Recent CUpdates

Okay everyone. A LOT has happened for ThreeCUPSandCAKES recently that I want to share with you!

1. ThreeCUPSandCAKES has a mascot! Officially, she belongs to Cupcaker Alex; and, believe it or not, her name is Cupcake She is a yorkie-poo (a yorkie/poodle mix); although, the way she climbs her cage you’d think she was a monkey and the way she bites your toes you’d think she was a… whatever animal you can think of that has sharp teeth and bites! But she’s such an adorable puppy.
   
   
2. Thanks to my dear friend, Amber, I have an official ThreeCUPSandCAKES apron! I feel so professional when I wear it and I simply LOVE it.
   
3. We now have an entire closet dedicated to baking! Who needs a place to keep linens when you’re starting a cupcaking business?! It is perfect.
   
4. Besides our mascot, Cupcake, meet the newest member of our business, my Kitchen-Aid Mixer, Cobalt! I bought him at a very, very good price.
   Isn’t he beautiful?!
   
5. AND we now have some pretty sweet delivery boxes, complete with ribbon to match our business cards!
   

We are very pleased with the orders we’ve had so far and are still having so much fun cupcaking. Let us know if we can bake for you, your friends or your next event. Regardless, I’d love it if you tracked with us as our business is further established!

– ThreeCUPSandCAKES Cupcakers

World Cup(cakes) of Beer!

Most everyone is familiar with the quadrennial soccer World Cup. But I’m willing to bet only about twenty or so people know what I mean when I speak of the first quadrennial World Cup of Beer! Those twenty people were the participants in an international beer-tasting tournament to determine the world champion. This is how it worked…

Each country participating in the 2010 World Cup was assigned a beer – if a country did not produce a beer at all or one could not be found locally, it was assigned a beer from either a neighboring country or a country that at one time had conquered there (trust me, this was a very well-thought-out game!).

First the tasters were split into two groups for the group stage where each group’s participants sampled four groups of four beers, ranking each round by taste preference. The top beer from each round of the group stage advanced to the bracket until the final game, Chile vs. Brazil…

Long story short, Brazil was the 2010 World Cup of Beer Champion! Chile was Tilburg’s Brown Ale, from the Netherlands, and Brazil was Xingu, from Brazil.

I write about this because, as one of the elite participants of the tournament, I made a most brilliant cupcake for the event! Chocolate-Guinness cupcakes with a Bailey’s cream cheese icing…
Tell me you did not just develop an acute craving for this cupcake while saying, “Ohh, woww…” I’m willing to bet you did because, let me tell you…
they were INCREDIBLE.

Check it out:

While Brazil won the actual World Cup of Beer tournament, I have to say that my underdog mini cupcakes might have sabotaged the whole event, had there not been such strict rules about the teams represented in the tournament having to be “actual beers”. However, I fear I may always be partial to cupcakes.

We’re in Business! Cards and all…

I recently spoke of the hope that I have for my cupcakes to affect someone or something more than just increasing waist sizes. (For the record, I am of the opinion that mini cupcakes don’t make much of a difference in this area… ) The same week I wrote about this, I received an email from a lady who was hosting a bake sale fundraiser at the Clear Lake Shores Farmer’s Market. *Side note: I also manage theGOsite for Clear Creek Community Church – a place to both find out what service or “go” opportunities there are to be a part of in our community and to read stories about how people’s lives are impacted by their service to others and/or others’ service to them. Anyway, Tina, the lady hosting the bake sale, was requesting that I post on theGOsite about their need for people to donate baked items to help raise money for The Bridge over Troubled Waters, a shelter for people who have experienced domestic and sexual violence. My thoughts were:

A) What an beautiful organization to raise money for
B) Not only would I post this need on theGOsite, but I happen to have just launched a cupcake business and would LOVE to help!
C) is for Coincidence but I am thinking… not really.

In hopes that I would also gain some good exposure at the Farmer’s Market, I got a business card made! (I’m fairly obsessed with them )

And, to co-ordinate nicely with my new business card, I experimented with teal-colored icing!

I’m pretty sure these have just become my trademark minis (a close second, are the Salted Caramel – the other variety I made for the bake sale). What a neat opportunity to be a part of and, with many other baked items besides my minis, Tina and her team raised $650 for BOTW!

I am thinking, our motto, “Saving the World… One Cupcake at at Time…” has only just come to life!

Saving the world, one Cupcake at a time

To bring you up-to-speed with our Cupcaking adventures, I must backtrack to the recent holiday weekend. While it is a rare thing for someone to spend time doing anything other than grill and lay out over Memorial Day weekend, for me, it was no typical holiday. Not only did I carve out some time to foster my Cupcaking adventures but I also found the Samaritan in me to do a good deed. I shall explain.

First, the Cupcaking: I baked for a graduation reception! I must admit, even while baking

two of our most popular cupcakes, Vanilla Bean and Salted Caramel, I still had a few Amelia Bedelia moments – like misplacing my cupcake pans! Who does that? Cupcake pans are like the MVPs of Cupcaking; a Cupcaker could never be without such. Nevertheless, after a quick game of hide-and-seek (and then discovering what burned caramel sauce tastes like), everything turned out quite sweetly in the end.

Now, the story of the Good Sar-arah-tan: Little did we know that more than just the swimming pool awaited our return from delivering the cupcakes; a billowing stack of black smoke blatantly announced its presence as we drove down our street.

Now, I know what you are thinking… Good ol’ Ameila B. left the oven on and the house caught on fire? Au contraire. I am proud to announce that this was not the case. In fact, a neighbor’s Ford F-150 had just burst into flames! It was the strangest/craziest thing.The hood of the truck was down and no one, not even the owner, was visible in sight. As I pulled into my driveway, I promptly called 911 and gave my account of the situation, expressing my concern that no one seemed to be aware of the fire.

As the not-to-distant sirens began sounding, the owner finally came out with his garden hose… whew! Except… NOT. This thing was in flames! Combat was about to begin and you are going to whip out your double-edged… garden hose?! Really? Fortunately, a neighbor with a fire extinguisher quickly joined him. A somewhat smarter move, I suppose. Let’s just say, it was a good thing that, thanks to me, the Fire Dept. was on the way. And what did I do in all of this? I ran inside to get my camera, of course! If I was about to have saved the day, I would most definitely need proof. In the end, the firemen put out the fire and, while the truck was toast, everyone was safe.

One of our readers recently pointed out the similarity in titles between our Cupcakery business, Three Cups and Cakes, and a Greg Mortensen’s book, Three Cups of Tea. Have you read it? This guy has built more than fifty-five schools – especially for girls – in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. So I now have this newfound intrigue of a man’s deep hopes of promoting peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan, one school at a time. Perhaps even more fascinating to me, the people in these cultures drink three cups of tea when doing their business!

Haji Ali, Korphe Villiage Chief in Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan explains it this way, “The first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die.”

After I saved the day, I began to think thatThreeCUPSandCAKES may be developing a new motto. We are just three girls, who actually do have quite a fondness for tea, and have no qualms about drinking said tea during business meetings (i.e. during Cupcaking); but perhaps one day, we can affect a positive change for a greater good in this world… one Cupcake at a time!

I hope so.

Cupeoplecakes!

Have you heard about the Cupeople?

Cupeople (pronounced, cup-people) are a recently discovered batch. They are smallish like Hobbits but not to be confused with Cupie dolls which were popular back in the early 1900s. Their very name, Cupeople, evokes a certain auditory playfulness, like when you say Lilliputians (or Cupie doll, for that matter).

The difference is, unlike both plastic dolls and fable people, Cupeople are non-fictional and quite edible! Sadly, it is the very fact of being edible that hinders the Cupeople population from growing very much in number. Recent studies have shown that Cupeople created are Cupeople quickly eaten. It is quite tragic… or delicious, really.

While I’m not sure how I would feel about being eaten, if I were something sweet to eat I would absolutely be a Cupcake. First, I would marvel at my cuteness and then I would quickly set out to find my distant Cupeople kin on their island, where I hear they were desserted…

To be desserted? Now, that sounds like a brilliant idea! If all those who were unlucky enough to get stranded on an island were to whimsically turn into some dessert variety, it would surely make resorting to cannibalism much more tolerable. Instead of eating legs, you could be eating lady fingers! Or perhaps you might meet your death by chocolate cake. Needless to say, to die would be quite heavenly.

Fortunately, our Cupeoplecakes aren’t the cannibal type. While ThreeCUPSandCAKES has mostly baked cupcakes of a more elegant variety, Cupeoplecakes are playful and a lot of fun to make. They function flawlessly as fantastic cupcakes for a kid party as well as clever Cupcaker profile pictures for a pretty sweet blog.

