With a Cherry on Top

There's some crucial information you need to know about me before hearing about the cupcakes I baked yesterday:

First of all, I love "fake" food. Love probably does not even begin to describe how much I enjoy it. The one food I could eat for every meal, every single day, for the rest of my life is Kraft macaroni & cheese. Kraft probably would have sponsored me as a young child if they knew how much mac & cheese I would go on to consume. Despite this, when I bake, I use only "real" ingredients and the highest quality of them I can find.

Second, in line with my first point, maraschino cherries are my favorite fruit. In fact, there was a time in my life where they were the only "fruit" I would eat. Probably one of the things that made me most sad about growing up was losing the ability to order Shirley Temples at restaurants without looking ridiculous. Not that that's stopped me from doing so; I usually just blush the color of the drink when ordering them.

Chopped maraschino cherries for batter

Third, illustrations of cupcakes with cherries are a personal pet peeve of mine. When I was commissioning my logo, one of my few criteria was that the image of the cupcake did not have a cherry on it. Realistically, how often do you see cupcakes with a cherry on them?

After racking my brain and the internet for a new cupcake flavor to bring to work, I settled on cherry vanilla. Almost all the recipes I found had real cherries in them, and I did contemplate using them, but I knew I'd be happier with maraschino cherries (although I did fear my coworkers would shun these cupcakes). I had also brought back some vanilla bean paste from a vineyard I went to in New Zealand, and was excited to try that out in the frosting. Unable to find a recipe I thought would work, I just put together one of my own.

After work, I picked up two different types of maraschino cherries - with stems and without. The cutting of the cherries left my fingertips stained deep red from the food dye. This reminded me of how my childhood best friend was not allowed to eat certain red dyes because her mother forbade her. Maraschino cherries were on that family's list of forbidden foods. After chopping all the cherries, I tossed them in to the batter and added a few drops of red dye for good measure, just to be safe. I didn't want any repeat grey cupcakes (see this post if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Cupcake briefcase I take to work

I know I said the other day that cookie dough is my favorite, but it has been replaced (or at least tied) with these cupcakes. I ate an embarrassing amount of them. Really, embarrassing. I'm usually pretty uninterested in the cupcakes I bake because once I'm done with all the effort, I'm too "over" them to eat them. These cupcakes also survived the monsoon we are having in NYC (and I didn't have an umbrella this morning) and made it into work, relatively dry. They definitely were appreciated though...they unanimously got my coworkers' seal of approval.

Kick Off to Summer Baking

Being as I only got home from Australia last week and hadn't seen my parents or friends in a while, I hopped on the bus to Toms River at the end of a very long, jet-lagged week at work last Friday. Aside from the 2 dozen I had made Thursday night, I hadn't baked since before Australia and knew I needed to get my baking (and the blog) back on track. Although the weather has been uncooperative, it is essentially summer, and this means two things: heavy shore traffic and fresh summer fruits.

Vanilla bean cupcakes with peach frosting

Wanting to use the latter in cupcake form, I stole the mango that was ripening on our windowsill and made a mango lime curd from it. Having never made curd before, I had no clue what it was supposed to look or taste like. I just kept cooking it hoping I wouldn't burn it or take it off while the eggs were still raw. I'm pretty sure I got it right and being as there were no reported cases of salmonella poisoning, I think it was okay. I baked 3 dozen vanilla bean cupcakes to use as a base. My mom & I then headed off to Stop & Shop to find some peaches and other baking ingredients I had run out of (no surprises there).

Vanilla bean cupcakes filled with mango curd

I pureed the peaches and cooked them stove top to attempt to reduce the water so that my peach frosting would not be watery. No such luck there. It's a pretty tricky balance between adding too many peaches and having too thin icing and adding not enough and not being able to taste them. Half the cupcakes I frosted with the peach frosting and the other half I filled with the curd and topped with vanilla bean buttercream. I had some left over fondant flowers that I decorated the mango cupcakes with.

