Blowing Kisses to my Fudgy Sweet Tooth – Toasted Walnut David’s Tea & the Triple Chocolate Fudge from The Cupcake Shoppe!

For the last month I’ve been having the strangest craving.  Not the stereotypical I’m-pregnant-and-all-I-want-are-pickles (or in my mum’s case when she was pregnant, bananas) type of craving, but the type of craving that feels so strange because it’s so common to everyone else BUT you.

I’ve been craving chocolate.  *cue crickets chirping*

It’s true!  Let it be known that I have always been a vanilla kind of girl.  Vanilla ice cream, vanilla frosting, those yummy rectangular vanilla Peek Freans cookies with the cream in the middle, vanilla whatever!  I’ve always enjoyed chocolate, sure (especially white chocolate but we all know white chocolate isn’t technically real chocolate.  Blah blah) but when push came to shove, vanilla was my happy place.  But lately?  Oh my goodness I’ve been raiding the chocolate peppermint patties, chocolate caramel, and Godiva chocolates in the sweet tooth bin in my pantry at home almost every day!  A nibble of dark chocolate here, a little truffle there.  My house is hardly full of the stuff; far from it.  But with Christmas and Valentine’s behind us, we’ve accumulated quite the decent stash and I’m shocked to find myself working my way through it!

And nuts!  Oh how things change with age.  You couldn’t pay me in lip gloss to get me to eat the stuff when I was little.  I wasn’t even really eating nuts 5 years ago.  But here I am noshing on almonds, hazlenuts, walnuts and pecans by choice and popping Ferrero Rocher chocolates like breath mints.

It’s a new era on Ate by Ate.  It’s time for more chocolate!

What we have here: the fudgy, decadent Triple Chocolate Fudge cupcake from The Cupcake Shoppe!  The cupcake ($2.85), with its chocolate cake, chocolate fudge frosting, and white chocolate chips, is one of the newer flavours the shop introduced when they expanded their line-up of flavours last summer and when they opened up their 2nd location in Vaughan.

The cupcake is sitting comfortably beside a hot cup of Toasted Walnut tea from David’s Tea, by far one of their best teas EVER!  The flavour is so warm and rich and perfectly concentrated with just a hint of caramel sweetness and to be honest, it took me by surprise.  I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be bad, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be THIS delicious.  I love tea immensely but some teas, in general, just don’t work for me because the flavour doesn’t come through strong enough.  If I wanted to drink hot water, I would just drink hot water!  The Toasted Walnut at David’s Tea is fantastic though and it’s totally on my “get a tin of this” list!

And as a bonus?  A packet of David’s Tea’s special Red Velvet Cake tea ($6.75, 50g), their Tea of the Month this past February and another amazing showstopper!  I’m telling you, this tea is even BETTER than an actual red velvet cupcake!  For a twist, try it iced.  I’ve tried it iced and I love it!  Rest assured, this is not a limited edition tea so you can definitely get some loose leaf in a tin if they don’t have the cute packets on their counter anymore.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a chocolate mint macaron waiting for me….

*****

The Cupcake Shoppe is located in the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood at 2417 Yonge St., north of Eglinton on the east side of Yonge St.  Their second location in Vaughan is located by Bathurst St. and Rutherford Road at 9340 Bathurst.  Hurray for more cupcake options in York Region!

They have a rotating menu of cupcake flavours each day and each cupcake is priced at $2.85.  For more Cupcake Shoppe goodness on Ate by Ate, click HERE!  There are write-ups, scrapbook layouts, and tons of photos on The Cupcake Shoppe’s following flavours: Cookie Dough, Eh? (maple), Lemon Drop & Lov’n Lemon (the first one is one of the most amazing lemon cupcakes you will ever eat and the latter, not so much), Red Velvet, Naughty n’ Spice (fall seasonal), After Ate (mint chocolate), Pretty in Pink (raspberry cupcake with raspberry buttercream), and the delicious summer seasonal Lime n’ Licious.

