A Treat "Fore" The Golf Lovers In Your Life!

The one year anniversary of my blog is coming up next month and one of my first projects was a golf course made out of cupcakes.  At the time I thought it was a bit sad looking and had wanted to give it another go with the proper tools, namely a grass piping tip.  Finally, I had a reason to do it when I was asked to create a cupcake golf course for a birthday party.

As with any cupcake project, I baked up the cakes!  Once they cooled, I arranged them on a cake board.  Without giving it much thought I designed the shape the same way I've noticed the courses on google - random and askew:

The order was for 20 chocolate and 20 vanilla cupcakes.  I purposely placed the chocolate on the outside so it would resemble earth beneath the grass.  I'm not sure it made a real difference.  Vanilla would have been just fine.  Next, I mixed up three batches of buttercream icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

2 sticks of butter

4 cups of confectioner's sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3-5 tablespoons half and half

Using a mixer, beat butter until it is fluffy.  Add 3 cups of sugar - one cup at a time - mixing until it's completely incorporated.  Add vanilla and half and half along with last cup of sugar and mix, adding more half and half until the icing is the desired consistency.


I wanted to make enough to cover the entire golf course.  Since I was dying the "grass" green, I needed enough to be sure I wouldn't need to mix more icing.  If I needed to make more I couldn't guarantee the greens would match and that there wouldn't be a darker or lighter patch on the course.  For 40 cupcakes three batches of icing was perfect.  I didn't have much left over at all by the end!

So, I combined the three batches (I mixed them up separately to ensure it turned out okay.  Recipes are funny like that; some you can double or triple with no consequences, some you have to make adjustments in the measurements.  I was under a time crunch, so I played it safe mixing the buttercream in three separate batches.  I spooned out a nice sized scoop for the water and another spoonful of white for the sand trap.  I spread the blue and white over the areas I designated for the water and sand.  On top of the white I sprinkled brown sugar.  I thought it had a nice, sand-like texture.  I've seen other courses where crushed Nilla Wafers or Graham Crackers were used for the sand and I think next time I will do that just to cut down on the sweetness factor.

Once the "water" and "sand" were applied, I filled a piping bag with some of the green icing fitted with a Wilton #233 grass tip.  Using the green, I filled in the remaining surfaces of the cupcakes.  My client asked me to make it look like a smooth course, not like separate cupcakes arranged as a course.  To that end, I filled in the spaces between cupcakes with some icing for a surface to pipe the "grass" on top.  Once I made some decent progress with the rough, I designated an area for the green.  Using the same frosting/smoothing technique as for the "water" and "sand", I added green icing and topped it with some light green sanding sugar to mimic the short grass of the green.  Then I continued piping the rough.

To finish the "water" I added some small chocolate rocks:

Lastly, for the golf course, was the flag and hole in the green.  I used a wooden skewer (next time will use a lollipop stick) for the post and white fondant for the flag.  The hole was an upside down chocolate chip and the golf ball a white dragee:

That's it!  A bit time consuming to pipe all of the "grass", but EASY.  As always, however, I have a few ideas to improve the design.

So, the order was for 40 cupcakes, but I was only able to fit 30 onto the cake board.  For the remaining 10 cupcakes I made cupcakes designed to be a golf course "green".

Picture quality is not so great, but you get idea.  I have a new macro lens and camera I'm still trying to figure out, which means some photos will be better than others until I work it all out.  :)

In elementary school one of my teachers had each of us students write a paragraph on the first day of school.  On the last day of the year she handed them back to us so we could see how our writing improved and how much we'd progressed during the course of the year.  This golf course is kind of like that for me.  When I see where I was a year ago and what I can do now, all just because I keep trying, it feels pretty good!

Lovely Little Ladybugs!

Omigosh I am so excited I was actually able to make these!  I've been wondering for some time now why people bother to use fondant and gumpaste for cakes, cupcakes and cookies.  I mean, they look beautiful, but you can't eat them despite the fact they are edible.  You can eat fondant, but it's not tasty.  So what's the point?  Then I made the Minnie Mouse Cupcakes and it was so much fun...I started to get it.  It's about channeling your inner elementary art student days and being creative.  You can make anything you want!

Now, I've never been terribly good at art - drawing, sculpture, visualizing - so I'm going to start with only the most elementary designs.  Like a ladybug.  How can you screw that up?

I began by making a batch of strawberry cupcakes.  I used a box mix and added a package of vanilla pudding and used 1 cup of milk instead of water to make it a bit tastier.  While they cooled I began shaping the ladybugs using gumpaste.

