Thank yous are in order for Joanna at Product Body for trying our Bath Cupcakes recipe! Read all about her valiant attempt here. Joanna is running a contest for the next few weeks on her blog so check out her generous contest as well!
Watermelon Cupcakes
This makes me want to do a watermelon soap project! There are so many projects to do and so little free time!
This weekend, I am going to perfect a chocolate lip balm, flavored with real Dagboda chocolate. Since chocolate is made with cocoa butter and fats, it seems chocolate should provide a good base and flavor for lip balm as well.
If anyone has tried this and wants to share their recipe, please do. It might save me a few hours of trial and error.
Happy Sunday!
Mynikin made 300 of these adorable, colorful cupcakes. It sounds challenging!
Sunday in Bellingham is usually a pretty relaxed affair. Today however, I am designing the last of Bramble Berry’s mineral make up line (coming soon!).
I’m almost finished with the instructional booklet and have designed 1 big kit. This afternoon, I will finish up on the eye shadow instructions and design three eye shadow kits. It’s fun to learn how to make products that cost a $bazillion$ dollars but are only a few cents to make at home!
I will post the winner of the Scwhag Goody Box tomorrow!
Happy Sunday!
Happy Saturday!
Ken runs a fun little cupcake store in the UK and has an inspiringblog about his sugary creations.
Cupcakes. Yummy Yummy Cupcakes.
I went to go visit Cupcakes on Denham Street in Vancouver BC. The store did not disappoint. It was bright, happy and colorful. The line of cupcake devotees was almost out the door. The cupcake and cake offerings were creative, colorful and displayed attractively.
They had cute Cupcake-branded hang tags and stickers that were available for purchase, encouraging easy gift giving and helping to further the Cupcakes brand aesthetic.
A 4-pack went for $10. Single cupcakes were $2.50
There were mountains of cupcakes. I devoured a Red Velvet cupcake. It was mushy, yummy, and practically melted in my mouth.
Carried away by the sugar high, I asked for a “I (heart) Cupcakes” t-shirt. The bill for one cupcake plus the t-shirt came to $38. It was one expensive t-shirt. Note to self: check pricing before buying.
If you are ever in Vancouver BC, it’s worth a trip down to Denham street to grab a cupcake (or four) and stroll along the beautiful waterfront, just a few blocks away.
PichPosh Bath CupcakeC
I’m a little obsessed with cupcakes of all sorts. I recently spent too much time trying to backwards engineer bath cupcakes. I was successful. Click here for directions on how to make bath cupcakes.
Last night, I took a bath with the PichPosh Solid Bubble Bath cupcake. Though they have many fragrances to choose from, I did the Vanilla based standby, Angel Food Cake. The Bath Cupcake itself is a heavy weighted dense confection. It must weigh about 8 ounces. It is colorful and feels like a decadent delight.
After 3 minutes of fizzing, the solid bubble bath was awash in color and foam.
Yes, those are real sprinkles. I know because I tasted them. They almost covered up the strange taste of the sodium lauryl sulfate.
After 10 minutes, there was still a sizeable chunk of bath cupcake. I was impressed with the staying power of this bath sundry.
20 minutes later, it was still a decadent delight as it fizzed and fizzed and bubbled and toiled and troubled. It was a bath bubble machine. Like most bubble baths, the bubbles dissipated without constant stirring and water interaction but big $9 chunk kept going for over 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, the party-in-a-cupcake had almost fizzled out and all that was left was a chunk of the bottom and a substantial amount of the top (due to the protection the sprinkles lent the no-exposed-fizzy muffin top).
Though I don’t love sitting in SLS for a prolonged period of time because of SLS’s reputed drying properties, this was a fun product and a good value – 20 minutes of bubble party is nothing to sneeze at.
Happy Monday!
This is a great example of using happy sugar flowers to personalize your cupcakes in a fast way! The effect of all the cupcakes is simply stunning.
I wish we had a cupcake bakery in Bellingham, WA. I’m reduced to driving to Seattle (Hello Cupcake Royale!) or heading to Vancouver, BC for my fix. It’s just not doing it.
Smilies and Daisies
How cute are these cupcakes? They are perfect for a summer party. The leaves are made with fondant so are edible in addition to looking spiffy. I love how smiley and happy they are. Happy Wednesday!
Bath Bomb Cupcake Redux
Jennifer at Creative Wanderings got inspired by my cupcake experimentsand made some very successful bath bomb cupcakes. Her frosting looks amazing! And the sprinkles are a cheery touch. Thanks for sharing!
Success! Bath Cupcakes Deluxe!
Bath Bomb Cupcakes – Instructions
I used the Wilton Easy Decorating Frosting Kit. Having the extra tips were perfect and made the cupcakes look ultra professional. Two days later, the frosting has dried to a hard plaster-like cast and will easily make it through the mail with proper packing.
1 part Citric Acid
2 parts Baking Soda
2 parts Baking Soda
Additives: SLS (for lots of Bubbles in the Bath) or Bentonite Clay (makes a harder bomb)
Example Recipe:
4 oz. Citric Acid
8 oz. Baking Soda
1 oz SLS
.25 oz. Salty Carmel Ice Cream fragrance
5 drops La Bomb colorant
Witch Hazel in a Spray bottle
8 oz. Baking Soda
1 oz SLS
.25 oz. Salty Carmel Ice Cream fragrance
5 drops La Bomb colorant
Witch Hazel in a Spray bottle
Mix Citric Acid and Baking Soda so there are no clumps. Add the SLS or Bentonite Clay. Mix in the fragrance and color. If consistency is not a dry pie dough consistency, spritz on witch hazel until dry powdered product easily sticks together.
