OMgosh! Cupcakes!

For Camille's birthday (today), we spent last night at the Riverbank Lodge in Petersburg. Such a beautiful hotel -- a rustic mountain lodge-inspired hotel that made us feel like we were in Colorado instead of 10 miles away from Springfield. And, across the street from the Riverbank Lodge, there just happens to be a little shop called OMGosh Bakery and Desserts. We stopped on our way out of town this morning so I could check it out because I can never resist trying a cupcake from a place I've never been.

OMGosh shares space with a shop called Memory Lane Antiques & Gifts. The pair of businesses is run by a mother-daughter team (Mom owns the antique shop, while her daughter runs the bakery). There were plenty of goodies to choose from in the display case, but I was there for cupcakes, so it was easy to hone in on those. Just some of the possibilities: s'mores, M&Ms, Reese's Pieces and Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, Oreo, turtle. There was even a caramel apple variety complete with stick. I have a weakness for all things peanut butter, though, so I went with the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup cupcake.

Boasting chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and a generous swirl of chocolate ganache topped with a mini peanut butter cup, this cupcake looked scrumptious enough before I found out there were peanut butter cups baked into the cake as well. Wow.

I have to say, it was a good cupcake. The cake itself was a tad on the dry side, but the baked-in cups helped infuse it with some moistness. The peanut butter frosting was creamy with just the right degree of sweetness, and the ganache added a touch of gourmet. The peanut butter cups in the cake, though, made this one really unique. I'd love to go back and try some of their other varieties. If you happen to be in Petersburg and you love cupcakes, you should stop by OMGosh Bakery & Desserts. It's good stuff! 

Finally, cupcakes!

It's been a busy week and I haven't had much time to devote to the blogs, but yesterday was Cupcake Day, and I was able to find the time to swing by Heavenly Delight at the Old Capitol Farmers Market to pick up my week's selections. That's right -- this week, I was unable to pick just one, so I bought Cheesecake and Carrot.

I was fascinated with the idea of translating cheesecake into a cupcake, so when I finally found the time, after work, to sink my teeth into it, I was a little disappointed to find that it just tasted like a vanilla cupcake. White cake with vanilla frosting, it was delicious, but not in a cheesecake way. Maybe the frosting was supposed to be infused with a cheesecake flavor, but if it was, my tastebuds didn't pick up on it. Still tasty, but I'd pick HD's classic white cupcake with the mini-M&Ms on top if I wanted a plain vanilla cupcake.

Next up was the Carrot, for which I had high hopes. The cake was just as I like carrot cake -- no nuts. It was moist with an excellent flavor. The only problem? The cream cheese frosting was a little heavy on the sugar and a little light on the cream cheese, and it had an aftertaste that reminded me of Splenda. I doubt HD uses sweeteners in their cupcakes, so I'm not sure what was behind that. (Maybe I have defective tastebuds ....) My mom makes a luscious cream cheese frosting that she puts on pumpkin cake, and that frosting in combination with HD's carrot cake would have made quite a memorable cupcake. As it was, though, I would skip over it in future weeks at the stand.

I was in the mood for chocolate this week but didn't listen to my craving, and maybe that was part of my problem with this week's selections. There was a S'more cupcake I passed on, but maybe that would have been a better option than, say, the cheesecake. Oh well -- it's a crapshoot with cupcakes just as much as with anything else in life!

Hello, Heavenly Delight!

My summer adventure with the cupcakes of Heavenly Delight, a bakery in Neoga, Ill., started on the second week of the Old State Capitol Farmers Market. I had read SJ-R food editor Kathryn Rem's column about the bakery, which was going to be bringing a stand to the market on a weekly basis throughout the market's five-month run. Once I read about the myriad flavors HD offers and perused its website, I was hooked.

