Lost In Sprinkles

Hey folks! Sorry we've been away for so long!
Things have been busy, busy, busy...
But we have a ton of orders coming up - which means we'll also have an endless supply of cupcake pictures for our blog. We thought we had a pretty busy summer here at Whisk Upon Star but fall is going to be 10x as crazy!
Last weekend, we did an adorable set of Ni Hao Kai Lan cupcakes for little Nara's birthday. After months of putting it off, I was finally able to take pictures of the fondant decorations AS I was making them - with the help of my lovely fiancee of course! (Note to self: It is virtually impossible to hold fondant in one hand, a sculpting tool in the other and the camera in the ... um third hand?)
Anyways, until I get those posted, here's a link to the luau themed cupcakes we made for Auntie Josie and Auntie Dolly's birthday:

Click here to see our luau cupcakes!

Mahalo!
~Deanna

Cupcakes In Sin City!

Oh man are we glad to be back in San Diego!! We just came back from our trip to Las Vegas - where it was a suffocating 110 degrees!! Luckily all of the casinos on the strip are armed with state-of-the art air conditioning. While taking a cool stroll through the shops at the Monte Carlo, we stumbled upon this adorable little cuppy shop - The Cupcakery! http://www.thecupcakery.com/

If only this were real!All of their cupcakes looked delicious but this one really caught my eye! Look at all that sparkly chocolaty minty goodness! Behold the Grasshopper...

I immediately fell head over heels in love with the edible glitter The Cupcakery used on their cuppies. It looked so similar to craft glitter - I almost didn't eat it! I've seen other types of edible glitter before. They usually look like a cross between sanding sugar and fish food (Ew I know!). But this glitter was gorgeous! It had a really pretty iridescent sheen to it. So sparkly!
Anyways, enough about the glitter! The Grasshopper did not disappoint! The chocolate mint frosting was the perfect consistency. It was nice and creamy - not at all heavy! The cupcake itself was a little too rich. But I'm more of a fruity cupcake kind of gal so I guess I'm just not used to all that chocolaty goodness!
Anyways, that's my mini-review of The Cupcakery in Vegas.
If you're planning a trip to Sin City, definitely go check it out!

~Edible Glitter and Kisses
Deanna

Ode To Flan

With flan - I've never been a fan..

Until I met this handsome man...

Who took some milk out of a can
Mixed it with eggs in a pan...And made the world's most bestest flan!
He makes my heart do a hand stand....

The End

Here's the recipe he used...courtesy of the fabulous Ms. Paula Deen!

Coconut Flan

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Ingredients:

1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup shredded coconut flakes
Fresh whipped cream, for garnish
1/4 cup shredded coconut flakes, toasted, for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the sugar until it caramelizes. Pour it into a flan dish, pie plate or round souffle baking dish with shallow sides, swirling it around to coat the bottom.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until foamy with a wire whisk. Beat in the condensed milk, coconut milk, vanilla extract and 1/4 cup coconut. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. It will need to bake in a water-bath in the oven. Set the dish into a large baking pan with sides and carefully pour water around the flan to come 2/3 the way up the sides. Carefully transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for about 1 hour, until the flan is set and the center only jiggles a little bit, like a cheesecake would. Remove from the oven and water-bath and allow to cool completely. Turn the flan out onto a flat serving platter. Cut into slices for serving. Garnish with whipped cream and toasted coconut.

Servings: 6 to 8 servings
Prep Time:
Cook Time: 1 hour 10 min
Difficulty: Easy

Show: Paula's Home Cooking

http://www.pauladeen.com/index.php/recipes/view2/coconut_flan/

Ellypant Cake Toppers

Just wanted to share a picture of the little elephant wedding cake toppers we made over the weekend. These little pachyderms are made out of polymer clay instead of fondant - at request of the awesome bride and groom.

Behind The Cupcakes: Thirty and Fabulous!

