The other day I found myself near the new-ish
Trophy Cupcakes and Party in the Wallingford Center here in Seattle. I had just gotten my taxes done and it was the perfect reason for a small celebration. I bought four cupcakes for myself, and for Scott, but mostly for myself. I was so pleased to find that Trophy was so charming and pretty. I asked if I could take some photographs and they were happy to let me, you can see them starting
here on my Flickr stream.
The store carries letterpress cards and wrapping papers from
Snow & Graham, it was like stepping back into the now gone (sniff) Flourish card shop. They also carry a bunch of charming and unusual party favors and cupcake toppers, as well as some
D Sharp decorations and
Cup-a-cake containers. They sell expresso drinks, and have all four flavors of
Dry Soda. But the cupcakes are really splendid. Each cupcake flavor we sampled had a different texture of cake to suit the flavor, and the icings were all different and went perfectly.
Despite being in the middle of the small shopping building the space feels cozy and welcoming. If you have ever been to Wallingford Center the cupcake place is located where the old espresso stand was, but they've opened up the middle door that is on Wallingford Avenue. It was blocked off during the time that I lived a few blocks away and it make the building feel very unwelcoming. If you are in Wallingford Center for the first time know it wasn't always that empty, and be sure to check out Amita. It's located half way up the front steps off of 45th St, it's tiny but always has purses I long for.
If you're curious about the
Deathcake, a Valentine's creation by Seattle's cupcake bakery Cupcake Royale, you can see pictures here in
The Three Stages of Deathcake Royale over at Cupcakes Take The Cake. Ooh it's so dark inside. The Deathcake was also interviewed for the Stranger's
Chow Bio this week.
On the left is the
extra tall cupcake made by
My Paper Crane, she said she used the
Wilton King-Size Muffin Pan, I must have that pan. Next to it is a
toffee crumble cupcake made by
Cupcaketastic, with French banilla custard, Choux pastry balls and hard crack toffee.
Left is a
Superbowl cupcake make by the
Cupcake Queen. Right is a cupcake made by
My Aim Is True for a
Lost party, be sure to also check out the crudités served with Dharma Initiative Ranch Composite.
A few people have written to let me know that the Confectionary House as the
brown cupcake liners back in stock, yay! And thanks for the heads up.
Last night I managed to roll and cut out the pastillage stars and bake around 100 cupcakes, here are 96 of them. Having the divided dry ingredients made things so much easier, yay me! How much do I love the cupcakes containers? Much. They'll make transport far easier. The stars are stacked between layers of parchment and stored inside a mostly airtight container. Tonight I make a massive amounts of buttercream, decorate, and we're off to the party.
If I hadn't managed to get these cupcake trays I would have used the large shallow rectangle Rubbermaid Take Alongs. They hold 12 cupcakes pretty well, and are deep enough for some taller frosting.
Something I stumbled across while looking for cupcake transport - Ziploc makes
huge storage bags, the boxes show pillows and sporting goods fitting inside. I'm guessing they'd work well for yarn and fabric storage for the fiber obsessed.
Birthday Cupcake Baking update: Last night I divided dry ingredients into bags based on which ingredients will be going in at the same time. This will free up my measuring cups for the wet ingredients and I'll spend a lot less time cleaning inbetween batches. Somehow every grocery store around managed to simultaneously run out of packs of regular white baking cups, which was ok since it gave me a reason to take some time to drive out to Home Cake and buy in larger bunches and get some backup pastry bags at the same time. I resisted impulses to buy more pastry tips and tiny heart sprinkles. (And tiny candy cup molds to make peanut butter cups to put in ice cream, the ice cream I'll make myself with the ice cream maker I don't have yet.) I took the pastillage out of the fridge to get ready to roll out. I'll cut out the stars tonight and store them in an airtight container between layers of parchment paper. Have acquired expensive chocolate and vanilla beans, makes me happy. And I finally had a reason to buy one of those flats of 18 eggs.
Note to self: correct this later -- you wrote down the version of the
recipe hanging on the fridge incorrectly, there really is 1/2 C sour cream to a regular batch of 12, so that Too Much Sour Cream
test run was actually the Just The Right Amount of Sour Cream test run. (Note that you predicted a recipe busting typo on that same page, see? You were right.)
