In the meantime...

In the meantime, while I am waiting to begin embarking on my journey of making some swiss buttercream and making some really nice core of the cake part of the cupcakes, I am going headed down another road.  Don't worry, this road is headed in the right direction...the direction that we're picking up on in the first place from the last time cupcakes took over my eyes and mind ;-)

I am going to attempt to make Blue Velvet, Blackberry Curd, Blackberry Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes.  Where did I get that from?  A friend of mine, made these and had them at a bake sale and they were absolutely delicious & I have to give a try at making them. 

So here goes, last night I went online to try and find what even would look like a similitude of what that recipe might be, and I found this.  These cupcakes were featured on Food Network.  They were done by Cakeology and were one of the cupcakes that won on Cupcake Wars (I "think"... don't quote me on that).  But I know that they were on there.

Long story short, this tells me two things.  Number One: This is a good recipe to try!  Number Two: Cupcake Wars is a good place to start pulling cupcake recipes.  That's what I need and that's the direction I am going in.

So now the plan is two-prong: (1) Make swiss buttercream, and (2)  practice making some really good cupcakes. You ready?

This one's new to me (The Sugar Baby Cookbook)

Sugar Baby: Confections, Candies, Cakes & Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Sugar

This one's new to me!  I just ran across it when I was searching for something (else) on one of

my favorite sites, and what do you know...there's another yummy cookbook out there.

Gotta check it out!

I used my Stand-Mixer for the first time (today)!

Okay so, I have finally moved my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer from this spot....

To this one!

I have had it now for a few months (since Christmas actually) and it's time

to dust this baby off, and get a move on!

"Well, let's see...how does this bowl go on?"

Got it!  Okay, since I was already starting to make this cake today, (by habit) in my usual blue bowl (and by hand I might add) I decided, "hey, why not use the stand mixer?" 

So I poured everything into my mixer's bowl.

...brought it on over to my mixer..."up...that's not going to fit.."

Okay, so then I took off the attachment and put the bowl underneath.

Then I added the attachment...

Hit the start button :-)

Oh, wait, no start button yet.  First, I had to raise the bowl. 

I raised the bowl, then I hit the start button (it's actually a lever I pulled on the other side.  I'll show that to you later).

See there it is.  It guages from low to hi and (sorry it's not clear)

ranges from Speed 1 to 10.

And it's a Kitchen Aid.

And it's a mixin'...

See my video?  I'm really excited :-)

And we mixed.  When I was done I lowered the level of the bowl

with this handle (the same one that I used to bring it up).

Then I unplugged it.  (I don't know if you have to do this step, but I didn't want to take any chances with having to remove the mixing attachment, next).

Then I removed the mixing attachment.

Shook it off...

Took my bowl out.

And poured it into the pan.  How fun!  (My pan was greased off course :-)

  This was really fun taking it from the old school way that I have been doing it for so long to finally coming into the modern Era with my stand-mixer.

Yippee!