The Cupcakery

Rain, rain, go away!

It rained all Friday and Saturday, but that didn't stop us from going out and having a sweet weekend.

On Friday, Howard and I celebrated our anniversary. Awwww.
Here is our delicious dessert from Madeline's. This was a chocolate molten cake with jack fruit, a hazelnut crumb, served with vanilla bean ice cream.

After lunch on rainy Saturday, we went to The Cupcakery and picked up three cupcakes for dessert.

Look at the rain! But surprisingly good lighting for the photos... Howard picked the Black & White, which is marble cake topped with a chocolate and vanilla swirl.

We also got Goin' Bananas, a banana cake filled with butterscotch chips topped with banana buttercream. Banana buttercream!!! It was odd at first bite, but then you could really taste the banana. And the banana cake was good, some places say "cake" but produce "muffins." This was a banana cake. So thumbs up!

Finally, we ate the Maple cupcake... this one isn't listed on their website! Don't mind the mess I made! I was eating in the car!

I didn't get a photo of the storefront in the rain, but visit their website. They have photos of their store posted in the gallery.

The Cupcakery
1034 St. Clair Ave. W.
Toronto, ON
(647) 430-7409

The Kreativ Blogger Award

Look at what we got! An award!!

Oooooooo!

Our first one! I was so excited when I found out and told Howard right away. He wasn't jumping up and down like me - I don't know how he manages to contain his excitement.

Thank you to January Asia and Steven Hui from The Caffeinated Globe! Here is the post where they passed on the award to us. Thank you!! It feels nice to win a creative award.

The Kreativ Blogger Award comes with these responsibilities:

1. You must thank the person who has given you the award.
2. Copy the award logo and place it on your blog.
3. Link the person who has nominated you for the award.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
5. Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers.
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.

I did numbers 1-3 already, so here are 7 things that you might (no promises) find interesting about me:

1. When I get called a "foodie" I scrunch up my nose. Don't get me wrong, I love food, but I don't think that I know enough about it to be called a foodie. I'm a baker!
   
2. I like watching shows/films that have some form of publishing in them. Examples: Ugly Betty, Being Erica, Lipstick Jungle, Post Grad and The Proposal. It amuses me because publishing looks really glamorous on screen.
   
3. I don't get the Food Network at home. It is really sad.
   
4. I collect postcards and scope out cupcake bakeries when I travel.
   
5. I don't have fancy photo shoot equipments. I use a white bristol board and a point-and-shoot camera.
   
6. I'm afraid of traveling on airplanes.
   
7. Even though I adore colour, most of my clothes are black or shades of grey.
   

In turn, I will nominate the following 7 bloggers (alphabetical order by blog name):

1. Bonita at Bon Eats
   A fellow publishing friend and I was lucky enough to try her cupcakes. =)
   
2. Lyndsay at Coco Cake
   Take a look at her fondant work and you'll know why! So cute!
   
3. Suzanne at Gleeks United
   I am a gleek and proud of it. Plus, she's a major cupcake fan!
4. Karen at Mad Baker
   Yummy, yummy photos! She's mad about cake, pastries, and all things baked.
   
5. Sarah at Milk and Honey Cafe
   More yummy photos and recipes! I like the simple style she does.
   
6. Heather at The Scootabaker
   She delivers baked goods on her scooter!!! Enough said!
   
7. Michelle at Une-deux senses
   I love her sense of fashion and food!
   

Congratulations to everyone, it was pretty tough narrowing my choices down to 7!

Cupcake Lane

Cupcake Lane
9441 Jane Street, Unit 118
Vaughan, ON L6A 4H8
(905) 303-7669

We tried 6 flavours from Cupcake Lane. We ate one (Lemon Loop) before all the photos were taken. I can describe it for you... vanilla cupcake with yellow lemon buttercream. The lemon buttercream was frosted like petals or loops - very pretty. We got a tiny taste of that cupcake, there were 4 of us, so we each got a quarter. The buttercream had a good lemon flavour.

The five other cupcakes we got were: Cookies’n’cream, Double Chocolate, Strawberry Delight, Pina Colada, and Café Mocha. The cupcake bases are all very pretty and uniformed. They have a nice crown shape, so you know their cakes are consistent. For all the flavours, it was either a vanilla base or a chocolate base cupcake. The flavours are not in the cake, but in the buttercream.

For example, the Café Mocha cupcake is chocolate cupcake with mocha buttercream. The Strawberry Delight was a vanilla cupcake with strawberry buttercream.
So sadly, Howard and I did not like the cupcakes very much. Granted, they were light and not too sweet, but the cakes had a very odd texture. It was chewy cake and felt almost elasticity, but worse of all, I didn't taste much chocolate in the chocolate cupcake, nor vanilla in the vanilla cupcakes. The buttercream was a hit-or-miss. The strawberry was a miss, I wouldn't have known it was a strawberry flavour, it was too light! But I did enjoyed the mocha and lemon buttercream.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to eat the Pina Colada cupcake. My mom ate it! So I asked her how it was. She too said it wasn't very good. She only took it because she saw the coconut shreds on it and thought it was a coconut cupcake. What a surprise it must have been to her when it turned out to be Pina Colada!

Hello Cupcake

Look what came in the mail for me today!
(Isn't it so stylish?)

From Madalina at www.duhlicious.com (check out her amazing site).
This is the first time I've won something from a blog contest I entered!

The subtle "Hello Cupcake" is engraved on the ring.

This just reminded me of Karen Tack and Alan Richardson's book, Hello, Cupcake!

I have been meaning to share this for some time now! I got a BLAD (Basic Layout And Design) of their upcoming book, What's New, Cupcake? from an author (<-- yes, shameless plug, click it!) in January. She picked it up for me at the ALA (American Library Association) Midwinter Conference in Boston.

There's only a couple of pages in the BLAD, but I am excited for this book! Plus, I need it to accompany Hello, Cupcake! - it makes me sad when a book is missing it's companion! There are two excerpts from the book on www.amazon.com (the apple and koi fish cupcakes).

P.S. Thomas Allen & Sons Ltd. is currently holding a cupcake decorating contest (deadline is on May 1, 2010) for your chance to win a copy of What's New, Cupcake?