Hello, Cupcake! BLOG

This is really a Cookin' Class!

2008-06-24T07:13:24Z

Sur la Table has been sponsoring us at cooking classes in their Culinary Schools across the country. We have such a great time at the classes because the students always have a great time. We get everyone from beginners to certified Wilton decorating instructors, and they all come away with a big smile on their face. In the classes Karen does a demo of each cupcake project and then it is the students' turn to make a cupcake masterpiece. To get an idea just how much fun cupcaking can be take a look at some photos from a recent class in Manhasset on New York's Long Island.

Below (l to r) Tara and her sunflowers with Julia Child looking over her shoulder! Sharon puts the bite into Heather's shark! And Joanie makes a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers.

Below (l to r) Stefanie's pup is sitting pretty in a makeshift doggie bed. Tara and Aunt Denise show off their shark. And Meredith promises that all three kids are getting pupcakes for their birthdays this year!

Below (l to r) Our favorite cooking teacher Natalie has a mighty firm grip on the frosting bag! Vicki has perfect ziplock piping technique and a perfectly ferocious looking shark. That's Lorette's sweet sleeping baby at the end of the evening.

We had so much fun so all we can say is...

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Cupcake Club Challenge #2

2008-06-24T06:21:42Z

Hey all you cupcakers. Challenge #2 is up on our website at hellocupcakebook.com

Show Us Your Pets!

That's right, we want you to turn your pet into a cupcake. Snakes, lizards, dogs, cats, hamsters, you name it. Any pet can be turned into a terrific cupcake so go to our club page and show us just how cute a little cupcake pet can be.

I found Hello, cupcake! at Paper Source!

2008-06-24T06:20:33Z

Karen and I were in Chicago last week and I decided to go check out Paper Source. I knew they were carrying Hello, Cupcake! and I wanted to see if they had the book in stock. When I got there my friend Felicia (from Chicago) informed the cashier that I was the author of Hello, Cupcake! Within moments we were surrounded by clerks and customers and I found myself describing the Candy Detective philosophy behind the book and telling the crowd how easy cupcaking can be if you just take a trip down the candy aisle. We chatted about recipes, ziplock bags, candy substitutions, sources for paper liners, and our favorite cakes and frostings. My friend Felicia managed to buy their last copy of Hello, Cupcake! for a friend and we finally slipped out with promises to return for a Hello, Cupcake! event at Paper Source in the near future. Encounters like this make Karen and I the happiest cupcakers around. And Paper Source turns out to be a perfect place to sell Hello, Cupcake! The store is full of creative crafting materials like beautiful papers, colorful ribbons, cards, markers, decorative boxes, and other things that would be great to use for creative cupcaking. I left with a lot of ideas for future cupcake projects. The staff at the story was happy to pose for a photo in front of the rack of beautiful papers. That's Mayra, Marcia, Gerrie, and Rachel (l to r). Thanks and all I can say is...

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan

Stephanie has a Butterfly Birthday Party

2008-06-11T22:41:31Z

My niece Stephanie D asked me to help her make cupcakes for her 14th birthday. We wanted to do something that would let us spend some creative time together and also let the other kids get in on the fun at some point. We decided to do the butterflies because I knew we could make the wings ahead of time, and then bake the cupcakes, frost them, and assemble the butterflies later with the other kids. We got our supplies together and found some quiet time in the kitchen to get creative. The first few wings came out a little clumpy and I knew we hadn't heated the melting wafers enough. We tossed them in the microwave again and when we got the texture of the chocolate wafers just right the wings really started to flow. Steph really liked blending the brown and orange and became very adept at using the toothpick to pull the colors together. It took us less than an hour to make all the wings for 36 butterflies, more than enough for our 24 cupcakes. Later all the other kids joined in frosting the cupcakes, piping the bodies, and assembling the wings on the cupcakes. We all had a blast and the cupcakes on the platters were as pretty as a picture.
Take a look!

Stephanie D. with her beautiful butterfly wings

Sarah, Stephanie, Thomas, Anna, and Lawrence (l to r) and the wings of the butterflies.

Happy Birthday Stephanie,
Keep on Cupcaking!
Alan

Postcards From the Edge of Cupcaking!

2008-06-04T19:03:08Z

The graduate desktop publishing students at Emerson College in Boston decided to use Hello, Cupcake! for their class in marketing design. They used images from the book and they all came up with great designs and slogans. But we definitely had a fav post card and it is from Ashley Gilliam. Thanks Ashley, I think Van Gogh would be proud, we certainly are!