Inside of the cupcake with curd

I'm not sure how crazy I was about these. I think I just don't like mango, despite trying to force myself to like it by incorporating it into every type of dessert I can think of (sorbet, mousse cake, cupcakes). The next time I make the peach frosting, I think I'll pair it with a peach cake in order to maximize the peach flavor. My mom also suggested using peaches baby food instead of pureeing my own peaches, but this idea sort of grossed me out. I know baby food is just pureed grown-up food, but it still seems weird. I might have to try it and let everyone know how it goes though.

Cupcakes for the Morgan's fam - Mrs. R is making me a cupcake stand!

Like Riding a Bicycle

The phrase "it's like riding a bicycle" is probably not one I should use to describe something I do, having never quite mastered the art of bike-riding. However, when it came to getting back to baking after being away from it for almost 3 weeks, the description was pretty accurate. All of last week I was pretty jet-lagged, but when Lauren asked if I could make 2 dozen cupcakes for her coworker, I jumped at the chance to get back to baking. Her coworker was throwing a party for her husband and wanted 1 dozen cookie dough and 1 dozen chocolate mint chip.

The baking process went pretty much like it always does for me - midway through mixing one of the batters, I ran out of an ingredient. In this case, it was cocoa powder. Fortunately, there's a convenience store up the corner from me, but it's always a pain to have to leave what I'm doing for an ingredient run. As it's getting warmer out, I realized it's going to be more and more uncomfortable to bake in my kitchen being as we don't have air conditioning.

I think cookie dough is shaping up to be my favorite flavor I make and not just because I can eat the leftover cookie dough while I'm baking. I like the unexpected surprise of finding a cookie baked inside your cupcake.

Finished cookie dough cupcakes

Cupcake Disappointment in Sydney

Our entire trip was fantastic, but overall, I was a tiny bit disappointed in the quality of cupcakes we found there. On our first night in Sydney, we headed over to Cupcakes on Pitt, a cupcake bakery whose website looked amazing. I had very high hopes for this one.

Inside Cupcakes on Pitt

When we got there, the store was really adorable, and the cupcakes in the case looked great. Vica and I chose an assortment - vanilla sundae, chocolate sundae, tiramisu, strawberry, chocolate, and lemon meringue. We promptly took them back to our hotel and set out to try every one of them. The cupcakes were slightly larger than a mini cupcake. Unfortunately, the cake part was so dry on all of the vanilla ones. It was about a half hour before close, so it's possible these cupcakes were more moist during the day, but I don't know. The worst though was the lemon meringue. The taste of the filling was offensive, and it sent Vica and I running for water to wash it away.

Cupcakes from Cupcakes on Pitt

Having struck out at Cupcakes on Pitt, we found another cupcake bakery on the way to Bondi Beach, The Cupcake Bakery. After some googling, we found they had a location in the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), a really nice shopping mall near our hotel. Our last day there, Vica and I split up and I went sightseeing by myself while she went to pet kangaroos. I had wanted to see the QVB anyway, so I set off in that direction, and after navigating an extremely confusing basement, found the cupcake bakery. It was a cute stand in the mall and they had a ton of cupcakes there. I picked out an assortment, saw more of the sights, and headed back to the hotel to lay down before the next feat (walking the Harbour Bridge). Vica came back from the Taronga Zoo, excited about all the kangaroos and koalas, and starving. These cupcakes were better than Cupcakes on Pitt, but still a little on the dry side. I'd go with The Cupcake Bakery though if I needed a bakery in Sydney.

The Cupcake Bakery in the QVB

That was all the cupcakes we tasted in Australia. After Australia, we went to Auckland, NZ, but were unable to find any cupcake shops or even cupcakes there.

Vica eating cupcakes from The Cupcake Bakery

This means I'm at the end of my vacation cupcake photos, but I'll be back to regular blogging about the cupcakes I have going on.

