Look what the wonderful gals over at Prudent Baby are giving away this week! These Cotton Candy Stripe paper baking cups from the Bake it Pretty shop will make sure you are enjoying a Summer of Fanciful Treats!
Enter to win this giveaway by leaving a comment on any post at Prudent Baby over the next week. Be hilarious, be ridiculous, be helpful, or just BE. They’ll pick our favorite comment next Friday and mail these cuties off.
One of our favorite sponsors, Tweedle Dee Designs, is giving away a $10 gift card to the Bake It Pretty shop! Plus a lovely cookbook all about cupcakes! In this giveaway, one lucky winner will receive a copy of Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski plus a $10 Bake It Pretty gift certificate!
Hurry, the giveaway is only open until this Saturday, August 21! Go to Tweedle Dee Designs to enter the giveaway! Good luck!
A big congratulations to April B. for winning the Dressing on the Side giveaway! The “Cupcakes Make Everything Better” tee shirt is ALL YOURS! You’ll receive an email very soon with info about your prize. Thanks once again to our sponsor Dressing on the Side for this great giveaway!
Jessica at The B Keeps Us Honest is hosting a giveaway for a $15 gift card to the Bake It Pretty shop!
She lives in North Carolina and is hosting an “I Heart NC” blog event to share all of the wonderful things North Carolina has to offer. Check out the posts to learn about some of her favorite businesses, blogs, and artists in NC!
There are lots of ways to get multiple entries into the giveaway, so go check it out!
I was absolutely thrilled to get an email recently from the folks at Naturally Nora (think all-natural Betty Crocker). Naturally Nora was started by Nora Schultz, a mom and former food company executive who saw the need for better for you baking. She began experimenting in her home kitchen and soon launched a full line of cake, frosting and brownie mixes all made with no artificial ingredients of any kind. She even has the only all-natural confetti cake mix on the market.
Naturally Nora has generously offered to host a *huge* giveaway here on the blog (you guys are gonna be excited) – stay tuned for that. In the meantime, they shipped me a huge box of goodies to review. In this post, I’ll be reviewing the Cheerful Chocolate cake mix as well as the Extraordinary Vanilla and Cheerful Chocolate frosting mixes.
I had a baby shower to go to Saturday, and I’d promised to make cupcakes, so their shipment of goodies couldn’t have come at a better time! The hand-drawn instructions on the back of the boxes are super cute. It’s just as easy as any cake mix you’ve ever made (add milk, oil, and eggs, stir and bake).
You could make the cake mixes dairy-free (using soy or almond milk would work fine), and maybe even vegan if you used soy yogurt or an egg replacer powder, but I didn’t try it that way (if you do, report back and let us know).
Since I need all the help I can get to not make a huge mess anytime I bake, I like to use an ice cream scoop to portion out the cupcake batter. It helps cut down on the amount of drips, and lets me get the cupcakes more evenly distributed.
As you can see, they are all perfectly the same. Ha ha. I’m very Martha in that way. The baking time suggested on the package worked out quite well. I was in the 20 minute range for cupcakes.
I whipped up the vanilla frosting mix according to the instructions. The box said it could frost 24 cupcakes, but as I tend to overdo it on frosting (hey, there are worse things you could say about a person), I wasn’t sure if I’d make it. The box suggested that if the frosting seems a little thin, put it into the fridge to cool, which I did. Even though I knew this frosting wouldn’t be ideal for piping onto the cupcakes (you have to do evil things with ingredients to get those gravity-defying peaks of frosting), I put it into my piping bag anyway with my round giant pastry tip. It swirled nicely, but as you can see, didn’t stand up very tall. I got 13 cupcakes out of one box of vanilla frosting with this method.
I had much better luck with the chocolate frosting, consistency-wise. I didn’t need to put it in the fridge at all. I also liked the taste better, personally. It seemed a little closer to the buttercream taste I’m used to. I decorated the cupcakes with a little hot pink sanding sugar and some rainbow nonpareils. Easy!
