Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Chocolate cupcakes with basketball decoration. It was the end of another season for Bubby's basketball team and after the last practice there was a pizza party to celebrate. We were asked to contribute desserts.  Last year it was so much fun to make a cake, but this year I only had time for cupcakes.  But they were fun to make too! And best of all, quick. I used  this recipe  for Chocolate Cupcake s from Sugar and Sparrow. It's so easy and uses all pantry ingredients.  The batter is very liquid, and last time I made it the cups were 2/3 full and the resulting cupcakes were too big. This time instead of 12 I made 13. And even then, some of them were a bit too tall. So I think with this recipe I can try for 14 next time.  As it is, when they came out of the oven I had to smush down the tops of some of them that had domed a bit. I needed to be flat. I used  the usual recipe  for buttercream, from Preppy Kitchen. I made one batch, reserving some to co...

  Scary Halloween Mummy  Chocolate Cupcakes Halloween is such a favorite holiday of mine! No stressful and obligatory family gatherings, dressing up in costumes and lots of sweet treats. What's not to love?  This year I decided to make Chocolate Cupcakes  for us to enjoy and just to spread the love.  I used  this recipe  from Sugar & Sparrow's blog. I followed the recipe and the batter was so liquid and barely filling the cupcake wells in half. Although the recipe says it makes 15 cupcakes, each portion just looked so scant I ended up dividing the batter among the 12 cupcakes in the pan.  Well, that showed me!  These cupcakes really rise and some of them turned out pretty big.  Next time, I'll make 14. I'd planned to do a simple "mummy" decoration with the frosting, so it really wasn't a problem that some of them were so domed. The strips of the mummy's wrapping are done with a basketweave piping tip done in a bit of a random pattern...

 It's a good thing everybody's Irish on St. Patrick's day because we love to celebrate. We decorate a little bit and I set the table with a festive shamrock tablecloth. As I get older and more family members are missing I find that I enjoy these low-key smaller holidays more than days like Christmas, New Years or, God forbid, birthdays.  This year our menu included Guinness beef stew, sauteed green cabbage and potato "farls". Dessert was Chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Guinness buttercream . I used this recipe  from Sally's Baking Addiction and I'm just going to go ahead and say that they were absolutely scrumptious. I wish could have eaten several!  The recipe calls for reducing most of a bottle of Guinness to use in the batter and the frosting. That was my first time reducing beer, and with this kind of stout it made for a bit of a bitter reduction but of course once coupled with all the brown sugar in the batter they balanced each other out wonderfully...