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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
"Homestyle" cupcakes at The Cupcakery
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
Strawberry, coconut, cookies and cream.
Chocolate-mint, cookies and cream, sprinkles.
Pretty pink cupcake!
All by Creative Abubot. Etsy shop here. Blog here.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
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!
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.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
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.
