Cakespy Cupcake Art Reception In Seattle and Online Cupcake Holiday Cards

Cakespy Cuppie artwork on Trophy Cupcakes cupcakes - via Flickr

From the Facebook invite:

Jessie Oleson (Cakespy) Artist Reception
Saturday, December 5, 2009, 6 pm - 8 pm
Trophy Cupcakes
The Wallingford Center
1815 N. 45th St.
Seattle, WA

Join us in welcoming back Jessie Oleson (aka Cakespy!), our December artist. Jessie's show featuring cupcakes hanging out all over Seattle was our most popular ever...so of course we had to invite her back!

Jessie is a triple threat: an illustrator, writer, and baker. These interests intersect oh-so-sweetly on her site, CakeSpy.com, a "dessert detective agency" where she reports on all things sweet, including bakery news, recipes, and baking lore, all accompanied by sweet illustrations. This show at Trophy Cupcakes is a collection of artwork featured on the site as well as several new original pieces. Though the artwork is very sweet, upon further inspection you'll find it sometimes has edgy little details (cupcakes eating cake, anyone?), making these paintings not only sweet additions to the home but engaging conversation pieces as well! More of her work can be found at cakespyshop.com

Reception from 6-8, bubbles and cupcakes will be served!

And check out the holiday card Jessie Oleson is selling this year:





There's a set of 10 cards (shown above) available for $12 - click for more information but here's the basics:

-Cuppie receiving a sweet gift from a robot! (inner greeting: "Sweet Holiday Wishes")
-Cuppie being chased by Zombie Santa and Elves (inner greeting: "Hope your Holidays are an absolute scream")
-Cuppie eying Santa's cookies (inner greeting "Sweet Holiday Wishes")
-Two Cupcakes with a Candy Cane Heart (inner greeting "Sweet Holiday Wishes")
-Various baked goods surrounding a Christmas tree (inner greeting "Season's Sweetings!")

And some other cards - see Cakespyshop.com for more cupcake art to purchase (they make great holiday gifts!) and Cakespy.com for cupcake and other recipes, photos and news.

Still loving our logo cupcakes from Chicago's Swirlz Cucpakes

photo by Chicago bakery Swirlz Cupcakes on Flickr

I've been so insanely busy since September, it's hard to believe that that's when I was running madly around Chicago. I "only" visited six bakeries - I say only because there are so many more, I must go back next year. But these Cupcakes Take the Cake logo cupcakes that Swirlz Cupcakes were selling were one of my favorite things I've seen all year.

See our video interview with Swirlz Head Pastry Chef Beth Welch and an older Q&A with the owners of Swirlz

Layers Cupcakes Los Angeles cupcake delivery company interview

Ebony Davis of Los Angeles cupcake delivery company Layers Cupcakes delivered to me (free) on Saturday, and I interviewed her about what Layers is all about. More on Layers Cupcakes later this week but for now, the interview and the basics. Love that they have a whole tea-infused cupcake line.



They also do mail order cupcakes across the United States.

Find out more:

@LayersCupcakes (Twitter)

Facebook

Layers Cupcakes

310-916-3655 (Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 9-6)

Cyber Monday! Check Out Our Advertisers

Luckily one of the reasons we are able to organize monthly meetups, do giveaways and blog regularly is because of our advertisers who sponsor Cupcakes Take The Cake. These are all small businesses who have products that appeal to our readers.

Check out their sites today while you are shopping online on Cyber Monday.

A Cupcakery
Carolyn's Kitchen Aprons
Cup-a-Cake Cupcake Containers
Cupcake Collars
Cupcake Swirl
Dazzle and Chunk Cupcake Jewelry
Tiny Prints Stationery

Christmas tree cupcakes, plus snowflakes and more in Spotlight on Extreme Cupcakes

Today's Flickr spotlight is on Extreme Cupcakes - they can be reached via Flickr for purchases or at sbaliban at yahoo.com. Cupcakes are $2.50 each. They're based in Louisville, Kentucky.

"Homestyle" cupcakes at The Cupcakery

Interesting article in Bellesville News-Democrat about The Cupcakery, which has bakeries in Edwardsville, Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri (that's the one I've visited last January but don't think I have any photos, alas) and Knoxville, Tennessee.

"The way I would describe our cupcakes is homestyle with a flair," said Ericka, 36, of St. Louis. "We're not glamorous or glitzy. We're just classic."

Seven varieties are always on the menu: double chocolate, confetti, tuxedo, gold rush, peanut butter cup, red velvet and cuppa coffee cake. They sell for $2.75 each or $31 a dozen.

Featured flavors -- such as island dream, grasshopper, strawberries and cream, lemon drop, mocha cappuccino and Italian cream -- change weekly.

