Uncoffee, Untoffe Pie and Brownies Oh My!

Last month, Gigi's Cupcakes announced some new flavors added to their daily menu. Of course, I had to test some of them out.

I started with Chocolate Caramel Macchiato, which was dark chocolate pudding cake with a creamy mocha filling, topped with Dulce de Leche cream cheese frosting-drizzled with caramel and topped with a chocolate-covered coffee bean. Even though I don't like coffee, I was prepared for this cupcake to taste a lot like coffee. Boy, was I wrong and quite surprised. It was predominantly chocolate flavored. Aside from the coffee bean on top, the mocha filling inside was probably the closest to coffee flavor throughout the whole cupcake. This was definitely very different than the caramel macchiato cupcake from I Heart Cupcakes.

Next, I had the Banana Toffee Pie consisting of banana cake with an English toffee filling, topped with marshmallow buttercream frosting and sprinkled with crunchy toffee candy pieces. I thought this cupcake would be similar to Gigi's toffee cupcake, but with a touch of banana. Nope, I was wrong with my expectations again. It was mostly banana flavored. I didn't taste much toffee. It was good; just not what I anticipated.

Then, this past weekend, I tried the Billion Dollar brownie mix from Sisters Gourmet. It called for eggs, butter and vanilla. About 23 minutes later, brownies were ready. While they tasted a bit better than your typical box brownie mix, they were still brownies. There isn't too much variation of your standard brownie.

Chip Off the Menu Block

The title of this entry is a combination of my dessert encounters over the last few weeks. We recently went to Sprinkles and tried some of their "off the menu" flavors. And last weekend, I experimented with a triple chip cookie mix (a play on the idiom, "chip off the old block").

Starting with Sprinkles, my first cupcake was an off the menu flavor, so I don't know exactly what the ingredients were, but it was a strawberry cupcake with orange frosting, topped with a fondant flower. This might have been a better summer flavor, but it was nice and fruity.

My next cupcake was a regular menu flavor, but I had never tried nor blogged about it. Hubby and I split the milk chocolate, which was Belgian dark chocolate cake with fudgy milk chocolate cream cheese frosting and chocolate sprinkles. A good balance of chocolate; not too rich and not overpowering chocolate taste.

And last was another off the menu flavor...ginger with cream cheese frosting. It almost looked like carrot cake, but it was not. The employee who helped me described this cupcake as, "like a gingerbread cookie." He was right. It was similar to some of the snickerdoodle cupcakes I've had before.

I like the off the menu surprise. Although I wouldn't consider any of these recent cupcakes, "off the charts."

After a recent online shopping spree of dessert mixes, we decided to give one of them a shot last weekend. We tried triple chocolate chip from Sisters Gourmet. The jar contained all the dry ingredients and I had to add butter and eggs, mix and bake.

Well, the visual results don't give you the impression that I knew what I was doing. They came out flatter than IHOP's all-you-can-eat pancakes. I even took the three best cookies from the batch for this photo op. Rest assured, they tasted better than they looked. I think I made the mistake of pressing down the dough a bit on the cookie sheet rather than leaving it in a ball.

This isn't the end of the cookie mixers. I have four more plus a brownie mix. I know you can't wait!