Pumpkin Cupcakes - Happy Halloween!

For the office Halloween event this year, I handed out chocolate chip walnut cookies and these pumpkin cupcakes—with cream cheese buttercream and handmade marzipan pumpkins—in lieu of the usual candy fare.

Hm, well, that's not entirely true. I admit I put out some Almond Joys and Snickers to get rid of the surplus from my Costco variety pack, after having picked out all the Crunch and Twix for myself =)

These cupcakes were made at 2am once again, but well worth it to see the trick-or-treaters at work look so eager and happy. I never received cupcakes for Halloween as a kid, but I guess I like to hand out what I would have liked to receive!

Chocolate Cupcakes - Spun Sugar Crowns

My co-worker gave me a Cooks Illustrated recipe for Ultimate Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache Filling, which I tested out over the weekend. These are delicious and indeed quite ultimate!

The rich, moist chocolate cake is made with melted bittersweet chocolate, and has a hint of coffee in it that really enhances the chocolate flavor. The cupcake is also filled with a smooth, creamy ganache. Out of the oven, this cupcake tastes and looks like a chocolate soufflé. I chose a dark chocolate frosting that has a soft and smooth texture much like the ganache filling.


For the topping, we decided to experiment with spun sugar crowns. It is going to take us some more practice to fine-tune this skill, but we were able to put together a couple crowns and spirals. Anyone have tips for cleaning caramelized (or crystallized) sugar from saucepans?

"Mooncakes" - Mid-Autumn Festival

And for those of you on the lunar calendar . . .


We didn't get a chance to eat actual mooncakes this year, but I was suddenly obsessed with baking my own alternative. After a quick trip to Michael's to pick up a couple tools, I figured out a way to make a cookie-coated brownie "mooncake"!

1) Start with a brownie and a cookie-cutter


2) Wrap thinly with cookie dough and imprint. Note: chill the cookie dough in the freezer for easier handling and pat gently with flour-coated fingers to mold around the brownie.


3) Bake! Or rather, brûlée in order to preserve the imprinted pattern.

Beach Cupcakes - Last Day of Summer

Summer never quite arrived this year in San Diego. But nevertheless, here are some starfish and sharks to bid it farewell.

Starfish cupcakes: Swiss meringue buttercream frosted vanilla cupcakes, dipped in graham cracker crumbs and topped with a marzipan starfish

Shark cupcakes: Swiss meringue buttercream frosted vanilla cupcakes, with metallic cardstock

In the 16 months I have lived here, I have only been to the beach once. What a shame. I must fix this immediately!

Strawberry Cupcakes - A Birthday Surprise

As far as fruit cupcakes go, this is hands-down my favorite: white cupcakes with freshly diced strawberry bits, topped with Swiss meringue buttercream flavored with strawberry puree. With strawberries doing most of the sweetening, this cupcake tastes particularly light, natural and fresh (and perhaps just a tiny bit healthier *wishful thinking*).

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a surprise, given that I asked my hubby to go buy strawberries for his own birthday cupcakes (although it was a surprise in that I didn't tell him until the last minute to do so . . .). In my defense, I was pulling an all-nighter to try to finish as much unexpectedly-assigned work as possible, so that I wouldn't ruin his birthday.

I knew he loved strawberries, as that tends to be his go-to flavor in the dessert department, so we went for a midnight jog to Vons to buy up the last couple of boxes of strawberry left. After he went to sleep, I decided to pipe some chocolate toppings to try to add back some element of surprise.

He loved the cupcakes and I hear his co-workers did as well. I didn't get much sleep, but it was worth it!

Milo | Rhino Dino

Hello! Shhh . . . I am hunting . . .

Icebox Cake - Homage to Billy's

As a cookies-and-cream fan, I love icebox cake (Milo clearly does too). Chocolate wafers, whipped cream, chocolate curls, and . . . that's it! What more would you want?


When we visited New York after my bar exam last year, we went on an impromptu cupcake tour. My cousin Naomi recommended that we check out Billy's Bakery, where we discovered the icebox cake. What a refreshing change from the other cupcake-dominant bakeries we visited!


The Nabisco chocolate wafers aren't easy to find, but grocery stores sometimes stock them in the ice cream aisle. The whipped cream makes up more than half the volume of the cake, but it's so light, and just barely sweetened, that you eat this cake up nearly guilt-free. A couple tips: 1) do not overwhip the cream (or it loses its smoothness, as it did in my case), and 2) use at least 1/4" of cream between layers, as the wafers will soak it up and you do not want to end up with a solid mass.