Strawberry salsa jalapeño cupcake plus recipe link!

Yes, this is a cupcake using strawberry salsa and a jalapeño pepper to recreate a Cupcake Wars winning cupcake, and it's raw and vegan! It's by Shannonmarie at one of my favorite food blogs, Rawdorable, who has the recipe for you. I'm a big fan of spicy foods in general and jalapeños in particular, so I'm excited about this one.

4 Cupcake Wars inspired raw vegan cupcake recipes: green tea vanilla, sweet pepper, corn and sage, lavender and orange, cacao spice

Yes, Shannonmarie at Rawdorable is at it again, this time taking inspiration from Cupcake Wars winner Stephanie Sparkle and her vegan baking fame, and turning Stephanie's cupcakes into raw vegan cupcakes. She's also got the recipes for these four lovely cupcakes for you all in this post and an interview with Stephanie!


the raw cupcake quartet


green tea topped vanilla cupcake


sweet potato, corn and sage cupcake


lavender and orange cupcake


cacao spice cupcake

Vegan S'mores Cupcakes with Recipe Link

I've noticed that a lot more cupcake bakeries are offering special dietary needs type treats, the most popular ones being Vegan and Gluten-Free. After watching and recapping the first all Vegan Cupcake Wars episode I decided to start expanding my recipe repertoire and look into Vegan recipes...

The blog Pickles & Honey developed this classy looking Vegan S'more's cupcake. The main reason I was always turned off by Vegan baking was the thought of how stressed out I would be trying to find specialty ingredients. This recipe has some special ingredients but overall, the majority of the items on the list can easily be found in your pantry...definitely a plus in my book! If all Vegan recipes are as simple as this one, I think I may have overcome my Vegan baking fear! Check out the recipe here!

Cupcake Wars competitor (tonight!) cupcake truck Dia Doce spotlight

A cupcake photo spotlight on cupcake and dessert truck Dia Doce in Chester County, Pennsylvania, who you can watch on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network tonight. All photos via their Facebook page. You can reach them at 610-476-5684 orThais at DiaDoce.com and also follow them @DiaDoce on Twitter.


farm animal cupcakes


cupcake push pops and matching cupcakes


Angry Birds cupcakes

Vegan cupcake success secrets with Sticky Fingers Bakery owner and Cupcake Wars winner Doran Petersan

Vegan baker, owner of Sticky Fingers Bakery and Cupcake Wars winner Doran Petersan talks to Portfolio about her business's success, and the rise of the cupcake:

To what do you attribute your success?

You can make your shop as pretty as you want, and ambiance is important. People could come in and feel comfortable, but unless you have good food, nobody’s gonna come back. So it’s the food that keeps bringing people in. The best compliment is when someone comes in not knowing we’re a vegan bakery and, after eating, they still have no idea it’s a vegan item. There’s no preconceived notion that vegan is not gonna be good. The minute you tell someone that’s not vegan that they are eating a vegan product, they are looking for something to be different. I’m not here to tell people what they should eat; I’m here showing them what we can do and then letting them make the choice.

Cupcakes are a luxury: Has the economy hurt your business?

They are luxury items, but they are considered acceptable and affordable luxury items. You're talking about a cookie or a cupcake that costs $2 or $3. We’re not talking about jewelry or shoes. Where we feel it is our largest orders—our catering, our wedding cakes—that’s where people try to cut back. But as far as our retail, we see more of the lesser expensive items being sold, but our daily retail sales have grown.

Has the cupcake wave started to wane?

It has not weakened at all. It is huge. After six years of cupcakes, they are getting hotter and hotter. We’re not just a cupcakery; we look at other people and the amount of product they are putting out, and I am flabbergasted. A lot of times if you have a fad it runs out in two or three years, but it’s not. People are absolutely in love with these things. We can’t keep them on the shelves. If it’s a fad, I’m not concerned because we have a full-service bakery, and when it’s the next thing you just ride the wave. I’m confident we can do anything as a vegan alternative to a non-vegan item. Whatever it is, you figure it out.

