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 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!