Guest Post - Fields of Cake & Other Good Stuff

This is the 3rd installment of guest posts where I've asked some of my favorite blogger/bakers to share a recipe. Have you been enjoying them? And better yet, have you tried out any of the recipes? Today's post comes from Carrie of Fields of Cake & Other Good Stuff - we used to compete in the Iron Cupcake Challenges and I was always wowed by her amazing flavor combinations and drool-worthy food photography. I'm so happy Carrie agreed to share one of her recipes here and all I can say is get ready to be swept off your feet too! Here goes.....

This has been a wacky summer. Some days have been rainy and cold, some super hot and humid. There hasn’t been any real, long stretch of one or the other, just a yo-yo type thing. I have been crazy busy with wedding cakes and cupcakes, taking care of my boys, going to conferences and workshops, entertaining guests….but one thing I would NEVER miss, is helping out my friend Cat and getting to do a guest blog for her! I was SO excited when she asked me. What an honor!
She asked for something light and summery and I dreamt of light lemon cupcakes, fluffy strawberry cupcakes, delicious vanilla cupcakes, airy cotton candy cupcakes, but in the long run I was crazy busy and decided to share a favorite of mine from my blog from a while back but I revised just a bit to make it a little more fun.
Thanks Cat for your patience and love. You are awesome!!
So without further ado….



Almond Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes!!!

Macerated Strawberries

• 2 lbs. fresh strawberries washed and diced
• 3 Tbsp. Chambord
• 3 Tbsp. Amaretto
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
In bowl combine all ingredients and refrigerate for 1-3 hours.
* Puree half of the mixture some for the buttercream and some to mix with the rest of the strawberry mixture.



Almond Vanilla Cupcakes (adapted from Warren Brown's Cake Love)

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup almond flour
• 2 ounces potato starch
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder (1 tsp at high altitude)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup half and half (1 cup + 2 tbsp. at high altitude)
• 2 Tbsp. Amaretto
• 1 Tbsp. Vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. almond extract
• 1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter (room temp)
• 12 ounces sugar
• 4 large eggs (5 at high altitude)
Sift the flours, potato starch, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside.
Combine half and half, Amaretto, vanilla extract and almond extract in a large measuring cup and set aside.
In bowl of standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar on the lowest speed for 5-7 minutes.
With the mixer still on the lowest speed, add the eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
Add the dry and wet ingredients alternating in 3-5 additions. This should take no more than 60 seconds total...you don't want to mix too much.
Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl remembering to get the bottom of the bowl. Mix on medium speed for 20 full seconds to develop the cakes structure.
Portion evenly into 24 cupcake papers. Bake for 22-25 minutes at 350 degrees. I find I need to bake mine a whole 25 minutes or they shrink from the sides. They should be a nice dark golden brown on the top, don't worry these are moist cupcakes...amazing! It is now my "go to".

Fresh Strawberry Buttercream
• ¾ lb. unsalted butter (softened)
• 1/2-3 ounce package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1/2 cup strawberry puree
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup macerated strawberries
Beat butters and instant pudding mix in mixer until light and fluffy, about 8 minutes or so. Turn mixer to low and slowly add the puree and then the cream. Beat for another 3 or 4 minutes. Fold in the macerated strawberries ( I found I kinda had to beat them into the buttercream to get it all to come together once adding the strawberry chunks, but don't worry...it's worth it)



Vanilla Bean Buttercream
1 lb. unsalted butter (softened)
1/2 pkg. french vanilla instant pudding mix
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup (or more to suit your tastes) powdered sugar
In mixer set on medium speed, beat the butter and vanilla bean seeds until smooth and silky. Turn the speed to low and add the pudding mix, when it is all incorporated, slowly add the cream, a little at a time. When fully incorporated bring speed up to high and beat for 5-7 minutes. Turn speed back down to low and add powdered sugar by Tbsp., tasting along the way. When it is sweet to your taste, beat again at high speed for a good 5 minutes to really break down any graininess that you might get from the powdered sugar. Bring back down to low speed and beat for a while that way to get rid of air bubbles.