Cookie Dough

And so I wandered into the market on that first day and found the booth. Among about a dozen varieties of cupcakes on display at the stand was a cookie dough cupcake. Cookie dough cupcake? Really? I was fascinated by the concept. It was surrounded by so many amazing-looking flavors that I couldn't narrow it down to just one, so I chose the cookie dough and a raspberry swirl. With those cupcakes, I started my summer of sampling and evaluating cupcakes in preparation for the eventual start of this blog. Below are descriptions of each cupcake and my rankings of the ones I've tried so far:

May 25: Cookie Dough, Raspberry Swirl

Cookie Dough: white cake with chocolate chunks baked in, vanilla frosting, mini-Chips Ahoy cookie  and chocolate chips as garnish; Raspberry Swirl: white cake with raspberry jelly swirled throughout, raspberry frosting

June 1: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup
Chocolate cake (possibly with peanut butter baked in; it was hard to tell), peanut butter frosting with Reese’s Pieces and chocolate syrup garnish

June 8: Chocolate Mint, Carmel Heath Chip

Chocolate Mint: chocolate cake, mint frosting with chocolate chips and Andes mint bits as garnish; Caramel Heath Chip: white cake, caramel/vanilla frosting with toffee bits, caramel syrup and chocolate chips for garnish

June 29: Key Lime

Lime cake with lime frosting and green-colored sugar garnish

July 6: Cookies & Cream

White cake with Oreos baked in, vanilla frosting with mini-Oreo cookie garnish

July 13: Chocolate Dream

Chocolate cake with chocolate mousse frosting and chocolate chip garnish

July 20: Red Velvet

Red velvet cake with round bits of chocolate baked in, cream-cheese frosting

July 27: Orange Cream

White cake with orange frosting and orange-colored sugar garnish

Aug. 3: White, Peanut Butter Cookie, Strawberry Swirl

White: White cake and vanilla frosting with mini M&Ms for a garnish; Peanut Butter Cookie (shown above): peanut butter cake and peanut butter frosting with peanut butter chips and sugar for a garnish; Strawberry Swirl: White cake with strawberry jelly swirled throughout, vanilla frosting with red-dyed sugar garnish (had to eat Strawberry Swirl several days after purchase, after freezing/thawing)

Aug. 10: Pecan Praline

Caramel-flavored white cake with pecans baked in and caramel frosting with a garnish of pecan pieces and little balls of caramel

RANKINGS

1. Chocolate Mint: Perfect, delectable flavor — not too rich. Outstanding. Bring on another!

2. Peanut Butter Cookie: This one’s all peanut butter all the time — peanut butter cake and frosting, with a delectable topper of peanut butter chips and sugar. It really did taste like a peanut butter cookie, and though it was rich, I just wanted more. This one ranks above Reese’s Pieces because I liked the top-to-bottom peanut butter just a tad better than peanut butter frosting with chocolate cake. If I have the chance, I will definitely get this one again.

3. Reese’s Pieces: Rich, but loved PB frosting. I could eat this one again.

4. Key Lime: Refreshing and lighter than varieties with chocolate. Would love to eat this one again.

5. (Tie) Raspberry Swirl: Delightfully fruity and light. I’d buy it and freeze it for later even if I couldn’t eat it that day. Strawberry Swirl: Same as Raspberry Swirl but with strawberry jelly swirled through cake. Filling added to moistness of cake for both flavors.

7. Cookies and Cream: Frosting actually tastes like Oreo cream filling, although mini-Oreo garnish had grown stale and lost its crispness. I could handle this one again, once I’ve tried all the other flavors.

8. White: Cake was moist and feather-light; creamy vanilla frosting left me wishing there were a bowl to lick. If I had to use two words to describe this cupcake, they would be: delicious simplicity. After the many fancy flavors I’ve tasted, it’s great to get back to an uncomplicated classic.

9. Red Velvet: Luscious, cream-cheese frosting and an unexpected chunkiness to the cake due to the little round pieces of chocolate — this was a pleasant chunkiness, not like biting into a nut. Tasty as it was, I think I’d rather try new flavors than repeat it.

