Ella turns the big ONE!

Ella stole my heart a year ago when she was born and is the cutest little cupcake fan I have. I am lucky to be really good friends with her lovely Mum Karen, who I used to work with. I got the honour of throwing her a baby shower before she had Ella and I went all out with the biggest pink fest ever. Here are a few photos from the baby shower:




Ella had her first birthday party on the weekend and Chris and I had an awesome time hanging out with the one year olds. I made Ella a batch of mini jaffa cupcakes, decorated pink and girly.





Karen and Craig's friend made the most amazing birthday cake based on Ella's favourite doll, the character Upsy Daisy from the kids show "In The Night Garden". The worst bit came when it was time to cut the cake, nobody wanted to be the meanie who cut off one of Upsy's feet.



Here is the birthday girl herself and her lovely cake!

Iron Cupcake Earth

How excited was I to get an email from fellow cupcake queen, Sandy the Milwaukee Cupcake Queen who runs the awesome blog No One Puts Cupcake in a Corner inviting me to join Iron Cupcake EARTH!

I couldn't hit the reply button fast enough to tell her I'm in! I can't wait to join in the fun of these cupcake baking challenges along with the rest of the worldwide cupcake blogging community! I've watched with interest the previous ingredient choices and cupcake submissions for Iron Cupcake Challenges and always wished I lived in Milwaukee and could join in the fun.

Now I can! I can't wait to hear what the first challenge ingredient is. Fingers crossed its vegetarian friendly, but I'll roll with whatever comes up!

You can read all about the fun at the Iron Cupcake Earth blog. And if you're a fellow cupcake baker looking for a challenge, join in the fun :-)

Heavy Metal baking!!

I had an order from a really rad chick called Victoria who wanted to surprise her partner with a gingerbread house for his birthday. But since they were both lovers of heavy metal, this could be no ordinary gingerbread house, it was a heavy metal themed one!

I'm really stoked with how it turned out and I really hope the birthday boy Mike K. enjoyed his birthday surprise! I decorated it with all the classic gingerbread house goodies, lots of yummy candy such as licorice all sorts, jellybeans, candy buttons. But I also made some chocolate guitars, bats, skull and crossbones and popped a couple of lightening bolts in there too made from gingerbread and iced with yellow frosting!







That same weekend was our friend Raggles (aka Craig) birthday. I promised him a batch of cupcakes for his birthday dinner and he chose jaffa for the flavour. It was a no brainer that I make his cupcakes heavy metal themed too! He plays guitar in Redline, worships Avenged Sevenfold and is a bad ass heavy metaler!

So I made a couple of gingerbread guitars and iced them and made a very special chocolate batskull like Avenged Sevenfolds logo. Raggles was stoked! Happy Birthday Raggles, we love ya buddy xx



I took kinda rushed photos before his dinner so they aren't the best but you can see his AX7 batskull here

Red Velvet cupcakes for Chris

Chris has been hinting for ages for me to make red velvet cupcakes, so I finally gave in the other day and made him some as a surprise. He was stoked, along with Raggles (aka Craig) who scored some as well to share with his workmates.

I think I could have made them a bit more red inside, but they still tasted delicious, especially with cream cheese frosting! I topped them with tiny candy coated chocolate chips that Chris says taste like teeny Herseys Kisses.

om nom nom nom....

anniversary cupcakes!

I had an order from a really nice lady who wanted cupcakes to celebrate 3 years together with her partner.

She requested organic vanilla with raspberry frosting and lots of romantic pink decorations.





Happy Anniversary to you both :-)

cupcake catchup - the big baking weekend!

I'm a bit late posting this but here are some photos from my MEGA baking weekend. We had 4 friends having birthday celebrations the fist weekend in July. We could only attend 2 parties but I managed to do baking for 3 people. I managed to do big batches so I had enough for everyones birthday cupcakes

First up was Shane who is a member of the rifle club I attend. It was his 21st and I said he could choose his favourite flavour. It came down to a tie between Rocky Road cupcakes and Mountain Dew cupcakes. I managed to do him 6 of each :-)



here they are naked before all the frosting goodness:


and topped with frosting, gummi candy and mini marshmallows before the melted choc:


Next birthday boy was Graeme, one of Chris' oldest friends. It was his big 30th and he's a fan of my cupcakes so I gave him a dozen Mountain Dew ones just for him. Although I'm very sure his partner Veronica and their 2 cute girls helped him out.



