Java (and cupcake) Express

When my coworker, Amy, left a post on my Facebook page late this week mentioning that she had tried -- and loved -- a cupcake from Springfield's Java Express, 1827 N. Peoria Road, I knew I needed to squeeze in some time to check it out myself.

Java Express is just down the road from my office, so I took a quick break on Friday for an excursion. Amy had tried the pumpkin, and there was one left when I arrived. However, I also found lemon with raspberry filling and chocolate with peppermint frosting. The women behind the counter (one of them the baker herself) reported that the lemon-raspberry is one of Java's most popular flavors. (They also told me that they rotate their small variety of flavors, and two others that they mentioned stuck in my memory -- chocolate-peanut butter and one with cherry pie filling and almond buttercream frosting.)

After a bit of deliberation between the pumpkin and the lemon-raspberry, I decided to go with the less-common combination and chose the lemon.

Let me just say that Java Express knows cupcakes. I waited to eat the cupcake until Saturday morning and forgot to freeze it, so it sat out most of the day and all night. As a result, the cake was a bit dry by the time I ate it. One of the ladies at Java also told me that they bake 3-4 times a week, so I'm not sure how long the batch I bought from had been sitting in the display case at the store. Despite the slight dryness, though, the cake was an overall hit for me. The lemon was subtle in both the cake and the thick buttercream frosting. And the raspberry filling was just right -- it was just the right consistency, and I liked the presence of seeds. I'm not sure if it was a jam or a homemade filling, but either way it worked for me.

A couple other noteworthy details about these cupakes: They're jumbo-size and bargain-priced at about $2.

I'm eager to go back and try the one with the cherry pie filling and almond frosting. Here's a shout-out of thanks to Amy for the recommendation!

Bugs Bunny would love this cupcake...

Today was a chilly, rainy, foggy, gloomy day in Springfield. I had to use my umbrella and dodge puddles to get this week's cupcake from Cafe Moxo on my way to work.

I wasn't terribly excited about the carrot cupcake on my agenda. I'd had too much dry cake from Moxo, and since carrot isn't my favorite type of cake anyway, I figured I'd just focus on the cream cheese frosting and make the best of the rest.

Well ... as it turns out, I had my second pleasantly surprising Moxo cupcake in a row (including the Snowballest Chance from my last post). The cake, which was packed with pecan bits, carrot shavings and coconut slivers, was moist and rich with flavor. The generous tower of cream cheese frosting was thick and buttery. All in all, this was one of my favorite Moxo cupcakes. And that's saying a lot, considering that I normally wouldn't even choose carrot. In comparison to the carrot cupcake from OMGosh Bakery in Petersburg that I tried with my coworkers Kathy and Jayette a couple weeks ago, which was dry with frosting that I felt had an odd aftertaste, this one was a star.

Soy City cupcake

This weekend, I took a trip to Decatur to help my friend, Kate, make her wedding invitations. Of course, when I make plans to go to a new place, my first thought is, "Can I find a new cupcake place to explore?" A couple of people had recommended a place called Lana's Cakewalk, so Kate and I decided to swing by and fortify ourselves for a few hours of paper crafting.

Lana's had a variety of baked goods to choose from: in addition to about 10 flavors of cupcakes, a pair of display cases were full of cookies (including several of the sugar/shortbread variety with differently flavored fillings) and other sweets. A specialty of the shop seemed to be the Mommy-Q's, consisting of fluffy vanilla frosting sandwiched between two thick slabs of cake (vanilla, chocolate, orange, lemon, spice, carrot and strawberry were among the flavors). I tried the strawberry and was impressed by the moistness of the cake. I can't recall any of the previous cupcakes I've tried tasting as moist as Lana's strawberry Mommy-Q. The frosting was light, creamy and fresh.

The Mommy-Q was just a prequel to the orange cupcake I also chose. (The cupcakes came in the same flavors as the Mommy-Qs.). Simple but pretty, the orange cupcake was topped with a thick vanilla buttercream frosting and orange sprinkles. After the spectacular moistness of the Mommy-Q, I was disappointed with the dryness of the orange cake. The frosting, however was delicious -- perfect flavor and texture.

