I'm a loner dottie, a rebel.

Why, hello friends. Miss me? I know that it's been a terribly long time between posts. I've had a whole lot going on lately including the demise of my poor little laptop, so I haven't been able to upload many pictures lately (the pictures here are from my phone - I'll upload better quality photos later). Rest assured, the baking has not stopped.

On a sidenote, I recently got laid-off from my 9-5 (again) and I'm seriously considering pastry school. More updates on that once I've seriously researched the option, but it would be a pretty rad adventure. We'll see!

Ok, on to the cake already! Here's a little update on the plans for my darling girl nikkiehippie's wedding cake. So far, we've decided on doing a cupcake tree with 200 cupcakes and having a 6" bride & groom mini cake for the top tier. The wedding colors are going to be black, white, and red. The bridesmaids dresses are black with white polka dots (completely adorable!). The planned cupcake flavors are red velvet with white cream cheese frosting, chocolate mint cookie with mint fudge frosting, and chocolate with red raspberry frosting. I'll be testing these out in the weeks to come, so stay tuned for pics and recipes!

I just ordered a cupcake tree from www.cupcaketree.com. I've been researching ways to display this many cupppers, and this seems to be the best option for the money. It supposedly fits up to 300 regular size cupcakes, but we'll see how big it is when it comes in. Has anyone used one of these? I'd love some feedback, pictures, etc! It just comes in plain, white corrugated cardboard but I plan on painting it red and lining the edges with thin black satin ribbon to go with the color scheme.

I whipped this up as a practice cake for the bride & groom mini cake and I think we're going to do something very similar for the big day. It's a margarita cake w/lime buttercream frosting and fondant polka dots. I poured rum into the cake after it was finished baking, but I'm going to use tequila for the wedding cake to keep with the margarita theme. The bride and groom never have time to eat and drink enough at their own wedding, so at least this'll kill two birds with one stone! Nothing says "baby, I love you" quite like a shot of tequila, right?

The cake consists of two 6" layers with lime buttercream between them. I used two different sized cookie cutters to cut black fondant into polka dots and then applied them to the frosting. The red trim is a satin ribbon (to be removed prior to cutting the cake).

The recipe for the cake comes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but I was out of soy milk so I had to use regular milk. The recipe actually calls for tequila in the batter, but since I'm pouring it directly into the finished cake for extra booziness I decided to stick with vanilla in the batter. Also, this recipe yields 12 cupcakes. I doubled it to make two 6" cakes.



Recipe:

Margarita Cake

1/4 cup lime juice
1 1/2 tsp lime zest
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350F. Fill a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.
In a large bowl, mix together lime juice, lime zest, milk, oil, vanilla and sugar.
In a small bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt (I usually blend this together with a whisk to break apart any lumps). Add to lime mixture and stir until just combined. Divide evenly into muffin tins. Bake for 20-24 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the cakes spring back when lightly pressed.

Lime Buttercream Frosting:*

1 stick unsalted butter (room temperature
3 cups confectioner's sugar
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 tsp lime zest
pinch salt (preferably course)

Beat the butter until it's fluffy. Add sugar a little at time until well incorporated. Add lime juice, zest, and salt and beat until smooth. Adjust consistency according to preference (adding more sugar will thicken it, adding water or milk will thin it out).

*FYI - This recipe makes a whole lot of frosting. I had more than enough to frost the mini cake (and fill between the layers). You might want to halve it, or just make more cupcakes to frost! These tend to disappear no matter how many you make.

While that's in the oven, check out this video of the Get Up Kids playing I'm a loner dottie, a rebel. My love for the Get Up Kids runs deep. Maybe it's because they remind me of my days as an angsty youngster in Massachusetts and of all my friends from back home. This is one song that I've never gotten sick of, even after about a decade of listening to it. I won't lie, I'm super excited about the possible reunion tour - woo!



This post brought to you by best friends, fond memories, wedding fever, and an excuse to pour booze directly into a cake.