This picture cracked me up. I grew up eating Teddy Grahams so I know exactly how much fun it must have been to set this up.  These cupcakes get extra points from me because, as you’ll note, this was done without any fondant whatsoever.

Also: this picture is posted in celebration of the gorgeous 60 degree weather we’ve been having in Seattle the past few days. I know what you might be saying, “Sixty is hardly bikini weather!” But if that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve never been in Seattle when the sun comes out. And I’m telling you, the minute it hits sixty in the Pacific Northwest, it’s bathing suit time.

(Thanks to Bakerella for her excellent cupcake decorating skills and for the great picture!)

I was wandering by the friendly neighborhood Cupcake Royale a few days ago when I noticed their signboard announcing the newly minted cupcake of the month for March: the Irish Whiskey Maple.  I love maple syrup and was curious to see what a cupcake would taste like with whiskey in the frosting, so I decided to try one out.

First off, the frosting is amazing. Maple syrup + buttercream is  a great idea and pancake houses across the country should be alerted of this delicious combination.  The little kick of alcohol from the whiskey is a nice touch.  If I were a whiskey connoisseur, I suspect I would have a better appreciation for it – it is Jameson we’re talking about, after all.

The cupcake itself was a little disappointing. I admit, some of this is because of my bias against vanilla cake (I’m a chocolate cake girl, myself). But the fact of the matter is, “moist” is not a word that I would use to describe this particular cupcake. Luckily for me, Cupcake Royale is never one to stint on frosting :)

Via Twirlit.com

It appears there’s some confusion as to exactly when we have a holiday to celebrate our favorite frosted treat. According to All Things Cupcake and the National Food Holidays calendar, National Cupcake Day is on December 15th. But according to the Baltimore Sun, Buzzy Bloggers, the Showbiz Gossips Blog and Twirlit, National Cupcake Day was on March 3rd. It looks like the March 3rd movement started on Twirlit when writer Amanda Pendolino declares March 3rd National Cupcake Day “according to…well, my stomach”.

But who’s to gainsay Amanda Pendolino’s stomach?  Isn’t that (and your tastebuds, of course!) the ultimate judge when it comes to all things cupcake?  Also, 365 days is a long time. I think there’s room enough in a year for two National Cupcake Days. Don’t you?

The Great A'Tuin

Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld will recognize the giant space turtle that carries the fictional flat realm and it’s supporting quadruplet of elephants through space.  What we didn’t know was that underneath the turtle was a delicious cosmic cupcake.  Thanks to Kelly’s Cakes and the Space Cupcake Throwdown for this incredible piece of dessert sculpture.

Manly McMancakes (via the Wall Street Journal)

When it comes to the competitive cupcake markets of NYC or Seattle or LA, you really need a niche within a niche, something that makes your own particular cupcakes pop.  This isn’t easy these days since the proliferation of bakeries has meant a proliferation of specialties. But David Arrick of Butch Bakery managed to find one specialty that I’ve never seen tried with cupcakes before: masculine.

After a job abroad fell through, Arrick was looking for his next career move when he drew inspiration from Magnolia Cupcakes. Cupcakes looked to be a wildly successful enterprise. The thing was, he felt like the business was way too girly for him as it was.

“Why did cupcakes need to be magical? They’re not magical for me. Where’s the masculine aesthetic?” Arrick said. “We needed to butch it up, buttercup.” And so Butch Bakery, an online delivery “masculine” cupcakery was born. (from the Wall Street Journal)

So, what exactly does it take to make a manly cupcake? First, no fancifully patterned frosting on top – all of Butch Bakery’s cupcakes have a topper of patterned-chocolate over a straightforward dollop of buttercream.  Next, flavors are named after stereotypically manly things, like Tailgate (caramel cake with a salted caramel swirl filling with vanilla buttercream) and Homerun (peanut butter cake with banana bavarian cream & crumbled bacon).

Personally, I don’t assign gender to my food.  That said, the flavors that Butch Bakery has come up with look inventive, and they’re marketing isn’t just adorable, it’s also successful: after a pre-Valentine’s mention on Daily Candy, BB’s website crashed from too many hits and they’ve been backlogged for weeks ever since.

This cute little guy comes to you courtesy of Clever Cupcakes (via Cupcake Takes the Cake). They weren’t exaggerating about the clever when they named this bakery. The things they can do with fondant are ridiculous.

Chocolate Olive Oil & Blood Orange Cupcakes, Feb./Olive Oil Cupcake Hero!

One issue that cupcakes and cupcake lovers have to perpetually face is that our favorite tasty pastry treat isn’t exactly healthy. But what can you do? One answer that’s been floating around cupcake circles is to use olive oil in place of shortening or butter. While there’s still more than enough sugar to go around (but let’s be honest, we are working with desserts here), olive oil is great for heart health with it being all full of bad-cholesterol-removing monounsaturated fat & delicious antioxidants.

