Marzi-CAN'T

Let's put our past behind us, yes?

I got a very exciting e-mail today requesting that every guest brings something for our meal for tomorrow nights New Years' Eve party. I quickly signed up for dessert, because I'm obviously an expert cupcake maker! What better cupcake to make than the Champagne cupcake? So, I got to work, in hopes of containing my enthusiasm!   After lunch, I went straight to the store (not Target, since they were OUT of powdered sugar!), bought all my materials and came home! After last weeks failure of cupcakes, I decided to research and found a great site for adjusting your baking for high-altitude found here and another one here. This was it! My batter was delicious and I knew the cakes were going to turn out spectacular. This particular party I am going to be with all of my close friends, so these puppies have to turn out just perfectly! The conversions to the recipe worked!

Aren't they just beautiful?!

Then I decided a Strawberry Butter Cream Frosting would be the best with these little guys. So I searched the internet and found the best recipe (From Martha) and the frosting tastes delicious!

After the frosting I got the cute idea to make marzipan and cut out numbers for the cupcakes, sort of like counting down on New Years. This was a little more than I bargained for. Marzipan is a type of candy/frosting that is used for decoration. In many of those famous cake shows, they use something similar, fondant, to decorate their cakes. All the marzipan recipes I stumbled on were either complex or called for pounds of almonds. I finally found one that didn't seem too extravagant for my little old kitchen. It went...alright. Boiling sugar, cooling the pan, kneading the sticky mess, it goes on and on. The end result? Another fail. The sugar clumped, the almond's weren't chopped enough, etc. It was in the trash can before I could get a picture of it! So I went to my greatest resource: My cousin, Ceacy! She gave some great advice about marzipan, fondant, and gum paste. I searched for a fondant recipe (VERY easy, as well as sticky!) and....nothing.

Sadly, I had no decorations, but the Champagne Cupcakes with Strawberry butter cream frosting were amazing and quickly disappeared! My first success! Happy 2010 everyone!

Recipes used today:
Champagne Cupcakes (Crazy about Cupcakes by Krystina Castella)
Strawberry Butter Cream Frosting (Ala Martha)
Marzipan

Fondant