The November 2010 catalog for J.Crew’s kid line, Crew Cuts, not only features kids in ridiculously stylish clothes but also kids with a sweet tooth! There are additional images on the Crew Cuts site where kids and cupcakes conform to spell out the letters of Crew Cuts (hop over to the site if you’re not sure what I mean)!

J.Crew must really love cupcakes since in August we shared with you images from The Romantics photo shoot where the cast enjoyed cupcakes.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Today I thought I would bring you three great last minute Halloween Cupcake ideas!  You may have heard of it already, but Zilly Rosen recently released her book Zombie Cupcakes in the UK.  It is coming to America soon, but the best news is that you don’t have to wait as Made for Moms features three ideas complete with recipe and decoration directions!  There are the Zombie Rising Chocolate Mud Cakes, the Brain Food Honey Cupcakes and last but not least the Bludgeon to Survive Pumpkin Cupcakes.  Check out each of them by clicking on the links.

My favorite?  I can’t go past the Bludgeon to Survive cupcakes shown here, especially as you need to make crowbars, baseball bats and shovels!

But alas, I have already made my cupcakes for this year, zombies with with chocolate ganache filling!  Yummy!

Oh how I love vintage things and when they involves cupcakes my heart just goes pitter-patter. I also happen to love Etsy and jewelry so this find was a no brain-er for me.

I found this great Vintage Cupcake Necklace at Chocolate Silver Designs Etsy Shop.  You can even choose the color freshwater pearl you want.

What is your favorite piece of cupcake jewelry you own?

Sweet Scarecrow Cupcake

Although this year I didn’t carve a pumpkin, if I had I know I would have attempted to carve it into a cupcake! Baking Bites did just that my carving a cupcake Jack-O-Lantern which has been titled, “I vant a cupcake.” On the website area  few tips for anyone that wants to attempt carving their pumpkin into a cupcake!

On November the 6th the first Wine & Cupcake Bar in Baltimore will be opened.  The venture is a collaboration of Emily’s Desserts and Pizzazz Tuscan Grille which will see the restaurant transformed into a wine and cupcake bar on Friday and Saturday nights.

But do wine and cupcakes really go together?

Don’t get me wrong, I love both, but I cannot think of a time when I have actually had them together.  Even when I eat out, I will always finish my wine with the main meal before commencing on dessert, and if I do drink with dessert it is usually a port or something sweet, like the aptly named ‘dessert wine’.

But then I could be wrong, I sometimes am (just don’t tell my kids), and wine and cupcakes could be perfect.

For more information, to get an invite to the grand opening, or to browse the wine and cupcake pairing menu, see Emily’s Desserts here.  If you do happen to go and try some of these wines and cupcakes, let me know!  I would love to hear how it goes!

The Disney Store knows little girls love three things, pink, cupcakes, and minnie mouse.  When you combine all three you get Cupcake Minnie Mouse underwear! The five pack of 100% cotton underwear which, costs $16.50, is available in two sizes, 2/3 or 4/5

Hotel Chocolat is one of the largest chocolate companies in the United Kingdom.  In addition to offering their chocolate in the UK, they serve the US!  Hotel Chocolat offers a wide variety of Christmas gifts which are great for the upcoming holiday season.

ATC was sent a large selection of chocolates to review but sadly when the giant box of chocolate, which would excite anyone with a sweet tooth, arrived it was melted due to issues with shipping.  Although some chocolate  had been melted beyond edibility, a portion of the chocolates remained intact enough to sample. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay I’m a little over the traditional round cupcake, I’m looking for something interesting, where are our square cupcakes, our star cupcakes, our oval and rhombus cupcakes?  Lets have diamonds and fleur de lys! We have giant, and we have mini, but lets see some more variety in the shape and design!

I guess the thing that is limiting is that the cupcake pan or muffin pan as it is more commonly known has round circles and although you may be able to find one that differs, you just can’t find the liners which means lots of greasing the pan in a desperate hope that your cupcakes will come out cleanly.  So what is the solution?

Simply Caked's Choc Fudge and Peanut Butter Frosted Cupcakes

Well I found one cool new product the other day on the Simply Caked blog, okay, so it is still slightly a circle, but I commend the design for a few key reasons.  It is different, with an interesting thick wobble edge, but also the liners are strong enough that you don’t need your pan!

Thats great, so you can create your cupcakes in a cool new shape.  If I had these I would make toad in the hole cupcakes – I think it is the wobble edge that gives me the idea of jelly molds and water!  So imagine, bright blue water cupcakes, frosted with a blue butter cream and a chocolate frog in the centre.  It is like a jelly toad in the hole only better, because it is cupcake!

Simply Caked didn’t go a watery theme, instead they went with a chocolate fudge and peanut butter frosting.  They look sooo yummy!  You can get these cups from ATC Sponsor Simply Caked here.  If you make some interesting cupcakes out of these, definitely let us know!

Brought to you by jewelry artist, Kristin Hipple, these adorable pink cupcake earrings are available from Virtuous Adornment through Handmade Selling for only $10. And this charm bracelet is only $15!  Kristin also does custom orders, so let your imagination run wild!

The latest issue of the Hello, Cupcake What’s News letter features a Bootiful Mummy Cupcakes! The cupcakes which are by the creators of the Hello, Cupcake and What’s New Cupcake Cookbooks, have marshmallows hidden under red fruit roll-ups which looks like blood under the melted frosting.  Gory, I know but it’s Halloween after all! For tips on how to make the mummy visit the candy corner and for help with the spider webs seen in the image below check out the technique of the month and for directions look below!

