Have you been to the Doughnut Plant on 23rd Street in NYC yet?

Happy New Year from our newest book
Cupcakes, Cookies and Pie, Oh My!

This is the year of the dragon and what a great way to celebrate, parade dragon cupcakes. The red, green, and yellow scales, flowers, and horns are crafted from candy clay. In our new book we show you how to make this tasty workable clay from white morsels and Karo. It works like crafting clay, you can tint it any color, and it tastes great. The snout is a sugar coated wafer ice cream cone. And the spine is made from sugar coated mini s-shaped cookies. The little firecrackers are also made from candy clay with a licorice lace for the fuse, what a blast! The book is available now on AMAZON and ships next week. We can't wait for you to see it.

http://www.amazon.com/Cupcakes-Cookies-Pie-Oh-My/dp/0547662424/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen

hellocupcakebook.com

Every year I make way too much rice for New Year's Day dinner. My family is Southern and I keep up those old traditions of eating food for luck on January 1. The whole plate is cooked for fortune and luck for the next year. We eat collard greens because they look like money on the plate. Black eye peas looked like coins to someone way back when, and they have always saved Southerners from starving when times were hard, so we eat those too. And pork, I eat it for my health, but most folks eat it because it symbolizes wealth. Everything gets cooked in lots of pork infused juice, the pot licker.



When you serve up a plate of pork and collards and peas there is a lot of liquid on the plate, and nothing soaks up that pot licker better than rice. So I make rice for New Years, lots of it.

After dinner we always have extra rice, wouldn't want to run out.



And just like we have a plan for our fortunes, we've got a plan for using the leftover rice, too. Lucky us, it makes a great dessert.

This year we made Leftover Rice Pudding for New Year's dinner.



Start with an old fashioned vanilla pudding
allrecipes.com/recipe/old-fashioned-vanilla-pudding/
I added a cinnamon stick to the pudding in the saucepan. Before the pudding sets up, fold it into about 2 to 3 cups of cooked leftover rice (less rice equals creamier pudding). Make sure you coat all of the rice with the pudding. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and bake at 400 degrees until the sugar starts to bubble and caramelize. Tastes great warm or cold.

I recently had another great dessert that would be a terrific way to use leftover rice.



Callas is a sweet fritter (or they can be savory) made from leftover rice, milk, sugar, flour, and eggs. The sweet version is fried and then dusted with powdered sugar like the one above that I had at Elizabeth's in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. Try this recipe at food.com. www.food.com/recipe/callas-94080

It never occurs to me to make rice just for desserts. So it's lucky that there is always leftover rice on New Year's Day. Works great with leftover Chinese take-out rice, too!

Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen


hellocupcakebook.com

In New Orleans the beignet is king. It is a fried dough square smothered in a mountain of powdered sugar. You eat them hot, right out of the fryer, so when you bite into one, steam comes pouring out from the center. I grew up on these, think it may be the source of my cupcake addiction. I'm sitting here soaking in the sights and sounds of a N'awlins Christmas. There is a brass funk band across the street in Jackson Square playing riffs on Jingle Bells, the tuba player dressed like Santa. Lined up in front of the square are horse drawn carriages decorated with garlands, the horses wearing bells on their traces. The black iron fence surrounding the square is decorated with big red bows and is covered with colorful paintings of the French Quarter, and everywhere artists are drawing portraits of tourists or their pets. Looking down, my plate of beignets reminds me that in New Orleans everything is done a little different. The music is unique, the buildings have more character, the art and even the people are quirky and interesting. And the sweets are different, too. This is no regular plate of cupcakes. but that powdered sugar does look a lot like Santa's beard. If I had some M&Ms and a little red frosting, I'm pretty sure I could turn those beignets into a Santa face. I'll have to save that one for our next book, Hello, Beignet! I hope you and your family are having the merriest of holidays, too. And don't forget, it wouldn't be Christmas without cupcakes (or beignets!) so heat up the oven and time to start baking.

Joyeaux Noel to all,
Alan

Next stop, beignets at Cafe du Monde.

Happy Cupcakes
Alan

The December What's Newsletter is out.


In the December What's Newsletter, the Technique of the Month shows how we made a sandwich of two vanilla wafers on a pretzel stick for the head. The wings are piped from melted white candy melts, the same thing we used to glue the wafer sandwich together. We used spice drops for the white robe, and the halo is a flattened yellow spice drop with silver dragees (Candy Corner in this month's newsletter has some great shiny candy swaps for the dragees). Under the robe are a couple of cupcakes minus their paper liners, with a coating of frosting. Go to www.hellocupcakebook.com to get the whole recipe and be sure to sign up for the newsletter to get a free cupcake design every month.

