Valerie Elizabeth Confections

Brownie Cupcakes – Cute and Creative In Less Than 30 Minutes

 

Learn how to make brownie cupcakes in as little as 30 minutes! With a little imagination and creativity you can have a fun dessert for any occasion!

 

How to Make Brownie Cupcakes

Brownie Cupcake Ingredients

 

 I needed a dessert quickly and while opening my pantry I found a brownie mix.  I decided to put a little spin on them by putting them in a mini cupcake pan. First, here are the things you will need to make your brownie cupcakes:

  • 1 Box of Brownie Mix (and what you need to make the brownies)
  • Powdered Sugar
  • Cooking Spray
  • 2 Mini Cupcake Pans
  • 1 Tbsp. Measuring Spoon
  • Butter Knife
  • Sifter
  • Mixing Bowl
  • Foam Shapes (Letters, Hearts, etc)
  • Cooling Rack

 

Pre-heat oven at 350 degrees!

Quick tip: Setting your oven before the whole process begins makes life so much easier and your oven will be ready when you are!

 

Brownie Cupcake Batter

Prepare your brownie batter as directed. I like to use a whisk instead of a spoon to mix. I feel it adds more air and fluff and also gives your forearms a nice little workout. Who says desserts aren’t good for the body?!

Brownie Cupcakes

Greasing your mini cupcake pans are a huge MUST! Don’t forget or you will have a caked on mess.

Pouring Brownie Cupcakes

 By using a 1 tbsp. measuring spoon, you can make pouring brownie batter easy with hardly any spills! One full tablespoon will fill one mini  brownie cupcake. Put them in the oven and set  your timer somewhere between 20-24 minutes (mine go for 22).  Easy, right?

Brownie Cupcakes Baked

 They are done!  Allow them to cool for a few minutes and while your waiting it might be a good idea to prepare your powdered sugar in the sifter and get your decorations ready.

Brownie Cupcakes from Brownie Mix

Turn pan upside down on the counter and most should flop out. For the stubborn ones, use a butter knife to loosen the brownie cupcake around the edges.  After that, they should come out quite easy!

Mini Brownie Cupcakes

These can be served as they are, or you can add sifted powdered sugar and sift a message into them!  In my opinion, these babies are clearly ready for some decor.

Brownie Cupcakes Recipe

Using foam hearts and letters that I got at my local craft store, I placed the shape on top of the brownie cupcakes and sifted powdered sugar from above. You can use any desired amount of powdered sugar, but I find the designs are more visible if you add a generous amount.

How to Make Brownie Cupcakes

The finished product – a beautiful set of to-die-for brownie cupcakes!  Now you can tell your friends you slaved away and spent all day baking ;)

Much Love!

Candyland Cake for a 1st Birthday

Candyland Cake for a 1st Birthday

 

A Candyland Cake Surprise

for a recent 1st birthday I did! It was such a fun cake to make and took a few days of sculpting, rolling and creating different shapes and colors of candy out of fondant, but the patience, time and effort were well worth it because it turned out absolutely fabulous!

One of the neatest things about this cake was everything was completely edible except the lollipop sticks, of course! The whole Candyland cake was given some sparkle and once finished was given lots of edible glitter (one of my favorite things to use if you couldn’t tell!)

I also created a smaller, single tier replica cake with the Candyland theme specially made just for little Madison!

Candyland Cake for a 1st Birthday

Until next time…

 

Much Love!

 

Peacock Cake

Peacock Baby Shower Cake

 

Baby Shower Peacock Cake

 

Peacock designs are ones that always amaze me – the colors and designs on the feathers are just so beautiful! We got an order for a baby shower cake that was having a peacock theme and I couldn’t help but have tons of ideas for a Peacock cake flowing through my head!  I decided to stick within a range of colors of a traditional peacock feather, while having the inside of the cake a marbleized triple chocolate and vanilla cake with strawberry filling.

 

The Peacock cake design process…

  • First, the cake topper was draped with a layer of turquoise blue.
  • Second, adding a hue of green to the left over turquoise fondant I used a round cutter to cut out a group of fondant circles.
  • Third, I began to place the bottom row of circles around the cake and then worked my way up to the top of the cake.
  • Fourth, I used luster dust and pure vanilla extract to paint certain rows of the fondant circles gold.
  • Last, to finish it off I added a regal purple bow around the base and some peacock feathers to the front.

Pretty easy, right? Until next time…

 

Much Love!

 

Tangled Cupcakes

Tangle Inspired Cupcakes

 

 Tangled Cupcakes for a Special Birthday

 

This week was a busy week for cupcakes! One theme we worked on is from the ever so popular movie, Tangled . The cupcakes were for a sweet girl named Ella who was turning 4 and loves not only Tangled, but everything princess!

 

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These were vanilla flavored cake and our classic vanilla butter cream, touched with a hint of pink. What kind of princess party would it have been without pink, right?  The Tangled cupcakes had variations of décor on them – some had the signature Rapunzel braid with an adorable pink bow, while others had a sweet princess crown or pink and white flowers. All of the cupcake décor was hand sculpted using our scratch marshmallow fondant.  To finish it off, these special Tangled cupcakes were sprinkled with lots and lots of edible pixie dust for the sparkle we all love so much!

