I knit a little sweater for the baby girl my friends Nicole and Joe are expecting in March. Hopefully the sweater provides the incentive they need to pick the lovely name of Lorene for their child.

The pattern I used was the in threes:  a baby cardigan. It took a bunch of looking to find a yarn. Ideally I would have used something from my ginormous yarn stash, but I have almost all wool and there’s no way I’m giving a baby gift that has to be hand washed. I also didn’t want to use 100% acrylic. So I went to Michaels, and after much searching I ended up with 2 balls of Martha Stewart Extra Soft Wool Blend yarn. It’s pretty expensive for 65% acrylic but I used a coupon.

This knit up very quickly, but as I’m discovering I am not very good at knitting a smooth stockinette when I am knitting back and forth. I also wanted duck buttons, which given the dearth of fabric stores in my area, was a challenge. I actually found these perfect blue duck buttons on Etsy, but they were in New Zealand and would have cost $15 with shipping. In the end my Mom saved the day by finding what I needed at Jo-Anns. They were still not cheap. I needed 3 and 2 pack was $4.50. D’oh!

I got lots of compliments on this sweater at the baby part and Nicole loved it. Yay! On a side note, I made the 6-12 month size, but it looked a bit bigger than that.

My mom and I decided to go with a wintery theme for the Christmas cookies we made this year. Jersey sure isn’t getting any other snow right now.

The recipe is from Cookie Craft: From Baking to Luster Dust, Designs and Techniques for Creative Cookie Occasions.

I have an inspiration board for cookie decoration on Pinterest.

My mom really loved the Aestlight shawl I knitted awhile ago, so I decided to knit her one for Christmas. This one is made with Malabrigo Sock yarn in Persia.

My mom is very sensitive to wool but I’ve seen her wearing this quite a few times! It blocked out a lot differently (ie bigger)  than the original shawl I knit using Colinette Jitterbug.

Pattern: Aestlight Shawl (S)
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in Persia
Needles: Size 6

I made Marzipan Caramel Pear Cupcakes (via Sweetapolita) for Thanksgiving and to top them off I made these adorable marzipan pears.

Marzipan fruit is much easier to make than it looks. I shaped each pear, then painted them with gold luster dust mixed with cheap vodka. After the were dried I used a clove as the stem. Just make sure you warn people about the clove.

When I find my photos of the cupcakes, I will post them as well.

My go to gift for my brother-in-laws are hats. That’s right! My sister got married in October and now I have 2 brothers-in-law.

First up is Kyle’s hat. I used the pattern Winter’s Coming and the light green is Knit Picks Cadena. The dark green is some scrap yarn.

I made up the pattern for Jeremy’s hat, and I like it enough that I may write up and post the pattern for this hat. The yarn for this is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Chunky.

If you, like me, enjoying bringing a fresh baked cupcake into work for an afternoon snack then you might like this post.

I have a Tupperware cupcake holder that will transport 18 cupcakes but it’s a bit overboard for one. The best way I’ve found is to take a small round container with a lid. The one in the photo is a Ziploc container, but I’ve also used the small Chinese food containers.

Cupcake transport mission is a success! This is my desk at work.

Remove the lid and place it so that the inside of the lid is facing up. Place your cupcake, then carefully set the container over the cupcake and seal.  It works great, and usually my cupcakes reach their destination in perfect form. At most sometimes some of the icing around the edges gets messed up.

One of my friends told me that today was National Cupcake Day. I figured this was as good an excuse as any to bake some cupcakes! I went hunting for a recipe that I could make with what I had in the house. I looked through my numerous cupcake cookbooks but nothing struck my fancy, so I turned to the web. I found a recipe for Brown Sugar Pound (cup) Cakes on Martha Stewart. It looked good and I had all the ingredients so it was a go!

I halved the recipe to make 12, despite the stated yield of 29. Seriously…who bakes 29 cupcakes?

The recipe also comes with a recipe for a Brown Butter glaze. I love brown butter but I’ve never used it in a dessert! I am not a big fan of the look of glazes…especially with how these cupcakes looked out of the oven. They are not smooth and bit uneven. So I used one stick of butter to make brown butter, then strained it and put it in the fridge to cool. Once that was cool, I whipped the brown butter with a stick of unsalted butter until it was light and fluffy. Then I added confectioners sugar. I didn’t keep track of how much but I’d say 2 to 3 cups. Finally I added a teaspoon of vanilla bean past (I love those flecks!) and about at tablespoon of milk.

These are so yummy! The brown butter gives the frosting a complex caramel-like flavor. The cake is also good, but the frosting is definitely the standout flavor.

Did you bake anything for National Cupcake Day?

It’s been 9 months since I last posted on Craftcake. That’s seriously messed up. I’ve been baking and crafting but not posting. So I’m going to try to catch you up before 2012 gets started.

First off is this cake I baked from my grandma’s 87th birthday. It’s a vanilla layer cake with the most divine mocha buttercream ever invented.

Here are few photos from the cupcakes and mint oreo cakes pops I made for St Patrick’s Day. The cupcakes are green velvet and are as easy to make as substituting half of the red food coloring in a red velvet recipe for green food coloring. In my case I used 1 oz of green in place of 2 oz of red. Yummy! An how much do I adore these little gold star sprinkles…so cute!

I love these oreo pops! They take way less prep than making cake pops, but they’re a little more fragile when dipping. So my cake pops turned into upside down cake pops.

Last year I bought a Groupon for Sweet Avenue Bake Shop in Rutherford. It was $10 for a $20 voucher. While I had good intentions of going right when I got it, I soon realized my voucher was expiring in 2 weeks. So off I went on Saturday.

The bakery is a little hard to spot when their awning is closed, as there is just the small logo in the window. (Forgive my crappy iphone pix)

Once inside you are presented with a range of flavors to try. Their menu changes daily. We were there on Saturday so here were our options. Did I mention it’s a vegan bakery?

We went with 2 Sexy Sadie (red velvet), 2 Jet Blacks (chocolate/chocolate with sprinkles), a Bacio (chocolate hazlenut), a Snowball (chocolate with coconut frosting), a Pomegranate Champagne (champagne with pom frosting, and a White Room (vanillla, vanilla). Thankfully I took this photo before I got out of the car because I managed to dump the box on the ground getting out of the car.

So how did they taste? Overall I thought they were good. My favorite was the Jet black as the chocolate frosting was really good. I also liked the red velvet and the Bacio. I didn’t particularly like the vanilla frosting and I wasn’t a big fan of the texture of any of the cakes. I have baked vegan cupcakes before and I can’t remember how the crumb. Maybe it is just a result of the ingredients you use. Anyway I think it’s worth stopping by for the interesting flavors and good cupcakes which range in price from $3 – $4 and include gluten-free options.