To assemble these delicious morsels...follow these instructions
• cut a cone in the top of each cupcake..I made mine fairly large to accommodate more strawberries..yum!
• put about a half teaspoon of buttercream into each cone then top with chunks of macerated strawberries and more juice, place the cone cap back on top.
• Pipe the vanilla buttercream around the outer edge of the cupcake and fill the hole in the center of the buttercream with the strawberry buttercream. Ta da!!!

Strawberry Swing Cupcakes for IC:E Summer Berries

This is my first entry for the June Iron Cupcake:Earth challenge - Summer Berries. I was thrilled when this challenge was announced because I had been eyeing a recipe from the new Martha Stewart Cupcakes cookbook which I had seen on her site and then was able to drool over in person when my copy finally arrived from Amazon.co.uk! Hers is a Strawberry Cupcake with a Strawberry Meringue Buttercream. And lucky for me, it's strawberry season here in Paris.



The most common varieties on the market here are Gariguette, which represent 20% of the French strawberry production, and Mara des Bois. I used the latter for this recipe - it's a small, sweet, somewhat firm berry reminiscent to the wild strawberries we used to pick in the fields when I was a little girl at camp in Maine.



After taking a more in-depth look at the Martha recipe, I decided hers might be a little too full-on strawberry for a gal like me who is preferential to chocolate and caramel, and also a little bland for IC:E where the flavor combinations are key to the challenge. So I decided to scrap that idea - sorry Martha - save for the strawberries.

So, what did I come up with? A strawberry cupcake loaded with white chocolate chunks and topped with a strawberry and pistachio twist buttercream. It's name,"Strawberry Swing" is taken from Coldplay's Viva La Vida which I was listening to while I baked them.



I have to admit that despite the flavor additions, these were still a bit too strawberry potent for me. I think next time I may chop the chocolate finer so that you get more chocolate in every bite, and up the ratio of pistachio to strawberry buttercream.



In any case they make a nice summery dessert and would be perfect for sharing at a picnic or 4th of July party. The recipe follows. Enjoy!!!

Strawberry Swing Cupcakes
For 16 cupcakes:
4 ozs. unsalted butter/beurre doux, softened
1 cup sugar/sucre en poudre
1 large egg
1 tsp. baking soda/bicarbonate alimentaire
1 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ cups flour
1/2 cup buttermilk /lait fermente
1/2 cup hot water
100 g. white chocolate, chopped
3 cups fresh strawberries, chopped in small pieces (you may want to reserve about 12 whole strawberries for decoration)

Pre-heat oven to 350F/180C. Grease or place cupcake liners into cupcake tins.
To make cupcakes, cream together sugar and butter until smooth. Add egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt and mix until well-combined. Alternate adding flour and buttermilk in 3 batches ending with a flour addition, mix well until smooth. Add hot water last and mix to combine. Fold in white chocolate chunks and 2 cups strawberries.
Fill lined cupcake tins 2/3rds full and bake for 18-22 minutes. Cupcakes are done when a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
Remove cupcakes from tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Pistachio & Strawberry Buttercream:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
3 tbsps. milk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup strawberries (reserved from above)
1/2 cup pistachios, shelled and crushed

Place strawberries in the bowl of a small food processor; process until pureed.
In a bowl or mixer, beat together butter and sugar on low speed until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and milk and mix well. Divide buttercream into 2 bowls, fold strawberry puree in one; fold pistachios into the other. Mix well. Fill a pastry bag with pistachio buttercream on one side and strawberry on other so when you pipe, you get a half and half mixture of each coming out. Frost cupcakes. EAT!

I am competing for an ETSY PRIZE-PACK this month, which you will find right below the photo of my new tote! Why is there a pic of that groovy tote bag in the midst of my cupcake blog you may ask? Well, it's just my way of giving a shout out to my friend Melissa at Etsy shop: Haut Totes. I won a contest she was running on Twitter last week (I honestly never win anything!) and won an awesome, so very cool tote from her! Yay! Do you likey????


Here are the Iron Cupcake June prizes:

* A sweet cupcake ID bracelet by INSANEJELLYFISH
* A groovy linocut piece from BLOCKHEAD PRESS
* a sweet surprise from Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Cupcakery,
* PLUS, IronCupcake:Earth can not forget our good friend, CAKESPY, who is now going to be doing a piece for our winner each month until further notice - sweet!

