Key Lime Pie Cupcakes

I have an amazing friend.  Well, I have a lot of amazing friends.  And lucky for them, I love to bake, and I love them, and they often get cupcakes for their birthday!  This August, we were celebrating the 30th birthday of one such amazing friend, Cecilee.  She planned a catered Hawaiian Luau complete with pineapple chicken and rice.  (It was delicious.)

When I asked what I could do to help, she asked me to make cupcakes.  When I asked her what kind of cupcakes she wanted, this "foodie" came back to me with two different recipes, "can you use the graham cracker crust part of this recipe, with the frosting and key lime curd from this recipe. . . "

Sure.  No problem.  :)

Luckily I have another friend who loves to help me bake, and I could never have done it without her!  We put a graham cracker crust on the bottom, then made key lime cupcakes.  Key limes are teeny tiny, so trying to "zest" them was a bit crazy, and don't even get me started on how long it took to juice them!  But we made it work, and then I cooked up the key lime curd to put in the fridge.  Meanwhile, Marlo was working on making white chocolate hibiscus flowers for the decorations.  We filled the cupcakes with the key lime curd, topped the cupcakes with key lime cream cheese icing, and then dipped them in more graham cracker crumbs.

They were pretty darn delicious!

Hawaiian Cake Pops

So the wonderful woman who ordered Mario Cake Pops ordered Hawaiian Cake Pops for this weekend!  She is keeping me busy but I am loving it!

 I saw this great blog post and was inspired by her pictures, but I wanted to "up" the ante a bit.  So I made a "stamen" from a licorice stick, made another "stamen" type thing from star sprinkles, and then made the other third sparkle with glitter.  Remember, I make cake pops to give folks a smile before they bite down and enjoy!  My cake is completely from scratch and so is the frosting.  This order was for 65 cake pops!  If I made only 5-6 cake pops for photographing, maybe mine would look a bit more perfect?  I am not sure.  :)

 These colors are so much fun!

 I've been working on different bases for my cake pops.  Last weekend I bought a 5 dollar cardboard "cake pop stand" from AC Moore and it was AWFUL.  I had to have help putting it together and it was terrible.  So I ordered two others from amazon, but I don't really want to let people use them if I am not 100% certain I am going to get them back.  So I bought a large Styrofoam block and covered it with a plastic white tablecloth.  I added some plastic hibiscus to this base to tie it into the Luau theme, and I have asked the customer for the base back, which can be re-purposed for in many different ways.

 I am still not loving the idea of using cookie or fondant cutters to shape cake pops - again, maybe if I'm only making 10.  You can see the indentations where I pushed the pop through the cutter.  It does help to dip the cutter in warm water, but it would also help if I smoothed them out some, too.  This was a 7+ hour creation, though, and I dare say I didn't have much stamina left toward the end.

 I still think they are awfully cute!

 The view from above.

65 Hawaiian Cake Pops!