I loaded everything up into my trusty cupcake courier and headed out to the party. The vanilla frosting melted a bit in the car but the chocolate held up totally fine. I let the ladies at the baby shower know that I was reviewing the baking mixes and to be brutally honest about the taste. Well, I took 23 cupcakes to the party (hey! I had to taste one!), there were 11 people there, and I came home with zero cupcakes. Haha! I’d say they were a hit.
Final verdict: the cake was moist and just what I’d hope for in a cupcake. Plus, it doesn’t have any funky ingredients. You can feel good about eating it and serving it. The chocolate frosting was delicious and a good consistency. Thumbs up. The vanilla frosting tasted good, but was a little melty, and I think would do better on a cake than a cupcake just for that reason. I can understand the appeal for a frosting mix, especially if you’re baking with kids. It’s really convenient. But for me, I’d probably just make frosting from scratch. It’s not that much more complicated, and it’s better for decorating when you want to make something fancy-looking.
The ladies at the party were all enthusiastic about the mixes, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Nora gets some orders. Lots of them have kids and are food-conscious (high fructose corn syrup-free, dairy-free, etc). I bet if Nora ever comes out with a gluten-free mix, she’ll strike it rich. I’d love to see one myself. Hint hint!
And now an adorable kiddo pic from the shower, just cuz… awwwww.
To find a store that carries Naturally Nora mixes, visit their website. Stay tuned for a big giveaway from Naturally Nora, as well as an interview with the lady herself!
Food Network Challenge judge Kerry Vincent and Bake It Pretty sponsor Lyndsay Zoratti of Sweet Cuppin Cakes Bakery have united to bring you a fantastic opportunity to show off your best fondant bear! Kerry will judge the bears herself and name the winning Kerry Bear on October 3, 2010 at the Oklahoma Sugar Art Show! There will also be a fantastic prize for the winners (stay tuned to find out what that is).
Check out the video above from Michelle of Inspired by Michelle Cakes for a tutorial on creating a fondant bear. This looks so interesting and fun!
Deadline for entries is September 15, 2010. Go to If You Can Fimo, Then You Can Fondant for full details on how to enter. The contest is open to all, no sugar art experience necessary. Good luck!
Well it’s another fun giveaway from our friends Dressing on the Side (DOTS), one of our favorite little etsy shops! DOTS creates the cutest pen & ink sketches and then screenprints them onto t-shirts. They create limited numbers of each design. Best of all, most of the shirts are sweet-treat-themed! DOTS have generously offered a t-shirt (any t-shirt from the shop) to one lucky Bake It Pretty reader!
Also, Bake It Pretty readers can get free shipping to the DOTS shop – just use the discount code “bakeitpretty” when you check out on etsy. DOTS will bounce the shipping cost back to you via Paypal (etsy doesn’t have a place for discount codes – so they’ll get it to you that way)!
TO ENTER: Head over to Dressing on the Side and take a look around. Come back here and post a comment letting us know which shirt you’ll pick if you win. Comments will close at 11pm eastern time on Thursday, August 12th. I will choose one random winner and post here on Friday the 13th. *This giveaway is open to worldwide shipping destinations.* Thank you, and good luck!
We love Shark Week! Even though it’s too late to get these toppers in time to celebrate, I think these little sharks are still perfect for late-summer cupcake decorating. There are lots of sweet new goods in our New Arrivals section, and more on the way – be sure to check it out! (Shark topper modeled on top of a humongous, coconut cupcake from The Sister’s McMullen in Downtown Asheville.)
A big congratulations to Glory, Shelley, and Kristi for winning the Chickabug giveaway! All three of you will receive an email very soon with info about your prizes. Thanks once again to our sponsor Chickabug for this great giveaway!
A huuuuuuuge and hearty congratulations to Jacinda at Prudent Baby. She’s having a boy! And we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with these totes adorbs mustache pops. She has a great tutorial over at the Prudent Baby blog and it’s all part of the Prudent Baby Summer of Fanciful Treats, sponsored by us – Bake It Pretty!
Want to make some mustache pops of your own? We’ve got lolly molds, candy melts, and lolly sticks. Stock up!