For the frosting:
3 Tablespoons Meringue Powder/Powdered Egg Whites
1 lb. (By weight) Powdered Sugar
5 Tablespoons warm water
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
Optional:
few drops Butter Cream Lip Flavor
few drops La Bomb Color
3 Tablespoons Meringue Powder/Powdered Egg Whites
1 lb. (By weight) Powdered Sugar
5 Tablespoons warm water
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
Optional:
few drops Butter Cream Lip Flavor
few drops La Bomb Color
Mix Meringue into warm water first. Add cream of tartar and Powdered sugar. Whip on medium speed for 4 to 7 minutes. Frosting will form stiff peaks and harden within an hour (or so!). To make it smell better, use a dab of Butter cream flavor oil. We used Rosy Pink Lab colors to color our “frosting.”
The Bathcake Debacle, Part Deux
My goal with the frostings was to make something that would melt easily and cleanly away in the tub. I was trying to stay away from the Royal Icing frosting that most Gingerbread houses use as glue. Sometimes reinventing the proverbial wheel is a waste of time, energy and money. This is one of those times.
Frosting One used Meringue Powder, Water, and Arrowroot Powder. It looked too watery. I tossed in some SLS and La Bomb colorant to make Frosting Two.
Frosting Three used 3 times the Meringue Powder of Frosting One, Water and way more Arrowroot Powder. It looked like it would work! There was much happiness in our house for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, it was clear that the frosting was not holding. In fact, the “frosting” started dripping down the sides of the molds.
Frosting Four had only Meringue Powder, Water and a dibby dab of Arrowroot. Notice how foamy and airy it is in the photo below.
Figuring I could only improve, I tossed in some SLS to the meringue powder/water mixture.
Notice the strange holes beginning to form in the SLS based meringue frosting. Also, on the right hand of the photo, you’ll see the first of the frosting trials cracking, completely flat and failed.
The photo below is the last batch of the morning frosting attempts. Notice that only the meringue frosting has stayed tall and proud though soft, gooey and completely unsuitable for transport. The SLS frostings completely failed. The arrowroot frostings also failed.
At this point, I was demoralized. I took a break for a few hours to regroup and get my creative energies back. I joined my happy family (that’s my brother and his fiance Cheriss in the photo below) at a
game of Settlers of Catan to try to ge
t my creative mojo back. It worked! My next blog post on the subject will show three more frostings, one of which ends up successful!
The Bathcake Debacle
I made 7 batches of bath cupcakes this week. Count ’em. Seven. It was a long and creative weekend. The photo of the bathcake above is not mine. Mine turned out non-photograph friendly (translation: very pathetic cupcakes).
My batches were:
normal (citric acid/baking soda/witch hazel)
Olive Butter (citric acid/baking soda/olive butter)
SLS (citric acid/baking soda/SLS/witch Hazel)
Kaolin (citric acid/baking soda/Kaolin/Witch Hazel)
SLS/Olive (citric acid/baking soda/SLS/Olive Butter/Witch Hazel)
Olive/Kaolin (citric acid/baking soda/Olive Butter/Kaolin/Witch Hazel)
Potluck! (citric acid/baking soda/SLS/Olive Butter/Witch Hazel/Kaolin)
My recipe was pretty basic. 1/3 Citric Acid, 2/3 Baking Soda with a few extra pinches of whatever additive I was testing thrown into the mix. For more detailed instructions on making bath fizzies, visit Teach Soap.
I attempted to frost all of these with various bath frostings to make a deluxe sassy bath product that melted cleanly away in the tub.
Seven attempts later, I am properly humbled.
The set up (notice the mouth-watering, amazing Salty Carmel Ice Cream fragrance) for making bath fizzy bath cakes.
This is the perfect consistency for making bath fizzies. You want the dry ingredients to stick together just enough to clump but not so much that they are a hard little ball.
SLS is used for foam and bubbles. In its raw state, it is often a soft chunk. You’ll want to break this clump up before adding it to your mixture. I use Sodium Lauryl Sulfate up to about 25% but you could use more or less depending on how much foam you want. Alternately, if you just want fizz, stick with straight citric acid/baking soda and skip the SLS.
First, I lined the cupcake “tin” with a cupcake holders. The cupcake holder helps keep the food grade “tin” reusable again. If there was no liner, the silicone would forever more smell of Salty Carmel Ice Cream fragrance.
The colors I used to achieve the green, orange, yellow and pink were the La Bomb line. The La Bomb Labcolor Colorants are made in a base of food grade glycerin. Because they are in glycerin, the colorant does not start the fizzing reaction in your bath bomb that a water-based colorant would set off.
Then, when the mixture is in that nice pie dough consistency, push it firmly into the cupcake molds. The tighter you pack, the heavier your bomb will be and the longer the fizz will last in the tub. If you pack the bath fizzy loosely, you will get a very short, explosive fizz in the tub. The loosely packed bath fizzy provides a more “Oooh Ahhh” factor than the densely packed fizzy. But, the densely packed fizzy lasts longer. So, how tight you pack the fizzies is a personal preference.
Tomorrow, I’ll blog (with photos) about the various frosting recipes I used and the (6 dismal, 1 partial success) outcomes.
Cupcakes + Knitting = Genius
My love of cupcakes borders on obsession. I like to knit too. Big thanks to Tami of Tami’s Soapworks for emailing me this great project that encompasses both of my hobbies!
Vegan Yum Yumeven has instructions for making these creative little morsels. The good news is that they sound easy to make. When you make them, they are sure to be the hit of the party.