Ordered By: Hoa and AAJA San Diego
Occasion: Savy's 30th Birthday
Flavor(s): Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting
Chocolate Raspberry with Cream Cheese Frosting
Theme: A Few of Savy's Favorite ThingsThirty is an awesome number. Researchers say it's the number of seconds it takes for a person to fall in love. It's the number of minutes it takes Rachel Ray to make a meal. It's the age Teresa tells people she is - but isn't (Just making sure you're reading Treese!) Our gorgeous and incredibly talented friend Savy turned 30 last week. She's the Vice President of the San Diego Asian American Journalists Association and her friends at AAJA wanted to surprise her with cupcakes at their meeting. (p.s. If anyone ever wants to surprise me with cupcakes, I'm all for it!! Anyone? )
Savy's favorite cupcakes are Red Velvet, so we whipped up a batch of those. Teresa also made a batch of chocolate raspberry cupcakes for the first time. They were delicious! The tartness of the raspberry provided a great contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate. If you look closely at the pictures, you can see a little bit of the raspberry glaze peeking out from under the frosting.
A few years ago, Savy adopted a little dog named Toto. He is the cutest little thing! You can tell he really loves his mommy, he follows her around everywhere! So of course I knew I had to make a little Toto out of fondant. When I first started making him, he was completely nekkid. Fur is HARD to make! But then I realized - he just wouldn't look like Toto if he didn't have long white fur. So I rolled out a couple strands of fondant and added it to his ears...then a couple to his face. Before I knew it, the whole puppy was covered in fondant fur.
And he turned out pretty darn cute...
I also made a Toyota symbol, to represent the other love in Savy's life - her brand new Prius!
There was also a little Vietnamese sandwich (Umm...ok balogna sandwich, I couldn't figure out how to make pâté or cilantro!)
And a girl can't live without her iPhone and her purse!

~Special thanks to Hoa and AAJA-SD for ordering these cupcakes!!

Whisk Upon A Star's Canine Employees

Meet Kona and Kash! These two monsters like to keep me company while I work on our cupcakes. Kash is my little spectator. He usually sits on the couch and watches my every move. Kona is the troublemaker. Over the last few months, he developed a strange affinity for fondant. He loves the sweet stuff - but since he has a sensitive tummy I told him he couldn't have any because it has sugar in it. This edict inevitably led to what we now refer to as the "Mad Hatter Massacre of 2010." It took me two days to finish the decorations for the Alice in Wonderland cupcakes. When I was done I put them in a little air tight container and left it out on our dining room table. I went to take Kash out to potty and when we came back inside, there were dozens of little fondant heads and appendages sprawled out across my living room rug. In the two or three minutes that we were gone, Kona had managed to knock the box off the table, break it open and mutilate all of my poor, defenseless little creatures. There were fondant body parts everywhere! It was gruesome! It took me over 14 hours to re-create the Mad Hatter decorations. Luckily, they ended up looking even better than the first batch. I guess I have Kona to thank for that...or not!
Anyways here's the low down on my boys:

Kona
Breed: Boxer
Age: 4 years old
Favorite Snacks: String Cheese, bananas,
Goldfish (the crackers not the swimmy ones),
scrambled eggs and sweet potato ice cream
Hobbies: Counter surfing, playing at the dog park, passing gas,
wrestling with Kash and running in the sand at Dog Beach

Kash

Breed: Boston Terrier
Age: 3 years old
Favorite Snacks: Peanut butter, yogurt, string cheese,
scrambled eggs and duck treats
Hobbies: Running in circles, chasing rabbits, humping things, killing stuffed animals and sunbathing

A few years ago, we decided to have a little doggie block party to celebrate Kona's birthday. All of our neighbors brought their pups over for a playdate and we served these cute little banana pupcakes. They were really easy to make and the dogs LOVED them! By the time we were done, Kona had frosting all over his face and our neighbor's boxer Colt had scarfed down three of them!
Here is the recipe for those of you who have furry babies at home:

Banana Pupcakes

2 cups water
2 bananas
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1 egg
2 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl combine water, mashed bananas, vanilla, egg and honey. Add flour and baking powder. Mix well. Pour into cupcake pans. Bake 20 min or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Frosting - In a mixer combine 12 oz nonfat cream cheese, 1 teasp. vanilla, 1 teasp. honey. Add 3 teasp cinnamon or carob powder, if desired.