Would I return to Lana's? If I were in the neighborhood, yes. However, I'd pass on the cupcakes and try another Mommy-Q or one of the cookies. (Kate loved the snickerdoodle she selected.)

Also this weekend, I sampled the Snowballest Chance, a Cafe Moxo cupcake I picked up while having lunch with my parents there on Thursday. Because that day was a no-sweets day (most days of the week, I abstain from sweets to balance out my cupcake sampling), I froze it for two days. In the past, I've had bad experiences with the texture of Moxo's light, airy frosting thickening after freezing, but I decided to take a chance. I was pleasantly surprised on Saturday after I had pulled it out and thawed it at room temperature. The chocolate cake, which I feared would be dry, was OK. The light, airy vanilla frosting, hidden beneath a layer of coconut, was fresh. And the marshmallow filling was thick and indulgent. I would rank this one high on the list of cupcakes I've tried from Moxo. Even though I can take or leave coconut, I found the entire confection sweet and delightful.

A side note concerning Moxo: I complained a month or so ago that the red velvet I tried there was dry as a bone -- the worst I'd tried at Moxo and possibly the worst overall. However, the day I went with my parents, my dad tried one and liked it. I suspect that my palate is more finicky because I've tried so many cupcakes in the past several months. To the average person, Moxo's "dry" cupcakes might not be so bad.

Pick-me-up cupcakes

It's been a rough week at The State Journal-Register, where I've been employed as a copy editor for 12 years today. The copy desk, which edits copy, lays out pages and generally serves as the last line of defense for accuracy in the newspaper, will be eliminated as the majority of our jobs are shifted to a central design hub near Chicago. Since this is a cupcake blog, I'm going to refrain from rehashing all the details of the situation. I'll just say that it made Wednesday's cupcake sampling that much sweeter because I really needed a treat.

My cake for the day was the Heavenly Delight Hot Chocolate cupcake that had been in the freezer since I picked it up with several others at the holiday farmers market Dec. 17 at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. With most bakeries, I'd be concerned about leaving a cupcake in the freezer for that long. Not so with HD. Time and again, I've frozen HD cupcakes and pulled them out and thawed them to find a cake as moist and fresh-tasting as the day I bought it. The Hot Chocolate was no different. With chocolate cake and vanilla frosting covered in marshmallows, this one was spongy and delicious. It was basic -- no filling or flashy garnish other than the marshmallows -- but it was reminiscent of a mug of hot cocoa. I especially liked the cake, which was a milky chocolate as opposed to a fudgy chocolate. While it may not have been the most memorable HD cupcake I've had, it was a strong cupcake in terms of taste and freshness, and that counts for a lot when you realize how many dry, stale cupcakes are for sale out there.

The Hot Chocolate wasn't the end of my cupcake tasting that day. My coworker, Kathy, had visited Lisa's Bakery in Riverton (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lisas-Bakery/132255686885783) for a story, and she brought back four cupcakes to sample with our other colleague, Jayette. (The three of us have built a fun and frequent sampling habit, and it's one of countless things I'll miss when my time at the SJ-R ends.)

The offerings Kathy brought back from Lisa's included cherry, chocolate, lemon and apple spice. At first glance, we thought the cupcakes were pretty (the frosting on the cherry and lemon was dyed with food coloring in shades of day-glo pink and yellow), but as we dug in we realized that the artificial hues were a bit of a turnoff. I would have preferred untinged frosting topped simply with flavor-appropriate garnishes. (The cherry-flavored cupcake did sport a maraschino cherry.) Our favorites were the apple spice and lemon, although we felt the cake was dry in most cases and the frosting on the cherry and chocolate had a bit of a bitter aftertaste, not to mention a grainy texture. Overall, we felt Lisa's cupcakes would be fine for an event such as a child's birthday party, but if you're looking for gourmet cupcakes -- the type that the average person wouldn't necessarily be able to make in their own kitchen -- we suggest looking elsewhere.

Next week I'll be back to the Cafe Moxo winter lineup, although I'm not sure which of the remaining flavors I'll try. So many things are up in the air right now, but I'm hoping my cupcake tastings will help me focus on the positive while I enter this transition in my life. There's not much a little buttercream frosting can't cure, right?

Cupcake road trip!

It was worth waking up before dawn yesterday morning to get to work early so I could take an extended lunch to visit Petersburg with my coworker Kathy and hit OMGosh Bakery and Desserts for this week's cupcake day. (In other news, Kathy, Jayette and I received four cupcake flavors to sample -- three of them new -- from Tracy of TLCuppycakes.)

Kathy and I were faced with a difficult decision at OMGosh. (Jayette was unable to road-trip with us due to a scheduling conflict.) The display case was filled with tempting choices. Kathy chose Carrot, and after much deliberation I chose Chocolate Mint and Butterfinger. (There was an amazing-looking Champagne cupcake that I'm going to have to go back for one of these days.)

Earlier in the day, Tracy had brought us her four cupcakes: Chocolate Peanut Butter (this one's an original from her menu), Oh Oreo!, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Rolo.

Clockwise from left: Oh Oreo!, Chocolate Peanut Butter, 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Rolo

Our favorite of this bunch was the Oh Oreo! Vanilla cake speckled with Oreo bits, sitting on a base of Oreo crust (still crispy by the time we tried it -- amazing!) and topped by a fluffy cream cheese buttercream (that reminded us of Oreo cream filling), a sprinkling of Oreo crumbs and a wedge of cookie. I hope this one makes it onto the TL menu.

Notice the Oreo cookie crust on the wedge of Oh Oreo! 

cupcake at right. Its crispyness was a high point of the cupcake.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough 

cupcake contained a generous filling of 

-- what else? -- cookie dough!

We also enjoyed the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, which featured chocolate cake with a cookie dough filling (well done -- this is hard to do because the dough tends to become one with the cake, but Tracy did a nice job of contrasting the textures), a luscious vanilla buttercream frosting and a garnish of mini-chocolate chips and a homemade mini chocolate chip cookie. The homemade cookie was a great touch -- no shortcuts in this kitchen. We all agreed as we sampled this bunch of cupcakes that Tracy's thoughfulness with each flavor is what makes them stand out from cupcakes done by other bakeries in the area. 

The Rolo was our least favorite of the new crop. The caramel frosting was too sweet for my taste, although I was the only one of the three of us who felt that way -- Kathy and Jayette both liked the icing. Tracy had baked a Rolo candy into yellow cake, and, unfortuantely, as we cut the cupcake into pieces we could all try, the entirety of the candy piece wound up on one of the segments, so I got the whole thing while Kathy and Jayette got none. Therefore, they missed a major part of the cupcake while I got a too-large ratio of Rolo to cake. Rolos aren't my favorite candy because I'm not a fan of hard, chewy caramel (I prefer the soft, flowy kind like in Caramello bars), so the mouthful of Rolo wasn't so great. I suspect that it would have been better had we each gotten equal parts of the filling. Regardless, we would likely pass on this one in the future (and go for an Oh Oreo!).

Finally, Tracy had thrown in a veteran of her menu, the Chocolate Peanut Butter. I expected to love this one, and I wasn't disappointed. The moist chocolate cake housed a center consisting of a Reese's peanut butter cup, which retained its texture quite well through the baking process. Up top was a dreamy chocolate-peanut butter buttercream and a mini-peanut butter cup garnish. This cupcake should definitely come with an extra shot of frosting on the side. Yum.

We also managed to tackle a bit of Kathy's Carrot from OMGosh. The colorful, nut-filled spice cake was, unfortunately, dry. Kathy and Jayette did, however, like the cream cheese icing, which featured a cheery frosting carrot. I wasn't as impressed with the frosting, though. Something about it, which I couldn't put my finger on, just didn't taste quite right. I'm still not sure what the problem was, but I know that, despite the cute carrot garnish, this is one I'll never need to try again.

I needed a few hours to digest and log a workout, but when I arrived home from work, I was ready to take a few bites from  my other two OMGosh cupcakes before I put the majority in the freezer. 

First up for a nibble was the Butterfinger. I didn't get too far into it, but it seemed to be yellow cake, maybe with some peanut butter in the batter, and a filling of melty Butterfinger candy. Mmmm. Piled on top was a swirl of peanut butter frosting crowned by a thin layer of chocolate frosting and Butterfinger crumbles. The only other Butterfinger cupcake I've had was from Heavenly Delight, and that was a much simpler interpretation -- yellow cake with chocolate frosting and candy crumbles. The HD version scored high on my cupcake meter, but while that one was Butterfinger in topping only, this one was Butterfinger from top to bottom, inside and out. 

In the interest of being a thorough blogger, I managed to choke down a few final cupcake bites -- these from   OMGosh's Chocolate Mint. I had fond memories of my last taste of OMGosh's phenomenally rich, milk- chocolately frosting (on its Snickers cupcake), and the mint-flavored frosting on this one was just as delicious. The chocolate cake was a bit on the dry side, but the frosting distracted me from that imperfection, as did the minty filling, which was a creamier imitation of the center of a York Peppermint Patty. Wow. I felt just like one of the people in those old, windy York TV commercials -- refreshed and blown away.

Raspberry rhapsody and pumpkin perfection

I'm still basking in my cupcake windfall from New Year's weekend, which included stops at Jilly's and The Cup in St. Louis. Thanks to my generous coworker, Jayette, I also found myself with a Chocolate Raspberry cupcake from TL Cuppycakes on Friday night. That was on my menu for this weekend, along with a Pumpkin Harvest cupcake from The Cup. 

Lately, I've become a fan of jumping on my first weekend cupcake at the stroke of midnight Saturday morning, and that's exactly when I tucked into my Chocolate Raspberry. 

As Jayette pointed out, one of the strengths of TL Cuppycakes is owner Tracy's ability to inject a cupcake with taste identity from top to bottom. For instance, the Chocolate Raspberry was dark chocolate cake filled with raspberry cream and topped with raspberry buttercream frosting and chocolate shavings. Even the color of the frosting was just right, calling to mind raspberries. Jayette commented that the frosting's color appeared natural, as opposed to some of the bright, obviously artificial colors you see on a lot of frosted cupcakes. When I tasted it, it was evident that Tracy had actually used raspberries in the frosting -- the texture included the seeds. While berry seeds in frosting might bother some people, it appealed to me. I liked knowing that there was no artificial flavoring -- just the real-deal berries themselves. The moist chocolate cake received an assist from the raspberry cream filling that bumped it into a higher tier of tastiness. And the chocolate shavings on top were the perfect complement to the whole creation. 

This afternoon, after a nail-biter win by my alma mater, the Fighting Illini, it seemed like a no-brainer to celebrate with the Pumpkin Harvest from The Cup.

This is among my favorite pumpkin cupcakes of the five I've tried. The spice cake was a tad dry, and I suspect that was from sitting in the freezer for a week. The frosting, however, took this one to new heights. Instead of using cream cheese frosting on their pumpkin cake like most other bakeries, The Cup opted for cinnamon buttercream. Divine decision. Creamy, creamy, creamy with a delicate cinnamon flavor that made me wish I'd asked for a side of extra frosting. (Oh yeah, and there was a wedge of pumpkin chocolate bark on top that was a nice touch, too.) I would love to try this one again, eating it in the shop or at least the same day. Not all cake holds up well in the freezer, and my foil liners (which I learned, from Heavenly Delight, help to hold moisture in cake when frozen) were too small to fit The Cup's jumbo-size creations. In the long run, though, the loss of moistness barely dampened my enthusiasm for the Pumpkin Harvest. I wish I had another!

