Mystery Murderer Dinner Party

Each year I try to do something different for my birthday, of course, this year was no expection.  I wanted to do a mystery murderer themed party for my birthday for a long time.  This year, I was able to make it with help from my friends and family, I was one happy birthday girl!

My friend had a mystery murderer party few years ago for her birthday.  She kept most of the materials and I borrowed the materials from her.  She and her husband were helping me to plan the party since they had experience of what we should do.  

For decoration, I had started thinking of how to decorating my party about a month before the party. I set few themed colors first (red, black, gold and white).  And work around with those colors and added little details to match the 1940s theme. Luckily, the themed colors at my house are red and little black, so I could easily reuse some of the decoration stuffs and frames from home and repurposed them.  We also created a photo booth and some photo props for pictures.  Everyone had a great time of taking pictures of the photo props I made.   

For desserts, I made few different desserts for the party, including donut holes and smore bites and of course cupcakes.  They were so yummy and great for us to walk around to communicate with other characters to find out who the murderer was.  I also made some little tags for each desserts, so people know what they were eating.

For food and drinks, we order Italian food from a local Italian restaurant.  Their price was very reasonable and food was great.  We also sticked with wines and old fashioned drinks the whole night.  We had two speical cocktails, Bee's Knees and Old Fashioned.  For non-alcohol beverage, we made cucumber rosemary lemon chiller; it was so refreshing!

I am so happy that most of my friends dressed up for their parts too.  They made the party even more memoriable than it could be. 

Here are some more pictures:

Found this old newspaper picture and a prescription for alcohol drinking online. 
Yup, you needed to obtain a prescription for drinking back to the 1940s.

My boot camp buddies=)

Another prescription I found online

Cucumber roseymary lemon chiller

Decroations on the dessert table

Posing with the photo props

My Asian gang

I love the setting=)

The boys in 1940s style

Our dessert table

smore bites

Cat Cupcakes

OMG!  I can't believe I have not updated anything here since last month.  I FINALLY decided to post some cupcakes I crafted early last month for a cat themed tea party.

My client sent me pictures of her 4 lovely cats and she is very open minded for any design. So I came up the design to match her mice invitation and some cat toys and fishes....and OF COURSE, her 4 cats. I wanted to keep everything French inspired simple and modern.  They came out amazingly adorable!  And everyone at the party loved them.

Meet BK

Boo is so cute.

Hershey

Coco (named after Coco Channel)

Under the Sea Baby Shower's Cupcakes

First of all, I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween.  Also praying for those who have been suffering from  Hurriance Sandy in the east coast. 

It's been too long since I last updated my "creations".  I got couple orders for parties this weekend.  The themes for both parites are very cute and unique.  I will share pictures of the second party with everyone later this week.

Here are some mini cupcakes I made for the first party.  It's a baby shower for a baby girl, the theme is "Under the Sea".  Since the mini cupcakes are so tiny, I needed to keep all the decorations simple and catchy.   The flavors of the cupcakes are carrot cupcakes with cream  cheese frosting, red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate rose water frosting and the last but not the least is Japanese honey cupcakes with vanilla buttercream  frosting...

A mini whale fondant topper

A colorful tropical fish dusted with edibile sprinking paint

Pink jelly fish dust with silver paint

A mini star fish

Done with 6 dozens mini cupcakes

Cupcake Nuggets

I saw this very innovative creation on the Cupcake Activist's blog.  It didn't only make me craving for cupcakes, but chicken nuggets too.  They looked so real and so cute!  I need to make this one of these days=) Perfect sweet treats for kid's birthday party or bridal/baby showers=)

The recipe is originally from a blog, called the Cupcake Project.  According to the creator, "Cupcake nuggets are cupcake pieces breaded with cupcakes and then deep fried.  Cupcake nuggets look enough like fast food chicken nuggets to fool all but the nugget connoisseur, but taste like doughnuts with crispy, sweet exteriors."

For recipe and more interest cupcake projects, click here.

A Cup Cake

I did not miss spell one of my favorite vocabulary on the title.  I found this beautiful Cup Cake's picture on the internet and would love to share with you today.