Sundays Just Got a Whole Lot Sweeter – The $2 Cupcake, Tart, Square, & Cookie Bonanza at Desmond & Beatrice!

You might think of Sundays as quiet, peaceful, lazy days.  Many shop owners choose Sunday to have their day off, traffic on the road is a little lighter save for the long weekends, and places aren’t open as late as they are during the rest of the week.  At Desmond & Beatrice on Queen Street East in Riverside though, Sundays might as well be the new Friday!  *NEWS BULLENTIN*  Sundays at D&B are $2 bonanza days!  $2 cupcakes, $2 tarts and squares, $2 EVERYTHING!  Everything on their edible display counter anyway; no way are we getting away with cute $2 aprons!  I have no idea how long D&B has had this promotion (*note to self: ask next time!), but boy does it get people extra kooky-crazy for their delectable, delightful desserts!  It sure did that to me.  I passed by their bake shop before they had opened, glanced at the front window, and almost got whiplash when I whipped around to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  $2 Sundays?!  No speciality cupcakery with the exception of Dessert Lady in Yorkville, who sells their vanilla and chocolate ones for $2, sells their wares for that price. 

And apparently, I was a little late to the party because when I came back when they were open later on in the day, they had been wiped clean!  The only thing that greeted me was a dish of peanut butter and banana cupcakes.  I should have known better.  Sundays might be a little on the quieter side (although you’d never know it taking the bus; it is crowded and packed early in the morning!  And by “early”, I mean 9am by bus schedule standards), but so many people are out and about in the city, whether it’s for a festival, a sporting event, a concert, or just good old fashioned weekend brunch.  Anyway, lucky for me, D&B had enough sense and hindsight to keep their delicious cupcakes coming and before I knew it, full, fresh, beautiful batches of red velvet, vanilla, and double chocolate were before me, waiting to be chosen like the crown jewel in a treasure chest.  And my precious cupcake of choice this time?  Double chocolate!

If you can believe it, chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting are something I don’t have very often.  If you were to go through my eleventy billion cupcake posts on the blog, you’d find less than 5 devoted to chocolate on chocolate.  And it’s not because I don’t like chocolate – I love chocolate!  It’s simply because I want to paint a more diversified portrait of the cupcake flavours available in the city and now that I have a steady foundation of posts (I believe this post here will be Cupcake Chronicles’ 90th!), I can feature more classic flavours here and there to round things out.  This double chocolate cupcake post is inspired and dedicated in part to both my boyfriend and my brother, two chocolate lovers whom I hold very dear to me, and given how my brother can take or leave cupcakes, I’m determined to find him the best of the best to really wow him.  And this one right here from Desmond & Beatrice has to belong on everyone’s Top 3 Most Amazing Chocolate Cupcakes because it is out of this world and RIDONKULOUS.  Yes, that’s right, ridonkulous.

Chocolate cupcakes are either really great or really bad.  Some can fall in the so-so category, but more often than not, they’re love it or hate it.  Some are way too dry, too powdery (a little too much of that cocoa powder taste), or too dense to the point where it just tastes like thick, goopy chocolate muck.  D&B’s amazing double chocolate delight is what EVERY chocolate cupcake should aspire to be like.  I was shocked out of my skirt because I couldn’t believe how damn delicious this was!  It is a fudgy, creamy embodiment of a brownie in cupake form.  It tastes like chocolate brownie fudge with fluffy cake.  It is so moist, so creamy and so decadent.  The frosing is as smooth as it gets and eating it with a fork makes you feel like you’re digging into a special chocolate birthday cake with, quite possibly, some of the best chocolate frosting in the world.  If you’re head over heels over brownies, this cupcake is the answer to your prayers, in addition to D&B’s crazy $2 Sunday sale!  I don’t think anybody needs an incentive to go to D&B, but this promotion sure is a mighty sweet deal so take advantage of it if you’re in the area! 

*****

Desmond & Beatrice Bake Shop and Cupcakery is located at 750 Queen Street East, just one block east of Broadview Ave. in the Riverside District.  They are open from Tuesday-Sunday (closed Mondays), from 12pm-6pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 11am-7pm on Thursdays and Fridays, 10am-5pm on Saturdays, and 11am-5pm on Sundays.

