Just some randoms...

Watermelon cupcake with watermelon buttercream

Fresh blueberry and buttermilk

Chocolate with salted caramel buttercream and salted caramel decoration

Carrot cake with raisins, pecans and pineapple, cream cheese frosting

Chocolate chip

Chocolate cupcake with coconut rum buttercream

Chocolate mint

Chocolate cupcake, pastry cream and peanut butter filling, chocolate buttercream with peanut butter drizzle

German's chocolate cupcake, Oreo mousse filling, vanilla buttercream

French vanilla cupcake with french vanilla buttercream

Hi-Hat Cupcake! Chocolate cupcake, marshmallow frosting dipped in chocolate sauce

Hi-Hat anatomy 

Hot Fudge Sundae Cupcake close-up

Marble cupcake with chocolate buttercream modeling chocolate decoration

Marble cupcake with vanilla buttercream, white modeling chocolate decorations

Margarita cupcake with tequila lime buttercream

Orange dreamsicle with candied orange peel

Pina colada cupcake close-up

Rainbow colored vanilla cupcake with (black) chocolate frosting

Rasperry Lemon Drop cupcake, raspberry lemon frosting (vodka all the way through this recipe!), garnished with fresh raspberry and candied lemon slice

Red Velvet close-up

A dozen here, a dozen there...

Here are just some random pictures of some cupcakes I've made:

Star Wars Plastic Toppers - sorry about the blurry picture. Cupcakes are chocolate or vanilla with chocolate and/or vanilla buttercream in coordinating SW colors. :)

Happy 4th of July!

Vanilla cupcakes, vanilla buttercream, fondant decorations.

Carnival!

Cotton candy cupcakes with cotton candy buttercream.

These were topped with tufts of cotton candy before serving.

Devil's Food with random colored buttercreams and fondant decorations. See the little devil up front?

Hot Fudge Sundaes! Just kidding! Cupcakes!

Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream topped with chocolate ganache "syrup", rainbow jimmies and maraschino cherries.

Chocolate or vanilla cupcake with chocolate or vanilla buttercream, rolled in Oreo crumbles with fondant lizards. 

Vanilla cupcakes, vanilla buttercream, hand-decorated fondant discs.

If you like pina coladas...heehee.

Coconut cake, pineapple filling, coconut rum buttercream, topped with toasted coconut, maraschino cherries, fresh pineapple wedges, straws and paper umbrellas. You know, for ambiance. B-)

Made at a friend's request in regard to a boss's favorite Seinfeld episode.

Chocolate cupcake, chocolate fudge frosting, chocolate fondant "pretzels" with sugar "salt".

These were accompanied by a cake of the same flavor and decorations with the quote, "These pretzels are making me thirsty!"

Made at the request of a co-worker for her and her husband's anniversary. Red velvet with cream cheese frosting, topped with red velvet cake crumbles. The center toppers are fondant and represent the anniversary (heart and wedding rings), a running shoe, bike tire and goggles, for the husbands love of triathlons.

These were for me, hence the message.

Chocolate cupcake, salted caramel buttercream, letters made from candy melts and a plastic letter mold. Happy Birthday to me, indeed!

Variety is the Spice of Life!

These are just a variety of varieties! Plus some handmade fondant toppers I made as a birthday gift for a friend. They were "A few of her favorite things".

From left: Chocolate and vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and garnishes of sugar pearls, chocolate jimmies and blue rock candy; Chocolate and vanilla cake with Oreo buttercream and Oreo cookies; Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting, garnished with red jimmies, red sanding sugar and red sprinkles; Chocolate and vanilla cake with Chocolate buttercream, garnishes of yellow sanding sugar, pink sanding sugar and chocolate jimmies.

Chocolate Mud Cake, French Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream with sugar pearls or Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream with chocolate jimmies.

From left: 3 Red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting - toppers are red food coloring "vampire bite", cell phone, wine bottle; 6 French Vanilla cake, French Vanilla Buttercream - toppers are zombie and peashooter (Plants vs Zombies), Buc-ee's 52oz Jug, Randy Marsh (South Park), yellow bird and green pig (Angry Birds); 3 Chocolate Mint cake, Mint Swiss Meringue Buttercream - topped with Andes mint chips, a camera, roll of 35mm film and a nook.

The same assortment as above, but garnished with red velvet pieces and random sugar decorations.

Learned me how to make a rose!

Can you tell? Chocolate cupcake with chocolate hazelnut buttercream. Mmmm.

Fancy!

White cupcake, strawberry cream filling, vanilla buttercream with fresh strawberries and (some of them with) red sanding sugar.

Pretty Colors! Better Taste!

French Vanilla Cupcake (colored with food coloring to make the pretty colors) and Strawberry Laffy Taffy Buttercream. Yes, I said Laffy Taffy!

Cinco de Mayo Cupcakes!

I am (not) your father...

This cake was made for my boyfriend's other nephew. 8 year-olds are definitely less fickle. This particular 8 year-old is a great kid. A little smarty...in a good way.  His request was marble cake with chocolate frosting. I was given creative license to do whatever.

I had a few options to choose from and went with Star Wars.  Those of you who know me well enough know that I consider Star Wars boring and dumb and essentially what I like to call, "movie diarrhea". But it wasn't my cake so I wanted to make sure I put some great effort into it.

I went online and found a "Star Wars" font and made a stencil for the HB message.  I used my trusty Exacto knife again and cut the letters out of gum paste. They could have been smoother, but my Exacto blades were nearing the end of their sharpness and I had yet to purchase new blades.

Not too shabby and, to fans, obvious SW lettering.

I decided I wanted to go with arguably the most recognizable character from SW...Darth Vader. I looked to my trusty friend Google to find a good picture to make a stencil from, then used my parents' copier to make it the size I wanted.  I won't even get into the long, sordid story of all the tracing and drawing I went through to get a good stencil on firmer paper (i.e. an open file folder) but it took a while.  I packed up all of my supplies and headed over to the boyfriends' to finish up.

I baked the cakes and carved what was to be the 2nd layer using the stencil I made:

Not bad.  Then I colored my chocolate frosting black, frosted the bottom layer, added and frosted the carved layer and placed the lettering on there:

Getting somewhere.  The letters BARELY fit so I had to do something that you might not be familiar with. It's a technical baking term called "smooshing" :D. I had to smoosh the letters, and if you notice from the letters up in the 1st picture, I had to cut the little tail from the "B" so "BIRTHDAY" would fit.

Then I got to work rolling and cutting out the fondant shapes (stars and helmet).

All that white stuff is powdered sugar. I promise.

So the hard part. Making the helmet look like Darth Vader. I had some silver luster dust and some black sparkle frosting in a tube (Wilton, I think), so I mixed those together for a silvery frosting and went to painting.  There was trial and error in trying to figure out how to get the image on there because my stencil was really only meant for the outside shape, so I had to wing it for the most part and I have NO art skills.  I ended up laying the stencil on the fondant, lightly poking holes on the lines through the paper and into the fondant to give me a rough outline of the lines and then just referencing the stencil's detail, applying it to the fondant with a food paintbrush. It took hours, but again, live and learn.

This was the final product, after applying the fondant to the cutout later and sprinkling some gold edible stars on the bottom layer.

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I hate to toot my own horn, but...toot toot.