How I Met the Cupcake…

So I am really into cupcakes. Why cupcakes, you ask? Well, my first response is, duh! because they’re lovely. However, there is a back-story. The Cupcake and I have a little bit of history together, to tell you the truth. While, I’m certain in my youth I consumed just as many clown-face cupcakes as the next kid, none of those take the cake when up against the elegant varieties that I am privileged to consume as an adult. This is the story of how I met the Cupcake…

It all began on a wintry day in Greenwich Village. It was my first trip to NYC and a couple of college girl friends and I were headed to what would soon become one of the most life-altering tourist attractions I had ever visited. While, of course, our itinerary included all the normal sites: Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown… I was instructed that any decent trip to NYC would not be complete without making a particular stop in Greenwich Village; a stop that has resulted in the launching of this blog; a stop labeled with quite possibly the two most decadent words in the Cupcaking World: Magnolia Bakery.

If you are not familiar with Magnolia from the popular T.V. series, Sex and the City, frankly, you need to be familiar with it. You do not want to miss out on this place. To tell you the truth, the wait-line to get in the bakery was twelve people out the door so, if you’re walking down Bleeker Street, you couldn’t possibly miss it. As one of the twelve that day, I suddenly developed an acute awareness of my sweet tooth. I actually felt like a kid again at my friend’s birthday party, impatiently enduring the gift-opening so we could get on with the cupcake-eating. Meanwhile, I watched the icing process through the window, fascinated by the icer’s speed and technique until, finally, we shuffled our way past the door, through the cupcake-retrieval system and out with our own box of assorted cupcakes! And let me tell you something. They were nothing like the clown-face cupcakes, no kidding. So it was at 401 Bleeker Street that I fell in love with the Cupcake.

The following spring, I was asked to make the cake for one of my best friends’ bachelorette parties. She had a LOT of friends coming and, in effort to maximize (or perhaps simplify) the execution of this aforementioned dessert,

I decided to make cupcakes, instead. Not long after I made this decision, I spent some time in the local bookstore gathering ideas until one day I discovered cupcake stands! This tree-like centerpiece would perfectly display all twenty-three of my cupcakes, further affirming that cupcakes were a GREAT idea. Thus, I made my first batch! Okay, so I used a pre-packaged box of strawberry cake mix for the recipe…

BUT I doused the cupcakes with sweetened condensed milk (the bride’s request!) and, twenty-three empty baking cups later, I was famous.

From that point on, it seemed I often had cupcakes on the brain. The obsessive thoughts only heightened in number when, shortly after my graduation, I received a cupcake cookbook as a gift. Before knowing exactly what to do with this book, I spent many, many sittings just flipping through the pages and marveling at the photography. I must admit I was somewhat intimidated by the all-from-scratch recipes, complete with sugared, edible flower garnishes. You see, I never was much of a baker, myself. The few times I tried my hand at the oven, I always managed to botch it worse than Amelia Bedelia. While Amelia got a whole book series of credit for her creative interpretations of simple tasks, such as dressing the turkey with actual doll clothes, I only ever ended up with hot chocolate soup for brownies and baked chicken with a Saran-wrap-turned-glass cover (did you know that if you don’t remove the plastic wrap from a baking dish, it will turn to glass when heated?! Yea.).

My one hopeful thought is this: Rome wasn’t built in a day. I decided that I had to start somewhere so, recently, I began testing out a few recipes at some small gatherings: Honey Chai, Gingerbread with Lemon Glaze, Egg Nog Cupcakes, just to name a few. And I am telling you! Either these must be really, really good recipes (which they absolutely are) or I’m not half as bad a Cupcaker as I thought…

So now, my two sisters and I have started this blog, Three Cups and Cakes, with the basic intent of sharing our Cupcaking adventures with whoever so desires to read our stories. This post marks only the beginning of our venture; but, like a timeless rendezvous with an old friend over a cup of coffee, I have no idea how long or how far we will go with Three Cups and Cakes. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure how much you can really say about a Cupcake. At the very least my hope for you is that you may find our cupcake stories interestingly sweet. But why cupcakes, you ask again? Well, they are lovely, aren’t they? And I’m quite into them, really.

– Sarah