More Cupcakes than Kangaroos in Australia

Since coming back from my trip, I've felt like such an Australia failure. One of the first questions everyone asks is "So did you see any kangaroos??" Sadly, I did not see any kangaroos there. People just can't believe this. In Australia, we really only were in cities, where kangaroos don't live, and I didn't have the time to go to the zoo while in Sydney. My friend Vica did, and I'm living vicariously through her kangaroo experience (she also ate kangaroo - ewww). She just sent me pictures from our vacation and there's a ton from the zoo so I feel like I was there (and am very jealous she got to pet a kangaroo!).

Cupcakes in Macca's - not a bad price!

I may not have seen any kangaroos, but I did see a ton of cupcakes surprisingly. They seemed to be following us. While we were in Airlie Beach, we wandered into the McDonald's (or Macca's as it's nicknamed in Australia) to get a soft serve cone, and at the McDonald's Cafe, there were cupcakes! Almost all of the McDonald's there have what's like a Starbucks-type cafe inside, separate from the other food. It's pretty nice, and I gather that's what they're starting to do here in the U.S. with the McCafe drinks. The first time we saw those cupcakes, we didn't try any because I was already set on icecream, but when we went back a few days later, they were all out of cupcakes. When we asked about them at the register, the woman told us that she could take some out of the freezer for us. Clearly we passed up that offer. Frozen cupcakes? No thanks.

On the our sailing trip in the Whitsunday Islands, it always felt like food was scarce. Because no one brought food on with them, what we ate and when we ate were entirely up to the crew. And the cook, Fern, particularly didn't seem to care if we all starved to death. That being said, one afternoon as a snack there were cupcakes. They were vanilla cupcakes with a glaze-like frosting, covered in nonpareils. It was probably the best thing I ate on the trip.

Cupcakes in the Whitsundays

Next up, I'll let you guys know about the two cupcake bakeries I visited in Sydney.

I'm Back! With Cupcakes from Down Under!

Me outside of Little Cupcakes

My two week Australia/New Zealand trek started in Melbourne, the city my brother had studied abroad in and I had heard so much about. We were staying with three of Eric's friends, who definitely showed my friend Vica & I a good and authentic Aussie time. Our first day in the city, our first stop was the cupcake shop I had read about, Little Cupcakes. Located on the laneway DeGraves Street, this place was really cute. I loved the whole feel of Melbourne, and DeGraves Street personified the cluttered laneway/outdoor cafes vibe. My first thought was that the cupcakes looked great, but they were pretty pricey. I think each was $2.50 Australian Dollars, which with the exchange rate we had, was about $2/cupcake. They were the mini size though.

Red Velvet - Love the stars!

I brought a dozen of these back to the guys' place to try, and we all thought they were pretty good. My favorite was definitely the white chocolate raspberry, but the ones with the Teddy Grahams were just adorable. These cupcakes were definitely the type we're used to in America. The buttercream frosting was similar to the one I use, not the cooked buttercream that's popular elsewhere. The cake itself was a bit dense, more like a muffin than a cake.

Teddy cupcake on my guide book

If you ever find yourself in Melbourne, these are definitely cupcakes worth checking out.

Cupcakes Down Under

So, tomorrow I leave for a 2 week trip to Australia and New Zealand. I am beyond excited, and being as I've been planning this trip for 4 months now, very happy it's finally here! My friend Vica & I have an awesome trip planned that includes Melbourne, Whitsunday Islands, Sydney, and Auckland.

This trip means I probably won't be blogging much, if at all, over the next two weeks, but I will be sampling a couple cupcake bakeries in Australia. Most notably:

Little Cupcakes in Melbourne: Melbourne is the first stop on the trip, and maybe the place I'm most excited to go to. My brother studied abroad there in the Spring of 2007 and I was so jealous every time I read one of his emails from there.

Photo from Little Cupcakes website

Cupcakes on Pitt in Sydney: My college, Boston University, had a really popular study abroad program in Sydney so I had a lot of friends who were there for several months. We're staying in the Central Business District (prior to doing research, we almost ended up in the Red Light District) and hopefully we will be able to find cupcakes there. There's Cupcakes on Pitt and the pictures on their website looked awesome. I'm hungry just thinking about them.