"My favorite right now is one of our seasonal cupcakes," Nicole said. "It's called pumpkin harvest. It's a pumpkin-spice cake with cinnamon butter-cream icing and a small piece of Bissinger's pumpkin bark on top."

The Cupcakery's Edwardsville location looks like a contemporary coffeehouse with bright natural light from a wall of windows, a 16-foot-high ceiling with exposed steel beams and seating that includes high-top tables and leather chairs.

Dozens of colorful, perfectly decorated cupcakes line cake stands next to a coffee-and-tea bar where customers fill their own mugs. A party room seats up to 20 people who can decorate their own cupcakes if desired.

Last minute reminder - December 2009 cupcake event listings

Last reminder - we need your December cupcake events (feel free to send January ones too) for our December cupcake event post and our sidebar at right, which is looking pretty empty. Give us date/time, name of event, short description, price, contact info, URL and image if there is one. Send to cupcakestakethecake at gmail.com - all postings at our discretion. And my apologies for skipping November - as we enter into year 5 of Cupcakes Take the Cake, I am vowing to be a better cupcake blogger. Look for some fun giveaways this December for our anniversary month.

I'm back in New York; sadly, when you don't drive in LA it's very hard to get to bakeries, so I will never be able to properly do a roundup but am hoping to go back in a few months and have a few video interviews I did (with Layers Cupcakes and Sprinkles Cupcakes) that I'll be posting later this week.

Miniature cupcakes = adorable

Scale is 1:6 and all are adorable.





Strawberry, coconut, cookies and cream.








Chocolate-mint, cookies and cream, sprinkles.







Pretty pink cupcake!





All by Creative Abubot. Etsy shop here. Blog here.

Peppermint, red velvet, chocolate and vanilla mail order cupcakes at Williams-Sonoma

Williams-Sonoma does mail order cupcakes (see right-hand side for our mail order cupcake links), and this is what they have this season:



Peppermint Snow Mini Cupcakes

Miniature cupcakes with great big flavors evoke the holiday spirit in each heavenly bite. Choosing a favorite is next to impossible: the dark chocolate cupcakes are topped with a generous dollop of peppermint buttercream and then hand dipped in white chocolate ganache; the vanilla cupcakes are finished with the same luscious peppermint buttercream and dark chocolate ganache. The cakes are shipped with a package of fresh peppermint snow for sprinkling on the tops before serving. Cupcakes Gourmet uses ingredients of the finest quality to prepare the handmade cupcakes, from premium Callebaut Belgian chocolate and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla to fresh butter and eggs. Set of 24, 12 of each flavor. $49.95



Perfect Endings Holiday Cupcakes

Perfect Endings, the renowned Napa Valley bakery, makes these cupcakes for us from scratch, using fresh eggs, real butter and other premium ingredients. And they're superb. Sam Godfrey, the founder, learned baking as a child under the strict tutelage of his Southern grandmother. This set includes three favorites re-created from her original recipes: rich chocolate, frosted with classic chocolate icing and scattered with dark chocolate sprinkles; red velvet, generously swirled with old-fashioned white icing and sprinkled with red velvet cake crumbs; and vanilla, slathered with vanilla icing and topped with shredded coconut. Set of nine, three of each flavor. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive. $59.95

Voting now open for Iron Cupcake Earth: Apple

Voting is now open for Iron Cupcake Earth: Apple.

Here are a few of the entries; check them all out. You have until Friday, December 4th at noon to vote.

Here are two entries "Hidden Fruit of Eden" and "Healthily Applelicious" by Kitchen Virgin at 27:





This spicy chocolate apple cupcake tree is from I Bake Cupcakes (click for recipes):



Apple ginger spiced cupcakes with spiced cream cheese frosting from Life in a Peanut Shell:

Update on Boston's soon-to-open CurlyCakes

This is also what Isabelle English told me via email; we'll update as soon as we know more.

From a New York magazine interview with Todd English:

You’re opening a cupcake shop in Boston with your 16-year-old daughter, Isabelle. Is she an aspiring restaurateur?
We thought it would be good for her college application, good for her self-esteem. She really has done everything: the layout of the shop, logos, the name—CurlyCakes, because we always kid her about her curly hair. We’re thinking about savory cupcakes for winter, like a corn cupcake, and you cut it open and put chili and avocado, with a sour-cream frosting. We’re looking hopefully mid- or late December. By Christmas.

Si Le Das Un Pastelito A Un Gato in 2010

So cute...coming in March 2010! Children's book If You Give a Cat a Cupcake in Spanish is Si Le Das Un Pastelito A Un Gato. Love this and love the book!

Turkey cupcake with cookies

by CandyTX on Flickr

Cupcake art: cupcake-brained monster

Cupcake-brained monster by Sam Nielson; via Super Punch

960 cupcakes baked in oven at a time

From a Los Angeles Times profile of Rossmoor Pastries:

So many cupcakes: "We have a machine that deposits the batter into the pans, and we can put 960 cupcakes in the oven at the time. Then you ice and box them," Feder said.

