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

Something Old and Something New

The London Fog

Last night we decided to bring back the London Fog for a well deserved photoshoot for our signature menu. The London Fog was actually the first cupcake we came up with and has sort of been the rock of epicupcakes. It sounds little strange but remains to be the favorite of many of our friends and family. It's all starts with Earl Grey Lavender Tea, steeped in milk and a little extra fine ground up loose tea for bolder flavor. We use :

This tea has such an awesome flavor that mixes beautifully with the honey and vanilla cream cheese frosting! It turned out magnificently. We are proud to add it our list of creations.

We also decided to try a new flavor we have been curious about trying for a long time now. It's definitely a perfect Spring/Summer party cupcake! Probably not one you would want to bring to a little kid's birthday party but definitely a must try. It was the Lemon Basil:

Lemon Basil

The cupcake was a simple light and airy lemon cake that was to die for! For the frosting we chose something equally as light and delicious, Basil whipped cream! Sounds funky right? Well let me tell you, I was a bit skeptical that it would work , but the combination was fabulous! It was soft and not over powering and just a hint of sweetness. It was the perfect balance with the lemon cupcake. It is now actually one of my very favorites!

<3 Ashley

Get a Glimpse

Last night Angela got some great work done on the website that has been in the works for sometime. We pretty much nailed down the concept months ago but have really been taking our time in building our photo collection of our cupcakes (which we are still working on). Now that we have a few good photos to work with, Angela has been toying with a couple different things. So far it's been going really well and I am really optimistic about getting it up and running in the next month or so. Here's a screenshot to give you a first look at what's to come:

Keep your eye out for more updates. I'll be posting fairly often in the coming weeks since this should start to move pretty fast. We are also planning on putting together a few new cupcakes soon so stay posted!
<3 Ashley

A Night of Mayhem

The Gentleman.

So last night Angela and I went to town putting together a few great cupcakes. Since I was able to find the missing ingredient for the Mexican hot chocolates we figured we would do it proper.

We used the Ibarra to do a chocolate ganache and it was everything I dreamed it could be. The cinnamon chocolate flavor was perfect and reminded us of our grandmas :)
For the cake we used a dark chocolate devils food with a hint of cayenne to give it a subtle spice.(not paprika, definitely not paprika) And of course to top it we made fresh whipped cream and drizzled more Mexican chocolate on top to give it that perfect look. The only thing better than how awesome it looked was how awesome it tasted!

After those were complete we created Cookies and Cream. We started off with a simple chocolate cupcake but buried inside we hide a whole Oreo!

The frosting was a vanilla buttercream with cookie crumbles. Yum! This was also a huge success!

After those were complete we photographed a couple different examples for Valentine's Day gift ideas. Everything we do is customizable but we thought we could showcase a few possibilities. Here they are:

If you are interested in ordering something special for that special someone shoot us an email at info@epicupcakes.com and tell us what you would like to do.

<3 Ashley



Missing Ingredient

Unfornutely I still haven't been unable to locate the most important ingredient for the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes, the actual Mexican chocolate! The stores right by my house have failed me and for some reason do not carry it. I plan to pick some up hopefully today but doubt I will bake tonight. I tried a make shift version last night since we had a cupcake craving. Instead of the original chocolate I had in mind I used Lindt Chili Chocolate. It was very mild and did not have the results I was looking for. Since it was a bust I did not spend the time photographing it in the tent. I did manage to take a photo of it just chillen on the table which I might post when I get back to my house. Perhaps tomorrow night I'll get back to baking. If not I'll wait 'til next weekend.

UPDATE 8:00PM :: here is the photo of last nights attempt
Cinnamon chocolate cake covered in a chili chocolate ganache topped with whipped cream and chili chocolate drizzle.

<3 Ashley

Chai Latte

Well after much hard work I bring you the Chai Latte cupcake.
Chai Latte Cupcake: A cinnamon spiced Chai tea flavored cake topped with a cinnamon vanilla buttercream.

Unfortunately for Angela, she got sick and was unable to participate in the experience of creating and photographing the new cupcake.

I starting off by creating the lighting tent, which was pretty simple. Buuuuut the lighting wasn't as bright as I needed but thanks to the wonders of Photoshop I was able to brighten thing up.

After the tent, or box rather, was ready to go I got a shot of the ingredients!

This was everything minus the egg and milk.

Unfortunately since I was riding solo on this adventure I didn't have the time to capture all my steps in putting it together but the end result was a pleasant surprise! I use a couple different backgrounds because I could not decide which on I liked best. I think I'm partial to the plain white though. What do you think?



<3 Ashley