Happy cupcaking
& Happy Holidays.
Alan and Karen

The NYCookieSwap was held last weekend at Hill Country Barbecue. The event was sponsored by Bloggers without Borders with Maggie Keet, Gail Doosik, Jackie Gordon, and Ken Leung organizing the meet up of over 90 bakers, bloggers, and cookie lovers for a mammoth cookie swap to raise funds for Cookies for Kids Cancer.

There were so many amazing bakers at the event, and a huge variety of cookies broken down into Sweet Cookies, Savory Cookies (gorgonzola cookies?), Gluten Free Cookies, and even cookies for World Peace from everyone's favorite baker, Dorie Greenspan.

There was lots of comraderie among the bakers ands loads of laughter, as well as a fantastic barbecue feast from Hill Country, followed by dessert, cookies, of course! We all left with a big GLAD tub of cookies and feeling the love.

The beneficiary of the swap, Cookies for Kids Cancer is a terrific non-profit that raises funds for research and development of treatments specifically for cancers that strike children. Please check out their website for more info on the amazing work they do.

www.cookiesforkidscancer.org

If you are looking for a way to make the season special, go bake a batch of cookies or cupcakes today and share them with your friends. Better yet, have your friends bake some, too, and get together for a swap. And be sure to find a good cause to include in the event. I promise it will make the season bright.

Happy holidays,
Alan and Karen

We just got a sneak peak at the newly designed cover for Cupcakes, Cookies, and Pie, Oh, My! and couldn't wait to show you. We just love that you get to see on the cover how we have given the Hello Cupcake treatment to so many of your other favorite desserts. Why shouldn't every dessert be as much fun as a cupcake?

Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen

We went to the Ft Worth Stockyards for boots and ended up at Leddy's. Their boots are almost as fancy as our cupcakes! Funny thing is cowboy boots are really comfortable, even when you are standing for hours decorating cupcakes. And now we can do a Texas two step while we pipe!

Happy cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Making werewolves and other scary Halloween cupcakes in our Central Market Cooking School classes in Texas. Our werewolves love a spaghetti and meatball cupcake for dessert.

Happy cupcaking
Alan and Karen

We are planning a shark attack on cupcakes for our Hello Cupcake App. It is so much fun giving all our cupcakes a new stage. Like Dr Frankenstein only we are bringing our cupcakes to life.

Look for the App early next year.

Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen

You've got your cookie on my cupcake! No you've got your cupcake on my cookie! Both are right. Now you can have your favorite cookie and a cupcake too. Cookie Topper Cupcakes are from our Hello Cupcake Whats Newsletter and are perfect for back-to-school. We have taken our favorite chocolate chip cookie ingredients and put them in the frosting on top of a cupcake. Next we roll the frosting in cookie crumbs made from our favorite cookies to make a delicious faux cookie topper for our cupcakes. This is so easy, and you can do it for almost any cookie recipe. Here are some of the crumbled cookies we think will taste great on a Cookie Topper Cupcake.



From left, those are Oreo cookie crumbs we threw in the food processor to crumb. You notice there seems to be no filling, just cookie. Well we threw them in whole and once they were chopped the white filling disappeared into the crumbs, Yet they still have the taste of Oreos with the filling! Next is a ginger snap, one of our all time favorite cookies. It gives the Cookie Topper a sharp flavorful taste and a rich golden color. On the right are Vanilla Wafers. Who doesn't love the flavor of vanilla?

Now for the ingredients. You can take them any direction. Classic chocolate chip, wild chunky monkey, organic oats and nuts. it's your choice. Below are a few tasty combos we tried and gave a thumbs up.



Above from left to right, we combined dried banana chips with pecans, and vanilla wafer crumbs for a tasty whole earth cookie, dried oatmeal flakes with two kinds of raisins and ginger snap crumbs for a classic with a twist, and dark chocolate chunks with white chocolate chips and Oreo crumbs for the chocolate lover. To get the recipe for classic Chocolate Chip Cookie Topper Cupcakes go to Whats Newsletter and while you are there be sure to sign up for more cupcakes fun every month.

Happy back-to-school &
Happy cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

The berries were spectacular at the farmer's market on Sunday. I loaded up on blueberries, raspberries, and big juicy blackberries. We ate a lot Sunday night and Monday morning, but looking at all of those boxes of juicy berries I started thinking we may not be able to eat them all before they went bad. That's when I got inspired to make a batch of fresh berry cupcakes.

