Karen TackReseñas

Cupcakes

Very clever designs!

I really enjoyed reading through this. There are many cute designs and step by step instructions. I can’t wait to make them!

3/26/22

3/26/22

Very clever designs!

I really enjoyed reading through this. There are many cute designs and step by step instructions. I can’t wait to make them!

Cupcakes...Simple designs for every occasion.

The silly cover sucked me in while I was browsing books at my kids' Scholastic book fair. Ten bucks later and I was making plans to try every recipe. (Two years later and I've only actually made one.) This is a fun book filled with creative cake ideas. I'd say they range from relatively easy to holy-crap complicated. I made the rainbow cake for my daughter's birthday a few years ago, mainly because it looked like the easiest option and it gave me a good excuse to buy bulk Skittles.

Gotta love the red Skittles.

Anyhoo, if you aren't creative enough to design your own cakes but you still want to impress all the Stepford moms in your kids's playgroup this book has relatively easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions that will make you look like you own your own bakery.

cupcake cooking

Really cute adorable cupcakes and designs. Easier than it looks, really.

This is the first time I have ever reviewed a cook book. I should probably do more because it is either you like it or you don't. So...I liked this one. It has beautiful pictures through out the book that makes you want to eat cupcakes and jump right into cooking.


The recipes are super easy to follow and they are all so cute. You wouldn't believe how easy it is to make some of these beautiful cupcakes (no I am not posting pics of mine ;). The book contains how-tos on actual cupcake batter, how to make great batter from box cupcake mixes and quick easy ways to make your cupcakes beautiful and unique. I guarantee anyone can make great cupcakes from this book.

By far, one of the easiest to follow, well written cookbooks - with lots of cute ideas for making special "themed" cupcakes.

Once again, I was seduced by an adorable cover. I should remember to look inside recipe books while I'm still at the library. I don't care how adorable a cake looks, if it is from a recipe whose ingredients include boxed cake mix and a can of supermarket frosting, I'm not feeding it to my friends.

I bought this hoping to find some cute Halloween cupcakes to make. I usually like to make some sort of cake for the younger relatives as they make the rounds on Halloween and it was getting harder to find ideas. I feel like I hit the jackpot! There are a lot of cute Halloween cupcakes, but there are plenty of ideas for all kind of occasions too. By the time I get through experimenting, the family may be tired of cupcakes! I will say that they give instructions for cutting the corners of a Ziploc baggy to decorate with frosting. I quickly got frustrated with that and dragged out my decorator bags and tips. Much easier. I'll also add that I have taken a cake decorating several years ago, but I only make a few birthday cakes a year and I'm FAR from being an expert. I think they're right when they say that anyone (with patience) can make these.

So, anyway, here's a pic of my first attempt at fixing up some of these babies! The werewolves are nothing but cupcake, frosting, marshmallow, fruit-by-the-foot, M&Ms, and a jelly bean.

This book is full of ideas for decorating cupcakes to look like various animals, flowers, etc. The designs are really adorable and would be great for children's birthday parties or similar events. Unfortunately, I don't really ever make cupcakes for those occasions, and hoped that there would be some more refined, mature designs. I still picked up a bunch of tips and techniques that I can apply to my own ideas though.

Cupcakes, Cookies, & Pie, Oh My!, one of the most creative books I’ve seen, is full of dessert-decorating ideas developed by Karen Tack (a food stylist known as “the cake whisperer”) and photographed by Alan Richardson.

To be clear, it’s not a cookbook -- the projects begin with store-bought goodies (think pound cakes, packaged cookies, frostings and candies; you could substitute home-baked goods for some basic items). But that doesn’t mean the projects are simple or quick, in fact they’re complex and laborious, requiring the goodies to be transformed by rolling, cutting, melting, mixing, etc., and then assembling. To give an example, the sheep project featured on the cover involves:

-- cutting slices of Sara Lee pound cake to form the sheep bodies, dipping the leg portions into melted frosting and setting it to dry, then covering the rest of the body with regular frosting onto which you stick mini-marshmallows (some of which have been shaken with cocoa powder for the black sheep);
-- cutting Milano cookies to form the sheep heads, coating them with melted frosting as above, attaching the heads to the bodies and then decorating the faces with piped frosting, mini-chocolate chips, decors and Jelly Belly beans;
-- then there’s still the pretzel-fences and patches of coconut-grass to make.

The directions are extremely well written and are presented with a mise en place methodology that gets all of the components prepared and in stand-by mode before beginning the overall assembly. And there’s meticulous clarity, for example (my emphasis added): “For the eyes, pipe two dots of vanilla frosting onto the cookie. For the pupils, attach the mini chocolate chips, flat side out, to the frosting.” In most projects, there’s room to get children involved. Each project includes a beautiful photograph of the finished product; most have additional photos showing the techniques of interim steps.

