Author: Brandy Saldana

I feel like I have been MIA longer than I wanted to be. As I mentioned on Saturday, I was busy making cupcakes for an event at work for Monday. The Hazardous Materials and Radiation Safety Associate Director from our office is moving on to bigger and better things and on his last day our office held a little recognition lunch for him.
 I say it was a little event, but there must have been 80-100 people there to wish him luck with his future endeavor since he had devoted almost 21 years of service to the campus. I was given the task to coordinate at the last minute, and I am very proud of how I was able to coordinate such an event. I had catering done by Yali’s Cafe in Berkeley and I was blown away with how much food they provided. Everyone at the event was really happy with the food, atmosphere, and of course, the cupcakes! 
The theme was toxic waste alluding to the department he commanded. The design started off with the idea of rats from the What’s New Cupcake? book because of his magnet on our office’s sign in board. The rat rhymes with Pat, his nickname, and allowed me to carry out the theme of Hazardous Waste. 
The radiation trefoil and bio hazard picks are actually handmade using a template we found, a punch out device, and toothpicks. It is actually pretty difficult to find hazardous waste theme in party stores and when you are short on time, it is great that there are templates available online to make your own designs.
I added the Toxic Waste Candy barrels from the Powell’s Sweet Shoppe located on College and Alcatraz in Berkeley. They added a nice touch to the display. The cheese and pink rat body parts are made out of yellow Star burst and pink Tootsie Rolls heated up, rolled out, and shaped. My sister did a great job making all the candy shapes, especially the cheese! She did a great job helping me over the weekend on on the day of the event. 
I ordered the sheet cake from Costco with just the lettering and an empty space. I made the green slime by adding food coloring to some piping gel. The drums were purchased from Ace Hardware by the Director who painted them over the weekend. The overall effect looked really good. We added some extra figures before the even like a caution sign and a Hazardous Waste guy with a broom “sweeping” the mess. I will add those photos if I anyone else happened to take any before cutting the cake.

I was busy the whole day running errands picking up a plaque in Oakland, the cake from the Costco in Richmond, and then grabbing balloons and picking up the platters. While it was a little stressful putting it all together, I enjoyed it so much and am now considering a position dealing with event planning because it was so fun!
Overall it was a very successful event and I am so glad he enjoyed it. I wish him the best and know he will do amazing things in his new position.

These cupcakes are inspired by Disney’s The Princess and The Frog.
My sister and I made these for a little girl’s birthday. Her mom was our first client outside of our family. She had ordered Batman cupcakes for her son’s birthday, so it isn very flattering that she requested for us to make something again.
She gave us the freedom to decorate with a lot of green for her theme as long as we stuck to certain flavors. She was blown away by our designs since she expected green liners and a a swirl of frosting with a Princess Tiana toothpick. She was glad her daughter would stand out as well because she was dressed as Princess Tiana.
The frogs were really easy. We cut a marshmallow in half and added black piping gel to dot the eyes and add a smile. The frogs were the main source of green for this theme.
The lily pads are made out of fondant. The flowers are made out of a flower mold press. The green pad was molded with the clean bottom of a soda can. It was then rounded out and a triangle slice was cut out. Some detail was added using a toothpick.
While we had green, we had to add some pink for a girl’s birthday party! The yellow crowns are meant to look like the crown Tiana has at the beginning of the movie. These were also rolled out of fondant and cut out. My sister did an amazing job with all the fondant work right?
These looked great alternating on a cupcake rack. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of that, but you get the idea from the first photo.
What do you think of the overall look? Let me know below and don’t forget to like our Facebook page Pandycakes for more photos and updates.
We will be doing another order for a good bye party scheduled on Monday so I will share pictures as soon as I can!