Cupcakes! Or, Why There's No Pattern Today :-)

Hi everyone! Happy Friday!

I had planned to have a new pattern today, but I didn't quite finish it. I spent a little more time than usual doing Mom stuff this week - and it was terrific. Seriously! My 10 year old daughter used a blow torch for the first time. :-) Read on.

Jo has a dream of opening a bakery when she's 17. She talks about it all the time - what she'll serve, what it will look like, what kind of music she'll play. She wants to have cheesecake, cookies, and other basic sweet bakery stuff - but she mostly wants to sell cupcakes. So she practices making cupcakes a lot. :-)

There's actually a limit to how many cupcakes I can eat, so any gathering of people is an opportunity for her to try her wares on them. This week we had two - back to back.

On Wednesday her homeschool group had a celebration of the vernal equinox and everyone brought spring-inspired food. Jo tried out her new mini cupcake pan and made sunshine cupcakes. . .

Yellow cake, pale orange starbursts of buttercream frosting with a sprinkling of red sugar.

She also made bird's nest cupcakes. . .

Yellow cake (tinted green) with threads of green frosting, topped with speckled jellybeans.

But last night was the big night. My husband and I host a live trivia game once a month at our favorite local restaurant and Jo baked two kinds of cupcakes for the crowd. She had a box out for donations for some new baking supplies and a big stack of comment cards for tasters to fill out.

She made Grasshopper Cupcakes. . .

Devil's food cake with mint buttercream frosting, mini chocolate chip sprinkles and an Andes thin mint stuck in the top. She's been enjoying Girl Scout thin mint cookies lately - so that was the inspiration for this one.

She made a few mini versions of these too - and called them Crickets. :-)

She also made Lemon Meringue Cupcakes - my favorite of the evening.

Lemon cake with meringue frosting. See how the ridges of the frosting are all toasty? That's where the blow torch came in. :-)

Last time she made these a friend suggested toasting the frosting - and gave her a blow torch! This was her first time trying it out. :-)

Awesome!

She spent the evening grinning from ear to ear, reading the comment cards and planning what flavors to bring next month. I think s'more cupcakes are on the menu. She wants to use that torch again!

So that's why there's no pattern this week. But look for two next week! A free one over at Sew, Mama, Sew and something special here on Friday.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Best,
Wendi