Cupcake Camp Seattle

Since we haven't had a cupcake camp here in the bay for TWO years, and I missed the big event in LA, one of my pals and I decided to make the trek up to Seattle to attend Seattle's Cupcake Camp! =)

First of all you can read my full review of the event on my Yelp. Big things that won me over at this event were the 1. You had to pay to get in, and that is because the $ went to the Hope Heart Institute (awesome!!). 2. It was SO organized! 3. Inedible cupcake vendors :) Some of the cons were that all of the participants were professional bakers and amateur bakers (like me!) could only participate in the decorating contest. boo! Also, there wasn't a very big range of flavors here...many companies only had choco and vanilla...too plain! I miss the adventurous flavors found here at cupcake camp sf. Also, my friend and I had a crazy hard time getting there! In short we got totally lost and had to walk/rent bikes to get there.

Anyhow, check out this neat punch card, which allowed each person 6 mini cupcakes, designed by none other than the amazing Cakespy!

Speaking of, I got to meet Jessie! Definitely one of my highlights of the day. I love love love the Cakespy blog...so fun and inspiring! =)

Cake featuring Cakespy's talent:

Here is the plates of our plates of cupcakes:

And here are some of my favorites from the decorating contest:

love love love the mini macaroon on top! cant wait to take my macaroon decorating class!

In addition to many many cupcakes, they had a couple of inedible cupcake vendors. One woman made neat baby cupcake gifts and another made these:

Cupcake Bath Bombs! You drop the cupcake into the tub and then the bottom "cake" fizzes into the water and the top "frosting" part floats to the top and is a body scrubby. I bought 2 regular sized ones and 3 mini's for $40 =) I haven't had a chance to try the out just yet but I can't wait to take a nice long bath to test them out.

All in all the event was fun despite the complications of getting there. =) I really hope cupcake camp happens in SF this year! Its been two years!!

Thanks for reading! =)

xo,

Treen

Pineapple Li Hing Cupcakes!

Pineapple, Yum! Li Hing...?! What is that?!

Li Hing Mui is actually a chinese salted dried plum. It has a sour, sweet and salty taste. It can be found in most Asian markets. I remember going to International Market with my Grandma or Mom as a kid and getting these...they came in tiny little clear box...I loved them! My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

Nowadays, this little guy is very popular in the Hawaiian culture. It is also sold as a powder and oh boy, it tastes so good on basically everything. Well not everything. It is delightful on all fruits, especially pineapple and mango. And adds an extra yummy flavor to sour candy, like sour belts or sour patch kids. Leonard's also makes a malasada dusted with li hing sugar and oh my was it just about the greatest thing I ate that day!

I guess now its even used to make margaritas so next time I'm on the Islands I'll be sure to grab one. One of my other faves is Li Hing kettle corn. =)

Li Hing Mui (Dried Salted Plum) Li Hing Powder

When we were in Oahu last week, I made sure to pick up a large bag of Li Hing powder and we picked up a bag of fresh mangos and li hing. And that is where it hit me. I needed to make Li Hing cupcakes. I love li hing-ifying so many things, why not a cupcake!?

And bam, this is what came about:

A pineapple cupcake, filled with li hing pineapple curd, topped with pineapple cream cheese, dusted with extra li hing powder.

(wow that was a mouthful huh?)

The pineapple curd was so yummy on its own, but once I added the Li Hing, oh man it was on! The cupcake is moist and hits your mouth with all kine's of flavors! Sweet, tangy, salty oh my!

Here is a picture of the cupcake with the li hing filling goodness:

I only made a few cupcakes since these were jsut a test run, but I plan on making them on Sunday for some friends and will give em out at the O'tea 'Api performance at Newpark, so if you want one, better be there! =)

All of my other cupcake ideas have been put on hold and replaced by Hawaiian inspired cupcake creations. I miss the warm sun already!

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

xo,

Treen.