And last but not least, my longtime friend Adria was having her birthday too, so I made her a big batch of mini Mountain Dew cupcakes with a couple of standard size ones in there too for the birthday girl, complete with candles so she could blow them out and make a wish :-) Sadly, my slack ass didn't take photos of her batch!! But I'm sure you can use your imagination or just look at my other Mountain Dew cupcake photos haha

excuse me while I do a post about ME!

Well I was quite surprised and flattered when I was a tagged for a Meme by THE Kitchen Vixen aka Sweet Stilettos

I've read a few other peoples blogs when they've been tagged and always enjoy learning random facts about favourite bloggers. I'm stoked I get to do one myself, I just hope I make for an interesting read!

__________

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
__________


OK people, here we go, 6 random things about me, the NZ Cupcake Queen:

1. My lucky number is 13, which was also my Dad's lucky number. To make things even more interesting, my late father was born on 13th March and my husband shares the same birthday as him.

2. I have a bizarre phobia involving my bellybutton. I don't like it to be touched, can barely put my own finger inside it and get totally grossed out to the point of feeling queasy and breaking out in a cold sweat if I ever have to clean it or watch someone else poke their finger in their belly button! I know, I know, I'm very weird.

3. When I was 18 I got a tiny black kitten. I named him Midget and everyone always thought it was because he was so small. He was actually named after a character from the 90's movie New Jersey Drive - a carjacker and petty theif called Midget (who later dies in a car crash). Now thats random!

4. One of my favourite things to eat is a sesame seed bun with cream cheese and sliced beetroot out of a tin. The combination of flavours and texture is great.

5. I can only cry properly out of one eye. When I was 5 I got stabbed in the eye with a pencil by a kid at my school (I grew up on the bad ass west side). My tear duct is damaged so now if I cry, tears stream out of the good eye and the bung eye just gets a bit moist and watery.

6. On a trip to LA when I was 7, I threw a massive tantrum at an airport security guy because he took my Cabbage Patch Kid from me to put through the x-ray machine. As a 7 year old who believed my Cabbage Patch Kid was real, I was NOT impressed with him at all and had an almighty crying fit, much to my Mum's embarrassment!


So now you know those fascinating random facts about me, its time to pass the torch onto some other bloggers I love:

1. The Art of Karla

2. 62Cherry

3. R.W.Scissors

4. Sugar Lemon Sweetheart

5. Candy Yum Yum

6. Cupcake Goggles


Have fun guys and I look forward to reading your Meme blog posts!

Stitch'd Ink cross stitch kits

Alot of my time and energy has been going into my new range of cross stitch kits. For the past few months I have been working on designs, then stitching up samples. I've finally got the kits done and they're now for sale on my Etsy store.



Stitch'd Ink has been a labour of love for me. It started out very simply, I was looking for some cool tattoo based cross stitch designs and couldn't find any, so I decided to make what I was looking for. I enjoyed doing them so much I figured other crafty people would too. And that is how Stitch'd Ink was born.

You can visit the Stitch'd Ink website (which is still a work in progress) and to purchase the kits you can visit my NZ Cupcake Queen Etsy store.

Where are the cupcakes?

I'm still baking and have had a few orders lately. I've been so busy a few have gone out the door without me even taking a photo!

But here are some ones I did for a baby shower/leaving afternoon tea. It was a very last minute order. I did 24 cupcakes in 2 flavours - organic vanilla with raspberry frosting, topped off with a sour cherry ball and jaffa with orange frosting

catching up on my blogging

I don't seem to have enough hours in the day to keep up to date with my blog, so I apologize for the big gaps between posts and then trying to cram all my updates into one day!



Lots has been going on here in NZCQ land. One of the exciting things has been being featured in Frankie magazine! They did a little piece about my art project called The Cupcake Project and also created a cupcake for their submission. If you haven't checked out The Cupcake Project yet head over there! I have around 160 submissions with more coming in each week. The creativity of the people submitting cupcakes blows me away!

I've been busy sewing too, but I stepped out of my comfort zone and gave sewing a plushie a go. I was inspired by a good cause, Softies for Mirabel which is run by the awesome Meet Me At Mikes.



I posted off my little cupcake plushie last week and he'll now be joining the rest in their window display. Get sewing and make a plushie too!