I'm reallyyyy excited for this Strawberries & Cream cupcake
from Cupcakes on Pitt. And about 20 of the others they have

I haven't been able to locate online a cupcake bakery in Auckland. You can be sure when I get back I'll be posting all the cupcake pictures from the trip. Make sure to check back in a couple weeks!

Under the Sea

Two of my great loves in life are cupcakes (obviously) and The Little Mermaid. When I was younger, I probably watched it hundreds of times and had the cassette tape so I could sing along when I wasn't watching it.

Cupcakes waiting to be eaten

For my birthday this year (in November), my parents gave me a cake decorating toolbox so that I would have my own set of equipment in my new apartment. In the toolbox, there was a package of Little Mermaid cupcake liners. I hadn't used them yet, but on Friday night when I threw together some vanilla cupcakes for guests I was expecting, I decided to liven up the seemingly plain cupcakes with fun liners.

Ariel cupcake liners

These were just vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting (dyed to match Ariel's ocean background), but vanilla is probably my all-time favorite flavor, so I could have eaten all of them. Fortunately (for my waistline), I found people to eat the majority of them (ok, I had one for breakfast today...).

Extremely Busy Weekend!

This weekend I had 3 orders to complete - a surprise 30th birthday that was fiesta-themed, a friend's niece's 2nd birthday, and a coworker's daughter's birthday. The fiesta needed 120 cupcakes in an assortment of margarita, marble, and vanilla with coconut. In addition to all those cupcakes, they also had me do a fondant-covered cake to go on the top tier of the cupcake stand! The 2nd birthday party was just 2 dozen mini rainbow cupcakes, and the coworker's order was 80 cupcake truffles. I have a problem with time management when it comes to baking as it is, so it is no surprise I ran into trouble this weekend.

I thought I was on a good track. In fact, I had planned on waking up Saturday morning, doing the cupcakes, dropping off Morgan's order of minis, getting a mother's day gift and maybe even taking a nap before I had to drop off the fiesta order in Hoboken (I was baking in Toms River). I was so ambitious with my time that I probably even thought it was feasible to solve world peace in the extra time between the orders and delivery. I was so, so very wrong. World peace will probably have to wait until next weekend.

The assembled fiesta order. I was really proud of this!

Around 12:00 pm on Saturday, I started to get panicky and think I was not going to finish in time. I called my mom who was in Philly picking up my sister at least twice crying. I was having a major problem with the margarita cupcakes. The recipe I had was really difficult to follow and for some reason grouped together the frosting & cupcake ingredients and I kept adding the wrong things or the wrong amounts. Hence, 2 batches of cupcakes in the trash before I got a good one...hours later.

Close-up of the cake

At about 1:30 pm, my parents came back home, and I could have dropped to the ground crying tears of joy that I had someone to help me. I seriously would have never finished on time if my mom didn't come home. Kate was also a supreme baking assistant, helping me out both Friday night and Saturday by going out of her way to pick up ingredients for me and then driving me up to Hoboken to help me unload the cupcakes. My sister Melissa was clutch as well and ran to Michael's to grab me more cupcake liners being as I had gone through way more than I was anticipating.

By some miracle, I ended up finishing approximately 3:50 (I needed to get in the car to have them there by 4:00), quickly took a shower (which was for the best of everyone who was going to see me), and loaded up Kate's car with the 6 boxes of cupcakes (oh yeah, did I mention I made an extra 2 dozen of 2 completely separate kinds for a friend's party I was going to??), the cake, stand, 36 personalized individual cupcake take-home boxes, and my suitcase I need for when I go to Australia in two weeks. I really did not calm down until about 6 beers into the party I attended that night.

Individual take-home boxes for cupcakes

The drop off of all the cupcakes went so well. Everyone seemed really happy with them and everything made it there in one piece! I LOVED the idea to have the individual boxes. I hope someone else in the future wants to do that as well.

