My VERY First Blog: Lakers themed cupcakes

This week I had the honor of making 6 dozen cupcakes for a Lakers themed party. Those that know me know I am a DIE HARD lover of the Purple and Gold, so you'd understand how stoked I was to be able to make and design these tasty treats.  The night before these cupcakes were due, my good friend Christine came over and convinced me to start a blog about my cakes...it is something I had been thinking about doing especially after viewing other people's interesting & inspiring blogs, so no doubt I thought it was a good idea.  My friends and family were also asking where they can view photos of my edible works of art, so due to popular demand, I am starting this blog and letting you into my world of cake making. enjoy.

My friend Keena (Hi Keena) celebrated her mom, Angie's 70th Birthday and came to me for an order of "Lakers" cupcakes. She ordered 3 flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate, and Red Velvet, so I felt I had to make 3 distinct designs to distinguish one flavor from the other. Not to mention give me liberty to play with the Lakers theme.  

As with all my cake ideas and designs, I first start off with sketches that help with my plan of action.  If there's anything I learned (or that was drilled in our heads) from Design school, it's that DESIGN IS A PROCESS...the final product does not happen in an instant. And more times than not, the final product is usually quite different from the original idea, but I believe the process is where you learn, and the final product is what inspires.  Something I wanted to do was make a cupcake stand in the shape of the Larry O'Brien Trophy aka NBA Championship Trophy, but it was too expensive....maybe I'll get to one day.

Before any baking began, I worked on the edible decorations. I used fondant, gumpaste, and colored icing. I had to mix purple icing color into blue fondant to get it just the right Lakers Royal Purple...or close enough. For the gumpaste basketballs, I had to mix the right amount of orange and brown to get the Spalding color.

Then it was time to bake, frost, and decorate. First, I baked the vanilla cupcakes...I intended to make them purple to making them more authentic to the theme.  Instead, they looked ube flavored and that batch turned out puny.  I was not satisfied....so I re-baked the vanilla and stuck with its normal color.  You can see the first batch of purple vanilla at the bottom of the final vanilla cupcakes.

My favorite part...putting everything together.  The 5 Lakers starters and Coach Jackson were in purple, the 8 retired jerseys in gold, and the bench players in white. My favorite one is the Chick Hearn jersey :) 

 

Last thing....packaged and ready for pick up ;)

 

Thanks for viewing....Stay posted for new AND older creations of mine ;D

~Abs of Cakes~