St Patrick’s Day is next week and I’m doing some special flavors for a party!  I haven’t made any cupcakes with alcohol in them…until now.  It somehow seems fitting to slosh a little alcky-hol into these festive party cakes.  The thought of green cakes make me want to yak, so I’m staying away from the obvious shamrocky-leprechauny-aye-begorrahy-stealin’-my-pot-o-gold stuff and opting to go for some popular drink flavors that come from Ireland instead.

I’m doing:

* Bailey’s
* Irish Coffee with Whisky Cream
* Guinness Choco-Malt (tastes like a Wendy’s Frosty!)

Ah, we had such great weather this weekend- it’s starting to feel like Spring already!  With the chill of winter starting to thaw, we can stop eating tubers, squash, and root veg and enjoy some fresh, young fruits and vegetables.  My thinking naturally goes to making up a Spring Mix pack, so I thought I’d give carrot cake a go!

There are two definite camps when it comes to carrot cake- are you a raisin person, or like me, not so much?

Ok, raisin people, don’t get crazy on me- I like raisins, just not in carrot cake.  Tea cakes, Garibaldi biscuits (remember those?!), Raisinettes, cinnamon raisin toast/bagels, ants on a log…see?  I’m with you!

At first I thought I would go nuts and do a full-out Southern style cake- coconut, raisins, walnuts, and pineapple all in addition to the carrots, but I don’t think I’d want to eat that.  Maybe it’s too many flavors at once?  Too many for a little bite to handle?

I decided to compromise and do a little cake with pineapple and carrots, cream cheese frosting and a walnut sprinkle.  Sound good?  He’s a cutie for sure, and I like how the pineapple adds even more moisture to the cake.  It’s definitely a keeper.

This Spring Mix is shaping up to be a killer set… I’ll have the other flavors up soon!

I was thinking about pineapple upside down cakes, and I started to wonder why:

1. no one seems to make them
2. it’s never done as a layer cake

I really love PUD cakes and with a bit of my lovely fresh pineapple still around, I decided to make a layer version!  Filled with a light pastry cream and covered with whipped cream, this cake is a winner…except that the outside looks really home-y.  Not too polished looking, but delicious!  Now that it’s all gone, I’ve realized that I just need to pipe a border around the top edge to finish it off.  Like they do for Black Forest cake, you know?

Sorry, cakes are not for sale!

I love the way minis look lined up, all military like, and in this case how it looks like there’s an infinite number of them…waiting to be gobbled up.

Someone pegged me as a ‘perfectionist’ the other day- why does that word have such a negative ring to it?  I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but I do try hard at whatever the task at hand is…but looking at these minis makes me wonder if maybe I am a little bit of one.   It’s almost eerie how they all seem to look the same.  But then you see that one guy, whose chocolate piece is in at a diagonal, and I start to feel a little more human again (ok it really drove me nuts, but didn’t want to mess the marshmallow up by removing and replacing it).  Ahhhh.

I have some flavors available for sale today!

It’s a mix n’ match (yeah!!) of:

• Chocolate Praline
• Bananas Foster
• Red Velvet
• Pineapple Upside Down (I don’t usually offer this for sale!)

You tell me how many of what you’d like, or I’ll do an assortment if you don’t specify.  Pickup Lex/60th, email me at gimmecake[at]cakelabnyc[dot]com !