In yet another bizarre Pittsburgh Food Network run-in, I met Mary Smith from Charm City Cakes at Piper's Pub on Sunday afternoon.  Apparently she's friends with some of my beau's friends who coincidentally decided to go to brunch at the same place and at the same time as us.  Mary seemed like a very sweet and nice person; perhaps all the CCC cupcake-hate is just Duff?

The wonderful ladies over at Cupcakes Take the Cake have included Cupcake Fetish in their list of Top 10 Cupcake Blogs!  We are so flattered!  Thanks, guys!

Last month I attended a cousin's wedding in Florence, SC, an event which ordinarily wouldn't merit mention on this blog.  The couple in question, however, was originally from the DC area and the wedding cake(s) were from their favorite DC bakery: Cake Love.


When I first heard the touching story of how their friends carefully drove the cakes seven hours from DC to South Carolina, I groaned.  For a cake aficionado like myself, there's nothing worse than the torture of eyeing a wedding cake all night long, patiently waiting for the end of the reception so you can freaking eat the cake already, only to discover that the beautifully decorated cake tastes like toothpaste frosted cardboard.

[As long-time readers of this blog may know, I'm not the biggest fan of Cake Love — popular opinion seems to agree that their sparsely frosted cupcakes are way too dry (even after allowed to come to 72°F) and their runny buttercream is tasty but has obvious texture issues.]

After the cake was cut I forced myself to wait an excruciating 15 minutes before I ate my slice (it was still quite cold in the center), all the while mentally preparing myself for disappointment.  Long after everyone else had finished their cake and I couldn't stand the wait any longer, I took a bite, even though the center of my slice was still quite cold.  I was shocked to discover that the cake was really good.  In fact, it was one of the best wedding cakes I had ever tasted, if not THE best.  Holy crap!

I'd grabbed a slice from the ganache-covered cake which appeared to be alternating layers of white cake, chocolate cake, and some sort of white mousse with whole raspberries mixed in.  The chocolate cake was moist and rich, the white cake was soft and sweet, and the chocolate ganache was smooth and creamy with a dark cocoa flavor.  The white mousse was sweet and fluffy and the fresh raspberries added bursts of tart flavor that complimented the sweetness of the cake quite nicely.  My only complaint was that there was a too much mousse filling for the amount of cake — I think half as much would've been perfection.

Of the twenty weddings I've been to, two of the cakes were memorable for being good, and this was one of them.  Now I know — skip the cupcakes at Cake Love and drop the extra $4 for a slice of their delicious cake.

My roommate hosted an awesome pre-Thanksgiving dinner at our house the weekend before real Thanksgiving.  Sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar are my favorite part of Thanksgiving, so I decided to make some sweet potato cupcakes:


These were actually a simple twist on the pumpkin spice cupcakes:  How to Eat a Cupcake's pumpkin cupcake recipe with mashed sweet potato substituted for the pumpkin, topped with Chockylit's cream cheese frosting. 

While I was vacationing in San Francisco in mid-November I got a text message from my roommate asking me to call her ASAP.  Thinking something horrible had happened I called her immediately.  As soon as she picked up the phone she asked "Do you think you could make 120 cupcakes?  By Tuesday?"  It turned out that my roommate had been talking up my cupcakes to her coworkers, and her boss asked her if I could make cupcakes for a special treat for the crew of the movie she was working on.  Seeing as how I was getting back into town on Monday afternoon, I thought it unlikely I could have 120 cupcakes finished by Tuesday.  After a brief conversation with her boss, she asked "What about Wednesday?"  And so I found myself with my first paid cupcake gig.

At first I planned on doing three or four different flavors, but worried that I wouldn't finish in time I decided to keep it simple(r).  Since people really enjoyed the pumpkin spice cupcakes I made a few weeks earlier, I decided to make them again.  I also decided to decorate each cupcake with a fondant Θ and Π, the name of the sorority in the movie.

I was so stressed about finishing in time that I totally forgot to take step-by-step pictures, or pictures of the final 159 cupcakes laid out on my dining room table.  Here are a few pics that I did remember to snap:

I spent a total of ~20 hours on the cupcakes, though I had an additional 10 hours of help on the fondant cutting and assembly.  A lot of the time came from having to do multiple batches of things – my mixer could only hold one batch of batter at a time (I made 5 total) and my oven could only cook 2 dozen cupcakes at a time.  I probably could've reduced my total time by 75% if I had a commercial mixer and oven.

All in all it was a great experience, though exhausting and not super profitable.  (It worked out to ~$7/hr.)  I think I'll leave the professional baking to the real professionals from now on.