The latest Martha Stewart Kids (Fall 2005) has some great Halloween cupcakes, I love the tentacles. But my question is: where did they find the dark brown cupcake liners? I keep coming across this question, usually for someone looking for them to do wedding cupcakes -- see
this post at Cupcakes Take the Cake. The liners in question are dark brown glassine like the little candy cups in an assortment box, or the wrapper on Reeses cup. Apparently Sprinkles in LA
uses them (
another). I've become curious and done some poking around, The Baker's Catalogue carries
unbleached cupcake liners which are a little darker, and apparently Bon Appetit used
Pannettone cups for a wedding cupcake spread. I have seen brown striped with gold cups like
these at Home Cake here in Seattle. The Martha Stewart Kids doesn't list sources. I've gone from mildly curious to mildly obsessed. Does anybody know if the general public can buy these anywhere?
update: That was fast!
Lisa found
brown cupcake liners at Confectionery House. Thanks Lisa!
The birthday party cupcake making has begun. Last night I made the pastillage (from the recipe half way down on
this page, I think it's from The Cake Bible). I made two batches, divided each into half and quickly wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap, put them in tupperware and now they are in the fridge, waiting. I used up the rest of my bottle of food coloring (AmeriColor Super Red). The palms of my hands are stained carnage-pink. I'll roll it and cut it the night before the event.
On Friday night I went shopping for ingredients and managed to get a stack of
nifty clear cupcake containers for free from the baking department. (Like the ones down on
this page which I was too late to purchase.) It helped that I asked if I could purchase them, and that my cart was full bags of sugar and flour and ten pounds of butter. It probably also helped that it was 10 p.m.* so I wasn't holding up any customers, and everybody from the actual bakery department was long gone.
* I didn't mean to spend my Friday night shopping, but there was this whole finding
pizza fiasco and by the time we got to the grocery store it was late late.
The latest game I've become addicted to is
Professor Fizzwizzle, I like it so much I purchased the full game. Thank you, me.
Otherwise I've been watching Jamie Oliver on DVD, and reading Alton Brown books and experimenting with pizza dough - should I just dump a bunch of ingredients on the counter, knead it and stick it directly in the oven? Or should I carefully weight each ingredient and allow it to rise at least twice, once preferrably overnight, before shaping and resting before baking? I'm obviously still working on what type of a cook I might be.
dried cherry toppers
Originally uploaded by
not martha.
Birthday Cupcakes Test Two -- more about them here.
star cupcake
Originally uploaded by
not martha.
This is a test cupcake for Scott's birthday. See extensive personal notes of trial number one here.
Cupcakes, in Chicago, has a nice little
History of the Cupcake.
swiss meringue buttercream
Originally uploaded by
not martha.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream made from this recipe at The Food Palate adapted from The Joy of Cooking.
This was yummy, not too sweet, but fluffy and slightly spongy, not slimy. Mmm. It got the color-and-Non-Pereils treatment.
Next up: rolled fondant shapes, in my case red stars, on top. See the new-ish Wilton cut-outs which come in many small shapes. I also find the interchangable people cutters rather cute.
the cake bible - mousseline buttercream
Originally uploaded by
not martha.
"It's definitely not as slimy, but it's still slimy." This felt like it would have piped really nicely. Again, not too sweet, but not a texture I liked having in my mouth. This is uncolored and flavored with vanilla extract.
the cake bible - neoclassic buttercream
Originally uploaded by
not martha.
Neoclassic Buttercream made from The Cake Bible, uncolored and flavored with 1/2 a vanilla bean and a few teaspoons of vanilla extract. Not sure if I screwed up the sugar syrup part of the recipe but I did not like this very much. It was too soft, too buttery (slimy?). The gentle sweetness was nice, however. Next: Silk Meringue Buttercream.
Note: a 2.25 diameter, 4 tablespoon (1/4 cup) capacity half sphere ice cream scoop is a good size for filling cupcake papers. I exchanged scoops so many times at Sur La Table they told me I could come back and exchange it again, but they weren't required to smile next time.