Last and certainly not least, don’t forget our corporate prize providers: HEAD CHEFS by FIESTA PRODUCTS, HELLO CUPCAKE by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, , JESSIE STEELE APRONS; TASTE OF HOME books, a t-shirt from UPWITHCUPCAKES.COM. Iron Cupcake:Earth is sponsored in part by 1-800-Flowers.

This Cupcake is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Of my two kids, my son is the more difficult when it comes to eating. He is tall and lean like his Dad and it really is no wonder given how finnicky an eater he is. We have had lots of battles at the kitchen table and then one day when I was at the pediatrician's he simply said, "Give up. He'll get the nutrition he needs from the food he eats but don't make mealtimes unpleasant. You are there to enjoy and savor, not fight." Spoken like a true Frenchman but you know what? He's right and since that day, that is exactly what I have done. Now that doesn't mean that I've stopped trying to sneak more "good for you" food onto his plate. And I know many of you parents out there have the same dilemma. That's why I decided to post this "good for you" cupcake recipe (okay, it has sugar and all that other bad stuff but the added bananas = real fruit, get high marks in my book).

This recipe is originally from The Australian Women's Weekly - Cupcakes, but I came across it on another food blogger's page : The Red Deer. All I can say is thank you Alicia, The Red Deer, for putting this out there. I actually made this recipe twice in a 72 hour period - it's that good!



The first time I made them, I topped them with a vanilla bean cream cheese frosting and melted milk chocolate. The second time I opted for a strawberry buttercream and a light dusting of my new Salmon Pink Mystical Dust for extra glamour. I really enjoyed both of these variations and will likely try the recipe with a lemon cream cheese frosting as originally posted the next time I make them.

Here's the recipe. I made some modifications cause I didn't have everything in the pantry which I have noted in the sidelines. You'll love the moist rich cake it yields, the delicious banana-y taste and best of all, your kids will too:

Sour Cream Banana Cupcakes (from The Australian Women's Weekly - Cupcakes)
As posted by The Red Deer
Makes 12

90g butter, softened
110g brown sugar
2 eggs
75g self raising flour (I used 150g. total of regular flour + 1 tsp. baking soda instead of the mixture of 75g. plain flour, 75g. self-raising flour and 1/2 tsp. bicarb soda)
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1/2 tsp mixed spice (For you non-Aussies like me, Alicia says this is coriander, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. I substituted a mix of 1/4 tsp. each ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and cracked pepper)
2/3 cup overripe banana, mashed (about 1 1/2 bananas)
80g sour cream (2 whopping tbsps.)
2 tbsps milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/350 degrees F and line a 12-hole muffin tray with cupcake liners.
2. Beat butter and sugar until creamy and light. Add eggs one by one mixing well after each addition.
3. Stir in sifted ingredients, banana, sour cream and milk.
4. Divide batter amongst cupcake liners, and bake for 20 minutes.

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting (from The Australian Women's Weekly - Cupcakes)
As posted by The Red Deer
Made more than enough for 12 cupcakes

60g butter, softened
250g cream cheese
500g icing sugar, sifted
juice of 1 lemon

1. Beat butter and cream cheese until combined, light and fluffy.
2. Add the icing sugar and beat until combined.
3. Add the lemon juice and beat until combined, and then keep beating until smooth.

BTW, you'd have to be living under a rock not to know the title of this post refers to "Hollaback Girl" a song from the fabulous Miss Gwen Stefani (sorry, Mom, don't mean to offend you! I don;t really mean that you live under a rock.). I've always been curious about what the lyrics really meant and came across this pretty funny, tongue-in-cheek explanation a while back.

Daring Bakers Challenge - Cheesecakelets

Strawberry, Raspberry, Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple, Turtle, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Key Lime, Chocolate Coconut Cream, Pumpkin, Oreo, Dutch Apple Caramel, Chocolate Tuxedo Cream, Tiramisu, Dulche de Leche, Chocolate Mousse, Vanilla Bean, Kahlua Cocoa Coffee, White Chocolate Raspberry....Have I hit a flavor that tempts you yet? What do these all have in common you may ask? Look no further than the Cheesecake Factory's Cheesecake Menu and you will find these and many other delicious, mouth-watering flavors.



