For LA Dwellers, Soap Lovers, and Cupcake Aficionados

General Hospital stars with their namesake cupcake

One of the blogs I read, Food 2, had a really great post about a cupcake Vanilla Bake Shop (in Santa Monica) came up with in honor of an on-screen couple from the soap opera, General Hospital. I wanted to share because it had the recipe and an interesting interview. And because I've been totally negligent about my own blogging lately (internet issues for the past few days!). I hope to get a post up about the end of breads and the start of petit fours, but in the mean time, I can blog about other great baked goods that catch my eye.

I grew up watching soap operas with my mom, specifically All My Children. Funny story...my brother would also watch them during the day with my mom, and my dad had to put a ban on All My Children for Eric when he started talking about Adam Chandler as if he was someone we knew. (Sorry, Eric.)

Anyway, the "Lante" cupcake is a dark chocolate cupcake with a mascarpone filling and a chocolate hazelnut buttercream with chocolate pearls. Minus the hazelnut (which will send me running for the Benadryl), that sounds amazing. Fortunately, the recipe's there too. I think I'll be trying a nut-free adaptation of that in the future. For any readers who live in or near LA, Vanilla Bake Shop is giving away the Lante cupcake to the first 200 people who show up on May 5. Definitely worth checking out if you're in the area!

This one's for you Eric...

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Last week it was my brother Eric's 23rd birthday. If you read the comments on this blog, he's the one always talking about the calorie content of cupcakes or making fun of our little sister, Melissa, for eating too many. See, Melissa and I are normal, cupcake-loving people, but Eric's strange and doesn't eat really anything that's bad for you. His ideal cupcake would probably be a mix of chicken, tuna, and protein powder.

Workspace around 1:00 am

Having decided that was not going to be my ingredient list, I went for a banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting. And I used no butter. Which is no small feat for me being as I use that stuff by the pounds. I also reduced the sugar in the cake. This was just about the "healthiest" cupcake I've baked yet. I also made a dozen regular vanilla for the people who wouldn't prefer the protein cupcakes.

Finished cupcakes

I really don't like bananas, but the banana cupcake wasn't bad at all. It definitely had more of a muffin texture, but that's probably due to the absence of butter. The combo of peanut butter and banana was good; each flavor held its own nicely.

Close-up of the suits cupcakes

Because Eric was having his birthday celebration down in Atlantic City, I went with a poker theme for the cupcakes. I covered the peanut butter banana cupcakes in rolled green fondant to look like a poker table and topped them with edible fondant poker chips I hand made and painted with gold luster dust. The vanilla cupcakes were covered in white fondant and topped with a card suit cut out of red and black fondant. I actually bought those fondant cutters about two months ago in preparation for these cupcakes. I also found tiny suit sprinkles at NY Cake and used those on the white cupcakes as well.

Poker chip cupcakes

All of this baking and decorating went down around midnight last Thursday. By the time I finished, I was exhausted and covered in corn starch (you roll the fondant on it).

About to sing Happy Birthday

Fortunately, when Eric and his friends returned from Atlantic City, most of them had won. It would not have been good to have a cupcake reminder of the big losses suffered at the poker tables.