Well, Halloween has passed, and we’re just three weeks from Thanksgiving. I feel like autumn is slipping away. Halloween is one of my favorite times of year, though, so here’s a slightly belated post on my favorite scary cupcakes.

They’re my favorite… and also the only ones I have pictures of. My significant other and I used to have a birthday tradition of cupcakes. We also spent a good part of our adult lives together in Hoboken, where he worked just down the street from Carlos’ Bakery, of Cake Boss fame. I walked by that place for years on my way to the Barnes and Noble (gone), CVS, and the Path train. Of course, I begged a cupcake off him on his way home from work for any special occasion I could justify. His birthday is October 30th, so I would promise him an NYC cupcake in return for a Carlos’ Halloween treat.

That is, until the show Cake Boss came about. These photos are from 2008 because that was the last time we could actually get in to the bakery to buy something without standing in a ridiculously humongous line. Believe me, we tried. I have photos of the line.. but no photos of the cupcakes. It’s a bummer. No more will I stand on the corner of Washington and Newark and smash a cupcake into my face. (Don’t ask.)

Of course, these photos being from 2008 also has another implication. This was just 5 months after I got my SLR camera, and I had no macro lenses. These photos were shot with the kit lens, a really slow 18-55mm, before I knew anything about proper lighting and styling.

Halloween cupcakes

So, in 2008, I traded Lou a Whole Foods spider cupcake for a Carlos’s ghost cupcake. I love this photo because the ghost looks very worried. I think he thinks the spider is going to eat him, despite how positively friendly the spider looks. The spider reminds me of a puppy with his googly eyes.

Ghost cupcake from Carlos's Bakery

It was a red velvet cupcake with a fluffy white icing. I can’t remember how it tasted, but I always liked Carlos’ cupcakes. The cake was moist, the icing was supple. Nothing mindblowing, but solidly good.

A triptych of anxiety. Look, he has a lot on his mind. I mean, he’s dead, and he’s a cupcake.

Spider cupcake

And the spider. Well, he was adorable. Many a time had I admired the Whole Foods cupcakes from their glass case. They’re gorgeous, whether they have seasonal designs or flowers. I’ve had beautiful Whole Foods birthday cakes at work covered with vivid icing blossoms and leaves, and they were tasty, too. However, this cupcake.. well.. I think the Whole Foods icing takes color and shape so well because it is essentially lard. It is pure grease with no flavor at all, like what you find atop those tiny cakes at a Chinese Buffet.

You would suspect that the disk on top of the spider was a cookie of some sort, but no, it was just another lump of icing-lard dusted with cocoa. It was disgusting to bite into it. Truly. What about the cake? Well, it tasted like cornbread. Dry. Corny. This was an absolutely terrible cupcake. I’ve been turned off  WF cupcakes for life.

I’ve mentioned Sweet Avenue Bakeshop several times on this blog. They make wonderful vegan cupcakes. I don’t go out of my way to eat vegan, but I DO go out of my way to eat weird, and to eat good. This compels me to always try unusual things, like vegan cupcakes, and to keep eating delicious things, like these vegan cupcakes. Sweet Avenue is also right in my town and caters to my fickle tastes by having new, ridiculous flavors constantly – lavender, margarita, lemonade, etc.

I was in there in July to try a whiskey and coke cupcake and picked up a s’mores cupcake, too, in case I didn’t like it. It had marshmallow frosting, a swirl of chocolate, a chocolate-dipped graham cracker, and a marshmallow creme center. The presentation really sold it, because I honestly don’t like s’mores much (though I DO love chocolate-covered graham crackers. Who’s with me?).

Vegan s'more cupcake from Sweet Avenue Bakeshop

I love this shot’s soft lighting. It’s unusual for me. I usually go for high contrast shots with obvious specularity, like in the picture above.

Softly lit cupcake

The cupcake looks particularly dark and decadent here. I like how the graham cracker provides a backdrop for its own cupcake.