A Cupcake Bar Makes a Perfect Cupcake Party

2008-06-04T19:01:45Z

Throw a Cupcake Party,

Our Friends Did and it was a Blast!

Karen's pals Andrea, Allison, and Mary Helen conspired with Karen's husband Chris to throw a huge cupcake bash for us on Saturday. They came up with a perfect cupcake party that used a lot of the crazy ideas from our book Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make . For the party they set up two long cupcake bars with all of the candy fixings and frosting to make two of our favorite projects. On one table they prepped all of the ingredients for the sunflowers (Oreos for the centers, frosting for the petals, and M&Ms for the Lady Bugs) and on the other table they had spaghetti and meatballs ready to go (frosting for the pasta, strawberry jelly for the sauce, white chocolate bars for the cheese, and Ferrer Rocher hazlenut candies for the meatballs). There were fresh baked cupcakes at each station and some of the older kids had already received cupcaking instructions from Karen so they could help everyone else make their cupcakes. The clever hostesses Andrea and Allison color copied pages from the book and mounted them so they could put them by each station to give the cupcakers a clear guide for their designs. They even had a video from the TODAY Show going on the computer so everyone could see how Karen made the sunflowers with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on their program last Tuesday. All this affair needed was cupcakers. I think there were eventually a couple of hundred guests including our new pal Kathie Lee from the TODAY Show who came with her husband Frank, daughter Cassidy, and some close friends and their kids. Everyone who came was in a mood to cupcake. As the guests streamed in they clustered around the tables to start making cupcake sunflowers and meatballs. The cupcaking action didn't stop all afternoon, it was even hard to get up to the cupcake bar and take photos. I didn't see as many cupcakes get eaten as I saw get packed in plastic containers and saved like precious treasures. They were so great looking everyone wanted to take them home. That's okay because Chris is a fantastic cook and he made lots of food so everyone ate well and the sunflower and meatball cupcakes survived to see another day. This party was a big success and proves our theory that serving cupcakes will make a party fun, but when your guests get to decorate them too you have got a bash to remember!

Another beautiful sunflower and Lady Bug, well done cupcakers!

Thanks to everyone who came and especially thanks to our hostesses and hosts for throwing us the Perfect Cupcake Party! We had a wonderful time!

Mrs. Cupcake and the three Mr. Cupcakes (l to r, Chris, Larry, Alan and Karen)

Keep on cupcaking!

Alan and Karen

New Pictogram

2008-06-04T15:27:30Z

We just love a good pictogram and seems a lot of you do too. This is going on the web sight but just wanted to give all you bloggers the first peek. Can you guess what it says? It is how we feel about all the great folks we have met through Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make .

Have fun and...
Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Another Library Has Cupcakes in the Stacks!

2008-06-04T19:02:26Z

We were invited to speak at the Warner Library last weekend. They were doing a series of talks with writers from the Hudson River area. They had a terrific lineup of literary speakers and also a couple of cupcakers. I think the crowd came in expecting a lecture and soon found themselves up to their elbows in frosting and candy. The crowd learned how to make a spaghetti and meatball cupcake, a corn on the cob cupcake, a westie cupcake, and a shark cupcake. We had a lot of very enthusiastic cupcakers and made a lot of new friends right here on my own Main Street. I am so lucky to live in my favorite town in the whole world. Take a look at the really great photos below, all of our guests turned out to be great at making the sunflowers.

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Ellen has a good grip on the frosting bag which keeps the pressure just right for making the petals.

Heather has a perfect ring of petals and is about to start the second row to complete a sunflower.

Briana and Roslyn get some tips from the master cupcaker, Karen

Briana gets the knack and makes perfect petals on her own sunflower.

What is the best Cupcake Cookbook Ever? You Decide!

2008-06-04T19:01:06Z

Our friend Sandy the Cupcake Queen out in Milwaukee is doing a survey and really needs to know what you think about cupcake books. Now I know you are all on the Hello, Cupcake! blog, but I think this calls for some real soul searching and it would be great for all of us to take the survey and tell her what we think. You can go to her web site at milwaukeecupcakequeen to take the survey.

Have fun and...
Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Panda-Monium

2008-05-31T11:22:27Z

Brienne sent us this photo of her adorable Panda project. They look so cute all nestled in that white plate. We really like how a couple of them look like they are leaning back and laughing. Small variations in the faces and changes in the angles of the heads really help to give them character and bring them to life. Congrats Brienne, they look fantastic.

