Baking Design

I'm slowly immersing myself into blogging again.  Right now, I'm focused on getting my Christmas activities done.  I'm a good baker.  This year, my 8 yo daughter, and I will be making a cream puff topiary.  Our plan this Christmas Day is to have a "silly/fancy supper" complete with fancy dresses, pretend wine, fancy desserts, etc.  My kids don't eat any real food, so I decided to make "Chinese turkey" for myself and some fancy form of chicken nuggets and french fries for them.  It's all in the arrangement. I'm thinking of of how I'll arrange it now.  Perhaps in a crown format.  It's all in the presentation.  And  have a story to prove it.

This summer I was in charge of a cupcake decorating station.  Rather than spend too much money on supplies and allow everyone to go nuts, I created three designs and a "freestyle" category.  I posted photos of examples that I have created earlier in the day.  It was a huge hit.  I received compliments from Moms too. The kids liked being shown how to create interesting cupcakes. I listed instructions too. Parents got a chance to interact with their kids helping them make fancy cupcakes, without having to go through the hassle if thinking about all it.  Personally, I thought all this baking design stuff was passe given all the TV shows dedicated to it.

A confession:  I ordered cupcakes from our grocery store, Jewel, and asked them to decorate with plain chocolate and white butter cream.   After doing the math, ordering from Jewel was about $5 more than had I baked and iced them myself.  Well worth it to me as I used 48 cupcakes.  I initially bought all the ingredients at Aldi and was surprised by the price.  So I returned all that stuff and ordered from Jewel.  Smartest thing I've done in awhile (remember I was in school this summer).

Panda bear. Crushed oreos coat the outside of the icing.  Mini oreos for ears, whit choc chips or M&Ms for eyes and nose.

Circus Cupcake.  Not a great photo, I know, but you get the idea.  It looks too simple, but the kids loved this one.  Non pareils on white icing remind of the circus so I took that inspiration and added animal crackers. 

The last one not shown was "worms in dirt".  A good ol' standby.  The cupcake icing was rolled in crushed Oreos (generic work great) which I stored in square tupperware and it was perfect.  One package makes a LOT of crumbs.  Use half.   Gummi worms are added as the worms.  Cut them in half with clean sharp scissors - they will be too long otherwise.  Kids kept swiping the gummi worms and eating them outright. So have extra on hand.