When we last lived in NYC, we had the Little Pie Company right around the corner from us and we went through a phase where we hit that joint weekly for their cheesecake and a few other goodies. Problem was they were a small business at the time and after a few months, I started getting a complex that I was maybe going there a little bit too frequently....that their employees were starting to notice those extra bumps and curves I was packing thanks to their sweet treats, and so I decided to back off for a while (and head to the gym a little more often).



The one offer I would never turn down though was a lunch and slice of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory in Miami on one of the many monthly pit-stops I used to make there when I worked for Burger King's ad agency. I have many fond memories of dining there with my former colleagues Pat & Holly; we would usually spend a couple of hours there between early morning meetings at BK HQ and the jaunt to Miami International to catch our flight back to NYC dishing about our Clients and bemoaning their reactions to whatever it was that we were presenting that day. Nothing made tolerating even the worst Client meeting better than a slice of Vanilla Bean or Oreo Cheesecake.



I was so ecstatic when the April Daring Baker challenge was announced and low and behold, it was cheesecake! This is hands-down one of my favorite desserts and I will never refuse a slice when offered. (Even when it came on the heels of a meeting where I sampled about 20 different Whopper sandwiches as part of R&D -- true story!).



The other day I was walking past a restaurant in my neighborhood that proclaims it serves the "Best Cheesecake in Paris." They apparently even won an award for it. I have been steering clear of them since. In the meantime, I am happy to content myself with the recipe you'll find below.



The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge. I decided to reduce this down to cupcake form, or cheesecakelets, and made 4 varieties:
- Abbey's as it is published below which yields a nice creamy slightly lemon-flavored cheesecake
- A Pecan Caramel Variety (Pecan crust with caramel de sel de Guerande topping)
- A White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal Variety (white chocolate cheesecake topped with fresh strawberries and a strained strawberry/confit de rose petal sauce)
- A Triple Chocolate Variety (dark chocolate crust with a 2-layer cheesecake - milk chocolate and white chocolate topped with milk chocolate shavings).



Here is the recipe. You can make this as a regular size cheesecake or do as I did and render it into cheesecakelets. I halved the recipe and ended up with 12 regular-size cheesecakelets. Enjoy! And many thanks to Jenny for this awesome and so simple recipe!

Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake:

Crust:
2 cups / 180 g graham cracker crumbs (I used crushed Speculoos cookies)
1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
2 tbsp. / 24 g sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Cheesecake:
3 sticks of cream cheese, 8 oz each (total of 24 oz) room temperature (In Paris, you can find Philly cream cheese at specialty cheese stores or the American groceries. For this recipe, I used a mix of approximately 3/5 Mme. Loik fromage nature, 1/5 St. Moret and 1/5 creme fraiche. Next time I will definitely use the Philly cause nothing really compares!)
1 cup / 210 g sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or the innards of a vanilla bean)
1 tbsp liqueur, optional, but choose what will work well with your cheesecake

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (Gas Mark 4 = 180C = Moderate heat). Begin to boil a large pot of water for the water bath.

2. Mix together the crust ingredients and press into your preferred pan (I used a lined cupcake tin). You can press the crust just into the bottom, or up the sides of the pan too - baker's choice. Set crust aside.

3. Combine cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or in a large bowl if using a hand-mixer) and cream together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next. Make sure to scrape down the bowl in between each egg. Add heavy cream, vanilla, lemon juice, and alcohol and blend until smooth and creamy.

4. Pour batter into prepared crust and tap the pan on the counter a few times to bring all air bubbles to the surface. (If making cheesecakelets, you will want to fill each cupcake liner to just about the very top.) Place pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until halfway up the side of the cheesecake pan. If cheesecake pan is not airtight, cover bottom securely with foil before adding water.

5. Bake 45 to 55 minutes (my cheesecakelets were ready in 21 minutes), until it is almost done - this can be hard to judge, but you're looking for the cake to hold together, but still have a lot of jiggle to it in the center. You don't want it to be completely firm at this stage. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let rest in the cooling oven for one hour. This lets the cake finish cooking and cool down gently enough so that it won't crack on the top. After one hour, remove cheesecake from oven and lift carefully out of water bath. Let it finish cooling on the counter, and then cover and put in the fridge to chill (You really do need to do this. I tried one about 2 hours after it came out of the oven and was not at all happy with the result. After letting them sit overnight in the fridge, they were excellent). Once fully chilled, it is ready to serve.



