And You Hip-Hop, and You Don't Stop Just Blast Off, Sure Shot

According to experts, today's the day. The Rapture, Apocalypse, Doomsday, the End of the World....Me? I'll be baking cupcakes til the very end. I've got a batch of carrot cake ones in the oven right now as I type this. What will you be doing to prepare for the end?

My friend (and fellow Cupcake Camp Paris organizer), Bryan posted a very funny article yesterday about what he will be doing when the end comes. Go check it out - if you are not among the roughly 3 million people who will be saved today, you have approximately 5 months til meeting your fate!



If yesterday was my last "normal" day on this earth, well, then I am glad I was able to spend it doing some of my favorite things. Like hanging out with my kids, having a nice dinner with my hubby and baking all sorts of chocolatey goodness (pictured here).



I'm off this weekend to celebrate a different kind of rapture -- my wedding anniversary. Hope to see you all back here next week! If not, well, it's been nice knowing you all.....

Some Day My Princess Will Come

Princess Fairy Cake & Cupcake Tower
Originally uploaded by Sugar Daze (f/k/a LittleMissCupcakeParis)

My first fondant fairy princess! I had so much fun with this. Wishing the birthday girl a very happy day - hope you like your fairy cake!

Baby, Baby, Baby Oh : A Contest & Cupcake Recipe

A few months ago, the distribution company of the new Bernard Jeanjean film: Une Folle Envie (A Burning Desire or An Insatiable Urge in English) contacted me to create a custom cupcake as a tie-in with the movie release.


I already posted about our very exciting evening out to a private screening with the cast and crew -- well, my cupcake gets a lot of inspiration from the movie's plot about a young couple, played by Clovis Cornillac andOlivia Bonamy, who are in love and ready to start a family. This is by no means an easy task, and as time goes on, Rose and Yann try just about everything to get pregnant including eating some pretty strange stuff.



There are no unusual ingredients in my cupcake but I hope this recipe will leave you feeling a little saucy -- it's a delicious mix of ginger, passion fruit and rose. But more about that in a sec...first, I have a little contest to whet your appetite.



I'm giving away tickets to a showing of Une Folle Envie (I have 5 sets of 2 seats to offer) which comes out May 18th. Here's the film's trailer to put you in the mood:


Une Folle Envie - Bande-Annonce / Trailer [VF|HD] par Lyricis

How Can You Win 2 Tickets to a Showing?

1) leave me a comment below telling me what is the craziest thing you have heard of eating or doing to increase your chances of getting pregnant,

OR

2) tweet "win 2 seats for the new film Une Folle Envie via @sugar_daze http://tinyurl.com/64w6y63"

The contest ends at noon on May 18 when winners will be chosen at random from all of the comments/tweets received. Please be sure to make sure I have a way of contacting you (by providing your email or web address for example).

A big thank you to SND Films for generously providing the tickets (and for inviting me to create a cupcake for this special event).

And without further ado, here's my recipe for Une Folle Envie cupcake for you to whip up at home...Enjoy with moderation -- I can't be held responsible for any desires you act out after you fall under the spell of this tantalizing combination of a triple ginger cupcake with a passion fruit curd center and rose cream cheese frosting!



Une Folle Envie : Triple Ginger Cupcake with Passionfruit Curd and Rose Frosting
by Sugar Daze

For the Passionfruit Curd
Yield: About 1 Cup (You will have leftovers that can be conserved in a sterilized jar for up to 10 days in the fridge or 1 month in the freezer).



To Make:
1) Take the pulp from 4 ripe passion fruit.
2) Combine with 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk and 75 grams of caster sugar in a medium suacepan over low heat.
3) Cook, stirring for about 10-15 minutes until the curd thickens.
4) Remove from heat and place in a clean bowl. Stir in 65 grams butter and mix until it's well incorporated. Let cool for at least 15 minutes, cover with saran wrap - pushing down so wrap covers surface of curd entirely, and then put in fridge to cool.

