Cupcakes Across America! The Cupcake Tree Santa Clarita, CA

And let's go back to California shall we?  Am I ever in the same time zone for more than a week at a time?  Well no - apparently not.  This trip back to CA was all over the place.  An hour before I had to go to my client's site, I found myself in Santa Clarita.  A quick google search on the iPhone found me The Cupcake Tree, and unassuming small cupcakery in a strip mall.  So often, I find myself in fancy schmancy places that if there's not a doorman saying hello, I'm prone to raising an eyebrown.  I'm judgemental - it's part of my charm.  And it assists in my snarkiness.   So when I see a tiny little shop with a nothing-fancy sign, I get a little worried.

Since I was there sortof near Easter, I was greeted by this cute little Peep cake:

And then I noticed their adorable cakepop selection:

And then finally, I notice their good selection of cupcakes:

They looked pretty good and there was a decent selection for what looked like a very small shop.  They had the standards:  Vanilla with vanilla buttercream which they cutely call "the blond" and red velvet with cream cheese frosting which they call "the southerner".  So cute names - I get it.  And a few other interesting flavors:  Vanilla Root Beer - vanilla cake with root beer buttercream,  Sweetart - a lemon cake with a lime frosting.  Then I noticed one called "Samoa".  Wait - like the girl scout cookies?  Turns out - YEAH!  This cupcake was amazing.  A coconut "infused" cake with caramel in the middle, topped with chocolate buttercream, caramel drizzle and a few coconut flakes.  This tasted JUST LIKE the famous and somewhat dangerous cookie.  And the cake was sooo moist and delicious.  And the balance between cupcake and frosting was perfect. 

So the lesson here is don't let a strip mall small shop turn you off.  This was one of the best cupcakes I've had.  Not an original flavor combination but done so well that you don't even mind. 

One other note about this shop - their website has a link they call "SVC Supporter".  A click on this link brings you to a page where they explain that they support the business of the Valley of Santa Clarita, using local businesses to help support the community.  And even playing music from local musicians.  What this shop lacks in size, they make up for in quality and class.  Get thee to Santa Clarita for the Cupcake Tree.

Where have I been? Cupcakes Across America!

These last few weeks have been insane-balls at my real life job.  I'm not even sure what time zone I'm in right now.  (exaggeration for dramatic effect)  But with bi-coastal travel comes responsibility to my blog-readers for finding and sampling the cupcakes of the world, or in this case:  Santa Monica.  


SaMo is one of my favorite places.  Everything there is pretty - it's 70 degrees all the time, everyone is a health nut so yoga is found on every corner, and farmers markets abound all year long.  Plus, it sits right on the Pacific Ocean - one minute you're in a hustling little downtown with cute shops and the next minute you're frolicking barefoot on a beach.  Not bad.  Not bad a'tall.  


And with all the working out comes need for small rewards.  Enter:  Yummy Cupcakes, Santa Monica.  Yummy Cupcakes actually has two other locations in Southern California, one in Burbank and a new one in Brentwood - which may not be open quite yet.  And one international location in Istanbul (??reallly??)  Their website promises more locations opening soon around the country including NYC, to which I will bare the $15 train ride during my time of the month.  Don't judge.  


So what's so special about Yummy that they won Best Cupcakes in Los Angeles, 2011?  I can't say for sure but if I were voting, I'd say the "whippy buttercream" - oh and staggering over 400 flavors of cupcakes!  On this trip I had the Chocolate Chocolate.  Not fancy or pretentious - ok - not as pretentious as me, but ridiculously good. And I got to taste my friend's chocolate with vanilla frosting, and mango lime chili & salt.  Hand to God, I will master the art of the whippy frosting.  I'm particular about frosting - otherwise it's just a little piece of cake - the frosting makes it!  And this is the best texture of frosting that has ever graced my tongue.  Yummy Cupcakes takes frosting to a new level.  And the moist and flavorful cake part?  - it's like a bonus that the cake part is even good!  Finally, way to go on the size of the cupcakes - they are big - bigger than standard but not quite jumbo, although jumbos and minis are also available.  Other fun note:  they have a gluten free menu, make cupcakes in a jar, and have other treats like cupcake piesTM (think whoopie-like), and frosting bon bons.  And IMHO, no cupcake shop is complete without some type of merch - so the aprons, plates, kitchen towels, etc, all have a place to call a temporary home.  