Gumpaste becomes hard pretty quickly and is very sticky, so you can use Vegetable Oil to help keep your hands free of gummy residue and to keep the gumpaste pliable.  Rub some on your hands and coat your work surface before handling the gumpaste. I used it quite generously with no negative effects of the design.  Using smallish amounts of gumpaste at a time, work some coloring into the paste using your hands.  I didn't use gloves and the dye made a mess of red all over my hands, but it washed right off.  I used Wilton No-Taste Red gel dye.  I could not photograph this process since I didn't want my camera to be covered in red!

Next, I made odd oval shapes in different sizes.  I worked some black dye into a separate ball of gumpaste and then used it to make the heads and dots, as in the photo above.

Then it was time to mix up some buttercream.

Buttercream Icing

2 sticks butter, room temperature

4 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk


In large mixing bowl, beat butter on high speed until fluffy.  Add three cups of sugar, one at a time until combined.  Add vanilla extract and milk, along with last cup of sugar.   Beat until smooth.  Add more milk, one teaspoon at a time, to reach desired consistency of frosting.


I removed about 3/4 of the icing from the bowl and mixed green dye into it to make the "grass".  I used a Wilton Tip #233.  To make the grass, squeeze the icing in the piping bag gently and lift up as you stop squeezing.  After covering the cupcake completely with grass, place the ladybugs randomly on top.

I divided the remaining 1/4 of icing and split it into 2 bowls.  One I dyed yellow, the other light purple.  I used a Wilton Tip #2D. Before piping the flower on top of the cupcake, I made a few practice flowers to get a sense of the pressure to use and just how it worked in general.

Once I felt I had the hang of it,  I piped some flowers randomly on the cupcake and used tweezers to add one white dragee in the center of each flower.

And then the last step - adding a white picket fence around my little ladybug garden.  I picked up some cupcake wrappers I found at my local Michaels Craft Store:

And Voila!!

I honestly think it's so amazing you can go from a simple, plain cupcake to something so special and cute!

I'm pretty excited to try some new sculpture and other avenues of decoration I have resisted.  I'm not sure what I'm going to try next, but the sky is the limit!!!  Happy Spring.  :)

Autumn Leaves Are Gently Falling on Chocolate Trees!

That is, they are gently falling from chocolate trees onto plush buttercream grass!  Oh, how I love October - the changing of leaves, crisp days and nights, hats and scarves, Halloween, my birthday and, of course, new baking possibilities!  Apples, pumpkins, and cider...oh, my!  So many recipes, so little time.  Where should we start?  I say with the bright colored leaves of fall!

Awhile ago, as I always seem to be, I was browsing through fall baking ideas.  I fell in LOVE with  the chocolate trees I found here.  All you need is chocolate and Autumn Leaves Quins...which, as it turns out, are not so easy to find.  Eventually, I ordered them from Amazon.com.  They took a bit of time to arrive, but when they did I was hardly able to contain myself.  I baked up some cupcakes immediately, melted the chocolate, placed waxed paper on the counter (any flat surface will do), and started on the trees.

Once you have melted the chocolate, pour it into a plastic pastry bag or Ziploc baggie.  Cut the end (or corner of the bag if using a Ziploc) off a little at a time.  You can always make a bigger whole, but cannot make it smaller!  I learned this the hard way when I cut too much off the end and had a flood of chocolate flowing everywhere.  Next time, I will use a funnel to pour the chocolate into a squeeze bottle for more control over the flow.  I'm still orienting myself with pastry bags in general!

Make the rough shape of a tree and a few branches on the waxed paper:

Next, take a toothpick to make a thicker trunk and whimsical branches.  Be sure to use enough chocolate to make a sturdy tree trunk because you want the tree to be strong enough to stand on it's own once placed in the cupcake.  Also, do not worry about smoothing the chocolate perfectly.  The swirls and texture will make the hardened chocolate look more tree-like.

While the chocolate is still wet, sprinkle some of the Autumn Leaves quins on the branches.  Work on one tree at a time.  The leaves will stay on the branches nicely once the chocolate hardens.

While the trees are setting, approximately 10-15 minutes, begin frosting the cupcakes.  I mixed up some buttercream icing, but you can use canned frosting if you prefer.  Dye the icing green using gel or liquid dye.  You can spread the icing on the cupcake as your normally would, but I bought an icing tip shaped to create the effect of grass (as well as many other things).

Once the cupcakes are frosted, carefully peel a chocolate tree off of the wax paper.  Start with the trunk and work your way up.  Go slowly, especially with the branches, and there should be no breakage.  Look at how lovely the leaves look!

After you've lifted the tree, push it into the center of an iced cupcake.  Repeat this process until you have created an entire forest.  The result is magical!  Wouldn't these be cute at place settings on a Holiday table?

HAPPY FALL  EVERYONE!!!