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For a recent event, Jen from Homemade by Holman and I teamed up to create a cupcake bar. For this summer party, we wanted some fun flavored cupcakes and bright colors. So I designed some signs and stands to put on the cupcake bar to identify the flavors and add a playful feel reminiscent of 50’s soda shop to the buffet.
What really takes this cupcake bar to the next level are all the special little touches of detail. Sure we could have just set out the cupcakes on plates and called it a day – but putting in the extra effort to add cute little coordinating signs and adding garnishes to the cupcakes makes it all special.
Each sign was made on a heavy 100# smooth white cover stock. We carried the same design theme from sign to sign to really help tie the entire cupcake bar and all of the flavors together perfectly. Along with the signs, I crafted the silver stands for next to nothing with some cheap pre-made wooden finds and a can of silver paint from Micheal’s. Each stand held one of the circle signs that coordinated with the matching cupcake flavor. All of the cupcakes were displayed nicely on some chargers that we also painted silver to match the rest of the bar.
We had 3 flavors of cupcakes:
Pink Lemonade ( one of my favorite Homemade by Holman recipes)– a lemon cupcake with raspberry buttercream topped with a fresh raspberry. (See the recipe below)
Oreo Cookie Cupcake – a cookies and cream cupcake with half an Oreo on the bottom and more chunks of Oreo mixed in to the batter. Topped with cream cheese icing and garnished with another Oreo cookie.
Piña Colada – a coconut cupcake topped with a pineapple cream cheese icing and coconut flakes. These were garnished with a pineapple and maraschino cherry pick.
Pink Lemonade Cupcakes
Cake from Triple Lemon Cupcakes, Frosting adapted from SouthernLiving, March 2009
Cake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/4 cup plus 2 T lemon juice
1/2 cup buttermilk
Zest of 1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 12 cup muffin tin with liners. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.
Add sugar and lemon zest to mixing bowl or stand mixer and rub zest into sugar with your fingertips until well distributed and fragrant. Add the butter and cream cheese to the sugar and beat until light and creamy, 2 – 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating about 1 minute after each egg. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture, beating on low speed until just incorporated. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk, once incorporated, add the next 1/3 of the flour mix, followed by remaining buttermilk, and remaining flour, beating each addition until just incorporated. Add lemon juice, beating until just incorporated on low speed.
Transfer batter to muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 of the way full. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center cupcake comes out clean. Cool about 5 minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Frosting:
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ cup fresh raspberries
½ tsp lemon extract
1 pound powdered sugar
Cream butter in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add in raspberries and lemon extract and beat until most of the chunks are gone. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, beating on low speed until incorporated. Increase speed to medium and whip for about thirty seconds. Transfer to a piping bag and decorate as desired. Top with fresh raspberries if desired.
For more of Jen’s recipes check out her yummy blog
Okay time for a long awaited Invitations to Dessert post. I know we said it would be a monthly feature, but as you know I got married Memorial Day weekend and that set me back a little on time. But not to worry, Jen from Homemade by Holman and I will be making this a monthly post eventually, just bear with us.So I’m really excited about this post because it actually features one of the many personal touches from my personal wedding and because a few months back I actually posted a little teaser as to what my dessert bar would look like (when I designed all of the tags) so I wanted to show you the final product, how it went together with the rest of the wedding and fill you in on some of the recipes. So here we go…
(picture on right by Jimmages Photography)I decided to do a cookbook featuring classic family dessert recipes in conjunction with my dessert bar as my wedding favor to all of my guests. I also got small white boxes from Uline, added a some cute polka dot tissue paper and tied a coordinating ribbon around each and every one. I also put a “thank you” tag on each one that tied in to the tags that I used on my invitation suite. The paper products really tied the look of the whole wedding together! The cookbook was a 3×4 twelve page booklet that I designed and titled Love is Sweet. Inside the front cover, I wrote a thank you to the guests and prompted guests to fill up their box at the dessert bar. The empty boxes were placed at each place setting. (picture by Amy Barry Photography)
The dessert bar featured Tommy and I’s favorite family recipes from our moms, grandmas and aunts. I designed coordinating labels to go along with clever titles for each dessert. Using several different cookie jars and platters added a nice aesthetic interest to the dessert bar and the cute signs tied everything together. The cookie jars were from Target, and the Anchor 3-tier cupcake stand, and silver chargers were odds and ends that we had and that I painted silver to coordinate. The dessert bar included:
(pictures by Amy Barry Photography)
While not all of these wonderful people are still here today, we all still remember the recipes. These were desserts that showed up at major family events or were always there when we showed up at grandma’s house. My sister (Jen with Homemade by Holman) and mom made several of the recipes including the Snickerdoodles, the oatmeal raisin cookies and the German Chocolate Cupcake Bites. (picture on right by Jimmages Photography)
Jen posted all of these recipes before but wanted to tell you about the slight changes that were made to the German Chocolate Cupcake Bites to fit the dessert bar specifically. The same recipe was used but when she made the frosting, she left out the chopped pecans. Instead she frosted the cupcakes and then used pecan halves to top each one. This made for a much more polished look for the cupcakes, really making the presentation much better since the custard frosting can’t be piped like a traditional buttercream. She also baked the cupcakes in plain white liners and then dropped them into decorative blue gingham liners to match the wedding colors, so the chocolate cake wouldn’t show through too much and you wouldn’t notice the pattern.