I Eat Cupcakes

Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Rilakkuma Rice Bears

There are so many things about Josipa’s birthday that make me happy.

1. Her famous sangria

2. Cute veggie displays with vegan dip made from garden-fresh eggplant

3. The garden where the aforementioned eggplant was grown

4. Vegan truffles

5. Homemade sunshine burgers

6. And of course…chocolate salted caramel cupcakes!

Let’s rewind a bit, to show the differences between these and the ones made for Jessica’s birthday. The main difference is that this time, the caramel came out in the form of a sauce to be drizzled over the cupcakes, whereas Jessica’s caramel came out in the form of chewy caramel candies to sprinkle on the top. I still haven’t decided which I prefer, but the cleanup was much easier the second time around so, Josipa’s birthday cupcakes get my vote.

Here are the cupcakes before any decorating began.

Here’s what the caramel drizzling looks like.

And the sprinkling of the sea salt is an often overlooked step, but it’s actually quite delicate. First of all, you have to get the appropriate salt. This variety isn’t the only good pink sea salt, but make sure you get one that’s pink because it’s the most nutritious, and isn’t it obvious that nutritious is what this cupcake recipe is going for?

And after sprinkling…

Calculus Cupcakes

Zach sent me the following email.

“So I’m having a birthday party next Friday night at Kosy Kar bar in SF. Once again, since you’re not on facebook you are getting a special invitation since I would really appreciate your presence. Bring your friends. Bring your friends friends, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be drunk I might not remember.”

Only the good ones make the (exhausting) effort of sending you your very own personalized email invitation. The others balk at the idea of having to exert more energy than a single invite-everyone-you’ve-ever-met-and-friended-on-facebook button click requires. They’re probably figuring that they’ll already have too many party attendees, since the average person has about 37586926 “friends”* already easily accessible with that one easy click. But I digress.

The follow-up conversation to Zach’s birthday invite went a little something like this.

Me: Will there be pre-party drinks at your house?

Zach: No. I want to get a waterbed at the bar before they’re all taken.

(Of course Zach would be celebrating his birthday by chilling in a waterbed while people bring him drinks. Maybe I should bring him a bedpan for his birthday.)

Me: Are there any cupcake flavors you don’t like?

Zach: mint, berries, or super rich chocolate. And I’m allergic to coconut.

(I haaaaaaad to ask.)

Me: No cupcakes for you then. I’m making you math worksheets for your birthday.

Zach: I’m partial to calculus.

And that’s how the calculus cupcakes were born. Unfortunately for Zach, they’re made with chocolate, but I used less cocoa powder than usual since he’s a woosie. I had to consult with Scott about what calculus was and he recited the quadratic formula to me while I set the cupcakes on the cooling rack. He admitted that he didn’t know what the quadratic formula was actually used to calculate though, so that made me feel slightly less stupid. But only slightly.

The decorating of the cupcakes ended up being not only a social event (we received quite a bit of advice and envy via twitter direct messages in response to Jessica’s synopsis of her evening activities), but also quite an educational evening.

First, we started with the Fundamental Theorem.

Then we moved on to calculating the horizontal asymptotes of a function.

This is what vegan cupcakes look like when they’re waiting for the bus.

And this is what they look like after having to finagle their way into a douchey bar with douchey people trying to ban them from going to parties.

* According to the world wide web, facebook users actually have an average of 190 friends.

Strawberry (squared) cupcakes

When Jocelyn asked me if I would make cupcakes for her birthday party, I didn’t even have to think about it before agreeing. There are a number of reasons for my willingness in this situation.

1. There aren’t too many things in life that Jocelyn could ask me that I would say no to.
2. When she asked me, she specifically said (quoted verbatim thanks to iphone technology*), “I had to ask you bc you make the BEST cupcakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (I’ll admit I didn’t actually count the number of exclamation points she used, but that’s my best imessage-blog translation.)
3. Everyone who knows me, knows that my mommy taught me that you always get your birthday (cup)cake of choice made for you on your birthday. And when we grow up and our mommies aren’t always in the same house (let’s hope for our sanity) to make us our birthday cake, then friends have to step in and keep the tradition going.

