Baking with Mrs. Hershman.

What do Aim and J think is more fun than baking together? Baking with a wonderful friend who loves baked goods as much as we do. Our friend Rachael invited us to her home to bake cupcakes for her roommate's bridal shower.

We made Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes while Rachael made her infamous red velvet recipe.

Note Rachael's super adorable aprons she lent to us...

Rachael's dog Zoey was a huge component to our baking success.

Rachael's Red Velvets (died purple to fit her roomies wedding colors). Notice how perfect they look. Before scooping the batter into the liners, she puts the batter in a ziploc and cuts a hole in the corner, making for easy batter distribution. A fantastic tip!!!

Our final product: Strawberry Shortcake cups.

Pretty pretty pretty.

Thanks again Rachael for inviting us to bake with you! So so fun.

Until next time...

Love and Cupcakes.

We've got ourselves a Situation.

This past week we celebrated the blessed birth of our dear friend Peter Raphael Fredericks. To show our appreciation and love, we decided to make cupcakes of his choice that reflected his character (Italian, flashy, red velvet- essentially guido cupcakes)

Peter loves red velvet, but we decided to embrace the Italian colors. So we split our batter and colored half of it green and half of it red.

The end result: red and green velvet cake. Cream cheese frosting. Leopard print liners. Italian flags. And edible gold glitter. (purchased from A&J's of course)

Guidofied

The best part about distributing cupcakes at a birthday party: Seeing the love of cuppies in our friends eyes. Check it out for yourself!

Stay tuned next week for more cupcake fun as we collaborate with our creative and talented friend Rachael Lunghi.

Cupcakes, Love and Guido's,

Aim and J

Mocha Cheesecake Cupcakes

These bad boys are not for the faint of heart (or weak stomached). We decided to use a brownie crust, partially because we couldn't find the right type of chocolate wafer cookies to use for a cookie crust. We considered this a blessing in disguise because the gooey brownie bottom really complemented the mocha flavored cheesecake.

In order to achieve the mocha flavor, we used a cheesecake base and added melted bittersweet chocolate chips and a little bit of strong brewed coffee. We used Pikes Place, our favorite Starbucks flavor.

(photo via tumblr)

Also this week we discovered the wonders of silicon baking cups. After being a bit apprehensive, we have learned these are the way to go. They don't require cooking spray and the cupcakes are easily removed without falling apart.

You can tell a cheesecake is done when the tops rises and cracks, but they still jiggle a bit. It sounds tricky, but you definitely can tell when they are finished.

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Gooeylicious.

We soon faced the problem of what to top these with. After contemplating our always reliable cream cheese frosting, we determined that would have been a cream cheese overload. These cupcakes are heavy enough, they needed to be paired with something light.

Bet you didn't know they sold Cool Whip in a can now! Yeah, we cheated. We didn't make our own homemade topping this time, but Cool Whip is unbeatable. Don't judge.

Caution: These must be refrigerated. One of our friends who shall not be named learned this lesson the hard way when they nearly melted away. Plus, they set better when refrigerated.

Alisha demonstrates how a classy girl sports a cupcake.

We brought some to our friends Victoria and Jessica hard at work on duty.

Here a Chick, Pt. 2.

How to create the cutest spring chicks possible in Six Easy Steps:

1) Batter (Coconut Almond)

2) Buttercream Frosting (challenging, but if you want to save your forearm 10 minutes of holding a handheld mixer, we suggest one of these)

3) Invert + Frost your cuppies (we used a big cupcake pan)

4) Golden Toasted Coconut

5) Raw Almonds + Licorice Strands + Chocolate Chips

6) Hatched!

No but seriously, these tasted as cute as they looked. Here's the recipe for the coconut almond cake batter. We encourage you to try it. Hope you had the happiest Easter and a marvelous Spring Break!

Love Love Love,

Aime & J