Mardi Gras Madness!

In preparation for Fat Tuesday, I took inspiration from a couple of Nawlin's favorites. First up was the good old King's Cake you might see around this time of year. Baked inside this cake is a little plastic baby (meant to represent the baby Jesus) and if your slice of the cake has the baby inside it is said you get good luck and are King for the day!

I remember the first time I heard about this. I was about 8 or 9 years old. My  mother's boyfriend at the time, Damien, who was born and raised in New Orleans had one shipped over for us to try and it was awesome!

So the cupcakes aren't entirely true to actual cake, but I took my own little spin on it.

For the cake I started with my favorite vanilla recipe and added a little cinnamon and dark rum! After that I topped them with a rum sugar glaze and used purple and green vanilla buttercream for the frosting. I placed the little babies on top just for visual effect. Of course I did bake a baby inside one lucky cupcake. (I'll take a photo of the "king" when it's found)

After that cupcake was finished, I couldn't pass up the chance to do a bananas foster cupcake. Bananas foster is my favorite (non chocolate) dessert! I was also introduced to this by Damien on a different occasion. First things first I had to start with an actual bananas foster recipe. I sauteed those bananas in butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, banana liquor, a dark rum.

I did my best flambe it, but I was kinda scared I would set my house on fire! HAHAHA. I did alright though. After that was done it was more rum and vanilla batter, then I mixed in my bananas. Since this actual dessert is usually served over vanilla ice cream, I topped the cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and adorned it with a brown sugar sprinkle and a banana chip. They were super delicious!

Another good weekend baking experiment!

<3 Ashley

The Luck of the Irish

With St. Patty's day quickly approaching we thought it might be a good idea to break out the alcohol. This week we were set on recreating the popular Irish Car Bomb drink in cupcake form. We had great success with these little morsels.

We started with a dark chocolate stout cake. We went with good ol' Guinness and it really complimented the dark chocolate and hint of cinnamon we added. To top it we did our signature chocolate ganash glaze with a couple teaspoons of Jamison Whiskey. It. was. awesome! And of course we had to top with a basic buttercream with added Baileys and we sprinkled them with a little cocoa powder. These are sure to be a year round favorite.
Once we finished these we had an idea to do a Lucky Charms cupcake. We thought we'd implant the little marshmallows inside the cupcake, unfortunately  it didn't work out. The mallows just made a big melted mess. We managed to get a few good minis out of our batch. Next time the marshmallows will only go on top to garnish.

This was just our velvet cake colored green for the holiday. We used vanilla buttercream frosting and then topped them with the famous marshmallows. Over all we had a really productive weekend turning out some more great flavors. We also released a discount coupon on our facebook page for all our great fans. If you haven't already, you should "like" us on facebook!
PS we are also really close to finishing out website so keep your eyes peeled for more updates.
PSS next week stay tuned for Mardi Gras cupcakes!!!!

<3 Ashley