piping dreams

I think I’ve told you before about my family’s newfound Netflix craze. My parents had never had cable before, so getting Netflix was kind of a big deal.

You get no…You get NO…YOU GET NO COMM-ER-CIALS. Name that movie musical.

There were entire seasons of all these old cable shows uploaded on Netflix. People had been raving for years about shows like Stargate SG-1 and Deadliest Catch while we lived on in blissful ignorance, content with the standard network television offerings. I don’t regret this; it was probably good that we weren’t exposed to more media. And I particularly do not regret never seeing Spongebob Squarepants (that was such a great sentence). Sew annoying. I know I just probably lost about 50 percent of my subscribers, but I have to be honest about Spongebob.

Anyway, Cake Boss is the first show my family ever got addicted to on Netflix. Everyone would sit for a couple hours (that’s four episodes!) every day until we finished every season. The lobster pastries! The fondant! The Italian family drama! It is irresistible.

Weirdly, I don’t think we watched it because we’re so into baking or anything. It’s more the idea that the massive, realistic cakes the bakery makes are totally edible. It’s like every kid’s ultimate dream come true: that Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory would be a real place. Who didn’t want to eat those edible daffodil teacups while singing strangely atonal phrases about abstract ideas?

These cupcakes turned out to be Valastro-esque kind of by accident. They started out looking like this:

Cute, yeah? I am really happy about the little golden balls I bought to put on the top which may or may not be illegal in some states, but not Europe! so I’m not going to worry. But I felt the needed something more…

So I dyed some extra frosting and added leetle decorations.

In their little aqua holder, I thought they looked particularly like little sea creatures, hence sea anemone cupcakes. Edible anemones!

And I was pretty happy with them. It felt like the most creative thing I’d done in forever.

Try using a combination of piping tips to decorate your next cupcakes. It’s easy, and the presentation is impressive.

“Nil deperandum, dear lady. Across the desert lies the promised land. Goodbye, Mrs. Gloop. Adieu! Auf wiedersehen. Gesundheit. Farewell,”

L

P.S. I used a one-bowl chocolate cake recipe, and the really good piping frosting I found. Bonus, I filled these babies with some leftover peanut butter cream cheese frosting. Divine.