the Mama-bird Bakery

When Brooke was here at Thanksgiving, she fell in love with the Hummingbird Bakery's Red Velvet Cupcakes. I mean, we all kind of did. I think mainly it had to do with the cream cheese icing.

But if you step back from the cute box and the amazing icing, the cake part itself I thought was a little lacking. {gasp!} Blasphemy, I know. Maybe it was because we got them on a busy day and quality was down in lieu of quantity. However, it was nonetheless a little dry.

When Brooke came back in February, in honor of her birthday (21) that she had just celebrated, I decided I would try my hand at Red Velvet cupcakes. First of all, who knew that there was cocoa in them? I knew the red was from food coloring, but I really thought it was like a yellow cake mix with red food coloring. So using, Paula Deen's recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing, I made roughly 30 cupcakes. (If you use this recipe, half it, unless you are making them for a big crowd or you want to gain 20 pounds by eating cupcakes for weeks.) I was able to give some to our neighbor, and the rest, well...20 pounds.

I made so much icing (I over mixed/beat it I think which made it too runny and had to add powdered (or as they call it here, icing) sugar to thicken it up) that I had tons left over. Of course, not wanting it to go to waste, I decided to make carrot cake for Wil.

carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese icing

I've never made a carrot cake, nor really ever been a fan of it. Carrot and cake do not go together in my chocolate-brain self. However, I'm sold. I ended up doing cupcakes...I'm in a cupcake phase, I decided. And they have turned out really well. I used Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa)'s recipe. I was surprised to see it call for 1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt (and I may be wrong about this, but is a bit stronger than table salt, I guess because the crystals are larger? And maybe salt is normal in baking, I can't remember, but I don't think it usually calls for Kosher) which seemed like a lot for a cake. But I think that kind of makes it. Maybe I'm over-tasting, but it seems to really seal the deal for me. Oh, I also used pecans instead of walnuts since that's what I already had.

this is waiting for wil!

My next project I'd love to do is to bake Dewey's Pink Lemonade Cake...into cupcakes, duh. Anyone have their actual recipe? I know there are other pink lemonade cake recipes, but if you've tasted Dewey's you know why I want it. On second thought, I think I may need to wait a couple weeks before I bake again if I want to fit in my clothes.

(oh, and I'm not a great chef or a great photographer, and I realize there are much better people at that out there in blog world than me, so excuse the not so pretty pictures)