I have been inspired.  It started quite innocently, a comment from a blogger on my friend Hannah’s website which led me to Jenna’s website where she wrote about Nie Nie who got a cake from the writer/blogger of Conversations With a Cupcake.  Since then, I have been addicted to the blog, or rather the photos in the blog.  Yum.  The pictures are luscious and inspiring.  In fact, I can often visit the site when I am craving something delicious and to just look at the photos of her masterpieces and I feel like I have been a very bad dieter!  So, I decided that yeah, it’s okay to make a few dozen cupcakes to celebrate the Fourth of July, right?  Gigi and I set out to do exactly that.

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We started by sugaring berries.  Take one egg white, add a tablespoon of water and whisk the mixture together.  Then either paint the egg whites onto the fruit or dip them.  Then sprinkle the wet fruit with sugar.  They take about two hours to dry.  If you dip the fruit in a thick coating of sugar they turn out frosty and frozen looking.  Lightly sprinkled fruit glistens.  It is all lovely no matter how you do it!

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After the fruit was all lovely, we got down to the business of making the cupcakes.  I have never found a cake recipe that tastes right, even though I have tried to bake many.  They always taste a little off.  Perhaps I am just used to box cakes, but that is what I prefer.  So we made cherry chip cupcakes because they are tasty and red and white to honor our holiday.  When they were finished, we frosted them with cream cheese frosting:

1 cup butter

1 block cream cheese

1 capful vanilla

1 pinch of salt

3 cups powdered  sugar

Cream the butter and cream cheese together, add the vanilla and salt, then the sugar.  Yum.  Keep the husband out of the frosting (mine likes his frosting).

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We frosted the cupcakes in thick snowy drifts and set the cherries and blueberries on them.  The strawberries didn’t make it onto the cupcakes, they had to be eaten earlier in the day.

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Next we set about making an experiment, a recipie direct from Conversations With a Cupcake.  Being a vegetarian family often leaves us out of some of the traditional American fare, like Hostess cupcakes which often says that their fare ‘may include beef fat’  in their list of ingredients (does it or doesn’t it?  What’s with the ambiguity??).  These cupcakes, dubbed ‘Abby’s Bakesale Cupcakes’ looked just like hostess chocolate cupcakes to me: squat little cakes with thick ganache-like frosting on top.  The center looked gooey and rich, the icing just like something I would have trouble staying out of.  So, I decided to give a ‘from scratch’ cake recipe a try one more time.  The entire recipe for the cake and icing can be found here (you have to scroll down a bit to find it).

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This is the product.  It looks exactly right.  Y-U-M!  Right?

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But, if I did it again, I’d make different cake.  The icing: AMAZING!  Exactly what I was hoping for: rich, fudgey, and oh-so-tasty!  The cake?  Missing…  something.  A little dry, a little plain and not nearly chocolatey enough!  If I were feeling extra decadent, I might use a brownie recipe for the cake.  On a normal day, chocolate cake mix.  Don’t get me wrong, these won’t live to see Monday, but I would just do something a little different next time.  And there WILL be a next time!

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Our Fourth of July will be sweet indeed!  Beautiful explosions in our mouths and skies.    Have a wonderful day celebrating our independence!


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