Also:

Made 100,000 cupcakes for Disneyland's 50th anniversary in 2005. Donated 20,000 cupcakes to the Long Beach Marathon last month.

Christmas tree cupcake

Retro silver Christmas tree picks, on a meringue snow drift. St Clement's, orange and lemon cupcake from The Lone Baker via Flickr

Sprinkles Beverly Hills visit

I'm at the Apple Store at the Beverly Center so only have time for a brief update, but I got to chat with Charles and Candace Nelson, co-owners/founders of famous Sprinkles Cupcakes, and visit their Beverly Hills shop, their original one, and shoot an interview with Charles at the Sprinklesmobile (their Mercedes cupcake van). Here are some of the cupcakes I tasted during my visit and shots of the store - more photos are in this Flickr set and there's lots more, including an older interview I did with Charles about Sprinkles' upcoming cupcake plans. They graciously gave me a dozen free cupcakes plus I sampled some at the bakery (theirs retail for $3.25).

You can also follow them on Twitter (@sprinkles) for daily free cupcake specials as well as on Facebook, where they are well on their way to having a winner of their BFF contest to be their 100,000th fan (81,261 as of this posting). We already know they have plenty of celebrity fans, like Gossip Girl's Blake Lively, and Courtney Love has blamed Sprinkles for weight gain; they also have an album of celebrities eating their cupcakes on Faceobok.




Beverly Hills logo on vegan red velvet cupcake in takeaway box


Vegan red velvet cupcake - this was very good! I'm not a huge fan of cream cheese frosting but this wasn't like regular cream cheese frosting because it's vegan.

This chocolate marshmallow cupcake was my favorite of the ones I tasted - a very rich, dark ganache on top and fluffy marshmallow inside and a very rich chocolate cake:






This was my second favorite...the chocolate peanut butter cupcake, which has chocolate chips in the batter of the peanut butter cake (!!), which reminded me of taking out chocolate chip cookies from the oven. They were warm and gooey. This one had chocolate frosting but sometimes there's peanut butter frosting on top!


Strawberry cupcake - also very moist and delicious


Sprinkles cupcake mix


Pupcakes!


I have to say that when I saw it on their website I thought "Really? Who needs a cupcake tray?" but in person, well, I wanted one! They have them in various colors and I could totally see serving cupcakes at a party on this.

Cupcakes at Sweet Lady Jane

One of the Los Angeles places that was recommended to me was Sweet Lady Jane, so yesterday I went there for lunch. I can definitely recommend their turkey sandwich and chili but the cupcakes, at $4.25 each, weren't really my personal cup of tea.



My friend remarked that they reminded him of the ones at New York's Cupcake Cafe, and indeed, they were as beautiful as those, decorated with frosting, and as buttery. The frosting was thick, the cupcakes on the cold side. They also offered a red velvet cupcake but I opted for the vanilla and chocolate ones.

The chocolate was definitely better than the vanilla; both had rather thick, cold frosting. Gorgeous presentation, and if you are into a very buttery frosting, you might enjoy these. They are better, in my opinion, than Cupcake Cafe, but from what I understand, Sweet Lady Jane is more known for their cakes and pastries, which admittedly looked amazing. The cupcakes didn't do that much for me. They weren't horrible, they just weren't really my type, though the chocolate was okay, a bit less buttery, but nothing I'd go back for. More LA cupcake reviews coming soon!

Spotlight on The Sweet Lady (Tulsa, Oklahoma)

You can find custom cupcake company The Sweet Lady of Tulsa, Oklahoma at http://www.thesweetlady.com and Facebook and her blog. She can be reached directly at angel at thesweetlady.com or 918-697-9748. All photos via The Sweet Lady on Flickr.




caramel apple cupcake




pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting


flower wedding cupcake tower


baby shower cupcakes

Want to be considered for a future Spotlight? Email your Flickr URL and any other relevant information to cupcakestakethecake at gmail.com (we post Spotlights on amateur and professional bakers at our discretion, time permitting).

Gooey chcoolate hi hat cupcakes

by Kelly Sue

Cute turkey cupcake

I like the little legs on this turkey cupcake. It's by .imelda

Black and white cupcakes

photo via Flour & Sun Bakery on Flickr

These are from Pleasantville, New York's (Westchester) Flour & Sun Bakery, one I happen to adore.

Today they have:

Chocolate Cookie Dough (choc. cupcake w/cookie dough center)
Magic Bar
Hummingbird
Peanut Butter & Jelly


inside the Flour & Sun Bakery cookie dough cupcake (via Flickr)

In addition to their usual chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. See their website for more information.