Side shot

Remember how old cartoons had someone spinning a swirling umbrella to hypnotize people? That is what this cupcake is doing. It wants you to eat it. Now, there’s a bit of a challenge here. How do you eat it? Graham cracker first? Icing first? Icing with graham cracker, or graham cracker separate? Do you try to eat some of the cupcake with the icing? The graham cracker basically adds another dimension to the age old question of whether you lick the icing off, THEN eat the cupcake, or eat both at once.

Hypnotizing cupcake

This doesn’t look terribly delicious, but I enjoy the colors and shapes. The background has contrasting angular lines, but the foreground is full of curves. There’s only three colors: black, white, and brown. It  has a  modern aura.

Inevitable close up

The cupcake was delicious, of course. The icing is always thick and pillowy at Sweet Avenue. It wasn’t my favorite type of graham cracker, but that’s fine – I was there for the cupcake. Who doesn’t love cupcakes filled with even more frosting, too? This shot reminds me of the good things in life.

Gooey marshmallow filling

As I mentioned in my last post, these photos are not as stellar as usual because I had to take these cupcakes on the bus, then wander around a hot, unfamiliar city to find some good light at 6 PM . Sorry! I learned a lot about what not to do next time I have to shoot in the street on vacation, at least.

So, here we go. My last cupcakes from Happy Cakes were a Cherry Coke cupcake and a Cosmo cupcake. The Cherry Coke cupcake is a cherry flavored icing on top of a chocolate and soda-flavored cupcake. This icing was pretty thick, close to a fondant, and pretty cherry-flavored. As always, I wasn’t getting a lot out of the soda cupcake. Cola just isn’t a strong-enough flavor to stand up to cake. Now, cherry frosting? Perfect. We need more of this. I’ll even venture to say we need it more than strawberry frosting.

The Cherry Coke is the pink cupcake in the foreground with the white sprinkles. I don’t have a better photo because it got flattened at the bottom of my cupcake bag. Boo.

Cherry coke cupcake

Now we move on to the Cosmo cupcake. The cupcake part of it was vodka-soaked and flavored with cranberry. I rarely taste the liquor in soaked cupcakes, and this was no exception, but the addition of cranberry packed a punch. It was very assertive, and I found that delightful because cupcakes tend to have good frosting but boring cakes. This was well-balanced.

Cosmo cupcake

If there’s one thing I can say about Happy Cakes, their frosting is flavorful. This cupcake had lime buttercream frosting that pretty much planted a flag on your tongue and said, “I’m here, and I’m staying.” Combined with the bold cranberry-flavored cake, it was pretty tart, but I liked that. It reminded me I was eating something, and this is important because, all too often, flavors get lost in the  mouthfeel of frosting. Raise your hands – how many of you have had frosting that tastes just like lard or just like butter? I thought so. (Heck, even my frosting tastes like butter, to my continued dismay.) Actually, this Cosmo was on the Martha Stewart show as one of her Favorites because she supposedly likes bold, tart flavors.

Cosmo cupcake frosting closeup

I like how the sugar encrusts the frosting, like tiny Pavé jewels. I think I’m seeing a trend where cupcakes that skew towards adults have sugar crystals instead of sprinkles. Sugar crystals are more elegant with their sparkle, whereas sprinkles, with their rounded shape and dull surfaces, are for kids. (Disclaimer: I get rainbow sprinkles on all my softserve icecream.)

Frosting peak

As I mentioned in a previous post, I went on a Culinary Connectors tour while in Denver and found myself at Happy Cakes, a well-known cupcake shop in the city. We spoke to the owner for awhile then took a look at their kitchen.

They have quite a few varieties for sale with rotating daily flavors. I like that they change up their frosting shapes – note the ribbon-like frosting in the back and on the left, compared to the thicker swirls of the Vanilla on Vanilla. Their different cupcake displays are also a nice touch.

Happy Cakes cupcake display

I get what they’re trying to do with the Black and White, but it looks a little strange.

Red velvet cupcake display

Now we went to the back. The Happy Cakes kitchen is tiny. It has a standing oven – think one of the tall, narrow cases where they keep the bread at Subway. That’s their only oven, for this whole establishment. They also have a sink, a lot of mix, a lot of frosting bags, and a shelf of liquor for flavors.

