40th Wedding Anniversary Part 1: Dark Chocolate Coconut Marshmallow Cupcakes

My in-laws recently celebrated their 40th (!) wedding anniversary and my dear father-in-law, one of my favorite people in the world, asked me to make some "coconut cupcakes".

I've made Almond Joy-inspired cupcakes in the past, and while delicious, I wanted the focus to be on his two favorite flavors -- dark chocolate and, of course, coconut. The result was messy deliciousness.

The 40th anniversary is the ruby anniversary, so I used some more of the red fondant hearts I made for the Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie-filled cupcakes my mother-in-law asked me to make. I like the way the red hearts pop on the white coconut marshmallow frosting and coordinate with the teal blue cake liners I chose.

The cupcakes were actually a little frustrating to make -- the frosting, while delicious, was just too runny and ended up spilling over the sides of the cupcakes. As a result, I've altered the recipe and, on my second try, it worked much better.

All in all, a very moist, dense dark chocolate cake that tasted eerily similar to a Snoball.

You can find the recipe here: DARK CHOCOLATE & COCONUT MARSHMALLOW CUPCAKES.

First Foray with Fondant

We celebrated my big brother's birthday this weekend, and, in true I Bake fashion, that meant making some of my favorite sugar cookies. Every time I make cookies, I look for new ways to decorate and this time, I went for gridlines and, for the first time ever, venture into the land of fondant.

We started by heading to the craft store and piling up on pre-made fondant, tools, and, Ingrid's favorite, disco dust.

For a first-timer, I may have gone a little overboard on fondant tools

Once we got home, we started baking, using our favorite sugar cookie recipe. Let me just tell you -- baking with an enthusiastic 4-year-old is incredibly fun, but also remarkably slow. What is normally a 20 minute process probably took double that, but hey, she had fun!

My (adorable!) assistant. Notice the apron...

While the cookies were baking, I set Ingrid up with the "edible Play-doh". She has a hard time rolling dough, so having an Ingrid-sized rolling pin and small amounts of fondant made her night.

We spent hours experimenting with shapes, colors, and stamps; we loved how easy it was to work with fondant. It's so forgiving -- if you don't like the way a piece turns out, you just re-roll it and try again, which is important to a Type-A personality like myself. The flower shapers were especially fun, but you definitely need more than one set if you want to do more than a few at a time. I really should have taken more pictures of the fondant process, but I was so engrossed that it slipped my mind. Next time!

Here are a few of the final products:

German Chocolate "World Cup" Cupcakes

My family are huge soccer fans; the World Cup is a very big deal in my home. I just had to make some German Chocolate cupcakes in honor of my favorite European team (and ancestral heritage). I think they were good luck charms, because Germany won!

Rooting for Germany in the 2014 World Cup final

My husband made the German flag toppers while I baked. Thank goodness our daughter has lots of construction paper laying around! They were the perfect touch -- no one could mistake which team we were rooting for that day.

I'm a little obsessed with filling cupcakes. My daughter likes it, too, because she usually gets to eat (most of) the cored-out cake.

The filling. I could have skipped the cake and just eaten this with a spoon.

You can find the recipe here: GERMAN CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES