There's a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow...

 

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  

 

Leprechaun Loot Cupcake, Ida's Maekery

Maevorite

¡muy dresspecial!

Valentoes

Happy Valentine's Day!

Chocolate = Love Cupcake, Ida's Maekery

Who needs a sweetheart to get some sugar?!?

Cupcake Tasting Party!

Some friends and I recently took it upon ourselves to systematically, scientifically, and selflessly taste an obscene amount of locally-made cupcakes in a quest to discover the
 

The tasting party began with a sampling of minicakes from most of the best-rated cupcakeries in the area: Babycakes, Pubcakes, Corner Cupcakes, Sprinkles, Cupcakes Squared, and The Daily Scoop (not so much a cupcakery, but offering a daily red velvet option we heard was worth a try).

Right off the bat, Babycakes clearly won the beauty contest:

Then the Red Velvet Round-Up began...

We descriptively evaluated each cupcake on three factors:
Appearance, Cake, and Frosting

And we used a highly sophisticated star and happy-face system for the overall ratings.

Well...our Red Velvet rankings were all over the map, peeps!

Girl Next Door: thought the Daily Scoop cake was the most classic
Ginger Spice: liked the fudginess of Cupcakes Squared's Not-so-Red Velvet
Partner in Cake: Sprinkles' Red Hot Velvet, hands down
High School Friendheart: 2 votes for Sprinkles!

Personally, I wanted to craft myself a little piece of perfection by topping Corner Cupcakes' Red Velvet cake with a swirl of zingy cream cheese frosting from Babycakes. Mmmmm...

Now, on to the fruit course!

Lemon (Cupcakes Squared), smidge of Coconut (Sprinkles), crumbs of Strawberry Champagne (Corner Cupcakes) and Mango Guava (Babycakes), Friendly Fork

Take home messages from this round? Overall decent level of fruity tastiness with the exception of that beautiful and promising, but ultimately greasy and tasteless Lemon. Complete tragedy.

By then it was getting late...time for Happy Hour!

Pubcakes

I tell you what, I could not get enough Beer for Breakfast!
Beer? Good! Maple? Good! Cream Cheese? Good! Bacon? Good!
Put it all together and what do you get?
A salty-sweet combo of comfort and joy.

And a group consensus was actually achieved (gasp!) on the taste and texture sensation that was the Stoned Portzilla.

We concluded the festivities with a smattering of other cakes that we were interested in tasting and a few doggie bags to take the rest home. That was quite a lot of cake, friends.

Coconut Curry (Corner Cupcakes), Pistachio (Babycakes), S'mores (Cupcakes Squared), Chocolate-Chip Raspberry (Sprinkles)

And what a sweet ending it was! That Chocolate-Chip Raspberry cupcake melted my cold, hard spinster heart and made me believe in the Valentine's Fairy again.

And the rest were pretty good too.

Once the last favorite crumbs had been picked at and the last drops of mimosa had been drunk, we all took a moment to reflect on the occasion and collect our very important thoughts on this very important matter.

While overall opinions varied among the ladies, since you're reading my blog, you only get to hear mine. And, I'm pretty confident that my opinion is the best anyhow.

So, here it is...


Ida Mae's Cakedown Breakdown! 

Cupcakes Squared: no. thank you. 
The Daily Scoop: meh 
Corner Cupcakes: sure, if the cake truck is in my neighborhood
Babycakes: fun place for decent, pretty cupcakes 
Sprinkles: definitely enjoyable, but worth the wait in line??
Pubcakes: yes, please! this round's on me!

P.S. To the lady at Influx Cafe who bakes the goodies: We hope you feel better soon! 
Mostly so that we can add your legendary red velvet cupcakes to the mix. 
It's just not comprehensive without you.

Ida Hearts Cupcakes

I've always been a fan of the cupcake. What's not to love about a delicious mini morsel of baked goodness with a dollop of whipped happiness on top? I recently started dabbling in my own cupcakiness here at Ida's Maekery:

Well, it turns out, I'm not the only Ida out there with a passion for these cutie cakes! I can't wait to try out the tasty treats at
Ida's Cupcake Cafe the next time I find myself in Bend, OR.

I also came across Ida May's "Never-Fail Cupcakes" recipe for young bakesters posted on The Recipe Club's blog:

 

(NOTE TO SELF: check out this tasty book and definitely try out this recipe)

And I'd like to send a special shoutout to Ms. Ida Mae of Starkville, Mississippi who, hopefully, received another 

batch of homemade cupcakes for her 76th birthday!

Just as every Ida Mae should...

Adorbs!

Love these hand-crafted little noggin cozies by
Buttons 'N Fluff!