Market Inspirations!

Living in Red Deer, there isn't always much to do on a weekday. Unless you're involved in other activities like soccer, baseball, dance...etc. So I tend to shop, mostly for food mind you at the local markets. Practically every town in Central Alberta has some sort of weekly market. The most recent market to start up in Red Deer is Down Town Market on Wednesdays running from 4pm-7pm right in the heart of down town! Its all local, fresh and deeeeelicious! All the fresh fruit, veggies, herbs, preserves, and baked goods can prove to be too tempting for some! Especially me. Stocking my fridge to the gills with local fresh goodies is all good but sometimes I find myself, scrambling to eat everything I bought for fear of it going bad! So I thought I should use some of those fruits and veg in some of my cupcakes this week I tried blueberry cupcakes with blueberry frosting! The cake was great the frosting needs a little work.

mmmmm blueberries.....I need to name this cupcake. Old blue? Booberry? I'll have to work on that.

I also tried out a peach cupcake, with a brown sugar frosting. Clearly the peaches weren't from the Red Deer area. I actually bought them at the Saturday Public Market. I only got through 4 of the six when they were getting a little too soft for my liking. I'm still trying to pull through a more intense peach flavour in the cupcake . Hopefully I'll have it figured out by next week and you all can try it!

The brown sugar frosting was sweet but surprisingly good.

I think I will name this one, "Peachy Keen"!

Toodles Pal's&Gal's!

Farmers Market round 2!

The markets for the past couple of years have been sooooo much fun that I decided, it is a must for this year! Our first Market in 2010 will be at the Red Deer Public Market located down by the Red Deer Arena/skatepark Saturday May 22nd. Its starts at 8am and goes till noon. Please stop by and try some free samples and some feature flavours for purchase. Julia, Charlee and myself would love to see ya! There will be postings on our Facebook page when and where we are attending a market, keep an eye out for that.

I almost forgot! We will be bringing some of our specialty goodies to the markets as well over the summer. Like the ever-so-popular Chocolate Dipped New York Cheesecake... on a stick! Thats right I said it!!!!

Hope to see you this summer. Cheers!

Milk and cupcakes??

Milk and cookies was something of an after-school delight for me growing up. Almost like comfort food! This week I'm going to show you two wonderful cupcakes that have made their mark on the Cuppitycakes Menu! First off, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough!

Mmm cooookies! Almost as good as a cupcakes, but not quite. I created this cupcake the very first year I started selling at the summer markets. I went through a faze of making cupcakes that were stuffed with this or filled with that. At this particular time in the summer I was making chocolate bar cupcakes like Caramilk, After Eight, Crunchie.....you get the idea! Then I immediately thought of ice-cream, which led me to blizzards and then......back to cupcakes! Anyways, I put globs of cookie dough into my Classic Chocolate cupcake batter. Topped it off with a rich chocolate butter cream and of course, a cookie.

Boy oh boy, was that a good idea!

I had also created one of Red Deer's favourites, Cookies&Cream. I positively love Oreos, they take be back to the good old days! I still indulge from time to time ;0)

I used my Classic Vanilla batter as the base. Most people use chocolate cake but I really wanted to see the cookie chunks. I put some Oreos into a little baggy and smash those little suckers up with my trusty rolling pin. The trick to making this cupcake is all in the frosting. I did my very, very, very best to make the frosting taste just like the delicious creamy filling you get with Oreos. Oh, and we added a little flare by topping the cupcake off with a mini Oreo.

Too cute! I might just have to go bake some... until next time!

Oooey Goooey Chocolate Zucchini!

So for the next few posts I am going to highlight some of our top selling cupcakes. This will help all of our new and old Fans become better acquainted with these little morsels of edible joy! As well as introduce our Main Menu to you!

Better known as our Chocolate Zucchini cupcake, this little number has evolved from many recipes. We took a little from here, a little from there and created my version of Chocolate Zucchini cake. The oh-so-yummy double chocolate chip cake with freshly grated zucchini. That's right, we grate the zucchini by hand... we put love into our cupcakes ;0). We then frost with one of my personal favourites, Classic Cream Cheese frosting. I enjoy cream cheese anything, but when you put it on a cupcake....(as Mickey Mouse would say) Oooooooh booooooy! Lastly, we topped it off with a blackberry and chocolate sprinkles.

Just another one of the local favourites!

Bon Appetite!

Happy Ester the bunny!

This Easter there were quite a few orders, but on top of that I had family time! YEAH! On Saturday I headed over the the parents house to decorate eggs and sugar cookies! Now before you see the pictures please don't judge us, we did the best we could with the resources we had. You can laugh though....