Visit Sticky Fingers at stickyfingersbakery.com on Facebook and be sure to check out her new cookbook, Sticky Fingers' Sweets: 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes.




from the Sticky Fingers' Cupcake Wars viewing party

Vegan fruit and flower cupcake spotlight on Cupcake Wars winners Bliss Cakes by Stephanie Sparkles

Last night, I started ogling the photos on the Facebook page of Bliss Cakes by Stephanie Sparkles, after seeing the beginning of TV competition show Cupcake Wars. I didn't get to finish the post before seeing that they'd won! For our recap, click here. They do custom cupcakes and delivery in the greater Los Angeles area, and can be reached at stephanie at stephaniesparkles.com or 424-259-3036; visit stephaniesparkle.com for more information. Here are some of their gorgeous cupcakes. They've also got a cookbook and you can follow them @s_sparkles on Twitter.














cupcakes at Burning Man

Here are just a few of their cupcake flavors:

Long-Life Goji Berry
From ancient Chinese medicine comes the Goji Berry, revered for longevity enhancing nutrients and its chewy citrus berry flavor. This tasty chocolate cake is filled with a heart of real Goji Berry kreme, and capped with fresh coconut frosting.

Acai Jungleberry Bliss
A purple-powered tropical kiss: luscious lemon cake frosted with exotic acai, real blueberries, and fresh fruit. Acai, a wild berry from the rainforests of Brazil, is packed with powerful antioxidants, nourishing amino acids, and essential fatty acids.

Tangerine Poppyseed Dream
Unforgettably sweet and citrus-ey! Moist poppy seed cake, sparkling with real tangerine zest, and capped with a juicy tangerine frosting!

Wild Jungle Peanut-Butter Choco Delight
A new twist on a classic flavor: decadent dark chocolate cake, with a gooey heart of real Balinese RAW chocolate, topped off with a frosting of creamy Wild Jungle Peanut-Butter. Wild Jungle Peanuts are pure, heirloom peanuts, loaded with antioxidants, complete protein, and beautifying oleic acid. Because they're grown wild in the Amazon, they help to protect our rainforests!

Tropical Avocado Mango Twist
A fruity, creamy, spicy little mouthful. Mango cake filled with coconut kreme and frosted with buttery avocados, mangos, and a dash of chili for some tropical heat.

Ginger Chai Spice
Like a creamy mug of zesty chai tea: warm and comforting. Fresh ginger cake awakened by a creamy frosting with a dash of Indian chai spice.

Sweet Picnic Chevre
Fluffy vanilla cake, enlivened with a luscious fig preserve, swirled with a creamy goat cheese frosting, and crowned with fresh-sliced pear. Rich and refreshing: perfect for a picnic!

Cupcake Wars: Vegan Bake Off

Did you happen to catch last night's new episode of Cupcake Wars? Well just in case, let me recap for you!

Last night's episode of Cupcake Wars was the first all vegan episode! The bakeries were competing for the opportunity to serve their delicious and animal friendly treats at the Inaugural L.A. Green Festival.

The competitor's for this episode were:

New Cascadia Traditional from Portland, OR

Michy's Foods from Los Angeles, CA

Bliss Cakes by Stephanie Sparkles from Venice, CA

Two Birds Baking Co. from Huntington Beach, CA

ROUND ONE:
This round challenged the bakers with locally grown fruits and vegetables, including but not limited to: clementines, sage, lemongrass, fennel, red peppers, coconut, avocados, etc.

NCT: Chocolate cake with sweet pepper lemongrass filling, avocado icing, vegan ganache and edible sprinkles. Also, this cupcake was gluten free. The judges were unanimously underwhelmed.

MF: Fennel cake, clementine buttercream with a candied sage leaf on top. All the judges loved the bright and fresh clementine flavor of the buttercream and creative nature of the fennel cake but were not too thrilled with the sage merely being a piece of decor.