10. Cookie Dough: Tasty, with actual cookie dough and chocolate chunks as filling. I love the idea of a cookie dough filling, but the dough seemed to bake along with the rest of the cake, so it didn’t stand out as much as if it had been more, well, doughy. Points for effort, though. Also, mini-Chips Ahoy garnish had grown stale and lost its crispness. 

11. Orange Cream: Light with a good flavor, although the name had me expecting some kind of filling, which wasn’t there. I liked it, but I wouldn’t need to buy it again.

12. Chocolate Dream: Very rich and bordering on dark-chocolate flavor rather than milk chocolate, which I would prefer; would have liked it better with vanilla frosting. I wouldn’t repeat this one.

13. (Tie) Carmel Toffee Chip: Though I love toffee, this was way too sweet and rich; I would pass up the cupcake stand if this were the only one they were offering. Pecan Praline: This one, much like Carmel Toffee Chip, was a bit too sweet for my taste. It was actually quite similar to Carmel Toffee Chip in flavor and over-sweetness. I’d avoid this one in the future, too, although I’d recommend it to Dad, who loves pralines.

Due to the state fair, Heavenly Delight was absent from the farmers  market this week, but will return next Wednesday. Please stay tuned!

A Cafe Moxo cupcake day

I've been sampling cupcakes all summer from a bakery in Neoga called Heavenly Delight Cakes. This bakery, which has a stand each Wednesday morning at the Old Capitol Farmers Market in downtown Springfield and every Thursday evening at the Illinois Products Farmers Market at the Illinois State Fairgrounds (except for this week, when the stand moved to the Illinois Building to serve state fair patrons), has been my weekly stop, with only a few exceptions due to travel, since the end of May. I've also been logging each cupcake, week by week, with a description and a ranking. My intention starting out was to choose one cupcake per week, but, of course, there have been weeks when I couldn't resist buying more than one and sometimes even freezing one or more for later.

OK, so I'm a little OCD. But it's been fun! It's also going to become fodder for this blog.

This week, though, I wasn't able to go to the fairgrounds to hunt down my Heavenly Delight cupcake. Instead, after I finished buying my produce at the farmers market (yes, I do make an effort to eat fruits and vegetables as well as cupcakes!) I stopped into Cafe Moxo, a locally owned restaurant downtown, on one fo the same blocks occupied by the market, to select one of their cupcakes as a replacement for Heavenly Delight. I chose the shortcake cupcake, which is strawberry-themed. My other choices were peanut butter, which I've had before and loved; chocolate; and carrot. (I plan to return and try other Moxo flavors, which revolve from day to day, once the market has ended and Heavenly Delight no longer operates a Springfield outlet.)

The shortcake was a white cake with a filling of chopped-up strawberries, what I can best describe as a thick vanilla whipped-cream frosting, and a strawberry garnish. The frosting, which tasted like a thicker version of the cream Mel-O-Cream uses in its bismarck doughnuts, was outstanding. It rivaled buttercream for me, which is saying a lot. The filling of chopped-up strawberries was a nice tough, as was the half-strawberry garnish. I loved the presentation, with frosting swirled high atop the cake. Moxo cupcakes are smaller than Heavenly Delight's, but I was just as satisfied after finishing.

I would highly recommend this cupcake for lovers of vanilla and strawberry. It was a worthy substitute for my beloved Heavenly Delight, and I can't wait to go back when the market ends in October and try more Moxo flavors.

Speaking of Heavenly Delight, I'll soon be posting my log of those cupcakes from May through last week, and I'll continue my recommendations on a weekly basis until the end of the market. I look forward to Wednesdays all week!

Now, get off the computer and go have a cupcake!

Bacon and cupcakes

I've  never been a big fan of mixing sweet and savory, although certain things, like pancakes and bacon, will always belong together. Getting a little syrup on your bacon as it shares a plate with your pancakes is one thing. Eating bacon surrounded by cake and mixed with frosting is another thing completely.

