The good, the bad and the ugly

I've been cupcake crazy as usual and have plenty of more pictures to prove it! I also made a cake the other day that we ended up having to call "Study Break Cake" (it's dead week) instead of easter egg cake - no religious connotations here! I wanted to write on it "Praise the lord Jesus" and have a big cross, but K'Lynn wasn't having it (although she did laugh). Haha. Anyways, here's what I got:

These are turtle cupcakes. They turned out okay. It was a chocolate cupcake (I used a mix so they weren't the best), covered in chocolate ganache. Then I topped them with caramel buttercream (needs work) and pecans. Problems with this cupcake:

1. Accidently used milk chocolate instead of semi-sweet chocolate for the ganache - too sweet.

2. Caramel flavor in buttercream not prominent enough - remind me to work on that!

3. Pecans needed to be toasted for better flavor.

4. The way they were decorated is horrendous!

I was bored one night and made these. They're plain chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow buttercream and marshmallow fondant on top. The marshmallow fondant is absolutely delicious on top!!! It's fluffy like the cupcake, and the flavors compliment each other really well. I'm thinking I can make a low-calorie chocolate cupcake and put marshmallow fondant on top and call it "Cloud Nine". We'll see!

These cupcakes are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! When I was little, my best friend's mom made a "better than sex" cake. It was a devils food cake, covered in condensed milk straight out of the oven with whipped cream and crushed heath bar on top. I decided it was time to make this a cupcake the other day at work, and voila! It's all the same, except I turned the condensed milk into dulce de leche (baked it for 2 hours) so it could be thick enough to fill the cupcake with and drizzled caramel on top. Why this cupcake is so great:

1. The devils food is amazing; moist but firm, full of flavor but doesn't overpower the cupcake and dark dark dark!!!
2. The heath bars on top add a perfect finishing touch both decoration-wise and taste-wise.
3. The whipped cream cuts some of the sweetness of the dulce de leche, so its not too sweet (and anyone who says it is is crazy!
4. It looks great!

So after all this cupcake making, I only have two final recipes: PB&J and Better Than What?!? (kid-friendly version)...I need to remake my other recipes and see if they're worth it!

I also made a cake yesterday to practice piping and such:

It's a chocolate cake mix with a cadbury cream filling (i.e. liquid fondant) and covered in buttercream. I topped it with colored coconut and chocolate eggs. It didn't taste like anything special, just another cake. Anyways, nothing too new at work - oh except the other croissant baker quit, so I'm picking up all her shifts until we find a new person! BUT the good part about it is, I can take over her shifts permanently when we hire someone new...that means my weekends will be free! BOOP BOOP!