Christmas Ornament Cupcakes

Christmas is almost upon us, and even though cakes have been light this month, I ave still been busy making tons of coconut macaroons for some of my seasonal corporate customers.

It's also allowed me some extra time to make home holiday goodies for friends and family.  In fact, when one of my regular customers called last minute just knowing I couldn't make Christmas cupcakes for her I was able to surprise her by saying "I can make them no problem!"  She left the design totally up to me, which is always nice.  I decided I wanted to make some rounded ornament cakes, because I love the look of the rounded fondant toppers on cupcakes, but as usual, I didn't want to use fondant.

So I started playing with mounding buttercream and smoothing it out and honestly, it went easier and quicker than I expected.  I did make the ornament stems from fondant, but those can be picked off easily enough.

When I finished I was so happy that I took a couple of the extras into the house for a mini photo shoot in front of our Christmas tree.  I just love the look of the Christmas lights all blurred out in the background.

Have a great week; I hope Santa is packing up something nice for each and every one of you!

Christmas Present Cake

Christmas is getting so CLOSE I can hardly stand it!  And when I get to make Christmas themed present cakes like the one above it really gets my Christmas spirit flowing!

I did a couple of new things with the cake above.  First of all, this was the first time I added an extruded gumpaste rope to the edges of my ribbon.  It really made for a finished and realistic looking fabric bow feel.  I will definitely use that again on future cakes!  And a few weeks back I saw some molds on clearance.  On the website, they looked spherical and they were so cheap on clearance that I thought I could use them as flower formers.  When they finally get in I realized they were indeed ball molds.  I'll still use them to form my gumpaste flowers, but they'll also serve double duty for making these cute Christmas ornaments.  A real multitasker - Alton Brown would be SO proud!!

OK, so back to Christmas... do you like surprises for Christmas or not?  While I do like to be surprised, I feel like I'm dying inside to know what's in that package for me!!  Chad used to wrap and store all my presents in his trunk so I couldn't peek!  I'm much better than that now, but I still want to know what I'm getting.  Chaddy would wrap his own presents blindfolded if it meant he was surprised on Christmas morning.

Speaking of... he told me that he bought me a present from one of my "cake blog friends".  I don't know exactly what that means. Did he buy something from someone who reads my blog, or someone's blog I read, or maybe he got something from someone I have met through Food Blog Forum?  You see, I drive myself crazy wanting to know what it is!!

Well, all will be revealed in 12 days, so I guess I can wait impatiently - or I can go shake all the presents again!  Have a great week!