Read the rest of this entry »

Our cupcake lanyard winner is Fiona!  Check out her sweet comment: 

 Fionna
October 18th, 2010 at 7:45 am
I loved the cupcake patterned crayon roll up! It’s so cute and practical. I loved the minky/stroller blanket but would love to see it in the cupcake pattern. I was also thinking that a collar/leash set in the cupcake pattern would be nice. Thanks for this! She’s got a great shop.

Congratulations! Please send your mailing address to [email protected].   Special thanks to SewCosmic for sponsoring this week’s giveaway.

In April we shared with you DIY Cupcakes in a Jar, now as if anyone would need more then one reason to eat a cupcake from a jar, Daily Candy has given us 10 delicious reasons to eat cupcakes from a jar. Number 5 was something I had not realized, which is how long cupcakes in a jar can be stored (12 days in the refrigerator)!

If you are completely done with all the traditional Halloween cupcakes, of ghosts, witches and pumpkins and are looking for something very different, why not take your inspiration from PepsiNZ and create horror movie cupcakes!

She went all out creating heaps of different cupcakes, but you could choose your favorite couple and go with a theme!  I particularly love this one here!

You can see all the horror movie cupcakes on her website Random Crap here.

Vol.25 created this downloadable freebie for Build Your Own Cupcakes.  There are a total of 10 pages to print which include, a cover page, the recipe, 8 different cupcakes, 8 different liners, 8 different frostings, 11 different cupcake toppers, and a sheet of name tags for your little baker(s).  Jessica, creator of this fun template, suggests printing your cupcakes on sticker paper which is a great idea!

I have never seen a paper disposable single cupcake stand! The is really cool. You could dress it up with some sparkles or ribbon. This would be perfect for a younger child’s birthday party.

I found these Paper Cupcake Stands at Paper Source.

Here is another few great items from Paper Source.

Cupcake Circle Custom Stamp

2011 Cupcake Calendar

  Happy Fall Sunday cupcake fans!  Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter our cupcake lanyard giveaway sponsored by Etsy crafter  SewCosmic.   Please click here to enter.

I’m pretty sure everyone that reads this blog has cupcakes on the brain, at least that’s what I thought when I saw this image.  Dr. Morvund is being held by a monster who’s brain has been mistakenly replaced with a cupcake.

If you are, then taking a quick trip across to the Cupcake Cauldron might be the answer for you.  Ashley’s blog is a mix of her current creations with a few great cupcake recipes thrown into the cauldron so to speak!  But it is Halloween that she does best, and here are two of her creations.

These show how much magic you can create by just adding a topper!  Of course the cupcake flavor choice is all important as well.  Ashley has used vanilla cake with fudge frosting for Pumpkin and for Skull she used a devil’s food cake with a mini peanut butter cup on the inside and peanut butter frosting on top.

Can’t believe Halloween is now just over a week away!

Cupcakes go with everything, including the theatre.  Sylvia is a comedic play about a dog and the quarrelsome couple who adopts her.  It is written by A.R. Gurney and was first performed in 1995 at the Manhattan Theatre Club.  Sarah Jessica Parker played the part of Sylvia.  That’s right — the dog. 

The play is still popular in theatres all over the country, and Mariel, an ATC reader, just submitted this fabulous photo of her Sylvia cupcakes, which she made to celebrate a production near her!

She cut the pawprints out of colored gumpaste, then rolled white gumpaste into little balls, which she flattened and attached with royal icing.  To make the “dogtags,” she tied scrapbook adornments into a bow, and then cut one side of the bow!  Isn’t she clever?   Thanks for sharing, Mariel!

Although it’s no longer available online, some Kohl’s stores still have the Halloween Cupcake Cookie Jar in stock. Be sure to check your local Kohl’s store soon before they are gone; keep in mind, Halloween is a little over a week away and the cookie jar is on sale!

With all the Halloween cupcakes and creations, I was cruising one of my new favorite blog’s Bake Happy when I stumbled onto the funniest of posts, which featured, very literally, ‘wicked cupcakes’.

I thought these were fantastic fun, as is her open letter, and it is so refreshing to see a poster cover of something other than the front page of the first Twilight book (not that I don’t like Twilight! lol).

Anyway, Aikko’s blog is well worth a look, she has some fantastic cupcake designs!

Tratella has a beautiful collection of products related to food and paper.  One item cupcake fans will like is the Cupcake Love Tea Towel.  The tea towel with a pink and brown screen printed cupcake image on a white 100% cotton towel is available from the website for $14.00.

NPR frequently discusses cupcakes, for instance they warned us that macaroons were going to replace the cupcake as the top dessert and explained that cupcakes are so popular because we are in a cupcake bubble. Now NPR shares with how to have your (less sinful) cupcake and enjoy it, too.  This article, unlike the previous two starts off on a positive not saying that the cupcake craze is not going away (yay!).  The downfall to the cupcake trend is that as a society we are realizing we need to be more health-conscious.  So Eve Turow has created several healthy cupcake recipes which allow us to still treat ourselves but watch the calories.  Since I have a few bananas on the verge of going bad, I think I might try the Banana Cupcake with Chocolate Frosting but be sure to read the full article for all the cupcake recipes.

Today is a good day to be a Texan!  Starting today through October 29th, Luby’s gourmet Halloween cupcakes will be available for preorder at Luby’s locations throughout Texas and at Luby’s website.  (Sorry, cupcakes will not be shipped and must be picked up!) 

A half-dozen homemade cupcakes costs $3.99.  The cupcakes are available in double chocolate and yellow cake with vanilla cream frosting.  Luby’s promises “spooky accents.” Orders need to be placed 48 hours in advance.

“Luby’s gourmet cupcakes are the best in Texas,” said Chris Pappas, CEO of Luby’s, Inc.

You can also visit Luby’s on Facebook.