Crabcakes

My dad took me to the cake store a while back and he picked up these adorable little chocolate crab molds. I made these for his fishing shindig. Chocolate crab cakes =)

And here is a close up of one of em. My dad also decided to put eyes on it using the food airbrush ink and it looked good, except I put the crabs upside down...you can kinda see on the bottom it has two dots...those are supposed to be its eyes hehe. And he said the ink dripped down later so it looked like he had runny mascara, but here it looks awesome hehe.

xo,

Treen

Vegan Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes and other treats

Hey there cupcake lovers! =)

Oh gosh, I can't believe what a bad blogger I've been! I had this post and the almond joy one ready to go last month before vacation, but never finished...sorry. hehe. Anyhow, vacation was great and that will be my next blog annnnd my in progress experiment Li Hing Pineapple Cupcakes!

Anyhow, here is the post about vegan cuppies

So, today was my first attempt at vegan cupcake baking. Well, thats not entirely true...I've baked many vegan muffins and have done some cakes vegan (without people knowing...shhhh!) but have added other things to frostings or fillings to make it not entirely vegan. So, yes, todays cupcake was entirely vegan!

Here is it, a chocolate raspberry vegan cupcake!:

So I also learned tonight what the difference between refined and unrefined coconut oil is. I have unrefined and I guess the difference is that unrefined still has the coconut scent and slight taste, so I hope those who enjoy it tomorrow are coconut fans! I also had a bit of trouble working with the frosting. I made it THREE times! Argh! The first time I guess I added too much water which caused it to slowwwwwllly drip down. It was not a pretty site. Second time I got scared and added too little water which caused the frosting to taste like a glob of sugar. Third times a charm and its perfect. At least I'm a bit experienced now so I know what to do now. I'll let you all know what the verdict is later on.

*Frosting was so thick and globby in my opinion. You only need just a tad but it looks so pretty and complete when its frosted. hehe. Some folks ate it all up so I guess it was good heh.

I also made a set of S'mores cupcakes...and yes I used half the batter for these and half for the raspberry cupcakes so it is an example of my secret vegan baking ;). I always enjoy making these, mostly because I like using my torch to toast the tops :D

Ohh and I wanted to share my new cupcake iphone case! I ordered it from Ebay from Hong Kong and its not the best quality but hey it was $2 hehe. And next to it, is my treen-ified square reader =)

Almond Joy and Rocky Road Cupcakes!

Hi Blogger land!

One of my favorite candies growing up was Almond Joy...come on, i know all of you know the jingle "sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't!" =)

Below is a picture of it for those of you that don't know what candy I'm referring to:

Oh and here is a picture of Mahalo, the healthier and vegan! almond joy equivalent, I love it!:

Anyhow, I've had so many different ideas lately for cupcakes but I was just so busy! I was excited that I had a reason to make some cupcakes; for my friend Cat's birthday. She mentioned she liked chocolate and fruit so I thought these would do well. I made her two kinds actually, half rocky road and half almond joy.

The Almond Joy cupcakes turned out good, although I may try a different take next time around. I mixed in shredded coconut to the chocolate batter and folded in sliced almonds. I topped it with vanilla frosting and sliced almonds and some coconut. The cupcake was good but it didn't remind me enough of an Almond Joy. Next time, I think I' going to put in chunkier pieces of almond and fill the cupcake with a sticky coconut mixture, so it'll be more similar to the real deal. Ps, yay for instagram for making my phone pictures looks kind of awesome!

The Rocky Road cupcakes were good too, it was a chocolate cake with almonds topped with marshmallow frosting and sliced almonds. I just wish I found mini marshmallows...you know, the ones that come in some hot cocoa mixes? I wanted to throw some of those in there, along with almond chunks and not slices. Still tasted like the real thing though. =)

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Treen

Happy February Birthdays

Wow, its been a while huh? Sorry blogger-land for not keeping up with cupcake adventures...February has been a busy month!