Back to Cupcake Basics With Sweet Chocolate & Vanilla – Scones, Cupcakes, & Desserts at Hammersmith’s, Part II

Happy 1st Birthday, Hammersmith’s!

What’s better than a brunch cafe with delicious sandwiches, salads, and breakfast fare?  A brunch cafe with all of those things plus desserts for sweet endings!  I love it when I can plan a meal from beginning to end with either an appetizer and a main or a main and a side, and a dessert to neatly book end the happy experience.  I especially feel this way when I go out for sushi – if there isn’t dessert on the menu, I am one very sad cookie!  While I don’t order appetizers, extra sides, or dessert every time I’m out (I’d say this happens maybe 2 times out of 10 – foreshame!), it’s just nice knowing I can enjoy a variety of sweet and savoury items in one go because it also means an endless amount of mix-and-matching possibilities during future visits.  

Hammersmith’s delivers on all fronts.  Not only does Hammersmith’s do a mean sandwich and salad brunch plate (I could eat their arugula salad with olive oil and razor-thin radish slices endlessly), they also bake homemade baked goods and desserts on site including fresh scones, giant monster chocolate chunk cookies, and fluffy, mouthwatering cupcakes!  Much like their savoury brunch menu, their selection of sweets will change on a regular basis to reflect the season or pure inspiration.  They will always have scones though.  Their scones are available for purchase individually for $1.25 a piece, or as a scone plate for brunch with jam and cream for $5.  You could totally transform this into a lovely morning tea type of meal with a pot of hot loose leaf tea!

Brunch and afternoon tea scones

The frosted cupcake crown jewels

The showcase of desserts!

I truly believe I was blessed with good fortune on this day.  On Canada Day, Hammersmith’s celebrated their 1st anniversary and birthday!  How exciting it was to be a part of their special day!  And can you take a wild guess as to what made the birthday/anniversary festivities even mor jubiliant?  CUPCAKES!  Every patron was given a free cupcake in honour of this occasion and I was absolutely taken aback and shocked – in a good way!  Can you believe it?!  It’s almost as if the foodie gods wanted me to inhale a fresh cupcake over the weekend! 

They had cake stands full of plump cupcakes in different vanilla and chocolate combinations with the sweetest of decorations (rainbow sprinkles!  Chocolate sprinkles!  Pink sugar sparkles!  Crushed chocolate bits!) and they were all so pretty and so inviting.  Choosing my free cupcake (normally priced at $2.85) was like choosing a crown jewel – giddy but really hard to do!  Part of me was dying to snatch up the vanilla with sweet rainbow sprinkle dots and another part of me was yelling to grab the marble cake with marble frosting.  The “all-things-pink-and-pretty” part of me won over though and I chose the sweet chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting and pink sugar sparkles.

If you love that fresh cocoa taste combined with moist-out-of-the-oven softness and soft, creamy, whipped buttercream, these are right up your alley.  It’s crazy because even though they’re light, airy, and fluffy in both cake and frosting, their cupcakes are surprisingly filling!  They’re decorated and piped beautifully and they truly have that comfort food, straight from home oven feeling to them and they taste delightful.  They make you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside because they really exude that “I was baked with love” glow.  It’s good old fashioned cupcake basics at its finest. 

The chocolate cake was fudgy with all sorts of warm cocoa goodness lurking throughout and the frosting was so soft.  The cake wasn’t so soft that the cupcake toppled over, but it wasn’t stiff and dense either and you could enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed – in one piece in your hand (or in my case, with a dainty fork!) as you take bite after bite of fluffy goodness.  What was fantastic about it was how they compared to other buttercreams.  It didn’t leave a greasy film, it didn’t taste like a mouthtful of butetr, it wasn’t too sweet or bland, and the ratio between cake and frosting was perfect.      

