Piecakes 2: Return of the Piecakes

Happy Thanksgiving to all! We celebrated at our house the way I usually celebrate things: by making cupcakes. I finally re-attempted the cupcakes that look like pies. They turned out better this time.

Red velvet. Mostly food coloring. True story.

Josh forbade the usage of orange M&Ms because he said it too closely resembled OSU colors. So I ate them.

 In the cupcake caddy.

Like always, Josh made his ribbon jell-o and it was a big hit.

Josh is suspicious about the quality of this turkey.

 Bonus Picture:

This has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but it's cute. The cats just can't get enough of Josh.

Piecakes or CupPies

For my last full week at Lewis and Clark, I wanted to make some cupcakes from my cupcake decorating book (remember these and these?)

This is what they were supposed to look like:

Cute, right? The frosting was just vanilla buttercream with cocoa powder and yellow food coloring mixed in. The design is pretty simple, here is what they look like in progress:

After baking the cupcakes, I frosted them, leaving a little unfrosted edge. That was supposed to be so I could make a crimped part of the crust out of frosting. I covered the frosted part with M&Ms. Believe me, it was a total chore eating all the non-red or blue ones! ;)

After covering all the cupcakes with M&Ms, I then piped lines on them to simulated the basketweave crust top. Unfortunately, BOTH of my pastry bags sprung leaks, so I didn't get to finish the edges, but everything else turned out okay:

I have an issue right now with determining the right consistency of frosting; the last cupcakes I make were practically dripping and this frosting was a bit thick. I'm not sure which to try next, but I love the cupcakes that look like regular food (like corn on the cob).

Easter with the ShepAlders

My family already celebrated Easter without us (for various reasons that I will, hopefully, be able to explain later... unless you've seen me in person, in which case I've probably already blah blah blahed about it). So I missed out on the egg hunt and the infamous lamb cake (a cake that looks like a lamb, not a cake made from lamb). Instead, when Josh and I went down to Eugene for the weekend, my mom and I made duck cupcakes.

They were supposed to look like this:

Hold on to your suspense!

We started off with cupcakes:

After we frosted the naked cupcakes for a base, we then added marshmallows cut in half crosswise for the tails and doughnut holes for the heads:

We were supposed to dip each cupcake in frosting, but the heads kept falling off. Instead, we did this:

It kind of worked, except the frosting at that point was so runny (for the dipping), it kept dripping off. I also used starburst for the beaks and feet:

 This required me to spent an hour squishing and molding. There was much debate about how best to do the feet. I think they turned out okay.

 We did finally get it all together, get the beaks on, and tried to keep the heads on. The turned out like this:

I think these duck bums are the cutest:

They are kind of deformed, but they just look so hopeful:

The unfortunate thing is that it took so much frosting to make everything stick together. It was a little too much sugar for me:

But people still ate and enjoyed them, so it was a success! 

 In Other News:
Remember how my dad requested we visit the Lego store in Chicago to buy odds and ends for his Lego projects? One of those projects is a Lego version of their house:

Isn't this ridiculous? 

My dad was planning to make it so you can take off the roof, but the design didn't work so well. So you miss that inside the house is all relatively (as close as you can get with Legos) architecturally accurate. There are even minifigs for most of the members of my family. For some reason, we're all in the den eating turkey.

Here's the back side: