No Tricks; Just Treats

On Saturday, we made another trip to Gigi's. We had a combination of our favorites and some new flavors. Lucky for me, they had Chocolate Salted Caramel. It's been awhile since I had this from Gigi's.

For Halloween, Gigi's had some cute holiday decorated versions of some of their basic cupcakes. Not exactly sure what the graveyard one was, but it appeared to be standard yellow cake with vanilla frosting and oreo crumbs. It was a tasty basic cupcake. The husband had red velvet, which had orange and black sprinkles added.

The husband also had (and I had a bite of) Chocolate Chip Cheesecake. It's devil's food cake with dark chocolate chips, champagne cream cheese frosting, chocolate chips and chocolate ganache. This one had a lot of chocolate, but very good.

And finally, I had their new seasonal Chocolate Hazelnut consisting of chocolate cake with hazelnuts baked in, filled with Nutella, chocolate hazelnut buttercream frosting and rimmed in hazelnuts. I didn't care for all the hazelnuts inside and out. The cupcake and frosting were good though. I liked some of the other cupcakeries' hazelnut cupcakes better.

Pumpkin Cravin'

We made an unplanned stop by Crave on Saturday and got a few cupcakes. It was not our usual half dozen devouring or anything like that. Even though it's not typically my first choice, I had to try their seasonal pumpkin cupcake. It's pumpkin spiced cake with pecans and topped with cinnamon cream cheese frosting and a fondant leaf.

The cake was moist as usual. I could have done without the pecans though. And the frosting was delicious. Pumpkin and pecan lovers will appreciate this one.

A Sprinkle of Vanilla

Last weekend, I baked with another cupcake mix from Sprinkles. This time, it was purchased at Williams-Sonoma using a coupon, so it ended up being about $13.

The container included a cake mix, Sprinkles signature candy dots and a frosting recipe. As with the banana cupcake mix, it called for the usual suspect ingredients like butter, milk and eggs. Again, I reduced the bake time by about 10 minutes and got 14 cupcakes out of the batter instead of the 12 it claims to make. And I cheated on the frosting by using the tub since I can never seem to get the "from scratch" ones right.

Ta-da! Another positive outcome with the Sprinkles mixes. The cake is much more dense than the standard store-bought mixes, so they fill you up faster. The vanilla flavor was not as prominent as I expected, but if I recall, it's actually the same as the ones at the Sprinkles cupcakeries.

Pumpkin and Spice is Somewhat Nice

Last weekend, we returned to Nothing Bundt Cakes. We had most of the same bundlet flavors as before since they have a standard selection that doesn't change much. However, we did try the featured flavor for this month; pumpkin spice. Pumpkin is not typically one of my top flavors, but this was fairly tasty. They don't have ingredient descriptions on the website, but aside from pumpkin, you could taste nutmeg and cinnamon. And as all of their cakes; they are drizzled with cream cheese frosting. Nutmeg seemed to be the most predominant flavor. Their cakes are always moist and the frosting is quite delish.

October Cupcake Specials

Check out this month's cupcake specials...

Sprinkles

September 28-October 14:

• Triple Cinnamon: Lightly spiced buttermilk cupcake topped with smooth cinnamon cream cheese frosting and dusted with cinnamon sugar. This varies from their regular cinnamon sugar cupcake, which doesn't have frosting.

October 8-31:

• Caramel Apple: Spiced apple cake studded with granny smith apples and topped with a buttery caramel cream cheese frosting.

Crave

October 15-November 21:

• Pumpkin: Pumpkin spiced cake with pecans and topped with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.
• Cranberry Orange: Orange zest and cranberry cake with orange zest frosting.

Sugarbaby's

New Seasonal Flavors:

• French Toast with Bacon: Cinnamon french toast inspired cake, topped with maple cream buttercream and garnished with chopped maple bacon.
• Buttered Pecan: Butter pecan cake, light and creamy butter frosting and topped with butter toasted pecans.
• Cookie Dough I Love You So: Vanilla chocolate chip cake topped with cookie dough inspired buttercream (eggless cookie dough frosting). I've had this one before and LOVED it! Glad they brought it back.
• Black Forest: Dark chocolate cake filled with tart cherries and topped with a swirl of vanilla buttercream.
• Orange Cream: Orange essence cake with creamy orange vanilla buttercream frosting.

Celebrity Cupcakes

New Seasonal Flavor:

• Pumpkin: Fresh organic pumpkin cake, cream cheese frosting with a touch of ginger.

Nothing Bundt Cakes

• Pumpkin Spice

Also, SWEET Houston now offers gluten-free cupcakes in chocolate and red velvet everyday!