new site!

So excited to announce biteconfections' revamped website!  Hopefully, this site will provide you with all the information you need to satisfy your sweet tooth :)

Thanks for stopping by and as always, live a life full of love, happiness, and sugary sweets!

xoxo, Vanne 

happy tree stump cupcakes

  You must know by now how much I LOVE to decorate with cupcakes.  It all happened in a flash!  One day I simply took the cupcake wrapper off and it's never been the same.  These cheeseburger cupcakes were the very first thing I ever created as non-cupcake-cupcake lol and these baby cakes were the first cupcake that I iced as a mini cake.  Now, I can't even look at a cupcake without taking the wrapper of and thinking what I can do with it.  First world problems ha!

 I just love what I do :) I love being covered in icing and food coloring.  My dog LOVES to sniff and lick all over me when I get home from work.  Even she loves what I do!  

These stump-a-lumps are sooo easy to make!  I know I say that with a lot of things, but it's true.  I don't like super fussy things that are overly complicated BUT I do like things to look like great thought and effort were put into them.

Directions in 3..2..1..

1. Peel cupcake liners off cupcakes.
2. Dab a bit of icing on your board(s) to keep the cupcake in place.
3. Using a smallish round tip, ice the top (bottom) of your cupcake with your top-of-the-stump color.
4. Using a small star tip and a pastry bag, start icing your cupcake from bottom to top coming just a bit over the top of the cupcake with either chocolate icing (I used) or your tree stump color of choice.  Keep going bottom to top until you've connected your 'bark."
5. Next, I added just a bit of flora and fauna to give a sweet whimsical feel.  I used a grass tip and leaf tip.

*You can add whatever decorations you like.  I even tried to add flower sprinkles but if you do this, add them right after you've iced your cupcake.  If you don't, your icing is likely to 'crust' and the sprinkles won't adhere to the cupcake.  

  

I made a few flower and toadstool cupcakes to tie the whole thing together.  I told you they were easy!

Happy decorating!

xoxo-Vanne

a (lovely) wedding affair

Oh, our wedding...(sigh.)  I've been trying for 3 days to write this post lol.  I think my problem was that I wanted to capture everything into words, but I don't think I can.  That's probably what makes our wedding so special and wonderful, the inability to recreate it, not even onto paper.  Maybe it's too new at the moment.

 There are some things in life that are just inexplicable and I think that our special day was one of them.  I can't even begin to tell you what a magical and amazing day this was.  I look at pictures everyday (maybe 3 or more, I know I'm obsessed.)  I wish I could go back in time to relive the whole thing!  Ok, well maybe not the stressful parts, OK, definitely NOT the stressful parts lol, but then it wouldn't be called a wedding now would it? 

My husband and I are simple people.  We don't like fussy or overly complicated things.

 We value the less is more approach and I think our wedding couldn't have reflected us any better!  

I knew as soon as we got engaged I wanted to make our cake.  People already thought I was crazy and I'm sure this didn't help ha!  At first, I thought I wanted a huge 5-6 tier cake, well because I'm a cake decorator and I work with brides on a daily basis and that's what all brides want right?  A big cake?  Wrong.

 I didn't realize it at the time, but that's not what I wanted, not at all.    

What we did want was something different, not overly complicated, simple, interesting, and most of all beautiful.  That's doesn't necessarily translate into ginormous cake.

I came across the coolest cake online.  It was very deconstructed compared to 'normal' wedding cakes. The sides weren't iced and you could see the layers.  It was sweet. It was whimsical. It was perfect.  What was even MORE perfect was my idea to make each guest their own mini cake that resembled the wedding cake!  EVERYONE knew I was crazy at this point lol.  So the journey began...

My husband requested chocolate cake and I requested something with whipped cream and our black forest wedding cake was born.  To be honest, I was quite nervous about incorporating whipped cream into a wedding cake, especially with exposed tiers.  I'd never seen one done before and I even thought I was crazy to test it out on our own cake.  But, I did it anyway...success!  

What did I do  you ask?  Well,  I added a bit of clear gel to my whipped cream.  

What's clear gel?  It's a modified corn starch normally used to 'thicken' pie filling, sauces, and stabilize my whipped cream ;)  It doesn't have any flavor so it didn't disrupt the taste of the whipped cream.  You can also use gelatin, I just found the clear gel easier to work with since there was no blooming necessary and the powder is finer which made it easier to dissolve in my cream.

I wish I had a picture of my then fiance with an apron on, layering mini cakes, and piping whipped cream rosettes...priceless!  I LOVE our wedding cake, so much!  I just think it's adorable, perhaps I'm bias, but I'm OK with that :)

  In the end we made 50 mini cakes, one two tiered wedding cake, and memories that will be cherished forever.

Hope you enjoy our cake as much as we did :)

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

   

   

I had to throw in a picture of Ms. Gweny boo boo

Thanks for stopping by!

A Huge thanks to The Swoop House for allowing us to use their kitchen to build our cakes and special thanks to Nouveau Photography for the amazing images and to Get Savvy Events for the awesome table decor and set up!

 

Apple doesn't fall far...

I'm sure you've seen these apple cupcakes all over the Internet, super cute right?!  I thought I would give it my own Vanne spin :)  What a great birthday theme or Teacher appreciation day gift!  I imagine all the party themed decor...endless!  Would LOVE to do an apple orchard shoot! 

These guys were so EASY to make!  The trickiest part was covering the apples evenly where the white wasn't showing through.  I used my little spatula to dig out a 'bite mark' and added two black buttercream seeds.    Thanks for stopping by  xoxo vanne