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I love cupcakes. My cat Spirit loves them, too. The popularity of cupcakes keeps increasing. I've lost count of the number of cupcake shops in the Portland area.
Saint Cupcake was where we went after seeing a show at the Northwest Children's Theater. Great cupcakes. So tasty we'd have to take a box home with us. Too bad for us the bakery moved to bigger digs in downtown Portland. I've heard it's nice with an expanded menu, but I haven't been to the new store yet. I don't get to that part of town much.
One fun thing we've been doing is making our own cupcakes. The kids love to bake. I bought one of those mini-muffin pans in December so they could start making the bite-sized size ones. Usually the frosting is pretty basic, maybe some sprinkles, colored sugar or mini-M&Ms. I'm waiting for the day they want to start getting more creative with them.
Have you seen the cupcake decorating books and blogs that are out there? All I can say is wow!
A few years ago, a friend used Hello Cupcake, a cookbook, to make Wizard of Oz themed cupcakes for a birthday party. I was amazed at what you could do with fondant and some other things. I watched her make a Ruby Slipper. Talk about a time commitment!
This morning on one of my writing loops a link to a blog with Harlequin Romance Novel Cupcakes appeared. Very cute! The blog called The Decorated Cookie is run by Meaghan Mountford, the author of the book Sugarlicious. The book is published by my publisher Harlequin so that's where the romance covers came in. I was thinking it would be a neat promo to use my titles of books on cupcakes like this, but then again the time it would take would probably outweigh the benefit. (This was the lesson I took away from my various promo efforts in 2011.)
I love looking at all the amazing cupcakes in books and on blogs. All of the creative combination of flavors is interesting, but I'll be honest. When it comes to cupcakes, I much prefer eating regular type ones. My fave is chocolate cake with either a white or chocolate buttercream icing.
What about you? What's your fave type of cupcake? And have you seen any amazing designs that blew you away?