Sure it’s 100 outside but these lemon cooler cupcakes will make it feel like it's only 98. This is the latest project from Hello Cupcake's What's Newsletter. To make our lemon coolers, we simply top lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting, drop them into pale yellow liners, stack them and insert a skewer to hold them in place, and garnish with a candy lemon slice, minty stick gum leaves, and a fresh green straw for sipping. click here for the recipe

If you borrow this image or recipe please credit it to Hello, Cupcake! Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.
A link would be appreciated too! Thanks.

When we start thinking up holiday ideas we get kind of silly. We are always looking for a fun way to celebrate the event with cupcakes and put a smile on our face at the same time. We knew we wanted to make Shamrocks and decided to do a little research into the Blarney Stone. Turns out it's a rock in a wall at a castle and you have to hang upside down by your heels high above the ground and kiss it to get the luck of the Irish (lucky if you don't fall!). So we decided to make getting the luck of the Irish much easier.

We took breakfast treat cookies and broke them into large chunks. Then we tinted our Duncan Hines Creamy Homestyle frosting a light gray with food coloring (we use the DH brand because it melts so well and then firms back up for a nice smooth coating). We dipped each chunk of cookie in the melted frosting and placed them on a cooling rack to set. Meanwhile we rolled out spearmint leaves, those mint-flavored sugared jelly candies in the shape of a mint leaf. We used sugar on the work surface and on top of the candy to keep it from sticking. As we rolled we added sugar as needed until the candy was about 1/16 inch thick. We used a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut the leaves, but you could also go free-form and just cut them with a paring knife or even scissors. We pinched the hearts at the pointed end to give them a clover leaf shape. Extra rolled out candy was cut into stems.

Assembly is always our favorite part of a project. that's when you get to bring it all together and add little touches that make it your own. We frosted our cupcakes with chocolate frosting and edged them in Oreo cookie crumbs to look like dirt. Then we placed three leaves and a stem on most cupcake, a couple got four for good luck, and we arranged our Blarney Stones on more cupcakes. Little spots of green frosting for grass and a few additional dirt crumbs and the Blarney Stone Cupcakes were complete.

Go ahead, make them and kiss the Blarney Stone Cupcake. We think it will be a Lucky Day if you do.

Get the entire recipe at www.hellocupcakebook.com and so you don't miss out on our new cupcake designs while you are there make sure you subscribe to Hello, Cupcakes! What's Newsletter.

Happy cupcaking.
Alan and Karen

Some folks like to wear their hearts on their sleeves...we like to wear ours on our cupcakes.

The latest edition of Hello Cupcake's What's Newsletter features football cupcakes made from tasty Mallomar marshmallow cookies and Tootsie Rolls. These pigskins are easy to make and provide both the halftime snack and the entertainment. If you haven't already, be sure to sign up for What's Newsletter. That way you'll be sure to get the latest Hello, Cupcake designs sent right to your e-mail. Get the full recipe as well as our inside technique tips and candy advice at:.

Hello Cupcake's What's Newsletter

Happy cupcaking,
Alan and Karen

Made these with my nieces Stephanie and Anna for Christmas. Hope you
are all having a wonderful holiday.

Happy cupcaking,
Alan

Starlight Mints have always been a favorite in the candy bowl now they'll be a favorite on your cupcake tray, too. This is a terrific idea for the holidays, or for entertaining any time of year. Think how great they will look on your New Years party table. The swirl top is created from red and white frosting piped from a Ziploc bag. It gets a coating of decorating sugar to give it sparkle.  We have used a Candy Glass technique to create the cellophane twist ties. They are made from clear hard candy mints that we crushed, melted, and cut into the twist shapes. Check out the latest edition of Hello, Cupcake's What's Newsletter for the entire recipe and techinique instructions for the Candy Glass.

While you are there be sure to sign up for the What's Newsletter so you don't miss a single new cupcake project in the New Year!
Take Me to What's Newsletter.

We hope to see all of you back with us next year in the Candy Corner!
Merry Cupcakes,
Alan and Karen

Karen will be trimming the Cupcake Tree with Kathie Lee and Hoda on the 4th hour of the TODAY Show today. Watch for the cute Rubber Duck Holiday wreath idea and more. About 10:30 AM EST.

Merry Cupcakes.
Alan and Karen