For the Cupcakes
Yield: 18

To Make:
1) Preheat oven to 350/180 degrees and place 18 cupcake liners in cupcake tins.
1) Cream 4 ozs. butter and 1 cup sugar until light and smooth. Add in 1 egg and combine.
2) In a separate bowl sift, 1 ½ cups flour, ¼ tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda & 1 tsp ground ginger.
3) In a measuring cup, measure out 1/2 cup buttermilk + 1 tsp. vanilla
4) Alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture to the butter mixture little by little ending with the flour. Mix to combine after each addition.
5) Grate 1 1/2 tbsps. fresh ginger and add to batter.
6) Add in 1/2 cup hot water and stir.
7) Lastly, mix in ½ cup thinly chopped crystallized ginger and stir to combine. (For extra flavor, you could also add in 1 tsp. of fleur d'oranger).
8) Pour batter into tins and bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from tins and let cool on rack.

To Make the Rose Frosting:

1) Take cream cheese and butter out of fridge about 30 minutes before using.
2) Mix 100 g Philadelphia cream cheese and 40 grams butter together using stand-mixer.
3) Add in 300 grams icing sugar and 1-2 tsps. rose water. Mix until whipped and creamy.
Note: We also tried topping these cupcakes with a chocolate ganache frosting which was very good too!

To assemble:
Once cupcakes have cooled, cut an inverted cone out of the top of each cupcake. Place 1 tbsp. curd in center and replace top. You may need to shave a bit off the cone in order for it to lie flat. Frost with an offset spatula or pastry bag & tip.

Enjoy & GOOD LUCK!

Taking Care of Business Part 1

After 2 weeks of non-stop travel, my first week back home in Paris has been pretty busy. I had an amazing time in my hometown of New York. It was nice to visit with some old friends and satisfy my cravings for some of my favorite foods like pizza, chinese, burgers and cupcakes! But it wasn't all vacation; I did work on some very fun projects while I was there......

A few weeks before I left for New York an old friend from pastry school called to ask if I would be interested in creating a cupcake with him for a new restaurant he's opening later this year in Manhattan. Would I? You bet! I answered.

24 hours before we were to meet, Tomas called and briefly described to me the restaurant concept. He spoke about some of the dishes and desserts they would be serving and asked me to focus on the color white (this fits in with the overall restaurant theme but I don't want to divulge too much so let's leave it at that). I met up with Tomas at a friend's restaurant bearing several bags of different ingredients I thought would come in handy. Since their cuisine is to be primarily fusion with a nod to Tomas' homeland of Thailand, I had something sweet and spicy in mind. For some reason I could not get the image of white-blond rocker Billy Idol out of my head and his song Hot in the City. Tomas wanted something different but easy enough to recreate at any time of year, something traditional with a unique twist. I love cupcake tastings and assembling all the various options of a new flavor combo. In total, we tried 6 different cupcakes, each had between 4-7 different iterations and unanimously settled on a winner. Keeping with the white theme, we concocted a coconut cupcake with a white pepper-macadamia nut-cocount cream filling and a white chocolate ganache mohawk frosting. Tomas of course has my permission to modify the cupcake as he and his partners see fit. I wish them lots of luck and patience over the months to come as they secure their funding and get ready for the big opening. I'm tickled pink to have been invited to work with them and look forward to our cupcake's NY debut!



I also had the opportunity to spend a day with Elisa Strauss, the founder of Confetti Cakes, to learn the art of gumpaste flowers. All I can say is that I had an amazing time - I love Elisa! She is a patient and enthusiastic teacher, clealy dedicated to her craft and is so very talented at what she does. Her cake studio is decorated with cake dummies from her books and they are just as incredible in real life as on the printed page. In 5 hours, we were able to cover a number of different flowers and I can't wait to try them for myself at home. I would highly recommend taking a class with Elisa to anyone in the area or further afield. A huge thank you to Elisa for taking me under her wing as a student for the day - I look forward to seeing you again (maybe one day in Paris?) and taking another class in the future.