One of the owners talked to us a bit about owning a cupcake shop. She has kids and found the business to be very demanding on her time; she’s constantly on her blackberry and is not even doing the fun part, baking, much anymore. This was in contrast to the head chef at Trattoria Stella nearby, who worked 12 hour days with only a single half-day off each week. He didn’t seem to mind his situation – he said he loved food, and instead of having a girlfriend, he had the restaurant. The general message seemed to be owning your own business is time-consuming and hard, but moreso if you have a family.

These were the cupcakes they were working on to put on the displays in the front. In the front, the cupcakes are beautifully displayed and grouped together correctly, but those same cupcakes, jumbled together messily on a giant tray, look less magical, don’t they? It’s like lifting the veil of illusion about where food actually comes from.

Fresh-baked cupcakes

This was their delightful pen holder. Yes, those are sprinkles.

Sprinkle pen holder

I am back from Colorado! What an amazing place. Within a few hours of deplaning, I found myself on a Culinary Connectors tour, wandering around the Highlands district of Denver. I toured 2 restaurants, a wine store, and a cupcake shop. This cupcake shop has led me to deem this Cupcake Week because I have so many wonderful pictures from my tour and subsequent purchases from them.

The shop in question is Happy Cakes, consistently rated one of the best cupcake shops in Denver. The two owners first started baking in their homes, then moved into a shared kitchen with a cooking school. After a third owner, they moved into their own shop. It’s quite small. I would say the front and back could fit in about two parking spaces.

This cupcake is a liquor-infused creation. Given how many I’ve featured on this blog alone, I am pretty sure that booze is the #1 trendy thing in the cupcake world. Vegan might be #2. This bad girl is a Pomegranate Margarita. The cupcake is flavored like a margarita – very nice, a little limey – and the icing is so tart and flavorful because it is made with pomegranate liqueur. It was a delight to eat it – very bold. (The icing is cracked because I had to carry these all over Denver to find a place where the buildings didn’t block the setting sun. )

Pomegranate Margarita cupcake

I really like their practice of only doing the sugar in a v-like formation on one side of the cupcake. It’s a very distinctive, lovely look that also doesn’t add too much sugar to the icing.

Pink frosting on a Pomegranate Margarita cupcake

I love my close-up sprinkle/sugar shots as you know. The square, faceted shape of these pink and purple sugar crystals makes them look like emerald-cut jewels. Speaking of emeralds, I adore the rogue green sugar crystal in the middle.

Aerial view

Extreme pink sugar closeup

Good cake to icing ratio. I like to not have to ‘save’ my icing. I don’t want to be afraid that I’ll run out before I finish the cupcake part! (Remember when we were young and used to lick off the icing first?) As you can see, the cake had a good crumb, and the icing was on the denser side.

I call this the bitten side view

Again, that magnificent sugar coating adds so much to the picture; the texture on the right is wonderful.

Pomegranate Margarita frosting

Sweet Avenue Bake Shop is a local vegan cupcake bakery I’ve discussed a few times. I most recently had margarita and pina colada cupcakes from their new liquor-themed line. I saw a Tweet today that they had a new flavor – Jack and Coke. I didn’t know what they meant at first, I’m embarrassed to say, but after further reading, I found out this was a cola-flavored cupcake, with a cola-caramel filling, and whiskey frosting. My significant other loves soda, whiskey, and rum, so I knew this was the perfect Friday pick-me-up. I got two Jack and Coke’s and a S’mores cupcake that I’ll post about later.

As I said, these are vegan cupcakes. That means they are made with no meat or dairy products – no milk, eggs, or butter. They are some of the best cupcakes I’ve had.

Jack and Coke cupcakes

These fat icing swirls make me think of the Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man in Ghostbusters. This icing does have a slightly marshmellow-like texture to it; it’s very thick and doesn’t instantly dissolve into butter in your mouth. It still coats your mouth with sweet goodness, but it is a little more substantial than butter+confectioner’s sugar. Vegan frostings typically use shortening instead of butter, and that’d explain the longer-lasting mouthfeel, but this doesn’t taste artificial enough to be shortening so I’m not sure of the source of the magic here.

