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!

An unexpected favorite

After buying six cupcakes at the final farmers market last Wednesday and putting several of them in the freezer, I pulled the Lemon Drop out on Sunday night. I wasn't expecting to be blown away because lemon generally isn't my favorite type of cake, and I figured Heavenly Delight's version would be too strong for my taste.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I LOVED the Lemon Drop. The cake was moist, the lemon-flavored buttercream frosting was subtle and creamy, and the white-chocolate chips on top -- for once -- didn't add an overpowering sweetness to the overall creation. Instead, they balanced the cake's tartness perfectly. After forcing myself to slow down a little and enjoy it rather than gulp it down in under 30 seconds, I decided that Lemon Drop ranks somewhere in the Top 10 of the nearly 30 HD cupcakes I've had.

THAT was certainly unexpected. The Lemon Drop showed up most weeks of the farmers market as a choice, but I put it off until the very last week because I figured I wouldn't be that impressed. I've had lemon cupcakes from other places that were too strong. For instance, Jilly's Bee Sting, of which I managed one bite before I gratefully handed the rest over to Camille to finish. Thankfully, Camille wasn't in the mood for a cupcake when I pulled out the Lemon Drop, because I wasn't sharing!

Anniversary cupcakes

Camille loves to surprise me on special occasions. On this, our second wedding anniversary, he caught me completely off-guard with a trip to St. Louis and St. Charles, Mo., that he began with a stop at Jilly's Cupcake Bar and Cafe, which competed on and won an episode of the Food Network's "Cupcake Wars" this year.

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We missed out on Jilly's a month ago, when we went to St. Louis for my birthday, because the shop was closed for construction. It was up and running when we arrived this weekend, and I was impressed by the array of cupcakes on display in the freshly painted, partially decorated shop.

They. Were. Huge. Possibly the biggest cupcakes I've seen to date. Crumbs had oversized cupcakes when we stopped there on the Chicago cupcake crawl, but I'm pretty sure Jilly's would come out on top size-wise if we compared them side-by-side.

Jilly's was serving a brunch buffet when we got there, so we had some pre-cupcake food. As it turned out, the buffet included a cake version of Jilly's Pink Velvet cupcake. Camille and I both tried some and were blown away by the moist, rich cake, stuffed with caramel, and the light-yet-creamy frosting featuring cream cheese, caramel buttercream and pecan praline. When it was time to get in line to buy cupcakes, that one was on the list. Others we chose for the to-go box: Bee Sting (lemon and honey); Missy-licious (vanilla with vanilla whipped cream filling); The Reese's (self-explanatory!); and Space Monkey (banana-toffee, with Dulce de Leche filling), one of the cupakes that won on "Cupcake Wars."

Clockwise from top left: Space Monkey, The Reese's, Missy-licious, Pink Velvet.

The Bee Sting

By the time we got home Monday afternoon, I was ready to tackle one of Jilly's monster creations. Looking for the least-rich of the bunch, I went for the Missy-licious, the all-vanilla cake. It was about twice the size of your average, homemade cupcake, with probably three times the frosting. However, I somehow managed to make it nonexistent in less than five minutes. Let's get another look at this beauty, with frosting in Jilly's signature colors of pink and green:

The Missy-licious is the closest competitor I've yet to find for the vanilla cupcakes I hold in highest regard: the Magnolia Bakery vanilla cupcake. With the Magnolia cake, it's all about the thick, creamy, sugar coma-inducing frosting. The vanilla frosting on the white-cake Missy-licious was light, but still creamy, and I wish I knew how to describe exactly how perfect the sugar/butter/vanilla flavor/texture balance was. There are no words -- at least not for me, an inexperienced food critic. Let me just remind you that it was a monster cupcake, and I ate it in less than five minutes. That should suffice to get my point across about how irresistible this cupcake was. My best advice: Get thee to Jilly's and try one!

Camille's lone choice for his take-home was the Bee Sting, which Jilly's website describes as vanilla cake with honey lemon curd stuffing and topping consisting of "lemon cream cheese, toasted almonds and a lemon candy dust."

After finishing half of it (cupcake-eating amateur!) he pronouned it "really good." I went in for my own sample of the leftovers and found it to be a little strong for my taste. I've mentioned in past posts that I prefer my lemon flavoring subtle, and I'm finding out that most cupcake places don't believe in subtlety when it comes to lemon. I can see where a lemon lover would fall head over heels for the Bee Sting, though. The frosting, cake and filling were a tart and tangy trio, waking up my tongue (which I admit was a little sluggish after working overtime to consume the Missy-licious). I would never attempt an entire Bee Sting, but I'll give it props for eliciting a "really good" from Camille, who could easily live without sweets altogether.

Our freezer is currently holding three cuipcakes that I'll probably need at six sittings to finish (OK, let's stop kidding ourselves -- MAYBE two servings for The Reese's, which is piled so high with peanut butter cup clusters that it rivals Mt. St. Helens), and with a Heavenly Delight trip coming in a couple days, it might take me through next weekend to finish them. But I'll be back to review them as soon as they pass  my lips.

Don't wait for me, though -- get on I-55 South and burn some rubber to Jilly's!