Sunday, I went back down to Toms River for Mother's Day and made the 80 cupcake truffles. I gave my baking intern (my mom) the night off from washing dishes, a fair Mother's Day gift I thought. I dropped those off today and am happy to be done baking at least for a few days. I never thought I'd say this, but I need a tiny break from cupcakes...at least until the next whim strikes me!

Cupcake Truffles - the blue were vanilla & pink were strawberry

Again, thank you SO much to everyone who helped out this weekend. This was the biggest batch of cupcakes I've done to date and it took just about every resource and bit of emotional support to make it happen.

Pretty Cupcakes

Recently I was asked to put together a "sampler" of cupcakes for various events - Sweet 16s, weddings, bar/bat mizvahs, etc in order to show what I'm able to do. I used some designs I've already done and also came up with some new. This post is going to be mainly pictures (which I learned this weekend is all some people look at anyway!). Most of these pictures were taken around 4:00 in the morning when I finished baking, so the quality of the photography is a bit lacking.

The final 24 that made the cut

Cupcake Flags!

Cupcake for a Sweet 16

Modified Golf Cupcakes to include a sand trap and water hazard


That glitter is edible!!

This one was my favorite

The woman's name I was meeting with was Lori. Not sure how

this would work out for longer names.

There's a lot going on on this cupcake, but I think it's pretty

Cupcakes in Jars

Late yesterday afternoon, I got a call from my friend Dan to see if I had yet to figure out a solution to shipping cupcakes. I had actually just stumbled across the idea to bake cupcakes directly in Mason jars in order to be able to ship them securely and was waiting for my shipment of 24 Kerr Mason jars. After calling around in Toms River, I found a local hardware store that stocked them and ran over there pick them up. Having never read up on how exactly to do this, I just prepared the batter, filled the jars, and stuck them in the oven. As the first batch was baking, my mom was reading horror stories on the Internet of glass jars with cupcakes in them shattering in too high of a temperature. Fortunately for me (and everyone within distance of the oven), no shards of glass came flying out. The whole process went relatively smoothly considering I had never done it before.

Once they were baked and cooled, I piped the frosting directly into the jar and added some sprinkles on the vanilla ones. I made a dozen labels to make them "prettier" and more personal. And then I tied them with a ribbon, forged a card in Dan's name (just kidding- He told me what to write), and packed them up to be shipped to Massachusetts.

Today I had my assistant (my mom) take them to the Post Office and mail them because I had to work. I should have known what to expect...That being a mom herself, she would choose the shipping option that got them there for Sunday regardless of how much it cost. When I expressed concern that it was really pricey, she put it this way: "Tell him to suck it up. She's worth more than that." Fortunately there were no complaints from Dan (which is unbelievable if you know him--joking Dan!) about the insane shipping cost.

I feel like pretty much the minute this post publishes, I'm going to be inundated with requests from my friends to mail them cupcakes all over the US. Kim already asked, but being as her address in Costa Rica is something like "50 meters from the Burger King, Liberia, Costa Rica", I don't think I will be able to send them to her any time soon.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I'm starting to sense a theme here this week with my cupcakes...alcohol. Hmm... Tomorrow's Cinco de Mayo and I have an order this weekend that includes 3 dozen margarita cupcakes. Being as I've never tested my margarita recipe before, I felt this was the perfect opportunity. Now I'm going to push these off on my coworkers tomorrow.


After getting out of work late, I ran around Hoboken picking things up for these cupcakes - limes and tequila. I found the tiniest, cutest bottle of Patron and had to have it even though it was twice the cost of Jose Cuervo (but still only $5). Usually I hate tequila (it is my absolute least favorite shot at a bar), but I love the idea of these cupcakes.

Sugars & salt before I mixed them

The cupcake is a lime cake, covered with the tequila lime frosting and rimmed with combination sparkling sugars and course salt. After downing a whole box of Kraft mac & cheese when I got home, I'm not hungry enough to want to eat cupcakes now, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow for an official cupcake review.

Cupcake + Booze = True Cinco de Mayo Love

Strawberry Cupcakes (and Daquiris!)

