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.

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.

Tastes like fall

It was hot like summer at the farmers market late yesterday morning, but the mood at Heavenly Delight was decidedly autumn as pumpkin cupcakes joined the dozen or so options on the table under the tent bearing the big pink cupcake signs. Pumpkin cake is one of my all-time favorite desserts, so it was a no-brainer.

HD's pumpkin cupcake has cream cheese frosting and a garnish of orange-colored sugar.

The cake was incredibly moist -- so much so that it fell apart while I was trying to remove it from the paper. It was messy, but I didn't mind licking my fingers. The cream cheese frosting somehow tasted better to me than it did on last week's carrot cupcake, probably because I like pumpkin cake better than carrot cake in general.

This is one to check out if you're at the Wednesday or Thursday farmers markets!

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!