Crumbs Surprise

Happy Friday! My job does this fantastic thing every month; it buys cupcakes and we celebrate the birthdays of the month. it's a really sweet gesture, and brings everyone together for about 12 minutes and we all enjoy a nice break from spreadsheets and grumpy people on the phone and all that an office brings.
besides answering phones all day, one of my responsibilities is to purchase the cupcakes each month. (well, i pick them up, the Platinum AmEX i use is not mine.....)
in an office filled with health conscious people who go to the gym on their lunch breaks, it's hard to fund something that please everyone. and i rarely do, but i still love my monthly duty of walking to Crumbs bakery and picking 24 cupcakes from the colorful displays.
So, I normally go for the Red Velvet cupcakes, and since that seems to be a popular treat, i get more of those than any other. today, i instinctively grabbed the red velvet cupake, but then decided to (gasp!) try something new. so i took half a red velvet and half cookie dough. A Hybrid! that looked like this :

The cookie dough: Aside from the cookie placed conveniently on the top of the cupcake, it did not resemble cookie dough in the slightest. It had a surprise fudge center (!), but tasted like your everyday super sweet unnecessarily swollen cupcake.
Red Velvet: I quickly remembered why this is the one i go fro every time. The cake itself had a hint of cocoa, and the frosting was cream-cheesy and done right. I often find that although bakeries get the red cake and white frosting down, the recipe itself is forgone for something more basic. Vanilla cupcake with red food coloring and some generic sugar icing, for example. it is supposed to be a cocoa flavored cake with cream cheese filling people! sheesh! Long rant short, Crumbs does it right.

and it sure as hell beats the 100 calorie Hostess snack pack i brought.


xo-TSR

flickr

hey! like what you see? ha! well, i just started a flickr account. i take a lotttt, of pictures and facebook albums are kinda creeping me out.....so go here!

xo-TSR

cupcake hiatus

i know.
after that whole long love note to all my faithful readers, i go missing for a whole month! well my camera broke, and i was internet shy, and honestly, i was not doing any baking. so...exactly one month from my last post, i have planned something big. i cracked open my Hello Cupcake! book, a gift from the dear Alex Fraley. i have not made anything out of this cookbook yet, because it is quite daunting. but i was ready for a challenge. So in honor of my new fish (!) and to make a dramatic comeback, i made Fishbowl Cupcakes. come with me as i show you the journey and the final product!
The cupcakes themselves were basic chocolate cupcakes. However, a noticeable difference was that instead of sloppily scooping the batter into the muffin tins, it recommended piping the batter into the tins. Needing practice on my piping skills anyway, I complied.

they looked nice going in, but the finished product wasn't worth the mess it made going in!

and, as i am tragically messy, i did it the old fashioned way from there on in....
I made these the night before, and they saved perfectly. now! the fun part...
the recipe calls for frosting (can frosting?! the horror!but hey, i make buttercream all day at school, i don't think one short cut is going to ruin me....right?) some food coloring,assorted sprinkles, fruit roll-ups, goldfish crackers....and that's it! (well, the cupcakes, obvi)Now, follow closely. Dip the (must be very cooled) cupcakes into the warmed up, dyed blue frosting. roll the very bottom of the now wet cupcake in the assorted sprinkles. let dry. then melt some more frosting, (just white this time), and spread on the tops of the cupcake. add goldfish cracker, and "seaweed" (fruit roll-up) and consume! got it? no? of course not, that sounds ridiculous, so here are some pictures to help:

my counter turned art studio.

it will all make sense in the end....

see? told you, you would get it.

Dr. Manhattan and Fishbowl Cupcakes.

Phew! so that's that! the cupcake itself was very moist and a good strong cupcake consistency; the frosting was from a can, so it was excessively sugary and blissful. the goldfish were a strange salty contrast, and the fruit roll-up kinda melted....it takes nice pictures, but might not bring in the dough. (pun!heh)
So please welcomes Dr. Manhattan into the Sunny Robot's little home, and I am off to eat a fishbowl! (or 7)
xo-
TSR