Friday, June 18, 2010

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

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

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/


Friday, June 11, 2010

Behind The Cupcakes: Hey Mickey!

Mickey Mouse Cupcakes For Des' 1st Birthday
Ordered By:
The Martinez Family
Occasion: Des' 1st Birthday
Flavor(s): Vanil
la 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!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

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