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Hello,Cupcake!Club Challenge

2008-06-04T12:37:05Z

Today is the day for all of us to post our first cupcake challenge to Flickr. Karen and I posted ours this morning and we saw some other challenges starting to come in. Can't wait to see what you have done with the flower challenge. Be sure to post and take a look at all the other designs. If you want to join the club go to our web site and join on the Hello,Cupcake!Club page.

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

This is our challenge. We turned the sunflowers from Hello, Cupcake! into Zinnias. We used Golden Oreos insyead of chocolate and made the petals hot pink, yellow, and orange. The leaves are fruit jellies rolled out thin and cut to make leaf shapes, and we even made an inch worm out of mini M&Ms, but we forgot to turn the basket around, the inch worm is on the other side. We better hire a professional photographer next time.

Hope you enjoy it and we hope you send us flowers too!

Library by the Sea Is Full of Cupcakes

2008-06-04T14:58:05Z

After the TODAY Show on Wednesday we turned ourselves around and drove down to the beautiful New Jersey shore to talk cupcakes at the Ocean County Library in Tom's River. So many people signed up for the event we were moved to the local Lacey Elementary School where 134 people crowded the gymnasium to see us make cupcakes. When we arrived we were greeted by Chef Jill and her students from the culinary program who had made hundreds of beautiful cupcakes from the book for the crowd to sample. We demonstrated how to make Sunflowers, Slumber Party, Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Shark Attack. After the demo we took questions from the crowd and I think our favorite had to be the little girl who asked if we could make a unicorn cupcake. We told her we would probably start with the horse design from the book, and asked her if she had any ideas how to turn ithem into unicorns. She then proceeded to name five or six candies that could make the horn and added that we would need lots of sparkly sugars to make the unicorn glitter. Now that's what we call Cupcaking!

It was an awesome evening all around thanks to the chefs and Scott Rodas and the talented staff of the library. Thanks for having us and all we can say is...

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Karen demonstrating the proper way to handle candy, away from your mouth so some of it actually makes it to the cupcake!

Our new favorite chefs, Chef Jill (pink hat in the center) and her students who turned our cupcake designs into beautiful treats for the crowd. Those are Spaghetti and Meatballs, Corn on the Cob, and Popcorn in front of them.

Arielle asked us to sign her cupcake design backpack. What a thrill it was to be asked!
We hope she fills it with cupcakes for recess!

TODAY Show Summer Blast Cupcakes!

2008-05-29T11:30:37Z

Wednesday started early for us, it actually started on Tuesday. Karen and I prepared a Big Top Circus Cupcake Party, a Lobster Cupcake Project, Popcorn Cupcakes, Corn on the Cob Cupcakes, Ant's Picnic Cupcakes, Fried Chicken Basket Cupcakes, a whole Whale Pod Cupcake project, Sandcastle Cupcakes, and finally a big Bouquet of Zinnias Cupcakes. We packed it all in Karen's station wagon and drove very carefully into Manhattan avoiding as many pot-holes as possible (we only lost one Zinnia and a couple of seagulls along the way) and delivered our Summer Blast Cupcake Party to the TODAY Show at Rockefeller Center. We worked with the set designers, the producer, the food stylists, the prop crew, and the camera crew to set up the table. The cupcakes on the table looked so fantastic and tempting that the crew put bright yellow caution tape all around the area to keep everybody safely out of arms reach and finally late Tuesday we called it a day and drove home to sleep for a few hours (Karen needed rest to look perky for her close-up camera shot on Wednesday!). Early Wednesday morning Karen crawled out of bed, decorated a few more clowns and elephants for the Big Top project and made her way back to the studios for the segment. And what a segment it was. The cupcakes looked great, Kathie Lee and Hoda were so sweet and loved everything, and they all had a blast making Zinnia cupcakes for the bouquet. The projects are all easy, they use simple candies and snacks for decorations, and there is something here to inspire everyone. So click on the link below, watch it yourself, and get started making your own Summer Blast Cupcakes. (The recipes for the Zinnias, the Corn on the Cob, and the Popcorn are on the TODAY Show web site at www.msnbc.msn.com)

Keep on cupcaking!

Alan and Karen

Pool Balls!