That was what I faced at Chicago's More Cupcakes on our third stop of the cupcake crawl. More is known for its sweet/savory combinations, such as Bacon Maple and BLT, and sophisticated menu. When Sara and I were doing our research prior to the crawl and saw More's website, we realized, because I was planning a story for The State Journal-Register, that I should try one of the unusual flavors. It would make for a better story, right? When I saw the Bacon Maple was among More's choices the day we stopped in, I decided to take a deep breath and go for it.

It wasn't easy picking the Bacon Maple, mind you. There were some other really great-looking flavors, such as lemon mirangue, with its toasted peaks of mirangue frosting, and white velvet, which Sara chose (that one was quite tasty). But I gamely ordered my Bacon Maple, to the skepticism of the young girl behind the counter, and forked over nearly $5 for the privilege.

More is a tiny, minimalist shop with no seating and not much room to move around when you happen to end up in there at the same time as a Chicago Chocolate Tour group. Yep, we saw several of them during the course of our crawl. Fortunately, we were able to put in our orders before the tour group swamped the single register, and we elbowed our way out the door and into the Starbucks next door, where Sara ordered a coffee to assuage our guilt over using their seating.

Simply stated, the Bacon Maple was yucky. Bacon bits were baked into the maple-flavored cake, and they were also mixed into the fluffy maple frosting. The thick piece of bacon brittle on top was the epitome of the sweet/savory combo -- I decided to eat it in one bite, and that bite convinced me that I would be throwing out the rest of the cupcake. The sickening sweetness of the brittle paired with the salty bacon aftertaste gave me my first queasiness of the day. Sara tried a bite and said she liked it, despite the fact that she doesn't care for bacon in general, but she wasn't willing to finish the rest.

And so, I must apologize to the Bacon Maple for how coldly I pitched it into the garbage. It was a pretty cupcake, but unfortunately most of its beauty was in the beholding.

Grandma Ginna's delights

This is a blog about cupcakes, but make no mistake -- there are plenty of other sweets I crave. When Camille and I paid our first visit to Springfield's new Scheels store with his two nieces last night, I discovered two things that are going to make the store's close proximity to our house potentially problematic for my all-good-things-in-moderation lifestyle -- Scheels' snack shop, Grandma Ginna's, and its cinnamon gelato and peanut butter fudge.

Unfortunately, I was unable to take photos of either. The store was closing as we were paying for our purchases, so there was no time to snap a picture of the two scoops of gelato (cinnamon and pistachio, which was also quite tasty and my favorite ice cream flavor in Paris) before we hurried to finish and clear out. I got the fudge to go and brought it home, but I, uh, forgot about the camera in my eagerness to sample. Now it's sort of, um, mostly gone. But hey, I can always go back and get more -- just so I can take a picture for the blog, of course. And then give it away... Right. Heh heh

Cupcake summer

I've become a bit obsessed with cupcakes, and this blog is my spot to wax poetic about them, if you will.

I hit a high note in July with a Chicago cupcake crawl with my college friend Sara, who shares my love of those little cakes in the paper cups. I was lucky enough to have the chance to write about our sugary adventure for my employer, The State Journal-Register. Check out this link to read about it: http://www.sj-r.com/food/x142922246/Run-walk-and-crawl-for-big-city-cupcakes.

This shot is of the salted caramel cupcake I chose at Sprinkles Cupcakes, http://www.sprinkles.com/, which is nestled in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. It was pretty good, but I would have preferred it without the trendy addition of salt. I love caramel frosting, but the salt overwhelmed the overall flavor for me. Camille and I try to keep a low-salt diet when we cook, so I'm sure my senstivity to it was part of my tastebuds' bad reaction. Sara and I also split a cinnamon sugar cupcake there, which was similar to a coffee cake. It was tasty, but it didn't strike me as a true cupcake because it had no frosting. I wish I could take another shot at Sprinkles and try a more traditional cupcake in a flavor I know I'll like. The shop was cute, and extremely colorful.

As time goes on, I'll write more about the other Chicago shops we went to, as well as a bakery in the area I've been sampling this summer. In the meantime, go have some frosting!