Fluffy and soft like marshmallow cream

Happy 1st birthday to Hammersmith’s and happy cupcaking, cookie noshing, and scone nibbling for all the sweet tooths!  Next up tomorrow: Hammersmith and drinks!

*****

Hammersmith’s is located at 807 Gerrard St. East in Riverdale, at the corner of Gerrard and Logan Ave.  They are a brunch and lunch cafe open from Wednesday to Sunday (10am-3:30pm on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and 9:30am-4pm on Saturdays and Sundays), with a price fixe dinner currently available on Thursdays and Fridays for $35.  Currently, for the summer, they are also now open on Mondays from 10am-3pm!  They accept cash and debit only.

Hallowe’en Headquarters – A Spooky & Sweet Cupcake Lover’s Paradise! Lollicakes on Mount Pleasant Road

Happy Hallowe’en everyone!  I hope everyone’s had a freakishly fun weekend and Hallowe’en day so far!  My Hallowe’en was spent snapping a gazillion photos for the blog today and looking at some of the cutest Hallowe’en treats and paraphernalia!  I may hop around the city on a regular basis, but I don’t think I’ve jumped on and off the subway and streetcar as much as I did today.  I was all over town hitting up some of my favourite places to capture the once-a-year occasion in all its orange-and-black glory.  I promised you all treats for tonight, so I’m here to deliver a nice helping of Hallowe’en posts, just in case you didn’t already fill up on sweet treats!  Kind of like the giddy emptying of a trick-or-treat bag 😀  Let’s get started!

Up first: Hallowe’en at Lollicakes!  Lollicakes is a cupcake bakery and merchandise retail shop located in uptown Toronto on Mount Pleasant Rd. just north of Davisville Ave.  If you’re the type of person who squeals over cupcakeries and the design and retail concept of “the cupcakery”, you will go bananas over Lollicakes because this shop is EVERYTHING CUPCAKE and more!  Do you like to collect cupcake related things?  Is your house or apartment adorned with cute cupcake kitchen tools, accessories, candles, photos, and recipe books?  Does the thought of outfitting your kitchen or room in true cupcake fashion make your heart flutter?  If you said yes to even one of those, you need to come here.  It is a cupcake haven.  Or heaven.  Or both.

Not only does Lollicakes sell fresh baked cupcakes on a daily basis, but they also sell all of the following: cupcake recipe books, wrappers, toppers, stands, trinket boxes, backpacks, makeup bags, picture frames, aprons, oven mitts, wallets, luggage tags, notepads, clipboards, paper stationery, cards, and cupcake and cookie baking tools and equipment.  You can pick your jaw up from off the floor now – it’s a cupcake dream come true.

Hallowe’en is awesome here at Lollicakes.  They have so many cute Hallowe’en related baking accessories and of course, Hallowe’en themed cupcakes and trinkets.  They have pumpkin trinket boxes, Hallowe’en cookie cutters, treat bags, and lots of sweet eats.  By the cash and counter today they had buckets and baskets of frosted cookies decorated like ghosts and jack-o-lanterns, chocolate covered R.I.P. treats on a stick, and plenty of frosted regular and mini cupcakes with Hallowe’en chocolate toppers and sprinkles!  Regular cupcakes are priced at $3 and mini ones come in at $2.  Granted, prices are higher if they come with the giant chocolate toppers, but if we’re talking about base price, those are the prices we’re working with.  This puts Lollicakes in the mid-to-higher range among other cupcakeries in the city.  The low-end (price-wise, not quality!) is around $2.50 and the high-end is about $3.25-$3.50.

Lollicakes is also the type of cupcakery that focus more on the asthetics than on flavour menus.  Every cupcake lover has their preferences.  Some love having 20 different flavours of cake and frosting to choose from while others find that type of system way too fussy and prefer having simple vanilla and chocolate cupcakes that are prettily decorated.  For the record though, Lollicakes does vanilla and chocolate cake and frosting, period.  Their vanilla buttercream frosting comes in a rainbow of colours and their cupcakes are often decorated with different kinds of sprinkles and sometimes fancy chocolate toppers.  For Hallowe’en, they had vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with orange, purple, and bright monster lime green frosting with colour coordinate sprinkles, as well as a cute silver tray of cupcakes with the Hallowe’en chocolate toppers already on them.  Eyeballs, skulls, skeleton hands, spiders and cobwebs, witches’ fingers, the whole shebang!  