Hawaiian Birthday Cupcakes

This post is way overdue, but luckily I still remember to post it before it's getting too late. Last month, my husband's family was throwing a surprise birthday party for his uncle's 50th birthday.  We all had a great time at the Hawaiian themed birthday party.  We even got a pig for his birthday!  My mother-in-law asked me if I mind making them some cupcakes for our uncle's birthday; especially she knew that I got caught up with other orders.  I said no, I don't mind.  So I made some pineapple cupcakes with creamy coconut frosting and decorate with yellow plumeria flowers (made of marshmallows). 

They came out really cute and they were so easy to make.  If you want to decorate your cupcakes in a easy way, marshmallows will be your new best friend.  You need a bag of the big size of marshmallows and cut them in lenthwise four times, so you will get five petals.  And then just spread a little food coloring in the middle and arrange them on top of your frosted cupcakes.  And I also used some melted candy wafers to make some "50" decorations for the cupcakes.  Everything was so tropical and matching the theme of the party=)

Introducing Cakey Perry and Lady Goo Goo by Top of the Cake Pops

Rihanna and "Cakey" Perry, yum!

As I mentioned on my previous post, cake pops are getting very popular.  They are one fun to eat dessert (isn't everything on the stick taste better?!).  I found these cute pop stars, including Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Justin Biber...in cake pop format.  Urgh, they are too cute to eat!  If you want to learn how to make your favorite pop stars, this book, Top of the Cake pops could definitely give you some amazing ideas (see cover of the book below).  And check out more pop stars by Top of the Cake Pops below also.

The most popular boy bands

Guess who are here?!

Perhaps Elton John?

After Grammy Party

JLo, where is your famous asset?

Baklava Cups Recipe

Couple months ago, I tried to make my very first Baklava (recipe here).  This is one of the most additive desserts I ever ate.  After my first successful attempt, I wanted to make this little treat again for our Easter's dinner; however, I want to make it a little bits different than the one I made the last time.  So I went online and find a pretty interesting recipe from Food Network.com.  The one appears on Food Network.com looks different than the traditional one I made the last time.  The ingridents are also a little bits different too.  I used walnuts and almonds as the recipe called for.  Also added bread crumbs and dried apricots too.  Don't under estimate the bread crumbs, they actually make a BIG different in the texture of the filling.  And the dried apricots make the baklava cups lighter than the traditional one.  

A traditional Baklava I made couple months ago.

The one I made the last time was closer to the one I had in Greece.  The one I made for Easter's dinner had a little Italian twist on it since Giada De Laurentiis is an Italian.  The one I made the last time was a little bits sweeter than the one I made for Easter.  They were different, but I loved them both!  Try both receipes and let me know what you think=)

This recipe was adopted from Giada De Laurentiis's recipe, you could also click here for her demo video:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup almonds
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
• 1/4 cup plain bread crumbs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• Pinch of salt
• 1 stick butter, melted, divided
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 12 sheets phyllo dough
• Special equipment: 2 mini-muffin tins

Time:  60 mins

Make: 6 sheets phyllo dough make a dozen, 12 sheets make 2 dozens

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Place the almonds, walnuts, apricots, bread crumbs, sugar, cinnamon, ground cloves, and salt in a food processor. Run the machine until the mixture is very finely chopped. Transfer the mixture to a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the melted butter and the honey and stir to combine
3. On a dry work surface place 1 sheet of phyllo. Using a pastry brush and the remaining melted butter, lightly cover the entire sheet of phyllo with melted butter. Cover the first sheet with a second sheet of phyllo and brush with melted butter. Continue until there is a stack of 6 sheets of phyllo.
4. Cut the stacked phyllo rectangle into 12 equal pieces (Cut lengthwise into 4 pieces and widthwise into 3 pieces.)
5. Gently press each cut piece of phyllo into the mini-muffin tin cups. Press 1 tablespoon of the nut mixture into each of the phyllo cups. Gather the ends of each of the phyllo squares and twist to make a sachet shape. Continue shaping the remaining sachets in the other mini-muffin tin.
6. Bake until the edges of the phyllo are golden, about 20 to 25 minutes.
7. When cool enough to handle, remove the baklava sachets and transfer to a serving plate.