(Or you can subsitute the cream cheese frosting for peanut butter!)

- Recipe courtesy of Jill @ BoxerTalk!

The Birthday Boy - Kona Bear

June Bug loved the frosting!

Roxie

Colt

And for the record - yes, we did try the pupcakes for ourselves! They tasted like bland banana flavored muffins with frosting on top. Definitely not something I would make for humans...
~Deanna

Happy Woody Day!

Um...yeah that came out wrong...
Happy Buzzlight Year Day?
The much anticipated Toy Story 3 came out in theaters today!! Who's going to check it out? I can't wait to bring the boys to go see it.To celebrate the opening of Toy Story 3 in theaters, our favorite confectionery goddess Bakerella made these incredible Hamm and Mr Potato Head cake pops. UH-mazing!!


I love the way she uses little pieces of candy to make Mr Potato Head's body parts. No fondant required. She is so clever!!

Check out the original post on http://www.bakerella.com/
Happy weekend y'all!!
~Deanna

Flavor Faaaaaaaave!

Ok so referencing a washed up gold-toothed rapper from the 90's might not have been the best way to start off a post about cupcakes but I just had to do it. Come on. Just try yelling it out....."Flavor Faaaaaaaaaaave!" Fun huh?
On to our post...
Remember back in the day when there was only two kinds of cupcakes - chocolate and vanilla? When we were growing up, my mom only used the boxed cake mixes so I didn't even know other kind of cupcake flavors existed until I met Teresa . For those of you who didn't know, Treese is the incredibly talented baking genius behind Whisk Upon A Star. I just make things look pretty - she does all the measuring, sifting, mixing and baking. She's also in charge of coming up with new cupcake flavors. Right now, we only have the basic flavors available (chocolate, vanilla bean, red velvet and carrot cake) but we are starting to experiment with new ones.
People are always asking us what our favorite cupcake flavors are. I had a really hard time coming up with a favorite. Of course, I love chocolate like everyone else, but I'm also a big fan of fruity cupcakes. I managed to narrow down my favorites to three:
1) Peanut Butter and Jelly
This one is my all time favorite!! When we were experimenting with the chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes, Treese had the idea to fill a few of them with jam. She put raspberry preserves in a piping bag and squeezed a little into the center of each cupcake. Then she covered the whole with our creamy peanut butter frosting. It was UH-mazing! I think I ate three of them.
2) Pomegranate
We haven't tried making these ourselves yet, but Babycakes in Hillcrest makeseen hooked ever since! The pink frosting was a little tart and provided the perfect contrast to the sweet pommy cake. It was also topped with a cute little pomegranate gummy.
3) Irish Car Bomb
They're cupcakes with alcohol in them! What's not to like? These little Irish cuppies were really popular around St Patrick's Day. The cupcakes are made with Guinness Beer and the frosting is infused with Bailey's Irish cream. They're magically delicious!! (*snort*giggle*)
There are also a ton of different cupcake recipes that we are dying to try out. Treese's son Joe will eat anything with bacon on it so we've been meaning try out some maple bacon cupcakes. He also likes steak but I don't think we'll be able to find a way to integrate that into a cupcake. Yuck...meatcake. Ever since Justin's nieces started selling Girl Scout cookies, I've been craving some Thin Mint cupcakes. I've also seen recipes for Samoa cupcakes. I love the cookies but they are a little too sweet for me! And last but not least, I am determined to make some Elvis cupcakes (peanut butter, banana and sometimes bacon!)
We asked our awesome Facebook fans what their favorite flavors were. Here's what they said:

Raspberry Lemonade – Suzie M

Rootbeer Float – Denise P

Peanut Butter – Junvi O

Banana, Red Velvet and Carrot Cake – Heather B

Carrot Cake – Savy H

Red Velvet and Chocolate – Chie S

Yellow Cake and Chocolate – Lani I

Red Velvet, Vanilla and Carrot Cake – Janice D

Chocolate - Monica Z

Thanks for sharing your favorite flavors with us ladies!

