Cupcakes Take The Cake Blogiversary

If you are lucky enough to live in the New York City area, be sure to mark December 4th on your calendar and head on over to the Cupcakes Take The Cake blogiversary celebration. Allison, Nichelle, and Rachel will be serving up free cupcakes and lots of great raffle prizes. Sadly, I won't be able to jet up for the party, but maybe Amanda can attend and report back to me. And if you can't make it either, be sure to visit the Cupcakes Take The Cake blog for recipes, cupcake photos, bakery reviews, and more.

National Vanilla Cupcake Day

Today is National Vanilla Cupcake Day. Aren't you glad to know that? In celebration, I made French Vanilla cupcakes (Duncan Hines instead of from scratch), and topped them with MaryKaye's Caramel Frosting (from the CakeCentral website). This is a cooked frosting, and it develops a crust very quickly, so I recommend adding a little bit more milk during the final mixing. Next time, I think I'll make it just thin enough to pour, and let it spread by itself.

December 15th is National Lemon Cupcake Day. I think I'll take a pass on that one. The only lemon dessert that appeals to me around the holidays is my Mama's lemon pie.

National Chocolate Cupcake Day

Today is National Chocolate Cupcake Day, and it was impossible for me to let this occasion go by without baking chocolate cupcakes. As always, I used the "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake recipe from Hersheys. I usually make a 9"x13" cake from this recipe, and this is actually the first time I've used it for cupcakes. There aren't any baking directions for the mini-cupcakes (about 1" across) pictured here, so I baked them for 9 minutes and they turned out just fine. For the frosting I used the "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting that follows the cake recipe. This frosting is very soft and creamy, so I usually don't do anything decorative with it. However, I couldn't possibly photograph my cupcakes without something fancy on them, so I pulled out the decorating tips and got busy.

Today also happens to be our 5th wedding anniversary. And our friends, Dottie and Joe, are celebrating their 22nd (wow!) anniversary today. My brother is down from Georgia for a visit as well, so I'd say it's a pretty good day. It's just too bad Dottie can't be here to share these cupcakes with us!