Late Post : Carrot Cupcakes, Halloween Festivites, and My Betrothed's Birthday

I have been MIA as of late, and it's because I've found myself busier than usual! Between Halloween, a hurricane, and cake orders at home, my blog has fallen by the wayside. :(  But no more!

The weekend before Halloween, I threw a Halloween Monster Mash/ Birthday Bash (for Roger's birthday). It was much fun, the food was amazing, and the costumes were awesome! I DIYed my devil costume, and managed to look quite snazzy-- except my corset was KILLING me. I think it was actually shifting my organs around! Eek! My Betrothed was an indie hipster (complete with finger mustache!) Thrifting for his clothes was a lot of hard work!

Anyhoo, for the party, I made carrot cupcakes, which were requested by my Betrothed, the birthday boy! I didn't really like how mixes turned out, so I went with a scratch carrot cake recipe. I obtained it from Taste of Home and the recipe can be found here. It came out tasty, but I wanted it more moist, so I may keep searching for other recipes or try to tweak this one in the future.

I topped my cupcakes with my cream cheese buttercream and Halloween sprinkles and voila!

The party-goers loved them-- and so did my Betrothed. :)

The next day, I made his birthday cake, which was The Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. He is a huge Tolkien fan-- so much so, that I'm pretty sure he's already getting in line for The Hobbit in theaters next month. I made my new trusty chocolate cake recipe and filled it with Dr. Oetker chocolate mousse. It was quite delicious and very moist. It was a hit with Roger and his family. :)

The writing is "Happy Birthday, Roger" in Elvish, I think

Slay that Eye! grrr

Ah, yes, this is my 100th post!!! It seemed like just yesterday that I started rambling about delicious sweet goodies. 2 years and 100 posts later, I am very proud that I've actually kept this up! (she said after a long hiatus)

Double Birthday Week! Mom's Carrot Cake

This past week, both my mother and brother celebrated their birthdays. My mom turned 60 on Sunday, so I had to make her favorite--carrot cake! I was short on time, but I wanted the cake to have an authentic feel, so I decided to try Duncan Hines' deluxe carrot cake mix. It had a pouch of carrots and raisins to add to the batter!

My mom doesn't like raisins, so I diligently picked all of those pesky raisins out. (so much for saving time, right?) While the cake baked, I worked on a different cream cheese buttercream recipe I had found.

• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temp
• 8 oz cream cheese, room temp
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 cups powdered sugar

1) With a whisk attachment, beat the butter until fluffy (about 5 minutes).

2) Add cream cheese and vanilla and mix on low for a minute or so.

3) Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and mix on low to combine after each addition. After all of the sugar is combined, whip the buttercream on high for about a minute or two.

Nice and fluffy!

I chopped up about a cup of walnuts and covered the sides of the cake then I decorated with orange flowers. Then I added the final touch- white chocolate numbers. (beats those number candles!)

My mom loved it!

And the cake was super moist with visible carrot shreds, so it definitely looked scratch-made! One qualm: the cake didn't rise as much as I wanted, so I would use two boxes for a double-layer 8 inch cake.