2008-05-23T07:03:36Z

Comment: I was so excited to try one of your cupcakes. Let me preface this by saying, I am by no means a baker, and found your cupcakes to be so easy and fun to make. My husband and I really got into it. We made the pool ball cupcakes for a friends birthday party. Everyone loved them.

Here's a picture:

Thanks Zsasha-your pool balls turned out really well. It is the first photo we have gotten from a reader of this project and I am so happy they turned out so well. Please send us more great cupcake photos and...

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Martha's Cutest Cupcake Contest Winners

2008-05-20T15:20:58Z

We don't know if you caught this on Cupcake Week at the Martha Stewart Show but they had a Cutest Cupcake Contest and here is Martha naming the winners. They really are cute too.

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Candy Addicts Unite

2008-05-20T15:20:34Z

I spotted this really fun candy blog the other day and had to do a double take when I saw the pug cupcakes. I read on and learned that Joann had made them from Hello, Cupcake! After more study of her blog I realized that I had found someone who totally gets our crazy candy thing and likes dogs too. Cut to the chase, I asked to excerpt Joann's post from her blog but it was so good I ended up using it all. Joann, I hope to meet you in the aisles of Dylan's Candy Bar one day.

Joann's post from jojobes.blogspot:

My sister is totally in love with her pug dog Presley, so I knew she would love these pug cupcakes I made for her birthday. I got the instructions for them out of the excellent new cookbook Hello Cupcake! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson. Not only does this cookbook have some of the most creative and adorable cupcake decorations I have ever seen, many of the designs use some of my favorite candies. Take the pug cupcakes for example, the ears are made of flattened and shaped Tootsie Rolls and the tongue is made from a strawberry Starburst. The eyes are made out of brown mini M&M's with a dot of white frosting in the middle of them. (oops! I forgot to mention that the nose is made from a black licorice Jelly Belly. The box I bought didn't have enough black ones to go around, so on some I used the brown Chocolate Pudding flavor which worked just fine.)

One of the great things about this cookbook is that you don't have to be an expert baker to achieve great results. All of the cupcakes in the book can be made with box cake mix and canned frosting. The candies used for decoration are also very common and readily available at most drugstores, gas stations...you get the picture. I really appreciate how this book made me look at candy in a new light. Before seeing this book, would I have ever pictured green Runts as green peas or a lemon Starburst as a pat of butter? Probably not. It's great to learn new things.

Thanks Joann. I hope you send us lots more candy ideas, especially if they happen to be on top of a cupcake.

Keep on cupcaking!
alan and Karen

Butterflies in Dallas

2008-05-20T06:09:39Z

I had so much fun at your cooking class at central market in Dallas!!!!

Here is a picture of my butterflies. Enjoy, I know I did.

D'Ann M

Thank you D'Ann. The classes are so much fun to teach. Thanks for coming and for sending the photo. Your butterflies are beautiful.

Keep on cupcaking!
Karen and Alan

Dogs and Alligators Get Along Just Fine

2008-05-17T06:47:28Z

We had so much fun with these, and so did the kids!! We couldn't find the cookies for Old swampy so we used the oreo cookie 100 calorie packs!!!

Cheryl

These pups better be alert for Old Swampy!

Cheryl,

We love the red-nosed pups, the chocolate ones look especially delicious. And your Old Swampy blows us away. We are happy to hear that you found a substitute to use for the chocolate cookie scales on him, that's thinking outside the box. Your piping is fantastic and the jelly bean nostrils and toenails are a terrific touch. Hats off to you.

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen

Butterflies are Swarming in Mississippi

2008-05-20T06:24:46Z

Barbara and Betty helped the kids make butterfly cupcakes for Addie's birthday party....

They didn't want to put the chocolate on the butterfly bodies because they liked the colors of the M&M's showing. Evan did a GREAT job outlining the wings. The kids were in their swim suits and after making the cupcakes we had a pool party for Addie's birthday. We will be doing this more often. It was a lot of fun!!!

Deb P.

Logan following the book to blend the brown and orange melting chocolates and add sprinkles to make the wings. His birthday was just a few days away too so he wanted to get his technique perfect in time for his own birthday cupcakes.

Logan and Evan and their butterflies. It looks like Evan is eating a butterfly too!

Addie blowing out the candles on her butterfly cupcakes. Love how the bathing suit colors match the butterflies!
Happy birthday Addie and...
we can't wait to see what they cooked up for Logan's Birthday Bash?
Happy Birthday Logan!
Send us photos of your birthday cupcakes!!!

Keep on cupcaking!
Alan and Karen