March Birthday Cake Madness!

My husband, and both of my maternal grand parents, all have March birthdays. So seeing as how I have been in a constant time pinch lately with my new job, and family obligations, and life in general, I was barely able to find the time make and decorate their cakes. In other words, I am lacking in my normal amount of photo journaling baking photo's. At least I was able to get some pictures of the finished products prior to them being devoured!


This was my husbands birthday cake. I asked his opinion about what he would like, and he said "I don't know, chocolate?" OK, you want chocolate, you got it! Devils food chocolate cake, with chocolate butter cream filling, coated with chocolate gnash frosting, and decorated with more chocolate butter cream!


My grandparents on the other hand, well I took it a little easier on them. My grandpa is diabetic and he really shouldn't be having cake as it is, but on your birthday your deffinatley entitled to some cake. So I went with a simple french vanilla white cake, and filled, frosted and decorated with vanilla butter cream. And to tell you the truth, were all so chocolated out from my husbands cake the week prior, the vanilla cake was a welcome change!

Bourbon & Sweet Potato Cup Cakes

Bakerella (I just love her) debuted these cupcakes on her blog, quite some time ago, and ever since the first day I read that blog post I knew I had to make them at some point. So I finally decided to give it a whirl, and they were really, really good. These are a very adult cupcake, the cupcake itself isn't super, sugary sweet, and the warmth of the bourbon in the cake and the icing is, well, it's awesome!

I will say no more, and let the photo's speak for themselves!




Getting started, I laid out all of my required ingredients...





Ingredients going into the fabulous Kitchenaid...





The fabulous Kitchenaid at work...





Loading the cupcakes into the oven...




Hmmm, the smell of these cupcakes baking reminded me of the smell of the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning...


After letting the cupcakes cool for a few hours, they took a nice lil' dip into the yummy icing...


See?...


Then I let them settle for a about half an hour, and then I dipped them again. That's right, I double dipped, and I'm proud...





Then I placed a pecan on top, and viola! Heaven on a doile!


They didn't last too long in my house. I wasn't really able to get that many photo's due to an eager crowd of cupcake fans.