Happy Birthday to...meeeee!

I'm a little late in posting this. But they always say, better late than never... My birthday wish came true, my dessert loving friend made me some strawberry cupcakes with strawberry frosting, and topped the cupcakes off with delicious sprinkles. Some people don't get sprinkles. But they really are a necessity. They add so much delightful texture. I will admit that I have been known to eat just a spoonful of sprinkles...so good. Of course it has to be the right kind of sprinkles, because if they are really crunchy, then it totally ruins it. Enough about sprinkles right now, the cupcakes were absolutely delicious, and this picture is of the very last one. Yep, it was good till the last bite. Dessert loving friend-please send more :)

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

With the coming of fall, comes the great taste of pumpkin and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. Probably the two greatest spices ever made. My mom especially has a soft spot for those flavors and she made a special request for some spice cakes, and I decided to spice up the cupcakes with some pumpkin puree. I made the cupcakes in a foreign kitchen, meaning not my kitchen. I had to use a hand held mixer and didn't have my double ovens for baking. But I did have my dessert loving niece as my cupcake helper. So we made a spice cake, added pumpkin puree and then topped them with cream cheese frosting. My niece added the cinnamon sugar topping, she is about cute as a cupcake and just as sweet!

Cupcakes were harmed in the transportation...

I was commissioned by my coworkers to make some cupcakes for a wedding shower. It is a big deal for my coworkers to pay for a non-grocery store bakery item, I felt some serious pressure to deliver an above quality product. So I made some delicious cupcakes, vanilla-white chocolate chip, and chocolate chocolate chip cupcakes. They turned out so cute. As my fellow cake decorators know, delivering bakery products is one of the most stressful events, but cupcakes should be easy...
Well I got to work, and realized that some of the cupcakes had not stayed in their carrier, I was mortified to show my coworker the dozen cupcakes that had been ruined due to my carelessness. She was very nice and didn't seem the least bit bothered by it, she said, "Don't worry about it, we're just going to eat them." I was relieved that she was very nice about it, but I still felt awful. I will not be using that cupcake carrier again.

Now accepting cupcakes

Sunday is my birthday! As a result I am now accepting all donations, gifts, contributions etc. in the form of cupcakes. You may hand deliver them to me, put them in the mail, or surpise me with them, whichever works best for you. Of course, I can't post my address on my blog, my husband would FREAK OUT, so you'll have to be sneaky if you don't know my address. Just in case you are wondering what kind I want or don't want, reading over previous blogs will help. But just to be clear, I don't want any vegetables in my cupcakes, and I highly recommend the cupcakes have lots of sprinkles! Thanks so much for my birthday cupcakes!!!!

Not dreaming of these cupcakes

A few months ago I decided to make some delicious blueberry cupcakes, I was even going to make them with real blueberries. I'm not really a fan of real blueberries, something about the texture makes them unappealing; I'm more of a fan of the fake, completely artificial "blueberries " that come in the 44 cent box of Jiffy Blueberry muffins. Having never made anything with real blueberries I decided to puree them and add them to the cake mix. Pureed blueberries do not look at all appetizing. Maybe our blender isn't the best, but there were lots of skins and it was an unattractive blue/brownish liquid, mush sort of stuff. Another great decision was that I wanted to make sure I had a nice blueberry flavor so I decided to add some blueberry jello as well, except I couldn't find plain blueberry jello, I could only find berry jello. The box had a picture of two blueberries and one raspberry, so it was as close to blueberry as I was going to get. The result of the experiment...not good. I didn't even make the frosting for the cupcakes, they weren't horrible, but they weren't the cupcakes I had been dreaming of. They tasted like candy, and while that might seem like a good thing for some people, these weren't the kind of candy you want to eat more than one piece. I guess everyone has to have the unsuccessful experiment once and awhile.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

I made these awhile ago, but haven't really had time to post them. I must say that they have been very well received. They were very simple to make too! Of course the pictures don't do them justice. The cake was cherry flavored and then I added lime buttercream frosting.

So many cupcakes to choose from...

I'm so far behind in my cupcake posting. During the month of June, I went to two cupcakes stores and made over 200 cupcakes and a wedding cake during that time. So where to start? I think that tonight I will blog about the cupcake bakery visits. On a roadtrip that was taken mid-Junish, we stopped in St. Louis at a cute little cupcake store called the Cupcakery.
It was a smaller store, nicely decorated, with very nice people working the counter. The store had only been open a few months, but they seemed to be doing very well. They had a basic selection, with a weekly selection to chose from. We chose six cupcakes to take on our travels. We got 2 Lemon Cupcakes, A Mocha Cupcake, a Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcake, a Vanilla Cupcake, and, a Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting.

The Cupcakes were HUGE, but not overwhelming with frosting, so that was nice. The Lemon Cupcakes were really good, but my favorite was the Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting. It was quite tasty. The frosting, had a great chocolate flavor, but with still nice and sweet.
The next place we went to was Gigi's in Nashville. This place had a huge selection of cupcakes, and the staff was very helpful, I ended up getting 7 cupcakes, and I think I ate a good portion of them...by myself. I got a Red Velvet, Orange Dream, Pink Lemonade, Lemon, a Chocolate Malt Cupcake, Chocolate with Vanilla Frosting, and Vanilla with PINK frosting. These cupcakes were very tasty, but I would have to say, that there was WAY TOO much frosting on them. I know this is blasphemy to some, but it just didn't have the right ratio of cake to frosting. Seriously, how can someone eat the whole thing? I can think of a few people who would like to try...


If I had to pick a favorite though, it probably would be the chocolate malt cupcake. The cake had a nice light chocolate cake with a cinnamon aftertaste, and then a nice chocolate frosting with chocolate malt balls sprinkled on the sides. YUM.
Overall, I'd say our cupcake shop visits were a huge success. I think that I was on a constant sugar high the entire length of our trip though!