The Best of the Worst

The best of the cake wreck that happened today (below). At first things went well, then I decided I would place the cakes in the warm sun  just to soften the chocolate so I could smooth out some wrinkles, which worked well until I moved the cakes.  Of course everything inside had also warmed and everything shifted. After that and my two year old eating Indie's satchel & foot, when I walked into the other room, I called it quits.  The b-day boy loved the results though & I guess that's what it's all about, right?

Saying Goodbye to Fondant

I need to quit Fondant. I know I've said it many times before, but we are not good for each other. Sure on a cute little cupcake, nothing of real substance or weight Fondant is great, but once you add a little pound cake, or frosting the party is over and Fondant cracks. I have said I am leaving Fondant behind and sticking to my true love Buttercream...ah! but alas, I continue to try Fondant again and again only to have my heart broken after spending hour upon hour with it. So there, I have publicly said it, I am out, no more. Today I met Fondant's cousin; I thought things would be different. It was more like a modeling chocolate and was fairly easy to make, I thought we could go the distance, until the final assembly and then it too cracked under the pressure. I was hoping that this time would be different and that I could mend what was broken, but it wasn’t meant to be. Don’t get me wrong, this new guy was delicious. Too delicious & I indulged much more than I should have, but Fondant, I need to quit you. You are frustrating to me and I’m afraid no professional counseling can make me feel the way I thought I once felt about you. My true love is buttercream, I realize now it always was. Goodbye cruel Fondant. Hello Butter!

Cinnamon Roll Craving Satisfied!

Not the prettiest I've made, but definitely one of the yummiest. If you like cinnamon rolls, this is the cupcake for you! Thanks Confessions of a Cookbook Queen for the recipe.

Sweet Idea

Ok, not about cupcakes but a sweet idea none-the-less...

I have been trying to get my children to eat a healthier breakfast. I love instant oatmeal and feel that for convenience and ease, it fits the bill. They flatly refuse to try it. But this morning I had one of those once-in-a-blue-moon great ideas and it totally worked! We had an oatmeal taste-testing session. Each child was a fieldwork expert. They each had numbers & ranked the oatmeal 1, 2, or 3. 1being their favorite, 2 second choice, etc...I wrote the flavors on the bottom of the bowls so they wouldn't know which was which. I told them that “real taste-testers” need to take a big taste to fully experience the flavor of each so they could make a good decision. I also told them that they could return to a bowl at anytime to try again if they needed to (which they did)! By the time we were through, they had eaten quite a lot of oatmeal and had three favorites that are on record with their mom, so the "I don't like that" excuse can't fly anymore. They each gobbled up a bowl of chocolate chip flavor (the winner) after the testing. Ok, so not the healthiest choice of the five flavors, but today it was the battle, not the war that was won and I will enjoy my small victory!

Cupcake Tour 2011 Day 1 Old Towne Orange

It's day one of the tour and I am afraid we just might make some enemies in the Ol' Towne today, Orange that is. It's sad actually we visited three stores and didn't find one cupcake that we wanted to eat, that's right; A & I did not eat one whole cupcake...speaks volumes doesn't it?

These pretties are from the Perfect Circle. They are beautiful! The Shoppe is so cute with its black and Tiffany Blue.  They are really amazing to look at...and that is where the love stops for me.

I was so disappointed when a parent (because of taste, not the generosity of said parent),  brought two of them to me for Teacher Appreciation last year. They were dry and the frosting tasted off. I figured they had probably purchased them ahead of time and they were not particulary fresh.

P.C. recently won Cupcake Wars, could Candace be wrong? Surely not, so we decided to give them another try. That, and A. had a BOGO coupon. Needless to say, they did not deserve the second chance. My chocolate cupcake tasted like they had fumigated for who-knows-what that morning and forgot to cover their bins, nope take that back, must have been the night before that the decontaminating occured because the cake was so dry!

Next we tried Rockwell's. Their cupcakes are equally beautiful and it was difficult deciding which flavor. We ended up with a red velvet, tiramisu, chocolate and cutesy pie patriotic (it was the 1st after all! Ok, wrong country but you get the point).

Again, all about the presentation which I will admit is important, but you need the flavor to back it up. The cakes were dry, even the tirimisu. Don't know how you make tirimisu (ah, soaked in coffee???) dry, but this one was a poser-marscapone cheese frosting with some coffee sprinkled on top of a dull dry cupcake. The vanilla frosting left us asking what in the world they put in it? It had a very artificial, unidentifiable taste.  A is the red velvet connoisseur, & although she didn't like them;  I actually thought the cream-cheese frosting was good, maybe it was in comparison to the others & that it was actually palatable.

Last on the stop was ABC Cakes. I know you know them for cake decorating supplies (if you don't, you probably don't bake, or don't live on this side of the OC), but they just opened up a little bakery in their shop.

I wanted to say great things about them because I want to love them for more than just the closest supply shop to my residence, but their bakery service is worse than their store's regular customer service (which again, if you frequent them like I do, you get what I mean). It took us forever to get waited on, with employees walking right past us several times. I finally walked over to the regular cashier and asked if we could get some help in the bakery. She directed us to a make-shift doorbell and told us to "ring it for service" seriously?

She did say I could pay for my other items there though, thank goodness because I was getting tired of waiting. But nope, after getting my selection the gal told me that I could not purchase everything there because she was new and didn't know how, but that I could get back in the line that I was in originally. Oh, goodie!

After all of that work, I was really ready for a yummy treat...sadly, no. Grocery-store bakery at best.  Even the cake-bites disappointed, guess I will have to return to Utah to get my fix of those too.

                              

It's a sad cupcake day indeed. The saddest part, is the kids didn't even clean up the leftovers once I got home. You know it's bad when the kids won't eat them!

Cupcake Tours 2011

Here it is, the Itinerary of Cupcake Tours 2011. Sounds so official doesn't it?
Well, maybe if  Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366551/) was a food documentary.

Yea, it's more like that.

Just a couple of chicks with a severe addiction and a snob attitude about what makes a fine cupcake, determined to find the best in the O.C. So, here is the "official" itinerary for this summer's tour.

Cupcake Tour 2011

*Black Forest Bakery  Lake Forest 

*CINDERELLA CAKES Laguna Niguel

*LayerCake Bakery Irvine, CA 92604

                                                 *85 Degrees Celcius Irvine, CA, 92606　　　 　　　 　 　 　　　

*Wonderland Bakery @ the Bluffs Newport Beach

*Rockwells (Creative Cakes) Villa Park

*Blue Frog Bakery Orange

*Sugar Me Bakery Orange

*ABC Cakes Orange

Please feel free to offer suggestions. We are always looking for an excuse to taste another cupcake and would be happy to be your guinea pigs. Snort, snort. 

Tales of A Little Teddy Bear Cake Pan

It all started with this guy. He seems innocent enough doesn't he? I remember my mom borrowing the mold from her cousin and using him to make an Animal cake for my brother's b-day.  Animal (from the muppets) you know, this guy...

sure wish I had a photo (ah-hem Mom) of it. It was amazing. My mom is amazing. I learned what I know from her. She is so creative and ingenious with all she does, especially her cakes. Anyway I knew I had to have one of those molds. I remember the teddy pan  being a lot more than Animal. Several b-day cakes around our house were born from his loins. About eight years ago, I finally purchased one of my own. And I have put him to good use around my own home. Here are a few of my teddy bear cake pan creations...

I am sure this particular post will be a work in progress. I am already planning an Elmo cake for Lil'Cupcake's b-day in August.