For December 2011, I had the idea of making cupcakes and selling them at a local Christmas craft show, and all proceeds would go towards The ALS Association - aka Lou Gerhig's Disease, which is what my dad passed away from in 2010.

I came up with 5 flavours to reflect Christmas/Winter theme

* ALS Awareness cupcake: Red Velvet with creame cheese frosting, and a fondant ALS Awareness ribbon on top.

* Winter Wonderland: White Velvet with mint buttercream and a hand-piped white chocolate snowflake.

* Peppermint Mocha: Mint dark chocolate cupcake with coffee buttercream, decorated with an old fashioned peppermint stick, and topped with a chocolate covered espresso bean

* Christmas Rose: Vanilla cupcake with vanilla buttercream, and a fondant red rose.

* Gingerbread: Gingerbread cupcake with maple cream cheese buttercream, topped with a fondant gingerbread man shape.

All of them turned out wonderful, and I ended up with 7 dozen cupcakes altogether. Unfortunately, they didn't sell very well - people didn't think they were REAL cupcakes! They thought they were candles, or formed/sculpted polymer clay...or just not real. I guess I made them too perfect =P What I should've done was offer free samples of each flavour.

Ah well. Whatever cupcakes didn't sell, I gave them to neighbours, my husband's co-workers, friends, etc. And had some myself too. It definitely was an experience! A lot of work, but I would gladly do it over again

:)