Johnny Cupcakes lecture in Denver- with cupcakes!

Last nite I went to a lecture at the Denver Art Museum held by Johnny Cupcakes, the T-shirt entrepreneur. It was very informative and really pumped me up to listen to him talk about how he started his business with no start up loans or investors. I left all fired up and jazzed to get started developing my own business.

Before the lecture, 6 local cupcake shops had samples for everyone and there was a contest to vote who was the best. The bakeries were:
Mermaids Bakery, Lovely Confections, Living the Sweet Life, The Shoppe, Cake Crumbs/the Denver Cupcake Truck, and Happy Cakes. I've tried a few before, so I was interested to see how the rest were. Everyone chose 1 mini cupcake from each place, and then we all voted.


From Mermaids Bakery, I chose the mexican chocolate cupcake. They also offered a vanilla-strawberry cupcake. The chocolate cupcake was great, but the frosting was best- chocolate cinnamon! It was a light chocolate, and was super fluffy and airy, but still with a lot of flavor. I could have eaten just the frosting!

From Lovely Confections, they only had sugar cookies with frosting. It was ok, nothing special. Kind of disappointed they didn't have cupcakes!


From Living the Sweet Life, they offered red velvet, chocolate, and carrot cake. I chose the red velvet. It was very red, the cake wasn't flavorful, and the cream cheese frosting was super tangy.


From The Shoppe, which I've tasted before, they had the biggest selection. Cookies n cream, banana caramel, pumpkin spice, strawberry, and chocolate salted caramel, which I chose.

Presentation was great. The chocolate cake was not flavorful and a little dry, plus there wasn't enough of it. I know these are minis, but there was 3 times the amount of frosting as there was cake. Speaking of the frosting, it was amazing! Super rich dark chocolate sprinkled with fleur de sel, piped over a caramel. Yum!

Cake Crumbs is the retail storefront of the Denver Cupcake Truck. They only offered one flavor, pistachio. I almost passed it up, but decided to try it to be fair. The cake was good, I liked the pistachio flavor, and there were bits of nut chopped up inside. The frosting was too sweet, I could barely tolerate one tiny bite.

Happy Cakes also had a good selection. They had a sweet potato cupcake topped with a mini marshmallow, a pumpkin one I think, and a chocolate peanut butter, which I chose. The cake was great, the peanut butter frosting was crazy rich, super thick. I like that it was topped with a chocolate covered peanut.

After much deliberation, I chose Mermaids Bakery as my favorite, although Happy Cakes came in a close second. Unfortunately, not everyone else agreed with me. The people's choice was The Shoppe. I'm just not impressed with their cake, although the frosting is very good.

After the cupcakes and the lecture, there was an after party outside where people could meet Johnny and ask questions. Before he came out, there were a few food trucks parked outside. One was a pizza truck (sorry I didn't get the name), and one was the The Biscuit Bus, operated by the Denver Biscuit Company. They served sandwiches on buttermilk biscuits. Yum! I had a fried chicken biscuit with a side of sweet potato fries. It was super yummy, although the chicken wasn't very flavorful, needs more seasoning.

Then I got the chance to talk to Johnny, and he posed for a picture too. It's a terrible quality picture, but I'm glad I got the chance to ask him a few questions, and he gave me some good advice.
All in all, it was a great night, learned a lot, stuffed my face, and now I'm ready to get going!

DC Cupcake tastings

We recently spent a day in DC tasting cupcakes, helping our friends choose a vendor for their wedding. I love cupcakes at weddings! Since I am a bit of a cupcake expert, they asked me to lend my opinion. We tried 4 places: Hello Cupcake, Red Velvet, Georgetown Cupcakes, and Buzz. We sampled 4 different flavors from each, took them all back to the house, and had everyone dig in.

We came up with a clear winner, but first, the contenders:


Hello Cupcake was super cute in the shop, very bright and cheery.

They had some great flavor selections, although they don't offer a red velvet, because they don't use artificial ingredients, such as red food dye. That was a bit disappointing, as the bride and groom specifically wanted red velvet. There are other ways to achieve the red tint, by using red cocoa or beet juice. The cupcakes were tasty though, especially the lemon.

Next up was Red Velvet, a small storefront. No room to eat, just a counter and cupcakes. Although they do have a deal with the place next door so their customers can sit somewhere if they want.

I liked that they had customized cupcake wrappers, a nice touch.

They also had a good selection of flavors, including a special daily flavor of honey-mascarpone. yum! We got red velvet, Carrot, Mocha, and the daily flavor. Ironically enough, their red velvet cupcake wasn't great.

Of course we had to go to Georgetown Cupcakes. We were all skeptical, because of the hype, the line outside, and the "reality" TV show. After waiting only a few minutes, we got inside and ordered. There was a bouncer at the door letting people in, and handing out menus to those in line to keep things flowing and organized.

Also a very cute shop, not much room for eating, but a few tables. Although with the amount of people in there trying to order, it's not a very relaxing place to enjoy a cupcake. We got caramel apple, red velvet, lemon, and chocolate hazelnut. Their cupcakes looked the cutest and came with little decorations, such as heart toppers on the red velvets.

Last was Buzz, a cafe that serves cupcakes. Sorry, no pics of the shop.

Our friends like this place for the mocha cupcake specifically, so we got that, caramel apple, red velvet, and a cute flower cupcake.

This looked like a fun place to hang out on a Sunday, read the paper, have a coffee. It's not a cupcakery specifically.

Now, the verdict. The hands down winner was.... Georgetown Cupcakes!

The hype is justified, these were great!

Best red velvet of the bunch, the only let down was the chocolate hazelnut. They were the cutest, tastiest, and cheapest of all that we tried. They also offer bulk discounts.

We had a fun day driving around buying cupcakes, and even more fun trying them all. I can't wait to see which flavors our friends choose for their wedding!

New Year, New possibilities

So, I have been seriously slacking. I blame it on 2 jobs plus school. However, now it's down to only 1 job and school, so I have no more excuses. My plan for the New Year:
*Find a kitchen
*Prep to sell at farmer's markets in the spring
*Marketing!
In other words, steps required to catapult me to success. When school is finished in one year, I plan to be ready to go pro. Along the way, there will be lots of baking. I will resume the Tania/Martha challenge, and fine tune my own recipes as well.
Until I get going again in a few days, here's some pics of my holiday baking: cupcake cookies!

Featured on Cupcakes Take the Cake!

So daily, I check the blog Cupcakes Take the Cake for news from the world of cupcakes. Much to my surprise, this morning my very own blog was mentioned! It's about many bloggers baking their way through Martha's Cupcakes book. Let me tell you, this has made my day, possibly even my week :) It has certainly encouraged me to continue baking and posting for the world to see. Thanks to the girls at CTTC for including me in what I consider to be the bees knees of cupcake blogs :) Now to get back to baking!!!!