My favorites are the rainbow-trout cupcakes that have fish scales made of M&Ms and swim in waves of blue and green Jell-O; high-fashion shoes composed of decorated cupcake fronts, tapered and coated (in melted frosting, as above) graham-cracker soles and Pirouette-stiletto heels; cupcakes baked in tall popover molds and decorated to look like soda-fountain drinks; and a pumpkin pie (one of the few actual recipes in the book) decorated with colored leaves and a rake made from extra pie dough. My only quibble is that most of the projects end up being mostly decoration (i.e. sugar overload).

These projects are special-occasion treats, not everyday, and they’re WOW-worthy -- hugely fun and inspirational to browse through and then destined to be the talk of a birthday party, shower or family gathering.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)

A really fun and cute book with very inventive cupcake recipes. The penguins are my favorite. :)

"Cupcaking," it seems, has joined the ranks of verbs like "scrapbooking." Where once a cupcake was a tasty treat, now it's an arts and crafts project. I must admit that I came to this book with a misconception. I thought the point was to create something good to eat. It is not. What's New, Cupcake is a triumph of style over substance. To eat the creations in this book is not only beside the point, it's bordering on sacrilege.

Clearly, I am an old-fashioned baker, or at least one cut from a different cloth. "Recipes" from cake mixes and the use of twinkies and mini-donuts as additional construction elements are anathema to me. Now that my biases have been disclosed, I will admit this: The photographs of the projects in this book are AMAZING. The finished projects are gorgeous--more akin to sculptures than snacks. For the, er, baker who aspires to such feats, this book should be equal parts instructive and inspirational.

For Luddites like myself, who are as interested in the edibility of their cupcakes as the attractiveness, there is definitely useful information. I advise using real recipes as a starting place. But there is much that can be learned about types and manners of icing and frosting, how to achieve textures, creative ways to use candies and other decorative elements, and more. It may encourage you to a more ambitious level of creativity.

This is a book for an extreme cupcaker. Perhaps there are far more of you out there than I realize. For you, this book may well be the bible of cupcaking. For the more moderate cupcakers like myself, take what you can from the book and then ooh and aah over the pretty pictures.

A fun treat for a sleepover with girls. Get this book out and have some fun. Head to the local supermarket to pick up the goodies and have at it. These are fun to make... not so tasty... but really fun to make!

Have fun and you will get better every time you attempt a new cupcake. The author is a food artist. I would have purchased this book for the visuals alone!

What I found the most striking about What’s New Cupcake is the photography by Alan Richardson. The pictures are so vibrant and colorful that they almost seem to jump off the pages. This is a good-sized book, at about 9” x 10”, so they are also nice sized and detailed photos. The cover photo with the “Rubber Duckies” cupcakes is too cute for words.

What’s New Cupcake starts out like a craft book with a list of needed materials and tools. Nothing unusual is needed and most are items that would be already on hand, except for the variety of colorful candies. The instructions for decorating the cupcakes are clear and the Karen Tack's designs are fun and very decorative.

The first chapter, April Fools Play, has cupcakes that look like something entirely different. How about cupcakes that look like a sub sandwich or a banana split? There are sections with ideas for all of the major holidays and party ideas for children and grown-ups.

Just a couple of examples of the design titles are:

Busy Bees (a honeycomb of cupcakes)
Mum’s the Word (beautiful flower cupcakes)
Fur Balls and String Monsters (You have to see it!)
Shower Heads (baby faces)
Knit One, Frost Two (knitting needles and yarn - my personal favorite)

Along with the decorating instructions there are quick dressed up cake mix recipes for cupcakes, frosting, and sugar cookies.

For anyone looking for an easy way to add fun to your baking, check out this book. Use ingredients that can be found in pretty much any supermarket to make all kinds of fanciful cupcake designs. This book shows you how to make cupcakes that look like dogs, fine art, flowers, and even a plate of spaghetti. Great fun for kids and kids at heart.

My kitchen is full of so many serious cookbooks and culinary guides, that this one is a welcome addition! It is such a lighthearted and fun cookbook. The beautiful photographs are fun to peruse and the recipes are so simple. All of the decorating ideas are broken down into simple steps that anyone can complete, even the cupcakes that look the most intricate and impressive. The techniques are easy to master, even for decorating novices and kids. I recommend this book highly for anyone looking to lighten up and have some fun in the kitchen.

I love this book! It's made me believe that I can make really cute cupcakes. Some are very elaborate while others are really easy.
For my Aunt's birthday, my cousin and I managed to make the Spagetti and Meatballs cupcake platter. It really was super easy, and everyone thought the plate of cupcakes looked like spagetti...so much fun!
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves cupcakes.

Cute, but I'll probably never use it, My favoritesare the ":owl" and the "bug" cupcakes.