BC: Corn cake, speckled with sweet red pepper, topped with creamy sage frosting, topped with parsley to lighten up the flavor and sweet red peppers. Judges loved the surprise of the cupcake being sweet over savory but again cautioned the use of the required third ingredient as a garnish.

TBBC: Clementine fennel cupcake, vegan vanilla buttercream frosting, with balsamic glazed figs on top. The balsamic reduction overpowered all the other flavors in the cupcake.

Eliminated: Two Birds Baking Co.

ROUND TWO:
This round challenged the bakers on showcasing "living green" through their cupcakes. As we all know in this round judging is based on 50% taste and 50% presentation.

NCT: Chocolate Cupcake with Chocolate Orange Frosting and topped with chopped hazelnuts
Molasses Spice Cupcake filled with Apple Butter topped with Cinnamon Molasses Icing
Zucchini Raisin Cupcake with Ginger Nutmeg Cream Cheese Icing.
Judges: Delicate decorations but not WOW for the second round. Overall taste was delicious.

MF: Apple Cinnamon Cupcake filled with caramel, topped with Cinnamon Buttercream, Caramel Drizzle and crushed peanuts.
Gingerbread Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting topped with crushed gingerbread cookies
S'mores Cupcake filled with a marshmallow with Chocolate Ganache, toasted marshmallow and crushed graham crackers.
Judges: Mixed review on the decor. Mixed reviews on the technical aspects of cupcakes (cook times).

BC: Matcha Vanilla Raspberry Cupcake with Matcha Green Tea Frosting topped with a raspberry and mint leaf
Mayan Spice Chocolate Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing
Tangerine Poppyseed with Lavender Frosting, Coconut Cream filling and fresh tangerines and lavender flowers on top.
Judges: Decorations = LOVED. Cupcakes were a bit over baked, too much going on in the Lavender cupcake, suggested removal of the coconut cream.

Eliminated: Michy's Foods

ROUND THREE:
Create a 1000 cupcake display for the event.

NCT: Display was tree-like cupcake tiers made up of reclaimed wood done in an upwards manner making the display 360 degrees
accessible.

BC: Display was imagined off of a vertical cupcake garden. Made up of recycled wood, bamboo, fresh herb garden below, the piece can be reused after the event as a real vertical garden.

WINNER: Bliss Cakes by Stephanie Sparkles


This was a more interesting episode of Cupcake Wars. As bakers and foodies, we're always learning new methods of cooking and new things to try. This episode definitely showcased the intricacies of vegan baking and really opened me up to trying out some vegan recipes for myself!

Congratulations to Hokulani Bake Shop for winning Cupcake Wars

I don't have a TV so I rarely get to watch Cupcake Wars on Food Network but last night I did and was excited to see Hokulani Bake Shop, which I visited several times during my vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii in January, win! Visit them at and on Facebook. Photos below were from my trip. Their shop in the Hyatt Regency Waikiki is tiny but you can then take your cupcakes out into the shopping area and the backdrop is gorgeous fountains, or walk across the street to the beach! The cupcakes were very good too, all moist and interesting flavors. I had meant to blog about it while I was there because I tried their carrot cupcake on National Carrot Cake Day but time got away from me. They also had cute cupcake-shaped cookies. Their Cupcake Wars audition video is from their site and YouTube.












inside the red velvet cupcake


snickerdoodle cupcake


cupcake cookies

Cupcake Challenge LA 2012

This past Saturday I attended Cupcake Challenge LA 2012 for the first time. Drink Eat Play sold out of tickets for the event by Friday so Cupcake Challenge LA was packed but nonetheless amazing! It was fantastic to see so many cupcake connoisseurs, bakeries and bloggers in one room! It was impossible not to have a sweet time at such a tasty event!