Tangled seems to be a huge craze right now and we are continually getting orders for this fun theme!  I would love to see your creations and ideas, so please leave a comment below and ‘Like’ this if you enjoyed this post! Until next time…

  

 

Much Love!

 

 

 

 

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Two Tier Wedding Cake with Twine

Twine Two Tier Wedding Cake

This two tier wedding cake is a very special one to me and we have since named it, “The Twine Cake”. This cake was one of the first display cakes I ever worked on.  I brought it along to the Bridal Couture Magazine photo shoot with some other works of ours.  This simple little two tier cake generated a lot of buzz at the shoot and we have had many inquiries for it since then.  I was blown away – before I knew it this little wedding cake was being featured all over the magazine and I can’t even begin to tell you how proud that makes you feel as an artist!

 

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Now..Let’s get on with just a couple details about the wedding cake!

The top tier is covered with little white fondant flowers, each one hand made and given a dot of gold in the center.  The bottom tier is wrapped with a collection of twine and tied off with a bow. This cake has a comfy, country look and feel but is also very simple and modern.

Who would have thought a little bit of twine incorporated into a two tier cake would be such a hit? Until next time…

 

Much Love!

 

Giraffe Cake for a Baby Shower

Giraffe Baby Shower Cake

This fun Giraffe Cake was for a baby shower this summer!  Did I also mention this was the first time I incorporated giraffe spots into a cake of mine?  What a fun design to work with!  I think the polka dots for the top tier gave it a little special something as well! I love to mix different patterns and textures with cakes; it makes them so much more unique!  I can’t wait to work on and include some more giraffe themed cakes to my collections in the future.  Until next time…

 


Much Love!

Vanilla and Chocolate Mousse for the Art & Wine Gala

Vanilla Mousse Dessert for Confection Table

Chocolate Mousse Dessert for Confection Table

 

These vanilla apricot mousse and chocolate mousse desserts were also favorites on our  dessert table for the local Art & Wine Gala . Both of these consisted of a graham cracker crust in the bottom and either a layer of chocolate or vanilla mousse in the middle. The vanilla mousse had softened, diced apricots sprinkled on top and they both were topped with whipped cream. The chocolate mousse had a great chocolate design in the whipped cream that gave it a very modern look and feel.

Apricot Cupcakes for the Art & Wine Gala

Apricot Fruit Cupcakes

 

These apricot cupcakes were vanilla cupcake with diced apricots inside. To achieve this I used about a pound and a half (this was to make 12 dozen cupcakes) of dried, diced apricots that had been softened over the stove which then were put into a vanilla batter. The cupcakes were so moist and had that tangy, tart taste of an apricot when you bit into them. We topped the apricot cupcakes off with a meringue topping which was then torched to give the meringue a touch of brown. Some cupcakes got an apricot slice on top with sifted powdered sugar and some were left with just meringue. These were a great addition to our dessert table!

 

 

Dessert Table for the Art & Wine Gala

Dessert Table for The Art & Wine Galla

 

The annual Patterson Art and Wine Gala was this past weekend and when we were asked to provide a dessert table for the wonderful event I immediately got to work on some new desserts I wanted to try and display. On the menu for the event’s dessert table was: apricot cupcakes with a meringue topping, chocolate mousse, vanilla and apricot mousse, caramel chocolate dipped pretzels, chocolate dipped strawberries, caramel chocolate dipped marshmallows, chocolate dipped apricots, apricot tarts and french cream puffs. We wanted to keep the heart of Patterson in mind so we went with a theme of apricots and also wanted to incorporate their beautiful orange color into the desserts as well. All of the apricots and strawberries were grown locally in Patterson at the local grower Traina Foods. My mom came along and we had a great time sampling all different kinds of apricots! Overall we received a fantastic response on the dessert table and we just couldn’t keep all the different desserts stocked fast enough! Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hello.

 

Want to see more of our delicious desserts from this event? Check out our:

Sailor Moon Anime Cake

Sailor Moon Anime Cake

 

When I first got an email to make a cake for Stephanie’s 23rd birthday I was really excited, but she wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted and she had narrowed it down to either an anime cake of Sailor Moon or a Night Before Christmas themed cake. To be honest I had no clue who Sailor Moon even was and had never done any type of anime cake before, but I always enjoy a challenge! After a few hours of researching, watching videos on YouTube and getting ideas to incorporate on the cake I finally came up with a sketch and was ready to start!

The Sailor Moon on the top was like a puzzle – I printed out the same two photos of Sailor Moon and with one of them I cut up every piece that had a different color while the other I kept whole as a guide. I colored the fondant as needed and began rolling it out. Using the cut up pieces as a guide and using an Xacto knife, I cut out every piece and then had to place them back together – almost like a puzzle. It was tedious, but the outcome was amazing . After everything was put together I used an edible KopyKake marker to draw all of the black lines around which really gave it that drawn, anime cake ‘look’.

When we delivered the cake to the restaraunt Stephanie was ecstatic and really loved it. She said Sailor Moon was such an important part of her childhood and she was so happy she could enjoy the yummy Red Velvet cake with her family and friends.