Cupcakes – The Ocelots' Den

Who Spiked the Cupcakes?

By Julia on 23 December, 2019

One of my girlfriends asked if I could make some boozy cupcakes for her annual Christmas Party (9? years running). I looked through a variety of different recipes on the internet and kept circling back to the thought of keeping it simple, packed with flavor, and seasonal. One of my favorite winter drinks is a peppermint mocha, and who doesn’t love a steamy mug of cocoa topped with marshmallows or filled with some whipped cream?

For the base of my cupcake, I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe. It is rich and chocolaty and always seems to be a crowd-pleaser. (The secret ingredient is coffee. Tasty, delicious dark coffee from a local roaster here in Richmond. Dark as Dark from Blanchards).

In my busy baking haste, I neglected to take photos as I was in the process of making these delightful concoctions. However, I’ll still do a quick overview before sharing the final product images.

After the cupcake base layer, I had intended to have a lovely light but stabilized whipped cream frosting. Friends, I met this task with failure, and I had a quick deadline. (Probably the reasons why I wasn’t busy snapping photos along the way).

Instead of my concept frosting, I went with an ol’ standby that is ALWAYS delicious, and ALWAYS turns out. Buttercream. I flavored it with equal parts vanilla and peppermint extracts. (As I had intended to do with the failed batch).

While the cupcakes were in the oven, I spread some chocolate out, added a layer of peppermint candy melts, generously sprinkled some crushed peppermint, and let it set up.

Once the cupcakes were cooled and frosted, I cut the peppermint bark into wedges and ~~stabbed~~ stuck the piece in the frosting.

The most fun part was adding the tiny bit of tipsy. I ordered some pettite pipettes. (They hold a volume of 4ml). For reference, there’s ~ 44ml in a standard shot. I added the pipette of peppermint schnapps, and the cupcakes were complete!

The best part was, they were popular enough to get a second order!

Autumn | Baked Goods | Cupcakes | Holiday | Thanksgiving

Second Thanksgiving

By Julia on 24 November, 2019

Like most families, I enjoy Thanksgiving festivities over multiple days. For my Saturday gathering, I wanted to make something tasty and portable. I know pie is a staple on the Thanksgiving table, but I thought cupcakes would be fun.

I wanted to make something a little different. Pie flavors- baked into the cakes! So I decided on Pecan Pie Cupcakes with Sweet Potato Pecan Buttercream.

It was a new recipe creation (which I usually would taste first), but it made a dozen, so I didn’t want only to bring 11 to share. (Sharing is caring).

I also wanted to add a fun design element. The buttercream has a little bit of a texture form the pecans, so I decided to make a festive cupcake topper. I’m an avid watcher of Friends, and though I wasn’t sure the image would come across to everyone at the event, I thought they were funny.

I designed a turkey wearing oversized glasses and a fez using my Silhouette software. I printed out a couple of copies and mixed my Royal Icing to match my three colors.

Transfers all piped, once they were dry I added a little gold luster to the turkeys.

Once my transfers were dry (at least 8 hours, but I usually try to wait for about 24 hours), I put two together (like sandwich cookies) and added a thin layer of candy melts and a toothpick to ensure they would set quickly. If I were to make them again, I would pipe the tassel after this point or flip the image to pipe it in reverse since it isn’t symmetrical. (So many lessons learned in the kitchen).

12 Turkeys getting packed to go to dinner

I thoroughly enjoyed designing, baking, and assembling these treats! Bonus, I was able to eat one, and I will be keeping the recipe in future rotations.

Baked Goods | Cupcakes | Holiday

My First Sale!

By Julia on 4 November, 2019

I’ve been toying around with offering my baking skills for hire for several years but hadn’t quite figured out the logistics. (Spoiler, I still haven’t figured everything out, but I have started nonetheless).

My neighbor, Jennifer, posted a request for recommendations for Halloween Cupcakes. I am usually pretty busy around Halloween between birthdays and creating spooks, tricks, and treats, so I wanted to ensure I wasn’t overextending myself before I offered my services. As luck had it, the order wasn’t due until the Saturday AFTER Halloween! It was the perfect opportunity.

We had some dialogue about flavors and designs. For the kids’ cupcakes, we decided on Chocolate/ Chocolate. So I made my favorite chocolate cupcakes and topped them with Black Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. I used the fir/grass frosting tip (233) to style some Monster Fir and then sculpted Monster Claws from brightly colored Modeling Chocolate. It ended up being the perfect mixture of cute and creepy!

I loved the ease of making these cupcakes. Each step was quick, and the order was only for a half dozen. It was manageable. Often, I find that I get overly excited and design very complicated and time-consuming treats. Simple and sweet was a nice change of pace.

The next design took a few conversations to decide the final design and flavor. There was also a misunderstanding about skeletons in hats. I struggled to think of spooky skeletons in hats aside from a skeleton in a top hat… Auto-correct struck again and replaced “bats” with “hats.” Jennifer knew her husband likes flavors that pack a punch, so we decided on a Spiced Carrot Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting, and I created little Bat icing transfers.

It was my first experience making icing transfers, and when I started to make them the night before, I realized too late I had run out of meringue powder. I made the mistake of trying to replicate with buttercream and ultimately just wasted time because they were too soft, even when I tried freezing them overnight. Though it was frustrating, it was a wonderful lesson to learn.

To make my adorable bats, I found a cute bat image in clip art and copied as many on a page as I could fit (once I scaled the size to the width of the cupcakes). I taped them to the counter and put a layer of wax paper over so I can pipe over the image as a template. Simple and relatively quick. The downside is it takes HOURS for royal icing to dry. The upside is once the transfers are dry, you can store them for a long time. (Make your own googly eyes, hearts or sprinkles… the sky is the limit)!

Once the bats were mostly dry, I popped them onto my freshly frosted cupcakes. I added a gray belly and used a toothpick to dot on some tiny lime green eyes.

I made cute little liners for the Monster Claws that look like spider webs, and for the Bats, I made skeleton liners (but neglected to get a good photo. Shame on me!)

I searched and searched for affordable cupcake boxes or a secure transportation method. I am always ~~a little~~ incredibly terrified of the travesties that can occur when transporting my goodies. I also thought boxes would be an excellent presentation. Unfortunately, the more affordable boxes (~$1 per box) were a little too deep, and I couldn’t remove the cupcakes from the box without touching the frosting*. The risk was too high, so I loaned out a couple of my Halloween trays.

*Update: one of my coworkers had the brilliant idea to add crinkled kraft paper (like you use in Easter baskets) under the cupcakes, so the top edge was high enough to grab. GENIUS!

As a test, I baked complete batches of my cupcakes so I could get an accurate batch count. The ~~downside~~ upside is I had three-dozen extra Chocolate Cupcakes and three extra Carrot Cupcakes. But, it made a lovely gift to share with my neighbors, and I brought the remaining Chocolate Cupcakes to share with my coworkers.

I couldn’t let the “extra” gray Royal Icing go to waste, so I piped some nails onto the Monster Claws! I wish I thought of it before I delivered the other cupcakes, but lessons for another order.

All in all, I feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment. I baked tasty treats that were a little spooky and whimsical and delivered them on time.