Little Miss Cupcake Varieties:
Pecan Caramel:
When you throw your cookies into the food processor add in about 1/2 cup of pecans. After the cheescakelets have chilled, top with homemade caramel sauce. Make it more savory by using salted butter or throw in some sel de Guerande - coarse sea salt.

White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal:
At Step 3 of the original recipe, melt about 100 grams of white chocolate with the cream. Let cool for a few minutes and then stir into the cheesecake filling ingredients. For the topping, slice strawberries, mix with some granulated sugar and allow to sit for a few hours in the fridge. Once cheesecakelets have chilled, top with sliced strawberries and then mix some of the juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl with some rose petal jelly. Pour over tops.

Triple Chocolate:
Replace butter in original crust recipe above with about 100 grams melted dark chocolate. For the filling, mix all ingredients except for the cream and divide into two bowls. For the milk chocolate layer, add a few tbsps. cocoa powder to 1/2 cup cream and then mix into one bowl. Use this mixture to cover crust in pan half-way. For the white chocolate layer, repeat as above in White Chocolate & Strawberry/Rose Petal variety and pour this mixture over the milk chocolate layer. Once cheesecakes have cooled, use a carrot peel to make milk chocolate curls for decoration.



**To see more Daring Bakers' cheesecake creations, please visit our Flickr Group : Daring Bakers Look Good**

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

Do you remember this jingle from the 1970's for Almond Joy candy bars and its sister product Mounds (sometimes you don't)? Mars makes a candy bar here in France called Bounty (pronounced "boon-tee") which is its non-US version of Mounds and I find myself singing this little ditty any time I consume one. Of course, everyone thinks I am a nut when I do this as they never ran this particular ad campaign here.

Which also make me think of the "I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper, she's a Pepper.....wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" song for Dr. Pepper that dates back to the same era. My mom tells a story about how she was once offered a Dr. Pepper at a party and broke into song and everyone looked at her like, you guessed it, a nut! Guess it's a genetic thing.

Well, the challenge this month for Iron Cupcake: Earth is Nuts & Seeds. As soon as it was announced, I knew immediately what I wanted to make as an entry. But it's going to take some preparation work I still haven't had time to do yet. So here for your approval is an interim candidate, the Almond Joy cupcake. I made this as part of an order for a meeting I am going to this evening. The order was for 2 dozen cupcakes, the only stipulation being that some of them be Caramel Dolce. As for the others, it was up to me. Which is kind of a curse in disguise. You see the problem is when I am told "blue sky," I really do think blue sky in that there are SOOOOOOO many delicious cupcake flavors I could make and I spend hours debating the pluses and minuses of each. This is the one area of my life where I really do crave structure. It's shocking, I know.

So, what did I come up with? Six of each of the following flavors:
- After Eight : a mint chocolate cupcake with a mint chocolate buttercream topped with a slice of its namesake, an After Eight candy.



- A cupcake similar to one I made earlier this week for my friend whose son is sick so it probably looks familiar to those of you who follow my blog : a mixture of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes topped with a light strawberry buttercream, a slice of fresh strawberry and drizzled in milk chocolate.



- The requested Caramel Dolce : a mixture of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes topped with a caramel buttercream and gummy creme caramel candies.



- And last but not least, the Almond Joy, my second entry for this month's IC:E challenge : a coconut and almond cupcake topped with a rich milk chocolate buttercream, sprinkled with shredded coconut and a grilled almond.



You can see what's up for grabs in this month's ETSY prize pack here. Voting will begin no later than Sunday, March 29 at 8 p.m. at NO ONE PUTS CUPCAKE IN A CORNER, and will be open through Friday, April 3 at 12 noon.

