A princess crown

One of the next orders that I received was for a little girl at my son's daycare.  This would be one of the first orders I got for a little girl.  I was told that this little girl liked princesses.  I decided to try my hand at making princess crown cupcakes.  I used the melted chocolate technique that I had used in the past.  Basically I melted the chocolate, put it in a squeeze bottle, printed out an image that I wanted to use, put wax paper over the image and traced it.  This time, I also took pink colored sugar and covered the crowns with it.  Here is the picture of one of the cupcakes:

I learned a few things after making these cupcakes.  First of all, now that I was making all of these cupcakes, I need to learn how to take better pictures!  LOL!  I can't figure out how to change the settings properly to take pictures at night in the lights of my house.  So silly, I know.  But the pictures can really make the cupcakes look even better than they do in person! I also learned that I used too much pink on these and the wrong frosting bag tip on the frosting!  Oh the things we learn when we look back on what we have done.  Just  another learning opportunity!

The story of Mike Wazowski

Monsters Incorporated. 

One of my friends wanted to order Mike Wazowski cupcakes.  For those of you who don't know, Mike Wazowski is the one eyed monster from the movie Monsters Incorporated.  Here is a picture of him:

I had my first experience making Mike Wazowski cupcakes when my son turned 2.  He was OBSESSED with the movie Monsters Inc.  He was going to have his birthday fall on a day that he was in daycare so I planned on making cupcakes to bring to school for his class.  The night before his birthday, my husband and I stayed up making the cupcakes.  We rolled out fondant for the white part of the eye and the teeth.  I used different colored frostings for the face and the eyeball.  They looked beautiful!  And then I left them on the counter in my kitchen all wrapped up overnight.  In the morning I heard my husband call from downstairs.  It was something to the effect of "don't freak out, but the cupcakes are ruined!" 

Well, it turns out that the temperature in my kitchen got too warm and the eyeballs and mouths on the cupcakes slid right off!  They were ruined!  This was way before I was making my cupcakes from scratch so I used frosting from a can.  It must have gotten very slippery and very melted!  The good news was that I was able to take a picture of the cupcakes the night before so I had evidence of them!  Fast forward to May of 2011 and my friend ordered the Mike Wazowski cupcakes.  I had a chance to redeem myself!  LOL!  This time, they went in the fridge overnight and they were perfect!

Blues Clues

One of the daycare parents requested Blues Clues cupcakes.  This was way back in the beginning stages of Cupcakes for Sophia's Cure.  I hadn't really gotten into any kind of fancy cupcake topper decorations.  So I thought and thought to try and figure out what I could put on top.  And since I had been an expert on watching Blues Clues back when my son was younger, I realized that the paw print was a HUGE part of every Blues Clues episode.  So, here you go:

This was one of my most basic cupcakes.  I thought they were cute, but if I have to critique it, I would have done the frosting a little differently.  I would have made the brown frosting (because the mom requested chocolate frosting) a lot smoother.  I would have used something else to make the blue paw print appear more finished.  But, we live and learn and this was just one more learning experience!

Elmo

And so the orders started slowly coming in.  I have to first say that looking back, it's amazing that these parents gave me a chance, ordered cupcakes from a stranger that they didn't know.  From someone who didn't have an established baking background!  To make cupcakes for their children!  And to pay me for the cupcakes as well!  The more I write, the more crazy I feel like it is!  It really highlights the power of an amazing cause!  How can you not look into the eyes of Sophia and hear about her story and not want to get involved! 

One of the parents wanted me to attempt Elmo themed cupcakes.  Here are the results of that attempt!

Vanilla cupcakes, vanilla buttercream frosting.  The kids loved them!

Getting the ball rolling...

Looking back, I am still so amazed at how this venture of mine started to slowly gain momentum.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, without the support of my children's daycare I'm not sure this would have gotten to the point it did. 

In addition to the parents at the daycare supporting my cupcakes, the teachers at the school started to support me as well!  It started with some cupcakes for a baby shower they were having for 2 of the teachers at the school.  When I look back at these cupcakes, I tend to shudder a little bit.  I was just starting and really had no idea what I was doing!  I had no idea that you have to use powdered or oil based food coloring when working with melted chocolate.  I had no idea how to  really make decorations for the top of cupcakes.  I was pretty much making it up as I went along! 

Here are the baby shower cupcakes that I made.  Both of the teachers were going to have baby girls so I made sure to include some pink!  Please be kind to these cupcakes!  LOL!

You know those cupcakes you see with the thick, beautiful, mountain of creamy frosting that is swirled so perfectly that it looks like a pile of soft ice cream on top!  WELL, that is what I attempted in the picture above!  LOL!  Obviously I was using the wrong tip on my frosting bag.  I can't believe people  told me that these cupcakes looked good, but t;hey did! 

And here is the attempt I made at making these cupcakes look like baby shower cupcakes!  I used melted chocolate to make what I thought were going to be baby rattles!  I do believe my 3 year old son at the time told me they looked like lollipops!  Amazing that I frequently use my children, who are now 4 and 2, as my litmus test on whether or not I did a good job on the decorations.  If my 4 year old son knows what the decoration is, then I  must have done a decent job!  Well, these baby rattles were not my best, but it was at the beginning of my cupcake venture so I will cut myself some slack!  And again, the frosting was delicious, but the way I piled it on..... not so pretty! 

A partnership is born

It was not long after I started my cupcake venture that I received a message from a woman on Long Island.  Her name is Renee and she approached me through a Facebook message, asking me if I wanted someone to help me with cupcake orders on Long Island.  She told me that she loves to bake and would like to be involved in what I had started. 

The challenge with what I had started was that the first people I began sharing my cupcake information with were the ladies on Long Island Families.  Hmmmmm.... "Long Island" Families.  I lived in New Jersey.  As a working mom, I wasn't going to do orders for people on LI unless I had a reason to go there.  I had to keep it local to where I am located.  So right off the bat, I hit a hurdle.  The women on LIF were already familiar with Sophia and her story.  It would have been so easy to tap into that resource to start getting orders for cupcakes there.  But I was in NJ. 

So I took Renee up on her offer.  She serves as the Long Island extension of Cupcakes for Sophia's Cure.  I think it's wonderful that she wanted to join me in my cause.  And from there, we were off and running!

The first official order... the theme of Spiderman

I believe it was the day after I put the flyers in all the children's cubbies at the daycare when I received my first cupcake order!  I was amazed that a parent would contact me so quickly.  And the cupcakes were needed a few days from when the order was placed.  It was a father who contacted me to tell me that it was his son's birthday and he would love to have Spiderman cupcakes for his son to have a party at daycare.

For these cupcakes, I melted chocolate to make the spiders.  Keep in mind that this was the very beginning of  teaching myself how to make decorations.  I basically take wax paper or parchment paper.  I print out from my computer an image that I want to create.  I put the image under the wax paper and use the melted chocolate in a squirt bottle to trace the shape that I want.  When you are done tracing, put the tray in the fridge for a few minutes and they come out hard and ready to go on top of a cupcake!  With these spiders, I broke some of the legs because they were a bit fragile, but otherwise, they came out pretty good for my very first official order!