One of the things I loved most about my visit to the US was the TV programming -- Cupcake Wars, Amazing Wedding Cakes, Last Cake Standing, etc., I could not get enough! Even my kids were hooked. I was so impressed by the skills of all these bakers and the unbelievable flavor combinations and structures they assembled in such a short period of time - 1000 cupcakes in 3 filled varieties with hand-made decorations in 2 hours! You have got to be kidding me! I still don't know how they managed to pull that one off. So, when my best friend's husband "challenged" me to take on Crumbs in a red velvet taste-off, I could not say no. Red velvet is one of my favorite cupcake varieties and I think I make a pretty darn good one. Thankfully, this request came in before I left Paris, so I traveled with a sachet of pre-assembled dry ingredients to NY.



Finding the equivalent of the butter, buttermilk, oil, etc. that I use was a challenge enough in a NYC supermarket (and wow was it expensive!) as was baking in my friend's apartment. You know that joke "My wife makes dinner every night...her favorite thing to make? Reservations!" Well, that sums up my friend perfectly. So when it dawned on me that I hadn't thought to bring vanilla beans for the frosting, I had to make due with the only thing I could find in her cabinets -- French Vanilla flavored Splenda! The horror! I wasn't present for the taste-off but my friend later told me her hubby and his family were "raving about my cupcakes" so I'll take that as a thumbs up. :)

As I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, we did a lot of eating while in NYC and I'd love to share some of my favorite addresses with you (especially for cupcakes)! This post is aready getting long so I'll fill you in next time about where we ate and the new cupcakeries we explored......

Crumbs Red Velvet photo courtesy of tambbr.blogspot.com

The Winner Takes It All

A few months back, my friend Lindsey told me about a contest on Martha Stewart's site. Entitled the Cutest Cupcakes of 2010, I decided I had a few contestants that fit the bill including my Thanksgiving turkeys made for La Mom's TV appearance on M6. I promptly submitted them along with 1-2 others and could NOT believe it when about a month ago, I was contacted by one of Martha's peeps informing me I was a winner! That's right, my turkey cupcakes were selected as one of the 20 winning (or cutest) cupcakes among hundreds of entries received! I can't tell you how tickled pink I am to have received this nod from Martha and her team! What did I win? A copy of Martha's Cupcake Book of course - I only wish she had autographed it before it was sent out! Oh, and an appearance on Martha's site along with the 19 other winners (congratulations to you all!); I'm slide #11.

Sugar Daze Cupcakes (and a Recipe) on Disney's YouTube Channel!

A few weeks ago, I did a cupcake tutorial for Disney centered around their Club Penguin. That video has just been uploaded to their YouTube channel here. If I had known they were going to spend so much time filming my hands, I would have gotten a manicure! This was so much fun to do and hope you enjoy it!

There She Goes, There She Goes Again

Well, I've just wrapped up the last of my orders for a short while - I am taking off for the US later this week to work on some fun, new projects and take a short vacation. On my calendar? I'm hoping to catch up with the girls of Cupcakes Take the Cake for a little cupcake chat. I've also booked a private class with the amazingly gifted Elisa Strauss of Confetti Cakes; I'll be spending 5 hours in Elisa's studio hoping that some of her magic will wear off on me. I'll be meeting with a former classmate from Peter Kump's who has invited me to create a signature cupcake for the menu of his new Manhattan restaurant opening later this year. And I will be taking on Crumbs Bake Shop in my very own personal version of Cupcake Wars! (A friend's husband has asked me to bake him a batch of my red velvets so he can do a taste test comparison -- no offense but I'm hoping to blow Crumbs out of the water by the way!). Yup, that's what we cupcakers do for fun....

And of course no trip to Manhattan would be complete without a round-up of some of the city's best cupcake stores. On my last cupcake crawl, I hit Crumbs, Butter Lane, Cupcake Stop (RIP), Chikalicious and Two Little Red Hens. On Round 2, I hope to get to Baked by Melissa, sugar Sweet sunshine, Billy's and Kumquat Cupcakery.



I won't be baking again until Tuesday April 26th and my May is already starting to look a little crazy so if you want to order, please do get in touch.

Wishing you all a good Spring break, Happy Easter and see you soon.

xo Cat