Happy Birthday Octavio! It's my coworker's birthday today and my boss came up with this brilliant theme for the cupcakes! Octavio use to be a state chess champion when he was younger (now retired), so my boss suggested I make cupcakes with chess pieces on them! Awesome idea! I and a big advocate for surprises, so I must share with you this story related to these cupcakes. So whenever there's a work birthday, we always try to surprise the birthday star with something, and so this time around it ALMOST got ruined! My coworker pretty much emailed all of us about how these cupcakes were going to present on this day, and updated everyone saying he'll be coming in for these, INCLUDING the birthday boy!! I quickly emailed him back saying "Oh em gee cameron!...the cupcakes were a surprise for octavio!!" And he emails me back saying "Oh em gee jackie!!! I'm sorry!! I didn't know!! =(" So I went Michael, our a super stealth IT man, and he was able to delete the email to Octavio before he was able to read it since he hasn't come into the office yet, and the surprise was salvaged! woohoo!! What an eventful start to a typical Tuesday =P. Anyways, these banana are banana cream pudding filled banana cupcakes with white chocolate and dark cocoa molded chess pieces for the decorations. I also printed out the chess board myself and cut it up and put it together for the complete image! The frosting is basic buttercream frosting. Does this looks fun to play and yummy to eat??? I'm up for anyone who wants to challenge me to a game of chess, or race to eat the most cupcakes as well =P.
My husband Khoa always tell me how nerdy I am, and I feel these next lines of humor only prove him more correct, and I'm darn proud of it! =) Here's one for thought, can you buy a complete chess set at a pawn shop? What is the name of the only moving castle? A rook! Someone once said "I can see why she likes the game - 'the king is stationary, the queen has all the power'". hehehe. OK, last one. Three retired International chess grandmasters were playing chess in the park. The first grandmaster said, "it is windy today." The second grandmaster said, "no, it is Thursday today". The third grandmaster said, "me too, let's go back inside for a drink" hahaha! =) I hope these cupcakes were a checkmate to your sweet tooth! Happy Birthday Octavio, chess ya later!
Happy Birthday Kristin!! These are also banana cupcakes with banana pie cream filling topped with whipped-cream cream cheese frosting! (Thanks Chi Hai for the frosting recipe!) My tip got jammed while piping, so it just became a mess...but at least I know it tastes good!!! All the decorations are made out of fondant and lightly brushed with gold luster dust and added some edible pearls as well. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to my hubby Khoa for making the nice fancy text! Kristin is such a great person and a very good friend of mine and I'm always so happy to be able to create something for her to enjoy! Happy Birthday Kristin!!!
