Wilton has some amazing new cupcake products and A.C. Moore wants to introduce you to them this weekend! Stop by one of their many stores on Saturday, February 16th from 1-3 and see free demonstrations of the new products.  FYI- if you sign up for A.C. Moore’s emails, they send you free coupons every week!

If you are anything like me, you love to try new recipes but worry that recipes found are the internet may not be high quality.   Never fear, All Recipes is here! Check out this recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes. It has 4 1/2 stars out of 5 and has been review by 870 bakers! I love reading the reviews and seeing how some people modify the recipes for dietary concerns and taste preferences. Sounds like a good one to try out this weekend!

You slave all day to make the perfect chocolate cupcakes, and then when they come out of the oven, your white wrappers have turned to an unappetizing shade of brown. Or worse, you spend a bunch of money on Elmo cupcake wrappers for your kid’s birthday party, but when they come out of the oven, you can’t see Elmo. All you can see is the color of the cupcake. Because of these tragedies, I’ve been using foil cupcake wrappers for any cupcakes that will leave the house. And I’ve just discovered a pretty snazzy version of foil wrappers–Wilton Color Cups. There are many cool patterns to choose from, and they work! The wrappers come out of the oven just as pretty as they went in. I tested them out!

With so many recipes available to us through the internet, cookbooks, and magazines, sometimes I have a difficult time choosing the best recipe.  I want the recipe that will give me the best looking and tasting cupcakes but not all cupcake recipes are the same.  I found this yellow cake comparison on The Way The Cookie Crumbles website.  The blog post compares three yellow cake recipes from Cooks Illustrated, Martha Stewart, and Smitten Kitchen to see which is the best.  The Cooks Illustrated recipe was the winner, for the recipe and to read more about the comparison check out The Way The Cookie Crumbles.  There’s also a chocolate frosting comparison if you need help choosing a frosting for your cupcakes!

I spent way too much time this morning on a colossal cupcake fail. I was trying to do the Wilton Rose, but all I got were wilted dandelions. Finally, I gave up and went to youtube for some help. Probably should have done that before I frosted two dozen cupcakes. Sigh. Anyway, I found this great video, though I had to watch it in slow motion. One of my problems was the consistency of my frosting. Too stiff won’t work. Neither will too soft. Of course, if you’re smart enough to use premade decorating frosting, then you don’t need to worry about that! So, here’s your professional tutorial!

Love fudge?  Been eating hot fudge sundaes?  How about cooling down while heating up some “Lava Fudge Cupcakes” in your kitchen?

Lava Fudge Cupcake

Georgetown Cupcake’s Sophie has a 2-minute video, courtesy of The Learning Channel, claiming to “reveal the secrets behind their famous Lava Fudge cupcake.”

While she doesn’t provide the recipe, Sophie does provide several excellent tips, from using apple corers to hollow out cupcakes before pouring in the fudge, to easy-pour tops for filling and decorating.

So I dug around the Internet at bit…and found the Georgetown Cupcakes recipe for their chocolate cupcake with vanilla cream cheese frostings with variations!  Add your own fudge and, “By George!  I think we’ve got it!”

I recently discovered Fantasy Cupcakes on line, a lovely UK bakery that won a gold heart prize in the North West Fine Foods Awards, beating out 400 entries in the general foods competition.

Vegan Mudpie Cupcake

So I e-mailed Fantasy Cupcakes to ask for their secrets at taking a vegan cupcake into the mainstream.  The owner, Melinda, thought that the bitterness of the chocolate was the primary flavor of the cake and that it lingered on the palate.

Here’s a list of Melinda’s tips for vegan mud pie cupcakes:

• Use a little apple cider vinegar in the sponge batter instead of soya milk curdled with vinegar;
• Mix the wet ingredients together and fold in the dry ones; and,
• For the frosting, melt rich, dark chocolate mixed with soya cream, leave it to set, beat in a little powdered sugar until a firm(ish) spreading consistency is reached, spread onto the cupcake in a dome shape with a small palate knife, and dust with a good quality cocoa.

Melinda said the frosting recipe was an adaptation from a recipe for a vegan chocolate torte which was a family favorite for years.

For my two pence, I’d recommend using Cadbury’s cocoa powder.  It’s make in the UK and has more bite to it than its US Hershey counterpart.