POP goes the peppermint

The cupcake of the hour this fine Wednesday was The Cup's Peppermint Stick, pulled from the freezer this morning after a stop at the St. Louis cupcake haven on New Year's Eve. This one was a beauty to behold: White, pearly sprinkles, mini white-chocolate chips and a mini candy cane served as a Christmasy garnish to a thick layer of vanilla mint buttercream that topped a festive red velvet and peppermint-swirled cake.

This cupcake was every bit as rich in taste as appearance. The frosting was like eating an entire bowl of those pink, green and yellow white-chocolate mints that are often served next to peanuts on the cake table at weddings and showers. (I actually grabbed a handful of peanuts from a stash in my drawer afterward to offset the overwhelming sweetness of the vanilla/mint combo.) Bold to the extreme, it left me with an aftertaste rivaling that of an Altoid. No need to worry about those raw onions on my salad at lunch! The cake itself was a welcome neutralizer; in spite of the website's claim that it contained peppermint, I didn't taste it. And that was more than OK.

I feel no need to repeat the Peppermint Stick. Much like the commercialization of Christmas, a little of this Cup creation goes a long, long way.  

New year, new cupcakes

Sugar Mama's Cherry Limeade

Jilly's Orange Dream

Happy New Year's, cupcakers! I started off 2012 the best way I could think of -- with my remaining Sugar Mama's cupcake, Cherry Limeade, and an Orange Dream from Jilly's in St. Louis.

Thanks to my awesome husband, I was able to visit Jilly's (as well as The Cup -- more on that in a later post) during our New Year's weekend trip to St. Louis and pick up a couple of their over-sized creations. We arrived late-afternoon on New Year's Eve, about an hour and a half before closing time. By the time we got there, the selection was down to only three choices -- the Missy-licious, which is one of my Jilly's favorites; the Bee Sting, which is Camille's favorite; and The Reese's with vanilla cake (it's also available with chocolate cake, which is how I tried it on our first visit). I was a little disappointed that there was nothing new to try (I contemplated trying a vanilla Reese's but decided it wasn't quite new enough). At least Camille and I were both able to enjoy our favorites. Note to self, however: Never wait until close to closing time to visit Jilly's!

We checked in to our downtown hotel after our Jilly's stop, and once we had dropped our bags in the room we realized that we needed some bottled water and a few other things. There happened to be a grocery store around the corner, so we went to check it out. Culinaria, which neither of us had heard of, is an offshoot of Schnucks, and we found it to be a cool little metropolitan-inspired market. It made a great first impression on me -- as we walked in, my eyes fell on a display of baked goods ... including Jilly's cupcakes! There were two left -- one, ironically, was a Bee Sting -- but the other was an Orange Dream, which I hadn't even seen on Jilly's website. I grabbed up that bad boy with delight. I wouldn't end up eating it until New Year's night, when we were back at home (I had my Missy-licious for the hotel room), but I've loved orange cupcakes I've tried previously, so I was looking forward to this Jilly's confection with white cake, vanilla filling and an "orange creamsicle buttercream frosting," as the package advertised.

The Orange Dream didn't disappoint. The cake was moist and the orange buttercream thick and luscious. The vanilla filling added that extra va-va-voom. (The other orange cupcake I tried, several months ago from Heavenly Delight, was tasty but lacking the cream filling that, at the time, I felt would have put it in a higher category.) There's no doubt -- Jilly's knows how to do cake and frosting, and although they specialize in creative flavors and combinations, even the basic, familiar flavors are fantastic.

I also indulged in my remaining cupcake from Sugar Mama's here in Springfield -- the Cherry Limeade. Just like the other Sugar Mama's cakes I've tried, this one was flavorful and delightful. I loved the combination of cherry cake and lime frosting, and I'm a sucker for maraschino cherries, so the garnish hit the spot. The first words that popped into my mind as I bit into this small-but-mighty treat were "tantalizingly tart." The cherry and lime played perfectly off each other, and, as always, the petiteness of the cupcake made it managable and left me with plenty of room for more (if I'd had another). There's no doubt I'm going to have to connect with Sugar Mama's again sometime so I can continue exploring their menu.

Here's to a new year full of delicious cupcakes!