Anyhow, I wanted to share some pictures from my MomDadGrampsSisters Birthday party:

My mom's favorite cupcake so far are dark chocolate raspberry. She makes a version and they are just divine. The cake is very dark and chocolate-y but not too bitter, and the raspberry frosting is tart and a bit sweet. While at Spun Sugar I found this awesome dark cocoa and I knew I had to get it to make my mom her favorite cupcakes for her birthday. Of course I wanted to surprise her so I didn't tell her or ask her how to make her specialty cupcakes, so I just winged it.

The cake batter was SO dark, definitely was black in color. It worried me a little to be honest. =) After they baked they were still dark, but luckily lightened up in color, and looked more appetizing. The Raspberry buttercream was giving me a run for my money. I had a hard time trying to achieve the right piping consistency while trying not to lose the raspberry's tartness. It took a while, but I think I did ok =) Whaddya think?

See how the cake is realllly dark? Verdict: Ok in my book. I like my moms better though :P The cake was a little too sweet for a dark chocolate cake...it was more of a dark colored chocolate cake. When I got home I looked at the label, and that is exactly what it is: dark colored chocolate powder. Well, its actually "toasted" to achieve that dark color, so boo! Its not a "real" dark chocolate cake! But nonetheless, people seemed to enjoy it:

My Mama and nephew Luca-Suca enjoying their cupcakes:

I also made two other cupcakes to try and satisfy all the birthday celebrants, which were the Burnt Almond cupcakes and Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Only thing is since it isn't berry season the strawberries in the strawberry shortcake cupcake were SO sour! Just wait until they are in season, oh they are gonna be scrumptious!

Strawberry Shortcake:

Close up of all three:

Yum. =)

On another note, my most recent cupcake adventure wasn't all that successful.

So I bought this awesome mini doughnut pan from Sur La Tab and was really excited because I wanted to make a policeman cupcake (coffee cake topped with a mini doughnut...like my name for it? heheh) for my favorite girls from the Optometry office I used to work at. We always used to have one of us make a starbucks run before our saturday shifts and even on some regular days so I knew this cupcake would've been perfect for them. Sadly it didnt turn out. It as a bit of a fiasco...

First, I stuck my butter in warm oven to speed up the cooling to room temp process. Fail, because I forgot about it and it dripped down to the bottom. When I went to put the cupcakes in, the oven was so smokey! I dont know what I was thinking lol. Then, I decided to try and clean the oven (on self clean) to try and clean up in there, fail#2 because I guess that takes like two hours. Once the cupcakes were finally done, I wasn't happy with their texture. Argh!

Then, on to the toppers. The doughnuts were so cute!...Too bad I forgot to add the butter I melted in the microwave, so they were a bit dry. But they were just too cute to not eat...with their sprinkles and glazed frosting. Lesson learned: do not try and multi-task baking cupcakes you never have before while trying to entertain friends. =) I will perfect these! And when I do, my VG girls will be the testers okay?

Hehe, ok that's all for now...Thanks for reading!

xo,

Treen

Happy (early) Valentine's Day!

As I walked through the shops at Bay St. in Emeryville, and at Fourth St in Berkeley, I coudn't help but notice all of the v-day decor plastered on windows, walls, and hanging from ceilings! ...And, I couldn't help but get excited too...And you know what that means! =)

What's better than getting a box of chocolates on Valentine's Day?

A box of CUPCAKES!!!

We're selling boxes of Valentines day cupcakes, in mini and regular size, decked out in valentines sprinkles conversation hearts and fondant. Order a box or two for your sweetie pie!

Here's a preview!

Flavors (2 of each):

Red Velvet

Vanilla

Strawberry Shortcake

Chocolate Peanut Butter

Hummingbird

Salted Caramel

And, I'm (trying to) set up an Etsy shop to sell these puppies! BUT I have no idea what I'm doing on there. Lol. So bear with me while I work out the kinks. But here is the link: (I hope and think) TrinketteCupcakes on Etsy. So far all I've got on there are the Valentine's boxes but tomorrow I hope to have plenty more on there!

Lastly, here is a picture of the cupcakes from a wedding consult this weekend:

Yum. Too bad the salted caramel decided to melt some of my chocolate ganache off :p boo you! hehe.

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Treen