Arte y Pico Award...and Cupcakes!

First off, the fun award stuff. Gigi Cakes awarded me the Arte y Pico award a few days ago. Then yesterday, Honeyed Hashette awarded it to me as well. Awards all over, I feel so special. Thanks ladies, you are fabulousity.

The Arte y Pico award translates to 'Peak of Art'. So when I thought about who to pass this onto from my end...I wanted to honor blogs that I feel are wonderful about putting their 'art' out there. The art of baking..and for me, photography. I absolutely LOVE wonderful food photos and am obsessed with taking photos. If it makes me salivate by looking at it, it's good stuff.

The rules for the award are:
-I have to pick five blogs who deserve this award because the content of their blog is creative, interesting, and they inspire the blogging community.
-Each recipient has to have their name and link back to their blog.
-The recipient must display the award and link back to the blog that awarded them the award.
-The recipient must also show the link back to Arte y Pico blog so everyone knows the origin of the award.

With that in mind, here are my Arte y Pico award gals.

She's Becoming Doughmesstic
Susan consistently posts amazing photos of her goodies & it seems like her learning curve is incredibly short, which is a huge inspiration for me to keep learning as well.

I Heart Food for Thought
Miss Clara has two blogs, this is one of them (the other is all about CUPCAKES so you know I must love it). How can you not be inspired by someone who manages and maintains TWO blogs..AND gives me fabulous ideas on cupcake decor while she's at it?

And Then I Do The Dishes
Lyb blogs like I do, lots of fun abstract pictures and commentary. Fabulous photos and writing style. Plus, LOVE the looking drippy whisk shot in her avatar!

Spatulas, Corkscrews & Suitcases
Donna blows me away with her creativity and imagination. She bakes on a BOAT first off, and now her oven is broken so she uses this other oven in another boat. No challenge too large for Donna. AND her stuff comes out looking like a food ad in her photos.

Dianne's Dishes
Dianne's vibrant, colorful photos are a continual inspiration to me...when I check out her blog every Tues, it makes me want to take some photography classes or something, jeez I'm a novice!

Award stuff end spiel! Thanks again Janna and Gigi for the fun awards! Now onto the cupcakes...I will be short since this is a long post already.

We've got Lemon Marscapone cupcakes for a friend's bridal shower. I wanted to do black fondant disks to match the liners, but I just ran out of time. Everyone loved these and this is seriously my favorite 'taste wise' cupcake recipe ever.





And then fab Vanilla Buttermilk cupcakes for two events, one cupcake kills two stones!! Some with PB inside...and some without. The birthday ones were fun, I tried a new technique with personalizing..fondant disks with chocolate transfers. Worked pretty well, but definitely time consuming.





These Vanilla...I think this was my favorite cupcake 'decor yet. They were just really amazing & consistent looking. The saddest part is on my way into the car, rushing of course, I tilted the carrier way too much to the side..and it was cupcake carnage. Literally, these beauties fell into and on top of and INTO each other. It was cupcake horror...I didn't know what to do.





I was almost in tears, and I NEVER cry. Pup was really alarmed at my distress. BUT I managed to save them and in 10 min no less...peeled liners off, put them into new liners, put all the demolished frosting back into a bag and piped one big swirl onto each cake to cover the previous mess, then pressed cleaned fondant disks back into them. They were well received and people thought they looked lovely(if only they had seen the original, oh such a difference). Oh well, I think I'll be more careful now??