I oddly don't have a picture of my cupcake - it didn't last long.  But here are a few I snapped in the store.  

Bakery Review: Deerfields Baker - Chicagoland

This review brings me to Chicago.   What a great city.  Underappreciated I think because it's cold but sometimes you get lucky and get a few hours to yourself in Chicago on a warm sunny spring morning.  The obvious thing to do is to find a bakery and so I turn to Yelp to point me to something nearby where I had a meeting and I got lucky in that I was directed to Deerfields Bakery. 

It was later that I looked at their website and found their true American dream story.  Deerfields is owned by the Schmitt family whose baking roots began in Germany in the 1880s. In 1911, Adam Schmitt imigrated to American and he and his wife set up "The New York Bake Shop" in Chicago.  His son then started Schmitt's Bake Shop which expanded to over 30 locations.  As they say - bigger business means bigger problems (I don't know who "they" are - I'm pretty sure I just made that up.  The expansion forced Henry to lose his business.  But, because this is the American dream, he apparently just continued to work hard in the industry until he was able to buy another bakery in 1972:  Deerfield Bakery.  Twelve years later, that bakery was National Retail Bakery of the Year.  Who doesn't love a comeback story like that?!  Deerfields now has three locations in the Chicagoland area and I was lucky enough to stumble upon their newest one in Schaumburg, IL.  New as in - opened in 2000.  So essentially, these guys are totally legit.  Too legit to quit (sorry - had to!).

While they did not have a huge selection of cupcakes, they did have a little bit of everything.  See the selection of fresh muffins and donuts: 

And the cute Easter-ready lamb and chick mini-cakes:

They also had a load of bagels, breads, and a whole gluten free section!  AMAZIN! 

But this day I had a hankering for Red Velvet!  Luckily, I had two really good options:  red velvet cupcake and red velvet DONUT!  Um - what?! 

I ended up getting both (don't judge).  They were both flat-out amazing!  The red velvet donut was actually - donut-y - not too dense but still had all the flavors of red velvet.  AND it had the cream cheese frosting and a light dusting of powdered sugar.  Bask in the awe of red velvet magic by Deerfields:

Cupcakery Review: Classy Girl Cupcakes - Milwaukee

This week my adventures took me to the beautiful, sunny Milwaukee!  Yes - despite being March, it was really beautiful and really sunny.  I got the best weather while I was there - not a drop of rain or even a cloud in the sky which made it easy to find Classy Girl Cupcakes.  Located on Cathedral Square in downtown Milwaukee, CGC is an adorable shop that seems to specialize in cheesecake cupcakes although they do have quite a selection of gourmet cupcake flavors as well. 

So - cheesecake or regular cupcake?  Obviously both!  I mean- who knows when I'll get to Milwaukee again.  My eye was immediately drawn to a plain looking cupcake whose name was "Caramel Stout".  Hmmmm - stout - it must be related to my Irish Stout cupcake!  Since clearly it's a cupcake that's party of the beer family, I had to try it.  Then onto the cheesecake cupcakes -  there were so many.  The lovely gal at the counter pointed out a few of their best sellers but my eye was drawn to the Malted Milkshake Cheesecake.  They wrapped both of my selections together and gave me a little spoon for the cheesecake treat.

First the Caramel Stout:  

The chocolate cupcake is made with Hinterland Luna Stout beer which the CGC website says "has notes of caramel, chocolate and espresso".  The Hinterland website says that the Luna Stout is infused with nitrogen which sounds like another famous stout from Ireland (that rhymes with Minnus).  If you've read my previous post about my stout cupcake, the Trevor Cupcake Cake, then you know I love beer based cupcakes.  The Class Girl version was really really good - the cake part was light but super flavorful which I imagine comes from the beer.  I've never had the Hinterland beer but maybe I'll try it in my recipe if I can find it in my area.  My only minor complaint was with the frosting - the caramel buttercream was just way too sweet for my taste and it was quite thick and a bit gritty - like the sugar hadn't quite dissolved all the way.  I tend to like a fluffier buttercream but overall the combination was good. I wiped off a lot of the frosting though as it overwhelmed the cupcake.

