First, thanks to everyone who ordered Thanksgiving Packs!  Orders are all in, with one even placed 5 minutes before the cutoff- I hope you all have a great day of turkey-carb overload!

Ok, now on to the next eatin’ holiday!

Hanukkah is pretty early this year and as last year, I’m offering a special mixed pack celebrating the holiday:

Blue Velvet

Like its red cousin, topped with cream cheese frosting

Black and White

The classic NY cookie, it’s a favorite in Jewish (and non-Jewish) homes!

Chocolate Gelt

Double chocolate cupcake- why should kids be the only ones to get gelt?!

Sufganiyot (Jelly Donut)

Like a bite of your favorite jelly donut-

nutmeg scented cake filled with jelly and dusted with sugar

Order by Sunday, 11/28 for pickup on Wednesday, 12/1 .  2 Dozen minimum order, $15/dozen.  Pickup location likely to be Lexington/60th St- details given on order.  Please see the etsy listing for more details!

It’s a funny feeling to stumble across your product by coincidence- I was on Etsy’s blog reading about the Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off that was held this past Sunday, and recognized my little Apple Pie Cupcake on the related items list.  A little clicking and I found that it was including on a page of ‘Editor’s Picks‘!

Did anyone go to that bake-off?  I was thinking about going,  but with all the projects I have going on I missed it!   I read that they had 46 pies to taste- nooooooo!

Oh here’s another gob-stuffing event: Cupcakes Take the Cake is celebrating their 6th anniversary with a party on Dec 7.  Tickets are $10, but you can mash a bunch of different cupcakes from around the city into your mouth under one roof!  They have different cupcake shops sponsoring the event so it should a fun, sugar-fueled night!   I haven’t decided whether to participate or not yet (as schedule allows) but thought you guys should know about such an event- you’ll be the envy of your office the next day while you’re explaining why you have sugar-hangover.

And this weekend is the last chance to order Thanksgiving Packs!  Nix the jello salad and take over some mini cupcakes instead- everyone will thank you for it!

So exciting!  I delivered a sampling of the Thanksgiving Pack to the Serious Eats office and they included me in a roundup!  I’m so thankful that people enjoy my cakes, and when I read “some of the best we’ve had…” my eyes actually teared up!  Ah and don’t even get me started on the beautiful photo they took of the cupcakes:

Thank you so much, guys!

Another exciting event is that my web designer, Jacky Chen has put the Flavors page up on my site!  I’m really happy with how it’s come out and working with Jacky has been great   He had a great feel for what I wanted and we worked well in making the site attractive and I think, informative.  Although there are about 35 flavors up on the site, there’s actually about another 30 that aren’t!  But I suppose they’ll get up on there sooner or later (Jacky’s cursing my name now).  Actually, I wonder if it’s just too overwhelming to have so many flavors up?  I’m curious to hear your opinions on this:

Should I just have a solid 10-15 flavors up, or show the whole megilla?

On the r&d side,  although I’ve been nuts lately with pre-Thanksgiving orders (a bazillion pumpkin cupcakes!), I’ve been dreaming of  more pie-cupcake flavors.  I’ve definitely been bitten by the pie bug trend and am so inspired by them!  I’ve also been eating waaaay too many slices of Double Cherry Pie from Hill Country Chicken- have you tried this place yet?  Everything is really good but that pie makes my eyes roll to the back of my head- SO GOOD.  Anyhow, a ‘pie pack’ is definitely on the horizon…but Hanukkah comes first!  Details on that pack coming soon…

Ah, now that the cool weather has returned, I can start to do some mixed packs again!  The summer heat is tough on frostings, so it’s been quite a while since you saw a mix from me-

Well let’s kick it off with some Thanksgiving flavors!

This pack is available for pickup only on Tuesday 11/23, or Wednesday 11/24 and comes in an assortment of:

Candied Yam

sweet potato cake with a toasted marshmallow button

Red Velvet

classic red velvet with cream cheese frosting

Apple Pie

vanilla cake with an apple bite, cinnamon cream and pie crust hat

Pumpkin-Ginger

a spicy pumpkin cake with crystallized ginger frosting

They’re up on the etsy store, so check it out for more details and to order!

I love a Thanksgiving meal- mounds of stuffing, canned cran with the ridges on the sides, potatoes 2-3 ways, gravy on everything…what, I’m missing something?  No not really! When it comes to my dream Thanksgiving (aka elastic waistband day), the turkey/roast/franken-bird is totally secondary!  To me, the stars of the day are the sides, and one of my favorites are candied yams- naturally sweet, cooked with a bit of oj, brown sugar, butter and topped with toasted marshmallows- YUM!  So naturally I would do a candied yam flavor for my Thanksgiving pack (details coming soon!).

He’s so cute with his toasted marshmallow button on top:

With all those warm candied yam flavors, he’s a sweet little bite of fall!

And here are a couple of pics from a frozen pumpkin pie tasting I was invited to by a food website:

I was really excited to try the different kinds of pie…until I actually tasted them.  It was an interesting setting- a bunch of people silently eating bits of pie filling and crust, separately and in combination, writing feverishly onto comment sheets.  Tasting, re-tasting.  Scoring, scratching out and re-scoring.  I’d never thought so hard about a pie before!  But tasting them all next to each other, I definitely learned…not to eat frozen pie.  Well, they weren’t *all* bad but some were clearly better than others.    Actually it was sort of like my experience at Cupcake Camp, where we tasted a bunch of cupcakes in one night!  It was a fun experience anyhow and really, is there such a thing as bad pie?