Sweet Avenue cupcakes

The whiskey flavor came through wonderfully. I felt like I was really consuming alcohol. (That said, I almost never drink, I’ve been to a bar maybe three times, and I’ve only had whiskey once, in egg nog, last Christmas. It doesn’t take much to overload my palate with whiskey flavor.) I really enjoyed this, much more than the margarita and pina colada icings I had. The whiskey stood up well to that thicker texture I mentioned, and it really stuck with you as it coated your mouth. The only downside is that it overwhelmed the cupcake part a bit, and I was bracing myself for a bran-muffin flavor because the cupcake looked like one. The cola flavor is much more delicate than the icing, and I don’t think I can accurately say I now know what a cola-flavored cupcake tastes like. Unlike a bran muffin, though, the cake was very moist with a great crumb.

Whiskey icing

These sugar crystals are courtesy of my new 60mm macro lens. Love.

Sugar crystal close up

To bring things back to reality, here’s the Jack and Coke after Lou got to it. I scarfed down my cupcake in about 20 seconds this evening with my bare hands and didn’t take time for pictures, but he delicately sampled it with a fork and put most of it away for later. Yeah, I don’t get it, either. However, his odd eating methods usually mean he loses interest or forgets about it, which means I get more cupcake later. Maybe I’ll be able to concentrate more on the cola flavor in the second go-around.

After a Lou-sized bite

There’s a bonus sugar crystal photo after the jump.

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I changed the site quite a bit yesterday so please let me know what you think. There’s now a carousel of recent pictures, a contact page, and a new logo. The photo flipping that used to be on the front page has been moved to the Photo Gallery link, so that the blog itself can be on the front page. I am still adding things, so if you see any weirdness, please let me know!

Redesign cupcake

Happy Fourth of July! Here are some fun food facts for you: you have a more than 1-in-4 chance that the hot dogs you consume tomorrow came from Iowa, and a 1 in 6 chance that your beef came from Texas.  That’s my obligatory mention of protein before we dive into the good stuff: cupcakes!

This cupcake came from Zaro’s in New York’s Penn Station. They make pretty baked goods for the tourists to buy, and if I have time before my train home from work, I’ll sometimes impulsively buy something. Unfortunately, they don’t taste as nice as they look — the sprinkles stain your tongue, and the icing is too lard-like.

Still, so photogenic. I like how the flag is blurred here.

Swirly icing

I’m fond of how the darkness of the flag matches the darkness of the cake. This photo also gives you a sense of just how much icing there was; look at the height.

Fourth of July cupcake

After I ate most of the cupcake, I planted a flag on it to show my domination of it.

I toppled it and conquered it

All that’s left is a smear of red icing.

The empty plate

I made some buttercream icing and cupcakes last night so I could practice my frosting skills. I just got a bag and a set of tips. I realized too late that I could have just practiced on a piece of paper for all it mattered. Oh well! I am not that good, but I thought some of these shots were nice.

I swirled my frosting with a couple different colors. When combined with a scalloped tip, I got what looks like ribbon candy frosting. I like the streaking.

Ribbon icing

I made this little critter by accident. I should have given him a hump to make him a snail, but instead, he is a worm.

Icing critter

This is my bowl of frosting. It might be cool desktop wallpaper.

Frosting wallpaper

Sweet Avenue Bake Shop, a pretty cool vegan bakery in Rutherford, NJ, did some liquor-themed cupcakes recently. I had hoped to try Whiskey Sour, but they only had Margarita and Pina Colada when I stopped in. The Margarita cupcake has a tequila-jelly filling, lime icing, a lime wedge, and large sugar (“salt”) crystals. The Pina Colada has a coconut-rum jelly instead with coconut icing and a pineapple-flavored glob on top. They were alright — the cake was supposed to be liquor-soaked, but it did not seem to be. The jelly fillings weren’t hitting the spot for me, either. However, their cake and icing is always wonderful, and I gladly ate these, even if they didn’t quite taste like cocktails. These gorgeous and tasty creations have no dairy or egg products in them. Amazing, right?

Lime icing closeup on a Margarita cupcake

I love big chunky textures at the macro-level.

Sugar crystals in icing

Two body shots if you care, but we’re all here for the icing, right?

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