Sprinkles Holiday Deal

Order a Sprinkles gift card of $25 or more by December 25 and they will email you two free cupcakes!

Sweet Falling

We stopped by SWEET this weekend and picked up a six-pack using a Google Offer I bought a few months ago.

My first cupcake was pumpkin. Since they don't have ingredient descriptions on their website, I'm taking a guess as to what's in it. Obviously, it's a pumpkin spice cake. It appeared to be topped with two types of frosting; the bottom layer was sort of cinnamon flavor and the top was like a whipped cream frosting. It was also topped with some cake crumbles. It tasted alright; had proper moistness. I've had better from places like Crave.

The second cupcake I had was toffee. It seemed to be ALL toffe from the cake to the frosting to the little pieces on top. I liked this better than the pumpkin, but it's not as good as Gigi's toffee cupcake.

And last was the cookies n' creme. It was a standard yellow cake with Oreo pieces baked in and I think had cream cheese frosting topped with Oreo crumbles and a half cookie. Even though this cupcake had a slightly drier consistency, I liked the overall taste the best of all three eaten today.

While SWEET's prices are comparable to the other cupcakeries, their cupcake sizes pale in comparison. The cupcakes are still good, but smaller and lighter weight.

Willams-Sonoma Takes on Sprinkles

Recently, I bought a few store-branded Williams-Sonoma cupcake mixes. Last weekend, I took a stab at making the Vanilla Bean version. It's made with organic flour and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla. I had to add eggs, butter and milk. I baked it for 15 minutes (about 1 minute less than the minimum recommended time). This one also makes a dozen, but I was able to squeeze out one more to make it 13. Again, I cheated on the frosting until I figure out a way to make it the right consistency.

Here is the finished product...

It was comparable to Sprinkles version. I liked seeing the little vanilla bean flecks. It makes me feel like it has good quality ingredients.

Verdict...it's a hung jury. Sprinkles and Williams-Sonoma are tied.

November Cupcake Specials

Check out this month's cupcake specials...

Sprinkles

October 19-November 11:

• S'more: graham cracker-lined Belgian dark chocolate cake filled with bittersweet chocolate ganache and topped with toasted marshmallow frosting.

October 31-November 30:

• Pumpkin: laced with fragrant ginger, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon and topped with sweet cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

November 2-25:

• Salty Caramel: fleur de sel granules the sweet, buttery caramel which flavors both the cake and frosting. One of my favorites. You gotta try this if you haven't already.

November 16-25:

• Orange Cranberry: a blend of orange cake studded with ripe, juicy cranberries and topped with white chocolate 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:

• Pumpkin Spice: spice cake infused with pumpkin and topped with extra creamy vanilla bean buttercream.
• Mocha Java Chocolate: moist chocolate cake with a hint of espresso, topped with delicious mocha java buttercream frosting and a pinch of chocolate curls.

Gigi's

November:

• Pumpkin Cheesecake

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.