Cupcakes presented art gallery style is how I would describe MORE cupcakerie in Chicago. Smoother-than-silk frostings. Sculpted icings. Chocolate curls as tight as Shirley Temple’s.
And the flavors? MORE’s list of cupcakes includes a blackberry, salted caramel, and chocolate mint (pictured).
I’m thinking Chicago Museum of Art, stroll along the lakefront, and some downtown deep dish pizza, followed by MORE, MORE, MORE.
I think we can all agree that there is no better way to spend New Years Day than eating and baking cupcakes! If you agree with me, than I have found a great recipe for you to try from the blog La Mia Vita Dolce.
These look so fabulous and they are visualually stunning!
Just in the nick of time, Magnolia Bakery now offers a monthly cupcake club with nationwide shipping. Pre-orders are being taken and shipping begins on January 2 with caramel cupcakes, followed by a different cupcake each month.
So if you find yourself in a line that’s too long for someone who is too hard to please, how about putting at least yourself in the spirit? And while you’re placing your order, why not order Magnolia Bakery’s “Truffled Chocolate Cupcake.”
I know what I’m going to click on as soon as I click on “publish!”
Christmas stollen is such a favorite food at the holidays, who can resist the notion of converting it into a cupcake? 
Here’s one recipe for Christmas stollen cupakes from The Cupcake Project.
Raisins, dried cranberries, dried currents, dried cherries…we’ll let that negate the bit of pleasure we’ll take from a bit of cherry liqueur and brandy. And, of course, we’ll only pour those into the recipe, won’t we?
Just in case you have some cherry liqueur left over, here’s a companion recipe for Black Forest Cupcakes. Well, if I’m on that theme, let’s be sure to have on hand a recipe for White Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes.
Now there’s a cupcake trio that deserves a Ho-Ho-Ho!
This is it. Your chance to enter Ghirardelli fame and Facebook feature.
Recipe for your success:
1 – “Like” the Ghirardelli page on Facebook.
2 – Fill in your basic information, upload your recipe, and upload your mouth-watering photograph.
3 – Win!
Perhaps we could do a group ATC entry?
I’d like to know of anyone’s opinion on baking with Ghirardelli and whether you find the chocolate richer, softer, and needing more cocoa powder to balance for spreading and shaping? What about the Ghirardelli Intense Dark? And the Ghirardelli white that I nibbled at while baking with it last week – do you do that too? Are we shorting our batches or should we just write them as 10 oz broken into small bits with remaining 2 oz for the cook!
As I said in my bio (albeit jokingly at the time), I thought my spot with ATC might entice my parents to get into the act. Sure enough, while visiting them, my mother and I went out on a cupcake expedition. In Ridgewood, NJ, we found a local cupcakerie with flavors to spare.
Cupcakes by Carousel is on Main St. in Ridgewood, next to the movie theater.
The product line starts with “Classic White/Chocolate with Fudge” and “Red Velvet” and moves on to “Vanilla Dirt Worm” and “Chocolate Pretzel.” “Pink Marshmallow Snowball” and “Turtle” looked almost too pretty to eat.
The winners in our taste selection included “Key Lime Pie,” which my mother said included candied lime, made by taking lime zest and packing it in sugar (the moisture makes the sugar adhere to begin with until it soaks in).
Dad had the gluten free vanilla cupcake with vanilla icing and gave it a thumbs up. This is a new product line for Cupcakes by Carousel, and, from pans used only for gluten free to individual cupcake holders for gluten free, it’s just the recipe for those with celiac disease.
I might just be going home to visit my parents again…soon!
Rosewater. A near completely forgotten about ingredient, except that I was daydreaming of France and how often the bakeries feature edible flowers.
So, a petit selection of the loveliest of the rosewater cupcake recipes I could find.
How about Organic White Chocolate Rosewater Cupcakes? Yum. The cupcake includes the white chocolate and coconut milk. The frosting is a meringue buttercream with 3T of rosewater.
Then, let’s get a little carried away with Persian Love Cupcakes. Candied rose petals on top. Lemon peel and cardamon seeds within. A frosting with rosewater, saffron threads, and pistachios. C’est l’amour!
Just in case you don’t have rosewater handy, here’s a recipe to make your own rosewater at home. Note that every type of rose creates a different rose water, naturally, so this, too, becomes a lovely opportunity to play in the kitchen. From one batch of cupcakes to the next, using a different rose’s water will create a different flavor.
Living in Upstate New York this time of year, we’re blessed with an abundance of fruits, like raspberries and blueberries.