Here is the recipe for those of you who may want to try this at home:

Almond Joy Cupcakes
For 16 cupcakes:
4 ozs. unsalted butter/beurre doux, softened
1 cup sugar/sucre en poudre
1 large egg
1 tsp. baking soda/bicarbonate alimentaire
1 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup buttermilk /lait fermente
¼ cup hot water

1) Pre-heat oven to 350F/180C. Grease or place cupcake liners into cupcake tins.
2) To make cupcakes, cream together sugar and butter until smooth. Add egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt and mix until well-combined. Add in coconut and almonds and mix again.
3) Alternate adding flour and buttermilk in 3 batches, mix well until smooth. Add hot water last and mix to combine.
4) Fill cupcake liners 2/3rds full.
5) Bake for 17-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove cupcakes from tin and let cool on wire rack.

Chocolate Buttercream:
1/4 c. butter, softened
1/4 c. plus 2 tbsp. cocoa/chocolat en poudre
1/4 c. plus 3 tbsp. warm milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 (16 oz.) pkg. powdered sugar, sifted

Mash together softened butter and cocoa until well-combined. Add in vanilla and mix. Add the sugar and milk in batches until the consistency is not too liquidy but just thick enough to hold its shape or make peaks.



Garnish cupcakes with shredded coconut, toasted almonds, whole almonds, chocolate covered almonds, etc. Whatever tickles your fancy and enjoy!

Getting By With a Little Help from (My) Friends

Paris may be a rather large city, but the expat community here is fairly close-knit. When something new or noteworthy happens, word spreads like wildfire. Such was the case last week when a friend phoned to inform me that the baby boy of one of the local moms was deathly ill and in the hospital. "They almost lost him," were the words that made my blood run cold and I pulled my children close to me in an embrace that was a little bit longer, a little bit tighter than usual when I hung up the phone. As a mother, nothing gets to me more than a tale of tragedy, neglect, abuse, etc. where the victim is a child.


The child in this case is the only boy of 5 siblings and not even a year old. With my friend and her husband spending most of the past week in the hospital, some of their close friends put out a call to those of us in the neighborhood to provide childcare, do some shopping or cook up a warm meal.



I volunteered to do dinner duty for them tonight and whenever else it may be needed. For dessert, I baked a batch of cupcakes as I tend to think of them as a comforting treat in a time of trouble. Just as important as the taste, I wanted them to look good so my friend would have something pretty to come home to after so many hours spent in the cold, sterile hospital environment.

And for the kids still at home, I was thinking of something whimsical and fun -- this must be such a terrifying experience for them.



Last week, I joked about cupcakes helping to find a cure for cancer. If only life could be so simple. This post is dedicated to my friend's son, Baby P, who has been in my thoughts and in those of so many people this past week. I hope he is back home soon where he belongs, and I wish him a long, happy and above all, healthy life -- something all of our children deserve.



RELATED LINK : The Lost Book Cupcake Competition

Truly, Madly, Deeply

How do I love thee, sweet cupcake? Let me count the ways.....From 1 - 16 February, Little Miss Cupcake will be serving up some enchanting new flavor combinations to treat your sweet (tooth or heart) for Valentine's Day.



Looking to put some sizzle back in your true love's step? Try our Kiss Kiss Bang Bang cupcake: a red velvet cupcake topped with a luscious cream cheese frosting and a red white chocolate heart. For extra bang, ask for your icing "red hot" -- kicked up a notch with cinnamon.



When you are in love, you see life through rose-colored lenses. Make your St. Valentine's more rosy with our La Vie en Rose cupcake: a pink champagne cupcake topped with swirled white chocolate and raspberry buttercream. A sweet red strawberry is baked in at its center.



Heart racing? Butterflies in your tummy? No worries, sounds like you just got a taste of our Cupid's Arrow: A chocolate-swirled vanilla cupcake topped with a layer of chocolate glaze and cherry buttercream. Chocolate candy hearts on top add some sweetness to Cupid's sting.

For sale in boxes of 12 (4 of each flavor), available on a first call, first serve basis for 30,00 euro. Limited delivery available in Western Paris. All others, pick-up only.

For Every Occasion, A Cupcake. This one tagged a romantic night for sweet lovers on St. Valentine's Day!

Yours Truly,
Little Miss Cupcake

Related Post: Cupcakes Take the Cake Valentine's Day Round-Up