Anyways my cousin, my Aunt and myself started off decorating the eggs, in the end it was just me and Auntie. We had 3 different colour kits, my personal favourite was the 24k GOLD kit. My eggs looked nothing like they did on the package, so we improvised.

I think the adults had way more fun!

We also used one of those tie-dye kits, it worked better then the others. And we used the crayon or "wax stick" to draw faces, designs and all that fun stuff. I tried to write Happy Easter on one of my eggs. Apparently I can't spell Easter, so now I call it Happy Ester the Bunny Day!

Our cookies are really terrible but we only had 4 wilton dyes for colours and they weren't so springy! Plus we only had a few pipping bags and tips. I guess when I moved out I took all my mom's decorating stuff. Who da thunk it! ;0)

My Grammy made some lemon cupcakes sprinkled with butterflies, she's so cute!

And I'll leave you with some of our popular Easter cupcakes this year!

Cheers!

Spring-time the only pretty ring time!

Sigh, it's Spring-time! Every time I hear someone say Spring-time I immediately think back to "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and begin to sing...a ding a ding, sweet lovers love, the Spring! And then I think of candy! You probably wondering where I'll be going with this. Well I thought I would devote a post to some of my favourite places to get my products! Which includes a lot of sprinkles and candy and liners and MORE candy!

Where I grew up in Ontario there was this amazing store called Bulk Barn. This store was heaven if you were a kid or a cake decorator. My favourite thing to spend my allowance on was Lego candy. I think they call it's called candy blocks now, but they were all the rage when I was young. Jam-packed full of baking ingredients, candy molds, cake pans, nuts, trail mixes, all things organic and yes, you guessed it, CANDY! They just recently moved there way out West, which I'm grateful for. I was flying back home to Ontario just to get sprinkles at least once a year...well, and to visit family too. You sure can find a lot a sweet goodies there ;0) Currently Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat all have Bulk Barn's. I dare you to check one out!

This was the Ajax location in Ontario, I went there a couple years ago for a good friends Wedding. Bulk Barn was a perk!

Here I am, in all my glory! I felt really bad for the lady ringing me in. The cashiers have to look up everything on a scroll. Crazy!

Just a quick peek into my collection of sugary details.

If your looking to get some unique candies locally, like the kinds you ate when you were younger or something you've never heard of, Check Out Candy Bouquet! I was surprised when I walked in and you could buy a variety of candy, not just a candy bouquet. This might be specifically unique to the Red Deer location, but in any case, they have a very large selection. They sell vintage candy and a lot of things you can't find in our convenience and grocery stores, like sugar free candies and chocolates.

Some more sweet delights that aren't your average find..

How fun are these! I remember using a magnifying glass to melt the plastic ones with the boys across the street. Strangely I think this would have been just as much fun.

I got some of these from my best customer Hilary, she went to england and picked-up a bunch of mini decorating goodies.

Sweet Cuppin Cakes Bakery & Cupcake Supplies is another favourite of mine. They have some awesome liners, wrappers and so much more. And the best part is that they are a Canadian company. If you're wanting something a little special for some cupcakes you're making, check out the cupcake wrappers!

Okay that's all for now, I'll show you guys some more soon!

Gold CANADA Gold!

I couldn't be more excited for the Olympics to finally be here! The olympics have always been a huge thing for me! When I was younger I secretly wanted to be a speed skater, or a cyclist in the summer games. Now you know one of my childhood secrets, haha! This year some of my friends and I headed out to one of our favourite local pubs, dressed in our Olympic/Canadian gear to celebrate! We watched as Jennifer Heil win a SILVER in the Women's Mogul's! We also saw the Women's Hockey team win 18 - zip! Go Canada!

While watching the opening ceremonies I was so inspired, that I had to created some Vancouver 2010 Olympic cupcakes. Super fun to make and I think everyone really enjoyed eating them! Just another way to show support to our Canadian athletes!

Clearly we need a cow bell to celebrate, you always need more cowbell!

Go Cananda!

CTV Correspondent, Chuck the Canuck!

Those are long-johns people, complete with bum flap!

Happy to be eating Olympic cupcakes! Direct quote from Cody "this is the best cupcake I have ever ate! Best one yet!"

And he would know he's tried a few, thanks Cody!

I know the rings don't overlap but, they were really small and I wanted to be able to see all the colours! You get the idea!

Miga!

Gold Canada Gold!

Inukshuk!

They were soooooo much fun to make and I'm very happy with the way they turned out.

More medals to come for Canada, only on day 4!

Cheers!