Professional Birthday Dessert Entries – Michigan’s Birthday Bake Off

As you know, Michigan is known for Strawberries.  Here at Cupcake Zoo we love to use fresh local Michigan ingredients whenever possible, especially our summer fruits!  Because is it often difficult to capture the flavor of fresh fruits in frostings using fruit without adding too much water content we take delicious in season fruit and turn it into fruit preserves and jams.  Some of our favorites are our Michigan Strawberry, Michigan Peach Vanilla Bean, and Blueberry Raspberry!  Each summer in early June we make massive amounts of Strawberry freezer jam with our delicious ripe Michigan strawberries.  As you know, there is no flavor comparable to that of a ripe juicy Michigan strawberry.   We keep these on hand well into fall to make our famous Strawberry buttercreams.  Each year we save just enough to end the year with a bang and make our Strawberries N’ Champagne cupcake for New Years Eve!  The cupcake we are entering here is our Strawberries N’ Cream!

Strawberries N’ Cream – Sweet and simple vanilla bean cupcake baked to perfection with fresh strawberries filled with a sweet bavarian cream and topped with a Michigan Strawberry buttercream!  In June we of course use Michigan strawberries however in the off season we use California strawberries or whatever region permits.  To make this already luscious cupcake even better we use mexican vanilla beans in our baking process as well as use marinated sugars to bake all of our cakes.  In this case, we marinate our sugar with our Mexican vanilla bean pods lending a truly unique vanilla flavor to this vanilla strawberry cupcake.  This cake is moist and simply delicious!

I did a topsy turvy cake, with hand painted scenery of a sunset at the Mackinac Bridge.  A painted petoskey stone board, finished off with evergreens, cherries, and the Michigan cupcake and party hat on top.

We created a 7 Cookie Boutray!  Each cookie is made from our Sugar Dough recipe.  We mix the dough using fresh ingredients in our 60 qt mixer, roll the dough out, cut each cookie into a Michigan Shape and then Hand Decorated each cookie to represent different aspects of the State of Michigan.  You will find the Traverse City cherry industry all the way to the Detroit Auto industry represented in the 7 hand decorated cookies including our fabulous seasons.  Each cookie is then drilled and placed on a stick in a bouquet.  We used blue tissue to represent the Great Lakes.  The base of the cookie bouquet is surrounded by all the cookie crumbs to resemble sand and all our wonderful beaches and decorated with a few fun cookies to represent Michigan summers!

Happy Birthday Michigan!  We are happy to be a locally owned Michigan business.

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Meghan’s Cupcakes

We have entitled our entry:  Big Betty Cherrilicious Birthday Cupcake!

Megan’s Cupcakes would like to wish our great state a very Happy 176th Birthday!  In honor of Michigan’s Birthday we baked a giant cupcake!  We started with a giant vanilla cupcake layered and topped with our Michigan Sweet Cherry Butter Cream.  Then we made our own Marshmallow fondant to create the paper for the bottom of the cupcake and the cherry and flower garnishes.  Last we made a shortbread mitten cookie covered with cherry butter cream and fondant as an art piece to write on.

Ingredients used:

Shortbread mitten cookie
vanilla giant cupcake
cherry butter cream frosting
marshmallow fondant
cake board covered in fondant

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Dream Cakes

Entry is a cream cheese sugar cookie with fondant.

 

 

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Cupcake Tree Bake Shop

Since cupcakes are what I know best, I decided to make a “cake” out of mini cupcakes in the shape of our great state, MICHIGAN, and of course the Great Lakes!  The cupcakes are my vanilla bean cupcakes with sprinkles mixed in the batter for a festive touch!  I tried to capture things that our major Michigan cities are known for and made fondant decorations to symbolize each one…Cars, craft beer, fruits and vegetables, MSU, U of M, CMU, the amazing MI beaches, Petoskey stone, Mackinaw Bridge, wine, mining in the UP, pasties, fishing, maple syrup (and there are so many more that I could have added as well)!  I love our state and am SO happy to call this home!  Happy 176th Birthday, Michigan!

~Mini cupcakes-I used my birthday cake flavor, which are vanilla bean cupcakes with sprinkles in the batter!
~Vanilla Buttercream-colored blue and green.  The blue buttercream was spread on using an offset spatula and the green was piped on.
~All of the decorations on the cake were made by me and were all made with fondant (the bridge does have pretzel sticks on it).  The “age” and “happy birthday” are being held up by lollipop sticks and the letters/numbers were used with fondant cutters.  The cup “cake” is on top of cake boards.  The writing on the maple syrup in the UP was done with edible pens.  Also, the pearls in the beer mug are edible candy pearls.
~A map of MI was used for reference to make sure the shape and layout were as close as possible.

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Second Floor Bakery

At Second Floor Bakery we take pride in being a local Michigan business and when we come across this opportunity, we could not pass it up.  We put our heads together and decided that we had to use our Champagne cake with strawberry filling; it is our most popular flavor.  For the design we thought about what first comes to our minds when we think “Michigan”. The Great Lakes, Mackinaw Bridge, apple blossoms, the robin, cherries and “the Mitten” all topped our list.  We came up with a design that incorporated all of these elements and quickly went to work creating our Michigan themed cake.

Items used in making our dessert:
Champagne cake
Strawberry filling
Buttercream icing
Fondant icing (for covering the cake and for decorations)
Food coloring (for painting decorations)
Dowel rods (as support for the cake)
Tools:
Paper and pencil (to draw ideas)
Spatulas
Tips and Icing bags
Paintbrushes
Turntable
Knife
Exacto knife
Rolling pin
Cookie Cutters

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Kathy Potter of Potter’s Bakery

I decided that a way to celebrate both Michigan’s 176 Birthday and say “Thank you to the Awesome Mitten”, was by making a delicious cookie dough that can be shaped to look like Michigan and the Awesome Mitten.

After the Upper and Lower Michigan shaped cookies were cooled, I mixed a yummy vanilla and cream cheese icing to spread on top. I then piped a replica of the Michigan emblem in the central area of the hand with butter cream, and surrounded the emblem with the kind of fruits that are grown in Michigan. The total height of the cookie is two feet tall.

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