There are a lot of recipes out there, but some of the most interesting & well documented I found via I Heart Cupcakes February [Olive Oil] Cupcake Hero. It looks like there’s not much lost in translation from shortening/butter to olive oil: all the entries look and sound fantastic!

Basil Infused Olive Oil Cupcakes with White Wine

I especially like Cupcake Project’s entry, Basil-Infused Olive Oil Cupcakes with White Wine – that kind of flavor combination in a cupcake sounds intriguing.  Cupcake Project also has a recipe for Lemon & Thyme Olive Oil Cupcakes with Balsamic Vinegar Whipped Cream. I am a big fan of balsamic vinegar, and I can definitely see how the sweet tang of the balsamic would work beautifully with whipped cream.

If these semi-savory recipes don’t sound like your cup of…cupcake, I Heart Cupcake’s February Cupcake Hero gives you plenty more to choose from. Three cheers for this month’s heart-healthier Cupcake Heroes!

Totoro strike again on All Things Cupcake! Thanks to a tutorial made by one of the original Totoro cupcake-makers, Flickr member Chotda, Flickr member Way Opening made her own little Totoro cupcake army. Kawaii and tasty!

Flickr is a constant source of wonder for us here at All Things Cupcake. Bakers and cupcake lovers from all around the world are constantly posting pictures of new and creative cupcake designs and flavors. 

One group of particular interest is Flickr Bake-Off!.  Bake-Off has pictures of some of the most amazing cake and cupcake designs I’ve ever seen; two of my favorite cupcake creations from this group are featured here in this post. They keep the pictures coming by encouraging group members to contact one another and conduct bake-offs via Flickr posted photos.  If you’re feeling competitive and you’re in-between cupcake competitions, this group might be the place for you.

Annie of Frites and Fries brings us these tasty treats, an invention she created for her roommate. Not only does she give us lots of delicious looking pictures, she includes her recipe in her post, an altered version of the butter cake recipe featured in Gourmet in 2008 with Slashfood’s cream cheese frosting. And that wee little cinnamon roll on top just makes it as cute as all get out (yes, Annie has a recipe for that too!). This opens the door to a some other interesting alterations of the base butter cake recipe…crumb cupcakes, anyone?

February isn’t just about presidential federal holidays or your valentine…it’s also about bare-knuckles cupcake smackdowns.  The East Coast brings us the Iron Cupcake Challenge on February 28th at the Tortilla Press Cantina. Open to the amateur and the baking professional, the fifth annual Iron Cupcake Challenge will center (like its namesake) around one special ingredient: chilies.  Cost to participate is $15 for adults and $7 for kids under 12, and the proceeds from this event will go towards earthquake relief in Haiti.

From the left coast we have the third annual Cupcake Challenge on February 20th at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel. Over 20 Southern California cupcakeries will go head to head for the honor of becoming the Cupcake Challenge Champion. Since it’s LA, there’s a celebrity judge panel, but members of the public in attendance at the event also get an equal vote.  20 different cupcakes to sample, $40 at the door – if you have room in your stomach, the math works out in your favor.

Valentine’s Day gift giving can get complicated. There as so many choices: flowers, cupcakes, adorable stuffed animals, a massage at the spa…mmmm, massage at the spa… So which one should you get your sweetie? Ok, after you make sure to get that massage for your significant other (and one for you, too!), I recommend making your life easier by getting two gifts in one: a cupcake bouquet.

Two cupcakeries with notable bouquet showings are Bettie’s Cakes of Saratoga Springs, New York and The Blushing Bakery of Charlotte, North Carolina.  The Blushing Bakery chooses to go with five pink (fitting!) frosting cupcakes arranged in a bucket.  Bettie’s Cakes does a classic dozen red roses in a long florist’s box.  Either way, that’s some fancy frosting work. Too good to eat? Never!

We’ve covered cupcake bath bombs before, but since bath fizzies are SO GREAT (and rather seasonally appropriate), I think it’s high time we wrote about them again.

My neighborhood bath goodies store, Bliss Soaps, carries chocolate, vanilla and strawberry cupcake bath fizzies with bubble bath frosting (cupcake fizzie lovers who live outside Seattle, never fear – follow the link to order online). I really like Bliss because all their products are hand-made from all-natural, high quality ingredients. Maybe not good quite enough to eat, but certainly much better for you and your skin than the run of the mill mass-produced bath product.  Also, how can you feel bad supporting a small business in times like these?

