DON'T NUT, DONUTS!

My friend made some donuts and cinnamon rolls for her little nieces' birthday couple months ago.  When she told me she is going to make cinnamon rolls, I told her to add bacon in your cinnamon rolls.  She and everyone else thought I was nut at first, but she still "bought" my idea.  And suprisingly, they turned out great and unique and everyone loved them.  Her recipes of making the cinnamon-bacon rolls and donuts are super easy -

Cinnamon-Bacon Rolls -

1 roll of ready to bake cinnamon rolls
1 round cake pan
1 pack of bacons

1. Open the ready to bake cinnamon rolls and put one slice of bacon and roll the rolls.
2. Place the rolls in a round cake pan (I suggest using round cake pan because it is the perfect way to keep the round shape of the cinnamon rolls).
3. Bake as directed and then done!

Donuts -

1 pack of store bought biscuits
Vegetable oil for frying
A big and a small round cookie cutters

1. Open the store bought biscuits and use your round cookies cutters to cut them in a donut shape.
2. Heat the vegetable oil, once it's heated.  Put your donut dought in the oil until golden brown on both sides.
3. Decorate your donut with powder sugar or with an easy donut glaze (click here).

And find these cuper cute donuts on the website.  They are from a bakery in Japan.  How cute!

Decorating your lonely cake stand

I made some fake cupcakes a year ago and I have shared my "secret recipe" of these non baked goodies with everyone last year.  If you missed it, click here to see our "recipe".

I mentioned that I have registered to enter a fondant decorative cupcakes contest at the OC Fair this year last week.  One of the requirements for submitting my creation is to make "fake cupcakes".  So now I am going to share with you how I twisked my "old recipe", which I shared with everyone last year and make the fake cupcakes ever more realistic.

What you need:

Tooth picks
Styroform balls
Brushes
Acrylic paints
Plaster of Paris
Vinyl Spackling
Cupcake Liners
Cupcake pan

1)  For the base of the cupcake, please refer to here.  I still suggest to use Plaster of Paris for the base becuase the weight could secure your top portion better.  Line the cupcake liners in a cupcake pan and pour your "batter" (Plaster of Paris) inside the liner.  After pouring the Plaster of Paris in the cupcake liners, make sure to put couple tooth pick in the middle of the "batter" because they will help to "connect" the top cake portion to the base (see Step 3).

2)  Get some styrofoam balls, cut them in half (I used my bread knife to cute them, and it worked perfect.)  Brush some acrylic paints (I used brown here for my "chocolate cupcakes") to make cover the white color of the styrofoam balls. (

3)  After the "batter" and the cake portion are totally dry out (the "batter" take longer time to dry, probably half of the day, the cake portion should be dry out in 3-4 hours max). Now we could put the base and the cake portion together.  The tooth picks we inserted to the "batter" on Step 1, will hold these two portions perfectly together. 

4)  Get a small jar of Vinyl Spackling from your local home improvement stores (such as ACE, Home Depot, or Lowe's).  If you don't want to add any color inside, you could use it alone as a basic white "butter cream" frosting.  If you want color for your frosting, add few drops of acrylic paint of your choice and mix well.

5)  To avoid messiness, I highly recommended people to use disposable cups and spoons to mix the color in the "frosting".

6) Put your "butter cream frosting" in a piping bag and pipe on top of the cupcake, let's dry for few hours. 

Home Sweet Home

The Orange County Fair is coming very soon (Mid July), we are so excited to go there to enjoy some fair food and see some farm animals again this year.  Besides the food and animals, I love to see the exhibits of table setting and food too.  This year, I decided joining one of the many contests they offer - the fondant decoration cupcakes contest.  I registered about a month ago and started putting ideas together immediately.  Since their theme this year is Home Sweet Home, I "kind of" go along with the theme.  Being a home owner is one of the biggest American dream people are having for many years - New Home Sweet Home is my theme for my creation! 

I made the toppers first and then spent about half day to finish some faux cupcakes.  For decorating cake/cupcakes contests, it's required to submit faux cupcakes/cake rather than real ones because the exhitbits will be showing at the fair for about a month, I guess that make sense to keep the cupcakes/cake look as good as on the first day.  I will share with you of how to make my faux cupcakes next time (stay tuned!).

In the process of making my creation, it reminded me of all the painful and sweet moments of getting our first house.  I still consider getting our first hourse is the most stressful moment I have in my life so far.  We need to put tons of documents together to get loans and submit to the bank.  We used tons of boxes to pack our belongings.  We sweated from head to toes to get our house painted.  We spent days and nights to read all the documents we received from our realtor and made our decision carefully. But after all that, everything was done and settled, and we finally got to enjoy our new home and new lives together. 

So here are my new creation, and I will let you guys know how it goes.  Hopefully, you will see my creation at the fair and don't forget to snap a pictures of my creation and share with me and everyone=)

New Home Sweet Home

Sold Sign

I tried to get as detail as I could.  I even put some "dirt" (cookies) on back.

Singed DEED and Got the key

Fixing up the house

Unpacking

Changing address

Finally got to enjoy our new nest!

Giant Cupcake Liner

These giant cupcake liners are so adorable and functional.  Check them out.

It's begining to look a lot like Christmas...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go; Take a look in the five and ten glistening once again With candy canes and silver lanes aglow. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Toys in ev'ry store But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be On your own front door.

25 days till Christmas - These cupcake ornaments could make your Christmas extra warm and sweet, check them out!

Want to make your own cupcake ornaments?  I found this website to teach you to make a very easy and simple cupcake ornaments, check it out--->here.