Sweet Me Up: Desserts by miVi

After doing some research (thanks BlogTO, A Baked Creation and Yelp :), how does this tour sound (I mainly stayed central-ish but starting at Leslieville thus, omitting places like Cupcake Shoppe and Life Is Sweet)

1. Sweet Bliss Baking Company (1304 Queen Street East)
   * http://www.sweetblissbakingcompany.com/
   * $2.50 each
   * Available flavours as listed on their web site: Vanilla with butter cream icing, Carrot with cream cheese icing, Banana Chocolate, Double Chocolate and Chocolate with strawberry icing
2. It’s The Icing On The Cake (1238 Queen Street East)
   * http://www.itstheicingonthecake.ca/main.html
   * $2.00 each
   * Available flavours: Chocolate and Vanilla
3. BabyCake (892 Queen Street East - located inside parent restaurant Lil’ Baci)
   * http://www.babycake.ca/
   * $3.25 each
   * Available flavours: Listed here but might not be available in-store http://www.babycake.ca/flavours.htm[Might have to walk back to grab the Pape bus and head north to...]
4. Sweet Tooth (508 Danforth Ave - between Chester and Pape Stn)
   * Available flavours: subject to change but when I was there last they had chocolate, vanilla, chocolate mocha, chocolate raspberry, vanilla strawberry and carrot w/ cream cheese frosting[Take TTC to Kensington Market...]
5. Miss Cora’s Kitchen (69 Kensington Ave)
   * http://www.misscoraskitchen.com/Site/Home.html
   * Available flavours as listed on their web site: chocolate/vanilla/lemon/carrot cake with cream cheese icing[A bit of a jaunt to...]
6. Sneaky Dee’s (431 College Street - College/Bathurst)
   * http://www.sneaky-dees.com/
   * Available flavours: cookies ‘n’ cream and pumpkin (both vegan)

UPDATE: Looks like there’s an empty void. Any suggestions what can fill it?
View Cupcake Tour in a larger map

The story behind the recipe:

A friend of mine challenged me to create a chocolate banana cake that would rival that of a bakery in downtown Toronto. This is the result. I found a regular chocolate cake recipe and added bananas and swapped out the milk with strawberry yogurt (mainly because that’s what I had in the fridge).

I’ve since then have put it in cupcake form.

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Friends, if I ever design a rollercoaster, don’t ride it. However, should I design a cake with a rollercoaster on it, feel free to eat it.

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Bubble Bobble cake requested by a friend for someone's 16th birthday.

Although this is a baking blog, allow me to release my inner geek to tell you  Bubble Bobble was one of many happy memories from my childhood. When my friend asked me if I’ve heard of it, I got so excited at the prospect of design a Bubble Bobble themed cake, I accepted without hearing any details.

In fact, let’s all take a trip, shall we? Let’s wiki this thing!

Now, let’s go play it!

Photo from blogTO (http://blogto.com)

Apparently there was a call for nominations on blogTO’s website for the best custom cakes in the city. I had no idea but I was voted rounding out their Top 12. Truly I’m flattered and would like to thank those who threw my name into the hat (I know it’s not any of my friends because they didn’t even know there was a call for nominations).

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LUAU!

If you’re hungry for a hunk of fat and juicy meat,
Eat my buddy Pumbaa here because he is a treat,
Come on down a dine,
On this tasty swine,
All you have to do is get in line.

Are you aching:
yup yup yup
For some bacon:
yup yup yup
He’s a big pig:
yup yup

You can be a big pig too

OY!

- Disney’s The Lion King

Actually, I made this cake for a friend last summer. It was for a Luau-themed Bridal Shower she was hosting. Yup yup yup.

Baked for the sole purpose of taking pictures of it (frosting those styrofoam cakes seems odd and taboo to me)

Description:
White cupcakes w/ buttercream frosting sit upon a “basket” of moist chocolate cake.

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Made these about a month (pre-film-release). They’re sugar cookies with Royal Icing. The black marker you see in the pics is an edible food writer marker.

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Ahhh, the popular Hostess Cupcake. Growing up this was alway a special occasion treat because A) we didn’t get a lot of cupcakes as a regular dessert (we were a family that honoured the chocolate chip cookie) and B) we couldn’t justify buying a snack cake if we could just bake it.

So I decided to whip up my own version of this cupcake.

First of all for the cake part, I use my go to chocolate cake recipe. I doubled the recipe to make 48 cupcakes (I have lots of mouths to feed!). Variation to the measurement time: Fill the cupcake wells ¾ of the way so that when they rise, it’ll give you plenty of cupcake top to cut off. Bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes.

When cupcakes are cooled, use a serrated knife to cut the tops off.

Create chocolate ganache: Place 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chip into a heatproof bowl. Heat ¾ cup of whipping cream until it just starts to boil. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate. Let chocolate melt and then stir with a whisk until ganache is smooth. Spread ganache on top of the cupcake tops. Refrigerate so the ganache can firm up.

Meanwhile, make the frosting glaze: Mix 1 cup icing sugar with 2 tbsp. milk. Add more sugar to get a pipeable consistency. Put frosting in a pastry bag and pipe a desired design on the ganached cupcake tops.

Create pastry cream: Whip 2 cups of heavy cream with ½ cup of icing sugar until soft peaks form. Dissolve 1 tsp. of gelatin in 1 tbsp. of water over a low heat. Add gelatin mixture to the cream mixture and whip until stiff peaks form. Feel free to add 1 tsp. vanilla to the mixture. Place a generous dollop of cream on top of the cut cupcakes.

Now, take those pretty little cupcake lids and place them on top of the mount of pastry cream like so…

Enjoy!

Okay, aside from not actually updating this site in a while, sometime over the holiday, the server deleted some of the last few posts. Here’s what you missed (or rather what was deleted):

• CupcakeCamp.ca launched! It was awesome.
• I wished you Happy Holidays
• I posted a recipe for a Pastry Lasagna - I will likely post it again (God bless the Facebook RSS feed - who knew Facebook would actually serve some sort of purpose?)
• I bitched about self-rising flour and provided how to make your own (will also re-post since it’s pretty useful)

What I failed to update you guys on:

• CUPCAKECAMP TORONTO! January 25 was an exhausting, chaotic, yet amazing day. Met some GREAT people and learned quite a bit on how to make the next one better. Looking forward to it. Here’s the play-by-play!
• I made Watchmen Cookies - I’ll post pics later

That’s all me these few months, baking-wise. I’ll do my best to keep on top on my baking shenanigans.

Out.
Michelle