Valentine’s Day is a holiday for lovers. So what the heck are you supposed to if you’re single?  Cakelab of NYC has a solution: their Sourpuss Cupcake Pack. Instead of the usual romantic sentiments, the Sourpuss pack features conversation dot cupcakes with messages like “H8 You”, “Let it go”, and “WTF”.  You can also drown your sorrows in the accompanying Sourpuss pack flavors of banana split, chocolate chip cookie dough and black bottom.

Cakelab is not one to drive off customers – they’ve got a Sweetheart pack too, for those who have them :) This assortment comes with more conventionally messaged champagne-flavored conversation dots as well as red velvet, chocolate turtle, and chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes.

I really appreciate Cakelab’s approach to cupcakes for the upcoming heart-shaped holiday. They’re willing to be typically adorable and inventively bitter, thus capturing both sides of the Valentine’s Day market.

You’ve seen it here at All Things Cupcake, you’ve seen it everywhere:  the  pink and red and heart-shaped wave has come and it’s sweeping up our favorite little confection in its wake.  Red Velvet cupcakes are enjoying a seasonal bump in popularity (no surprise there) as cupcakeries across the nation make a run on flavors in the right color range. Ex-pat bakery Little Miss Cupcake is taking the trend to Paris with their special Valentine’s flavors La Vie En Rose, Linger, & Go All The Way.  In my own hometown, Cupcake Royale just came out with this year’s version of the Deathcake Royale,  a chocolate-packed supercake that’s only available for two weeks per annum right before Valentine’s Day.

This is just a proverbial taste of what is to come.  All Things Cupcake is here to bring you daily coverage on the latest in Valentine’s Day themed-cupcakes (and cupcake shaped items!).

I stand amazed. These cupcakes are little cartoon-y works of art. Works of art that get special points for the cool Futurama reference and the fact that they are delicious (at least, that’s what their creator Alicia Policia claims, and far be it from me to gainsay the words of such an artiste).

Ingredients used: homemade vanilla cupcake base (made from scratch), buttercream icing brains with a touch of grenadine, and gum paste slugs with royal icing eyes and flower stamen attenae. Neat!

At my place of employment, we have a two little machines known as MakerBot Cupcake CNCs (I think the name comes from how the inventor of the Cupcake CNC originally wanted to make a frosting extruder).  These adorably named bots can print small 3D shapes out of plastic.  It didn’t take much time for the crafter-types who use a machine like this to put together a program (or two) that lets the Cupcake CNC print out cupcakes.  Out of plastic, mind you, but still cute little cupcakes.

Just recently, I heard about 3D bioprinters that can print basic organic tissue, technology that can hopefully someday be used to print full organs.  I also know that the folks at MakerBot Industries have been tirelessly working to create a fully functional frostruder, and may have in fact succeeded. What’s next in the world of 3D printing?  Carbo-printers? Printcakes? A girl can dream…

Red Velvet is officially the cupcake flavor of the hour.  It’s been mentioned everywhere this week, including right here on All Things Cupcake. Personally, I suspect it has something to do with a certain romantic holiday on the horizon, a suspicion that is upheld by a recent Google image search that shows almost every red velvet cupcake accompanied by little heart decorations. But I should give credit where credit is due: the deliciousness of vanilla cake with a kiss of cocoa and topped with buttercream plus the dramatic presentation of red cake and white frosting makes red velvet cake (and cupcake!) a classic.

I think cupcakes are pretty great. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing for All Things Cupcake, right?  But it takes something special for me to bestow an “OMFGBBQ CUTECAKES!” award.  CakeSpy has it…CakeSpy, in fact, takes the cutecake.

I first discovered CakeSpy a few years ago at I Heart Rummage, a local artist swapmeet that goes on every other month at Chop Suey (Capitol Hill, Seattle).  I stood at the booth for at least five minutes paralyzed and making cute noises over freakin’ adorable drawings of wee little cupcakes living their little cupcake lives: checking the interwebs at a coffeeshop, falling in love, and running from zombies.  It made my week.

Turns out that CakeSpy (aka artist and writer Jessie Oleson) not only does prints of the wee lives of cupcakes, she also have a blog and plenty more merch. I mean really – what says awesome like a hip cupcakes and unicorns tee in the closet, a cupcakes and unicorn checkbook in your purse and teeny-beeny cupcake and unicorn magnets on the fridge?

As I was walking past some storefronts this afternoon, I noticed something I had never seen before: a cupcake calendar.  My boyfriend confirmed that while this was the first year he had seen it too, the Hello, Cupcake! calendar is in stores all over town. It’s sort of a companion to the Hello, Cupcake (Irresistably Playful Creations Anyone Can Make) book, being as it’s made by the same folks out of their favorite illustrations from the book.  From the pictures on their website (the little doggiecakes are the on front cover of the calendar), it looks like a darn cute way of keeping track of the days as well as a serving as a muse for the creative in the kitchen.