I was happy to meet up with Anthony Valerio of Wonderland Custom Cakes. His table happened to be my first stop so we were able to talk about how his bakery has been going since the grand opening and how exciting it was to be a part of Cupcake Challenge LA. My fellow blog pal Lili and I made our way through the line of cupcake crazed fans to each of the bakery stations. We received two cupcakes from each bakery and were asked to vote on our top 3 bakeries. To ensure that every ticket holder received every cupcake each bakery would mark their treats off of our ballots:

Overall we all ended up with 36 cupcakes each. Thank goodness they were all minis, it was already nearly impossible to taste all of them! Because I took over a hundreds pictures I can't post them all here BUT, you can head over to my Flickr account to see them all! I'll also be adding my favorite pictures to the Cupcakes Takes The Cake Flickr Pool. 

After tasting all of the cupcakes (I had to finish the majority of them at home...who can eat 36 mini cupcakes in one sitting?!) I came up with my top 3 bakeries. Though I did have to vote at the event, my top 3 definitely would have stayed the same either way.

Dulcitas Tres Leches Cupcake was my absolute favorite cupcake at the event. It was perfectly cinnamon-y, creamy, moist and just melted in your mouth. In case you don't know, Tres Leches cakes are always wet cakes as they are soaked in a milk.Upon opening the wrapper milk was literally oozing out of the cupcake. I would, without a doubt, be enjoying a full size version of this cupcake sometime  very soon.

My Delight Cupcakery was my second pick with their Red Velvet Raspberry Cheesecake Cupcake only because I couldn't pick two top bakeries. There were several Red Velvet Cupcakes at the event but none of them really spruced it up to create something as incredible as this. All if not most Red Velvet Cupcakes are topped with Cream Cheese Frosting but adding graham cracker 'crumbs and raspberry puree transformed something so simple into something that made our whole table say "Oh my God." after their first bite. I found out that My Delight Cupcakery is near me which means I'll be heading there several times a month!

My final vote went to Bake You Happy for their Chocolate Cherry Licorice Cupcake. This was by far the most unique cupcake I've ever tasted. Upon first glance I was both confused and intrigued, and because we eat with our eyes first I just couldn't wait to taste this! This cupcake was chocolate based with a Red Vine licorice filling. Topped with marshmallow fluff atop a pretzel and covered in a cherry cola glaze. With so many ingredients in this cupcake one might think it would be overly sweet but in fact it wasn't! All the textures made this cupcake's mouthful very enjoyable! Creating such unique flavor combinations proves why this bakery ended up winning an episode of Cupcake Wars!

I had a fantastic time at Cupcake Challenge LA and will definitely be attending the event next year! I'm also going to make an effort to head out to several of the bakeries that attended to interview their owners!

To see all my photos from Cupcake Challenge LA check out my Flickr!

Twitter postings lead to Cupprimo Cupcake Wars appearance tonight!

From Austin Business Journal comes some cool news about Austin, Texas bakery Cupprimo that is a major reminder that social media is extremely important and is in no way just about reaching your local community, but about reaching the entire world:

“Cupcake Wars” usually chooses combatants from audition tapes, but producers approached Brown after following her tweets that constantly promote Cupprimo.

“I never dreamed [Twitter] would lead to such an incredible opportunity,” Brown said. “I know people in this business who have been trying to get on ‘Cupcake Wars’ for three years.”

And if you hadn't heard, Cupcake Wars is now casting for Season 5!

You can follow those Tweets @Cupprimo on Twitter and also find them on Facebook and cupprimo.com and watch them tonight on Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. They're located at 8650 Spicewood Springs Rd Suite 105 in Austin and can be reached at cupprimo at gmail.com and 512-335-7746.

Below are some photos from their Facebook page, including fun chalk art. They have Thin Mint cupcakes! Or had them yesterday. Again, keep up with their social media to know what flavors they have each day. "It is a thin mint cupcake, chocolate mint cake, filled with a magic concoction, topped with mint buttercream and of course, that persnickety little girl scout cookie." Sorry I couldn't grab a larger size of the photo (if anyone is making Girl Scout cookies, now is the time to email us those photos! cupcakestakethecake at gmail.com with "Girl Scout cookie" in subject line).