Unsure of what to bake Wednesday night for a few friends, I was passing Garden of Eden, this amazing specialty grocery store in Hoboken that has the best produce. There was a pile of stacked quarts of strawberries there, as usual, but the price has come down so much since the winter. And the berries looked amazing. I had to make strawberry cupcakes.

It is so hard to find good lighting in my cave of an apartment!

I made these for the first time last year for Morgan & my birthday party, but in mini form. I used the recipe I found from Sprinkles (a popular cupcake chain on the West Coast) on the Martha Stewart website. You can find the recipe here. After making them again this time, I remembered (after the fact, of course...) what modifications I had wanted to make to the recipe after making it in November. The cake comes out very dense and moist, and the frosting is awesome, but really thin. What I should have done (and will hopefully remember to do next time) is whipped at least 1 of the egg whites to fold into the batter to lighten it up (this is a good bet for any fruit recipes-they tend to be heavier than others) and maybe even condensed the strawberry puree into a thicker syrup (this definitely should have been done for the frosting). Those few things aside, these really are one of my favorite cupcake flavors. Plus I can fool myself into thinking they're healthy because they're made with whole fresh fruit.

One interesting thing about these cupcakes is they have a really short shelf life. Usually, when I bake cupcakes, they can stay fresh for many days in one of my cupcake containers. With the strawberry though, after really one or two days, they start leaking. Yep, leaking. It is SO weird. After that time frame, you open the container and find them sitting in a little pile of strawberry/sugary goo. Gross. I'm definitely interested in seeing if this happens when I lighten the batter up.

Yes, they tasted as good as they looked

I had some left over strawberry puree on Thursday night, and picked up more strawberries to make strawberry daquiris for Meghan & Lauren. It's really a toss-up what was better - the cupcake or the daquiri. But, the pairing of the two was amazing!

So happy together...

I <3 Red Velvet

One of my absolute cupcake flavors is red velvet. Prior to last year, I had never even heard of this flavor, but when I was organizing a Valentine's Day dinner party last year, there were these adorable red velvet cupcakes on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens. After reading up on it, I found out that red velvet is a traditional Southern recipe (i.e. the red velvet armadillo groom's cake in Steel Magnolias) and is a hybrid between vanilla and chocolate cake with a lot of red dye. I don't know why red dye, I just know the end result paired with cream cheese frosting is fantastic.

Before adding the dry ingredients, the batter looks like abstract art

I have turned almost everyone I know into red velvet fanatics. It's gotten to the point where if I'm baking cupcakes, everyone is like "these are really good, but where's the red velvet??" I think someone may even currently be in rehab for their red velvet addiction. (Kidding, but Kim did have to flee the country to shake the addiction.)

Cooling cupcakes - Love my new cupcake trivet - Thanks Kathie!!

The worst part about making these is that after I get done mixing them, that area of the kitchen looks like a crime scene, with bright red batter splattered all over the place. I am not a tidy baker (although I'm working on it Mom!), and before these go in the oven, the kitchen is straight out of an episode of CSI.

Murder mystery scene

Purple Cupcakes to Match My New Logo

Last Thursday night I decided to make some cupcakes to give to Lauren, the graphic designer who did my logo, when I met her the next day to get the cd of images. I knew I wanted them to be purple to match the logo, and I had some some purple liners that I absolutely love.

Meghan and I are a bit behind in taking down our Easter
decorations...check out the tablecloth

The baking process itself was sort of a debacle. First I took all the baking stuff to Lauren's because I was going to bake there. When I got there, I realized I had left the majority of things I needed at my apartment. So I made her come back with me and I baked intermittently with watching Grey's Anatomy. By the time I got around to making frosting, it was about 11:00 pm and I realized I had no powdered sugar. At that point, no store was still open, so I had to wake up early Friday morning to go out and get sugar to make the frosting before I went to work. I love baking, but that's not quite the way I want to start a Friday morning. After all that though, they ended up coming out pretty. I had some extra white and yellow royal icing flowers, and topped the lavender frosting with them.