

(You might remember Mason's little sister Makenna from her first birthday party. She's one month older than Big D.)

For his fourth Mason had a bug-themed party at the local museum where they brought the creepy crawlies in for the kids to touch! I'm not talking cute bugs like butterflies and lady bugs. I mean the ugly ones, tarantulas, flying cockroaches, and some totally disgusting wormy thing that I didn't catch the name of.

Such a yucky party theme created a bit of a dilemma for me. I spend a lot of time trying to make pretty sweet things, not creepy sweet things. But after much research (i.e. Googling) I settled on a few designs from the the book Hello Cupcake!

First up, the cupcakes in spider, centipede, ant, and beetle:


These are Yellow Buttermilk Cake with Almond Buttercream frosting. The bugs are made of chocolate and various types of M&Ms and chocolate covered sunflower seeds.

Then the tick cake pops. Seriously, ticks!



And here's the birthday boy digging in to (or maybe around?) his cupcake.



You might have noticed that Mason and Makenna look an awful lot alike. If you're wondering who they look like, it's this guy!


And, as a shameless plug, John and his wife, along with their partners Chris and Lisa, own two restaurants here in Durham- Pop's and Rue Cler. Both are fantastic, so check them out!

Christmas Cupcakes

I LOVE Christmas. I just can't help myself. The lights, the presents, the over-indulgences at every turn. It's just my kind of holiday!

When my friend Siping asked me to make Christmas cupcakes for her son's class, I jumped at the chance, and here's what I came up with.





I hope the kids enjoy eating them as much as I enjoyed making them.