The Malted Milkshake Cheesecake: 

The Classy Girl website describes this treat as a milk chocolate cheesecake blended with malt powder.  On top is a chocolate buttercream with a malted milk ball.  I LOVE me some malt.  When I was a kid, I used to drive 6 miles to the ice cream shop that had powdered malt that they would put on top of your ice cream instead of the lame liquid malt that other shops used.  (Note....liquid malt=lame)  The bottom or crust of the cheesecake was brownie - yum!  So I was super psyched to dig into this concoction in hopes of getting a little piece of buttercream, cheesecake and brownie on my mini spoon.  Unfortunately, the spoon pushed the buttecream off in one lump.  Ok - no harm done except that the buttercream couldn't really be cut with the spoon.  So I just took a bite out of that - it was more fudge-like than buttercream but OK.  So then onto the cheesecake part - it was good - definitely chocolatey.  I didn't love it - it was a ricotta based cheesecake and I'm partial to more of a New York style cheesecake where it's mostly cream cheese- or at least you can't notice the grains of the ricotta like you could in this little cheesecake.  But if you like your cheesecake like that, then Classy Girl is the place for you.  Well done on the flavor of this cheesecake though - I'm sorry I wasn't partial to the textures.  

The shop:  

Very cute!  And they had cupcake merch - always a good sign of a devoted cupcake fan.  The cupcake prices are reasonable and the staff was friendly.  Definitely worth a stop if you're in downtown Milwaukee - let me know what other flavors you try!

Cupcakery Review! Cupcake in Minneapolis!

I was in Minneapolis less than 20 hours.  Plenty of time for a 1 hour meeting and 1 hour of finding my way to Cupcake which is definitely worth the trip and completely worth fighting the current construction in their neighborhood.  The had at least 24 different cupcake flavors - not counting their Baby Cakes minis. 

 As this was only a few days before Paddy's Day, they were featuring an Irish Car Bomb Cupcake - you can see my recipe below - theirs was seemingly quite similar although I didn't try it.  I had taken a look at their extensive menu before I went.  There website is great and shows pictures of each cupcake but lucky for me, their bakers like to experiment!  If it's not obvious from my last post, I think the best way to consume booze is in cupcake form.  When I saw they had a "Bourbon Butterscotch Chocolate" cupcake, my jaw hit the floor and my mouth started watering.  And I'm so thrilled that I did.  If there was a Guiness World Record for the fastest cupcake consumption, I would definitely have won with the way I inhaled this completely amazing cupcake. Usually, I try to take only one or two bites of a cupcake (girl can not stay curvey on cupcakes alone!) but I couldn't even stop myself.   I'm not even sure I can accurately describe how this cupcake was constructed.  The frosting was amazing - I think it was either a whipped cream of some sort or a light swiss merigue - the key was that the frosting was just barely sweet and the bourbon was just enough to scent the cupcake.  If I had a bowl of this frosting, I would put my face in it.   I hope they keep this one on the menu as it would certainly earn its spot in their top sales category.

A friend I was travelling with ordered a Red Velvet and saved it for her flight home.  She later texted me to let me know that it was the best Red Velvet she's ever had.  Why these people aren't on Cupcake Wars, or in the Cupcake Hall of Fame (I just invented that!) or on the Ellen Show or some other fame creating device is beyond me.  

As a side note, the shop was really cute and the staff quite friendly.  They also have a load of cute vintage themed merchandise, much of which was cupcake related.  They serve regular food too - sandwiches, soups, salads, etc and looks like it would be a great place for lunch or a light dinner.  They have a pretty good selection of freshly baked breads too.  A great all-around bakery with a wonderful cupcake slant.  Stop by (or immediately fly to) Minneopolis to stop by Cupcake!