It helps me to reiterate all of these reasons to myself (and you), because the next text that dared enter my peripheral made want to rescind my offer/agreement to make said cupcakes. The party-ruining-text in question was this: “I think I want strawberry and strawberry.” WHAT?!!!!! Jocelyn’s birthday request was strawberry cupcakes^2. Are you kidding me right now? I like strawberries, don’t get me wrong. I think they are a pretty and delicious fruit that should stay the hell away from my cupcakes!!! Cupcakes are supposed to have chocolate in them. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. Bert and Ernie. Salt and pepper. Chocolate and cupcakes. Come on!!! I can’t be the only person who knows this fact. Buuuuuut….it’s not my birthday, so I did what any good friend would do. I faked illness. Kiddinnnnnng. I invented a strawberry cupcake recipe with strawberry icing, put strawberry hearts on top, and brought them to Jocelyn’s birthday picnic. But i refused to eat one. It’s a matter of principal**.  Here’s the birthday girl with one of her cupcakes.

Apparently this is the standard reaction to a strawberry^2 (seriously…tumblr can’t render superscript?) cupcake.

I tried to pick out clothes to match the cupcakes, so as to camouflage myself properly.

* This iphone technology can also aid you in proving your friends wrong when they pretend they didn’t say something and they actually did. Some non-taurus-gemini cuspies may think that the time spent scrolling through 38764589 pages of imessages isn’t worth the effort just to prove someone wrong, but their opinions don’t count.

** That was a lie. I would probably eat a cupcake if it were made out of brussel sprouts. GROSS!!! What freak would ever think to make a cupcake out of brussel sprouts?!

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

A Whitney is an adorable creature that comes from another planet. Her natural habitat is a sunny, tropical environment where the inhabitants like hugging, overanalyzing, and calling eachother by pet names. When Whitney moved to planet Earth, she kept many of her characteristics from her home planet, and I am lucky to be one of the pet-named humans in her extended family of friends. In the year I have been blessed by Whitney’s presence, I have been called sweetpea, chickee, darling, chickadee, punkin, snicklefritz, and snickerdoodle. Everytime I am called snickerdoodle, I am reminded of the cookie of the same name, whereby my thought process immediately travels directly from cookie to cupcake (this happens to everyone right?). That was when the challenge was born. I had exactly 83 days until Whitney celebrated the day she came to Earth (known as her bearthday) to invent a vegan snickerdoodle cupcake recipe. So, I did what every responsible vegan cupcake blog owner would do. I waited until day 82, and created magic! Yes, magic almost always reveals itself in the form of vegan cupcakes. No, magic has nothing to with cards or bunnies peeking out of top hats. Just cupcakes.

Here are snickerdoodle cupcakes before being dusted (with magical fairy dust obviously).

And here they are after.

In case you’ve never seen an actual real Whitney, here is what they look like.

Birthday Garden Tea Party

While scrolling through Danielle’s endless tumblr feed one night, we came across an adorable picture of My Melody having a tea party. It was so cute that I sent it to Jocelyn to remind her that we had talked about having a tea party for my birthday. To my amazement, she used it to create this this super cute invitation for my birthday party!

Instead of cupcakes, there’s a possibility that my post-Jocelyn’s-bachelorette-party euphoria persuaded me to falsely agree to make some sort of mini ice cream sandwiches using a teeny biscuit cutter. However, due to a work happy hour gone bad the night before, once the day actually arrived, I downgraded my plans to making colored sugar cubes, modeled after the ones they use at crown & crumpet.

While I didn’t actually make any vegan cupcakes for this event, I made up for it by eating some that Emily made. In addition to Emily’s delicious cookies-n-cream cupcakes, Jessica (played by the part of sailor moon) also made vegan petits fours, which while they are aren’t technically cake that is in a cup, they are in a heart shape, which makes them more loving versions of cupcakes, and therefore worthy of a blog tutorial.

To begin the process of making petits fours (or any other creation born in the kitchen, really), you must wear an apron that changes your identity, preferably in a way that you gives you some sort of special powers.

Step 1: Use my standard chocolate cupcake recipe for the batter, but pour a thin layer onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Once baked, use a cookie cutter to make the teeny tiny cake layers.

Step 2: Spread a thin layer of preserves over half the shapes.

Zen turns 14

Following the rule that everyone who has ever known me knows about birthdays, I inquired as to what type of birthday cake Zen would like for his 14th birthday. Typical to his undying attempts to prove his uniqueness, his request was none other than a gigantic pina colada cupcake. I, of course, had to invent this recipe since I pretty much only make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and chocolate drizzle, because why bother making non-chocolate desserts? At least that is what my theory was before tasting this recipe. In an effort to not promote underage drinking, this recipe is actually the cupcake version of a virgin pina colada. Booooorrrring.

Here’s a time-series photo montage of Isabelle decorating the cake.

The short lifespan of the cake before it was devoured.

FarmhouseConf has vegan cupcakes

If you have not yet heard of the farmhouse or the conference that is held there annually (rumors are that is soon to be semi-annually), you are probably part of 99.99% of the population. I would like to be the first to welcome to the .01%. We’re glad to have you. And you should be glad to have us. Do you know why? Because attending FarmhouseConf is one of the most inspiring and delicious experiences to be had in a land filled with boring, unpleasantly-catered conferences.

This year, FarmhouseConf was held on Cinco de Mayo and was 100% vegan catered by Doomie’s, Veggie Grill, Cruzer Pizza, and Clara’s Cakes, just to name a few. I ate better piggier that day than I had in a long while. Clara of Clara’s Cakes is one of the most adorable vegan bakers I have ever laid eyes on. I wish I had been able to think about something other than music and boys when I was her age, and maybe now I could be a famous vegan baker too!

I had to taste every flavor of cupcake that she brought (for reporting purposes). Look how crazy happy Clara’s cupcakes made all the conference attendees.

The Blueberry cupcake experiment

Please excuse any misinformation lies in this posting, but these cupcakes were made, eaten, and discussed approximately 387465 days ago, and that in conjunction with having a memory equivalent of a snail’s, makes my rendition of this story almost guaranteed to be slightly different than real life. Once upon a time, there was a super sweet, amazing girl named Amber. Amber was having a rough week, and therefore in need of some cheerful (but not too cheerful) cupcakes. That was how the “blueberry” cupcakes were born. I thought that blue cupcakes would be fitting since Amber had been feeling blue, and everyone (everyone = me) wants a cupcake to sympathize with them by matching their mood, right? So, what Eidelyn and I learned after presenting people with these chocolate cupcakes topped with blue vanilla icing, was that humans associate colors with flavors. And the flavor that our human friends associate with blue is blueberry. So, then we wondered if we let them think it was blueberry, would their mind control win in a battle against their taste buds, leading them to believe that the cupcakes were indeed blueberry, when they were only vanilla. Some people might think it was a mean trick to treat their friends like lab rats by performing social experiments on them, but everyone already knows that I’m mean, and Eidelyn will basically sacrifice all of her morals in the name of science. So, basically those people would be wrong. Yay science!

 This is what cupcakes look like when they get tucked into bed for the night.

This little cupcake house is care of Emily, my favoritest baker ever! My cupcakes have never been so excited to go for a ride in the car before! They really liked looking out the windows.

Cafe Flore Strawberry shortcake cupcake

After accepting an invitation to vegan brunch from Shane, Jessica and I had a planning session for our next LA road trip over a raw cacao (cacao!) shake and a tuna melt that was not as tasty as the one from Red Velvet, but probably healthier. Since Jessica was too full for dessert, we took it to go. They had 2 kinds of GF vegan cupcakes, as well as 4 varieties of regular ones and this most delicious looking strawberry shortcake cupcake.