Inspired, I paraded through the Internet to locate recipes that have me headed straight for fresh picking tomorrow morning early so that I can head to the kitchen.
How about Raspberry Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream Frosting? Wow! But with only 4T of champagne in the frosting recipe…I better pass along my personal note that you can toss a few fresh raspberries into a flute of champagne et voila! It’s time to have over your girlfriends in spades.
For the blueberries…did you know that freezing fresh blueberries for a few hours will stop them from sinking in the cupcake batter while baking?
Another idea is to dip them in flour, also to prevent sinking. I settled on Chocolate Blueberry Cupcakes with a recipe calling for both bitter and sweet chocolates, goat cheese, and cinnamon. Who needs a partner with this much comfort in a cup?
Enjoy the fresh pickings!
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!”
More in my week-long series, using foreign blogs for summer cupcake ideas. Yesterday, we were speaking Spanish for super cute, beach umbrella cupcakes. Today, we’re working in Dutch to figure out baking cupcakes in sea shells!
Sea Shell Cupcakes
Even if you’re land-locked in South Dakota, you can find sea shells for this recipe at cooking shops. Primarily used for dishes like Coquilles Saint-Jacques, leave it to Carola Damen in Boskoop, Netherlands to think to use sea shells in lieu of cupcake wrappers!
And, take note that Carola starts the cupcake by placing an edible “pearl” under the cupcake batter and ends with chocolate sea shell decorations on top. Carola makes use of edible body paint to achieve her silvers and golds.
If anyone speaks Dutch and would care to help us understand even more about the recipe, please let us know.
Today, my friend Beth and I tried a little market research on cupcakes, going to Dollop, a local cupcakery. A novel concept: at Dollop, you pick your cupcake, your filling, your frosting, and your topping, and the cupcake is put together before your eyes.
Ice Cream & Cupcakes!
Beth asked for a chocolate cupcake with mint frosting and York Peppermint Patty topping.
I asked for a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting with dark chocolate bits as topping.
On the side? That’s mint chocolate chip ice cream and mocha chip ice cream from our favorite local, Pittsford Dairy Farms. All organic, Pittsford Farms Dairy uses milk and cream from their cows to make their ice cream. The perfect accompaniment!
Do you have cupcake shops like this near you and what do you choose when you go there?
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcake
Let’s chat on the subject of peanut butter cupcakes, like this lovely one from the Baker Street Bakery.
Smooth or chunky?
I have never met a peanut butter cupcake made with chunky peanut butter. Have you?
Here’s a sampling of what I could find. Some recipes create a peanut butter cupcake base and go so far as to say “smooth.” Other recipes put the peanut butter in the frosting and indicate “creamy.” Going over the top is a recipe that not only uses peanut butter, it also uses Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
And I did manage to find one recipe that specified “creamy or chunky.”
"Strawberry Lime Daiquiri"
Ooooh! About three weeks into blogging for this site, I finally have my Facebook and Twitter sufficiently loaded with cupcakeries that I’ve scored these yummy photographs from the Little Cake Bakery in Atlanta, Georgia. These were just uploaded into Facebook in a new album titled “Test Kitchen.”
Who wants to report live on location to our cupcake community whether these cupcakes taste as good as they look and sound?
"Chocolate Curry with Coconut"
"Chocolate Ginger Toffee"
Hostess Snack Cakes. Gotta love their cupcakes. Golden. Chocolate. Orange. Fondant-y icing. Seven, white squiggles down the middle. Vanilla creme frosting in the middle. Wrapped in plastic. Mass producted.
Hostess is big business. Hostess Brands, which owns Hostess Snack Cakes, employs 21,000 people in 39 bakeries in 41 states across the U.S.A. (In case you’re interested: they’re hiring.)
Hostess is still celebrating its February 2011 launch of the strawberry cupcake, so it’s not too late for you to vote for your favorite Hostess cupcake and get a chance to win $25,000 and other, daily prizes.
According to the Hostess Director of Marketing, “Hostess sets the standard for timeless treats that are loved from generation to generation.” So just how many Hostess cupcakes do Americans eat every year? 600,000,000. And it’s Memphis, Tennessee that’s the Hostess cupcake eating capital of the Hostess empire.
If you are looking for a seriously rich and decadently good cupcake, then this one from Kevin & Amanda is for you. But you do really need to have a seriously sweet tooth… it is certainly not for the faint hearted!
Rich, moist and amazingly rich the recipe for these Brownie Batter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes with Outrageously Rich Chocolate Indulgence Frosting, click here!