waiting for the results...

sarah and yvonne assembling cupcakes

1400 cupcakes have been filled, frosted and eaten. just waiting for the results of the cupcake challenge. the awards are for "best overall," "best original," and "best traditional." we submitted tahitian vanilla bean for "best traditional" and chocolate and salted caramel for "best original." you can view more pics on here or on my flickr page.

chocolate and salted caramel cupcakes

we had so much fun at the cupcake challenge! everyone was incredibly nice and it was great to see and taste all the mini cupcakes. the contestants went all out decorating their tables. some had giant custom cupcake towers, videos, and raffles. my favorite display was blue cupcake. it was absolutely adorable. our table was full of mini cupcakes resting on ruffled glass and white ceramic cake stands, stacks of my favorite pastry cookbooks and of course, suzanne's "sunday suppers" was tucked in there too. we made some larger versions of the cupcakes for display which proved to be a real hit with all the little kids that attended. who wants a mini cupcake when you can have a large one piled high with frosting and a cute little macaron hat?

...also nestled on our table

before we started packing up, after the competition was over yvonne, sarah and i celebrated with a little champagne. then we went to palate for an amazing dinner. octavio, jason and francois filled our bellies with foie gras, house-made pasta and more bubbly and vino. it was the perfect way to end our 14 hour day.

thank you so much for everyone who came to support us and cheered us on via twitter, facebook and text messages!

1400 cupcakes....

just a quick update: the cupcake batters are made, the frostings are being made and i'm just starting to bake off 1400 mini cupcakes! no typos here. sorry there are no pictures, its hard to take pictures with frosting on your fingers.

cupcake fever!

carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

in a few weeks i will be competing in the nestle cupcake challenge. this will be my first competition....ever. i am full of self doubt and nervous energy...trying to make it go away. for the big day, i will be making a vanilla cupcake (in the "traditional" category) and salted caramel and chocolate ("non-traditional"). wish me luck and come out and support if you get a chance! i will keep you updated on the testing process. i also might submit my application for food network's "cupcake wars"....shhhh....

snowmen, snowflakes and luster dust...

i'm sorry it took me so long to write. the holidays were a bit insane at the restaurant! thankfully they are over and i can begin to get my life in order. here are some pics of what i did this holiday season. enjoy! my ghost cupcakes became snowmen, complete with marzipan carrot noses. my lemon meringue cupcakes grew up into a full cake with lemon tuiles. i made tons of holiday cookies: maple walnut snowflakes (pictured), almond snowballs, gingerbread men, pumpkin and pepita thumbprints (with sara's home-made pumpkin butter), cranberry pistachio sables, and thin mints "a la girl scouts." i became obsessed with peppermint and made peppermint meringue kisses (pictured) and little candy cane bites. check out this video to see more candy making. every time i watch a video from papabubble, i immediately want to make candy. lastly, i made dozens of mini marzipan pumpkins to go on top of our pumpkin and brown butter cupcakes...any excuse to use luster dust. note-the macarons on the top of the page, lots of luster dust are used in the making of those macarons.

halloween creations...

remember these cutie pies! ghostly black and white cupcakes (chocolate with marshmallow). they got slimed (with green tinted fondant) for the big day! i already have ideas for next halloween. if you look really close, you can see the witch in the background. here are more pics of my halloween creations...

the bakeshop wouldn't be complete without a witch, rolling pin and an ipod.