In my search for quality cupcake news, I’m keep seeing one word: trendy.  As with every trend, two questions come to mind:”When will the bubble burst?” and “Is all this hoopla a good thing?”

Though cupcakes have moved past the “indy cool” stage, the trend is only just going mainstream and cupcakeries are still popping up all across the country.  You’d think this would be a bonanza for cupcake fans, but in reality it’s a mixed bag.

At All Things Cupcake you can see the best side of this trend: great recipes, lots of creative ideas, and many entrepreneurs making a go of it, even in a poor economy. However, both Carmelized OpiNIONS and Kat with a K have posts this week about the downside of the cupcake bubble: overpriced product, inferior quality, and the annoying fact that cupcake have been co-opted for the purposes of conspicuous consumption.

The good thing is that all trends pass. The bursting of the cupcake bubble , whenever it happens, will have the effect of winnowing out cupcakeries- while many will go out of business, those with the best recipes and sound business plans will survive.   In the meantime, I hope that talented bakers everywhere will use this opportunity to raise some capital and that cupcake hobbyists will have a lot of fun reading all the press.

Love My Cake of Upper Montclair, NJ starts with all the necessary ingredients for a good cupcake establishment: family recipes, rich and delicious ingredients, and of course, a deep and lasting love of cupcakes.  Love My Cake also has what it takes to go from good to local icon status: panache.  Owner Sonya Newton has a flair not only for baking, but also for the creation of chic, and it shows in Love My Cake’s fashionably boutique design, stylish cupcakes and vintage apron collection.

Speaking of chic and unique – one of Love My Cake’s specialities is their Cupcake In A Jar. I’ve heard of mason jar crumbles before, and even mason jar pies, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a cupcake in a mason jar.  It sounds like we’ve discovered the latest fashion in baked goods –  are cookies next?

Cupcakes are versatile things. They’re tasty, portable, come in many flavors, have been known to create jobs, and also happen to be really good for fundraising.  Emma Klassen of Kelowna, BC made the right choice when she decided to make 300 gourmet cupcakes to exchange for donations to the Canadian Foundation for the Children of Haiti.

Klassen put together this Saturday’s Sweet Exchange to collect money and supplies for the Haiti Home for Children, an orphanage and school run by the CFCH. Though the orphanage’s buildings have been damaged, the children and caretakers were not hurt in the earthquake and are presently living in the orphanage’s courtyard.

While the Sweet Exchange is over,  the Haiti Home for Children still needs your help. You can send donations to the CFCH at:

The Canadian Foundation for the Children of Haiti
11400 Seafield Crescent
Richmond, B.C. Canada. V7A 3J2

(CFCH is a registered Canadian charity. CRA Business No. 89000 4591 RR0001. Donations qualify for CIDA’s matching grant program.  Tax receipts will be issued for donations over $20)

As the recession stretches on and jobs stay hard to find, more people are turning to self-employment to pay the bills.   The name of the game is to use your pre-existing skills in a venture with a low start-up cost.  Like, say, using your many years of cupcake-baking experience to start a business selling cupcakes.

Carrie Spindler of Hudson County, New Jersey did just that when she started GoodieBox Bakeshop.  After losing her job, Spindler decided to take the leap and put her fifteen years of baking experience to entrepreneurial use. Spindler started her business online and created a dedicated following (especially for her signature red velvet cupcakes) before moving into her own retail space.

Mini Empire Bakery of Seattle, Washington has much the same business plan. Christy Beaver and Morgan Greenseth started their cupcakes and more concern online this last December and have just started selling their goods in local cafes as well.  Just as Spindler did with GoodieBox, Beaver and Greenseth plan on building a following before setting up a brick and mortar shop.

Besides the relative ease and low-cost of starting up an online catering company, these cupcake entrepreneurs have one more thing on their side: the robustness of the small luxuries market. While many of us can no longer afford big luxuries,  we still have money for little luxuries like cupcakes. Thus cupcake-making is a potential source of jobs as well as sweetness, even in tough economic times like these.

Cupcake Royale's "cupcake fit for The King"

Seattle is a big cupcake town, so it’s no surprise that new styles and flavors show up all the time. Nor is it too surprising to have a flavor named after a celebrity. But Elvis’ famous favorite snack, the banana and peanut butter sandwich, transformed into a cupcake in celebration of The King’s 75th birthday? That’s original. And that’s the Velvet Elvis, Cupcake Royale‘s newest creation and present cupcake of the month.

I stopped by Cupcake Royale’s Capitol Hill location to try a bite-sized version of the banana bread cupcake with peanut butter and chocolate frosting a few days ago. It was sweet, but also rich, with a depth of flavor that is often lacking in cupcakes. If you’re a cupcake fan swinging through Emerald City, I recommend giving it a try – it’s well worth the stop.