Cupcake Night

My friends and I decided that we should make some cupcakes from the amazing book, Hello Cupcake. The book has some amazing ideas of how to decorate cupcakes. The book uses lots of candy and everyday items to make cupcakes look like dogs, owls, cats, popcorn etc. We decided to start off with an easy cupcake idea, and we made the owls. The decorating part was a little labor intensive due to the massive amounts of oreos needed. There was some doubt as to how they would turn out, but overall I think they turned out very nicely. Plus they tasted great too!

Hey, Cupcake!

So this past weekend I was in Austin visiting some friends, and one of the events that I really wanted to do was...of course go to different cupcake places and taste the competition. I thought that I had done all of my research, but apparently I missed a very important part. While Austin does have lots of places to get cupcakes, most of the cupcakes come from people's homes. Except Hey, Cupcake! This place is actually an airstream trailer and someone delivers massive amounts of cupcakes to the trailer. So your car pulls up to this trailer with a cute pink cupcake sitting on top of the trailer. There is a slow moving line of about 30 people waiting to get their bites of heaven. Are people mad that they are having to wait 30 minutes, no, people are patiently waiting their turn; visiting with fellow cupcake lovers like themselves. Ok, I wanted to push a few people out of the way, I heard a few people say,"it's just a cupcake." Mainly those people were in my group and I tried to teach them the error of their ways, but I'm not sure how successful I was. So we finally get our chance to order. I got a Red Velvet, Vanilla Dream, Double Dose, The Standard and a Snowcap. I let my husband eat the Double Dose (chocolate cake chocolate icing) and our new friend Alissa eat Snowcap (chocolate cake, white icing) Everyone seemed to really enjoy the cupcake experience, Mitch (my husband) wasn't too impressed with the actual cupcake but loved their business model. Daniel and Janella both raved about how great their cupcakes were. Alissa and Ryan (Austin natives) said they would be back for more delicious cupcakes. My favorite cupcake was the Red Velvet cupcake(not pictured because I ate it), I thought it needed a little bit more flavor, but the cream cheese frosting was delicious and made me want another one. The Vanilla Dream wasn't quite what I was dreaming of. However, I loved that they used pink frosting. It is a scientific FACT that pink frosting is 66% more attractive than plain white frosting to girls age 2-99. Anyways, the cake lacked vanilla flavor, and it was very crummy, and while the icing was pink and had sprinkles it just wasn't the perfect cupcake. In all fairness, I do think that Hey, Cupcake is doing a great job making the world a better place, one cupcake at a time. After all they did sell 1500 cupcakes in one day.

Bad Ideas

I know that I mentioned that my taste buds are equivalent to a 5 year old's taste buds, but I've found some cupcakes that I genuinely think are bad ideas. The first one I came across seems kind of tame now, but I found a place that makes Tomato Soup cupcakes. Gross. They add walnuts and raisins to the cupcakes and use cream cheese frosting. Thoughts on this?
Another bad idea, a broccoli and cheese cupcake. Now if they took out the broccoli and called it a cheese biscuit, it might be different, but don't suggest this could be a dessert, because it isn't. They didn't use a frosting, really what kind of frosting could you use?

The next cupcake I saw had a musk flavored buttercream. Need I say more? I was really hoping that it wasn't referring to the scent of some animals. The description said it tasted just like a musk flavored lolly. Not helpful. I googled it, and apparently musk is a really popular Australian flavor that is perfume flavored. I once tasted my mom's perfume and I can honestly say that I wouldn't want frosting that tasted like that.

Cakespy, a normally really great website, had the nasty idea of using vegetables to make cupcakes. I understand that lots of people enjoy carrot cake, but they took this a little too far. They made cupcakes, with Snap Peas (gross), Radishes (nasty), Parsnips (ick), but by far the most nauseous cupcake was BRUSSELSPROUTS. And then they tried to make it look cute...

I really hope the cupcake mafia doesn't raid my house for this posting...

Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I've seen lots of different varieties of mint and chocolate cupcakes. Most of them involve a chocolate cupcake with either mint buttercream or chocolate mint ganache. I have also seen a couple cupcakes that are mint cake with lavender buttercream. I'm not sure how I feel about lavender flavored buttercream, but sometimes I think my taste buds never developed past age 5, so lavender buttercream might be good... In all my searches I haven't seen any mint cupcakes with chocolate chips in it, so I did some thinking, what if I made a mint cupcake, with chocolate chips mixed in it? And that's what I did, the whole time I was thinking, "I hope this tastes as good as mint chocolate chip ice cream." I made chocolate buttercream frosting and added peppermint extract, and then topped the cupcakes off with a junior mint. The overall result? They were really good, the peppermint had a nice cooling taste to it, plus they were green! My husband said they were probably his favorite of my creations. And that is saying a lot, since he says that he isn't really a dessert person. But I don't really believe him. What I really learned from this experience, is that, I'm not really so good at taking pictures. How do people do that?

Red Velvet Cupcake

Last Saturday night I went to Coco Flow for dessert. Coco Flow is a wonderful little chocolate cafe with delightful hand made chocolate creations. In their display case they had Red Velvet cupcakes for purchase of 4 dollars. I thought this was a little pricey compared to lots of the other cupcakes prices I've seen at speciality cupcake stores. But I splurged and bought the cupcake. Oh what a disappointment that little cupcake was. The cake was dry and lacked the silky flavor that Red Velvet is known for. The frosting was nice though, it had a light cream cheese flavor. Despite my disappointment, I did eat the whole thing.