*If you are in the Hillcrest area, go check out Babycakes on 5th Avenue! http://babycakessandiego.com/

Behind The Cupcakes: Hey Mickey!

Mickey Mouse Cupcakes For Des' 1st Birthday
Ordered By: The Martinez Family
Occasion: Des' 1st Birthday
Flavor(s): Vanilla Bean with Red Cream Cheese Frosting
Chocolate with Yellow Peanut Butter Frosting
Theme: Mickey Mouse

Does anyone else remember the words to the Mickey Mouse Club song? Because every time I tried to sing it while making these cupcakes it came out "Hey Mickey you're so fine! You're so fine you blow my mind HEY MICKEY!" Try working with that song stuck in your head for THREE DAYS! We LOVED doing this order of Mickey Mouse cuppies for the Martinez family because it involved two of our favorite things: cupcakes and Disney! Right from the start we knew we wanted to make cupcakes with big round ears - but we had a little trouble deciding which kind of Mickey we wanted to use as the centerpiece.There are so many different kinds of Mickey's! There's old school Mickey, Sorcerer Mickey, 90's Mickey, Classic Mickey and then that new fangled 3-D Mickey. We were going Mickey crazy!
Then Des' mom sent me this adorable invitation that they made for the party:How cute is that? The colors and shapes reminded me of a little solar powered bobblehead Mickey figurine that my brother bought the last time we went to Disneyland. Does anyone else have one of these? They are so much fun to stare at. I'm not even going admit how many long I've spent watching their little heads bob from side to side. Let's just say it's a lot.

I decided to use bobblehead Mickey as the inspiration for our cupcakes. Here is the original sketch:

And from there, our little fondant Mickey was born.

We decided to go with a yellow, red and white color scheme for these cupcakes (to match Mickey's chonies and shoes). We were lucky enough to find little red and white Mickey sprinkles at "Do It With Icing" http://www.doitwithicing.com that matched perfectly. Normally we use a small/medium piping tip to frost our cupcakes, but we needed to pile on the frosting a little higher to make the ears stick up. So we decided to use a large flower tip and instantly fell in love with the results! Not only was the bigger tip easier to use, but it also gave our cupcakes some height - which is exactly what we were looking for!
If you look at the original sketch, our Mickey originally had little feet. We tried it out but for some reason they looked odd so we decided to make him feetless. We didn't have time to make Minnie Mouse, but we did manage to make Mickey's best friend and arch enemy Donald Duck.

Then of course we had Mickey's chonies!

And his shoes
and his ears
We also made a few mini's
And of course we had to make a special cupcake for the birthday boy!
Happy First Birthday Des!!

And that concludes the story behind our Mickey Mouse cupcakes! Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take pictures of our little fondant friends while I was making them. It's definitely on my to do list for our next order. One of my goals for this blog is to do a photo tutorial on fondant so that you guys can try some of these designs for yourselves! But it's a little hard to sculpt fondant finagle the camera at the same time. (That's right, I used the word "finagle!") We'll figure something out.

Until Next Time!
~Deanna

*Special thanks to the Martinez family for ordering these cupcakes from us, and for letting us borrow your pictures!! We love you guys!

Welcome!

Hey Everyone!
Welcome to Whisk Upon A Star Sweets! As you can probably tell, we are head over heels in love with cupcakes - so we thought we would start our own site to pay homage to our favorite frosting covered treat. We'll be using this blog to swap recipes, post pictures and share a few baking/decorating tips and tricks that we've picked up a long the way.
We also want up this blog to showcase your sugary creations as well! If you'd like to share some pictures of your cupcakes, feel free to send them over to whiskuponastarsweet@gmail.com.

~Deanna and Teresa
Whisk Upon A Star