Last Saturday, we were invited to a pumpkin carving party with the Lee family! There were lots of Halloween-themed treats and games for the little kids, and our whole family had a great time taking part in the festivities with friends. Stephanie and Chwan were wonderful hosts and really threw an awesome Halloween party full of fun for all ages!
Two delicious treats in one! I made these for the Nakayoshi Annual BBQ today, but unfortunately a lot of them toppled over in the car and they were a mess when we got there. 🙁 At least I got a couple nice pictures of them beforehand!
Notes for the future: Keep the macaron and cupcake separate until we get to the final destination and top them before serving. Also may not want to use softer frostings like cream cheese frosting, since they have a tendency to not hold the macaron as well.
We went to a potluck picnic over Memorial Day weekend, and I decided to make rose petal cupcakes!
I followed a recipe I found in the Delicious Cupcakes book from a gift set that I’d received as a gift last Christmas. The cake portion is basically a vanilla cake, infused with a few drops of rose oil, and the frosting is vanilla buttercream — I just used some icing color to give it the pale pink color.
The unique part of these cupcakes were the candied rose petals on top! First, you pluck and rinse the rose petals very well to ensure that they are clean, and then you pat them dry with a paper towel. You then brush them with egg whites and coat them in super fine baker’s sugar and let them dry overnight… and voila! You have candied rose petals.
Here are the rose petals that I used, just after rinsing. (I had wanted cream ones with pink tips, but I couldn’t find them at the store… so I settled with orange ones.)
Here’s what the candied rose petals looked like when finished:
The rose petals tasted mostly like sugar (since they were coated in it), but you could sort of taste the rose petal flavor towards the end, as an aftertaste. I’d say that it’s a nice aesthetic touch and that the novelty of rose petals on your cupcakes is cool, but it doesn’t really add much in terms of flavor to the dessert. It was fun trying it, though! 🙂
Dan brought me home a double chocolate cupcake from Berkeley Bowl. I love how it’s iced to look like a Hostess cupcake. heehee* (Of course, it tasted much better than a Hostess!) It’s been raining cats and dogs all week in the East Bay which has made the daily commute to work all the more tiring and unpleasant… so this was a delightful little pick-me-up. 🙂
If you know me, you know that one of my latest obsessions is cupcakes — more in terms of eating them, rather than making them (although I do enjoy trying my hand at a few cupcake recipes here and there).
So when I heard about Cupkates Truck from a friend recently, I was immediately intrigued. Cupkates Truck is a mobile cupcakery, and the very first “cupcake truck” in the whole Bay Area. They wander around Berkeley and Oakland selling delicious cupcakes straight from the truck (like a taco truck, except with cupcakes!) Their cupcakes are apparently baked fresh daily with local high-quality ingredients. Sounds like a winner to me! 🙂
We actually didn’t get a chance to try them until today, since aside from us being busy, the truck moves to a different location everyday and sells out promptly within a couple hours of arriving. You have to be on the ball to catch them before they’re out of cupcakes, especially on a weekend (which is really the only time we can get them, since we’re both at work when they’re out and about during the weekdays).
Let me tell you right now that Cupkates Truck is a slice of heaven that you will not want to miss out on. If you don’t believe me, here are some mouthwatering photos.
I’m so glad that we were finally able to track down Cupkates Truck after stalking them on Twitter for quite some time now. Their cupcakes are definitely some of the best in the area, and have a great balance of seasonal/unique flavors and traditional (like double chocolate and double vanilla). You can follow them on Twitter or Facebook to see where they are daily, and look up their available flavors on their Menu. I know I will definitely be paying them another visit soon to get my cupcake fix.