My parents (and probably some friends) would be over the moon about Lollicakes because their cupcake confections are not too sweet.  If you’re the type of person who enjoys the idea of cupcakes but shudders at the thought of sickly sweet frosting and/or cake, you would most definitely breathe a sigh of relief when eating these because the sweetness level is a little lower.  With Lollicakes’ cupcakes, think fluffy.  Don’t think dense.  The frosting is thick but with a fluffy texture to it.  The vanilla flavour is subtly sweet and you don’t get any of the “butter” taste which is a good thing in my opinion.  The cake is incredibly soft.  If you prefer a denser cake, these probably aren’t for you but if you “mmm” at the thought of pillow-soft, airy fluffiness, these fit the bill.  I think a lot of cupcake devotees will either love them or hate them.  If you enjoy sugary sweetness with thickness and density and heavy vanilla flavour, you won’t enjoy these.  However, if you’re like my parents and can’t stand that type of texture and strength in sweetness, these are more your speed.

One of the things I really adore about Lollicakes shop is how it isn’t age-specific.  Even though they have cute, kid-friendly items, it’s the type of shop that doesn’t alienate its older cilentele.  There’s something for every type of cupcake lover here: the collector, the interior decorator, the beginner, everyone.  You can find cupcake items in other stores, but to have an entire shop dedicated to cupcake things alone in this capacity with this type of selection is rare.  They have items here I’ve never seen at other places and I think it functions as a fabulous gift shop for birthdays and holidays.  Part of me whimpers every time I leave the shop though because everything is so darn cute and in my opinion, perfect for my own house.  One of these days I’m going to end up living in a house just like Hansel and Gretel and then I’ll really be in trouble.

 

*****

Lollicakes is located at 559 Mount Pleasant Rd. just north of Davisville Ave.

Martini, Anyone? Chocolate Cupcakes and Fondant Fun at Le Dolci Cupcakes & Cakes Design Studio, Day 2!

I’m so glad you all liked the photos and post of my first day at Le Dolci’s Cupcakes & Cakes design studio the other day!  The support and excitement means a lot to me and it makes me really happy knowing you guys want to know and see more of what I do when I’m here.  I can say with absolute conviction that I have the baking itch more than ever now.  I know there are times when we all feel like our passion for certain things starts to wane and we start doubting if we actually love what we believe we love.  But I’ve been doing scrapbooking since the age of 13 and have only wanted more for myself over time and I have a gut feeling this passion for baking is only going to be fuelled more and more in the best way possible.

On the agenda for Day 2 at Le Dolci: chocolate cupcakes and fondant fun!  You’d think after baking cupcakes at home and baking vanilla cupcakes at the studio I’d be set with the chocolates ones.  Not exactly.  You can bake a million times and still not get it right sometimes.  The chocolate batter looked, smelled, and tasted awesome (oh please, like you don’t stick your finger in the mixing bowl to have a taste, right?), but I eyeballed the amount of batter in some of the baking cups wrong and ended up putting a little much batter in some of them with resulted in some chocolate cupcakes that were a little uneven and too big and puffy.  Whoops.  Sigh.  No matter, live and learn, right?  I’m showing the ice cream scoop who’s boss next time and you can bet my next batch is going to be freakin’ perfect.  One very important thing to learn and always keep in mind: if at first you don’t succeed, kick the problem in the ass and do better next time 😀  Regardless, it was mouthwatering seeing the cooling racks with rows and rows full of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.

Next up, fun with fondant!  This was my very first time playing around with fondant and I felt so giddy as I started rolling, squishing, and moulding balls of it in my hands.  I thought to myself, “hmm, I kind of feel like Duff from Ace of Cakes.  That, and a pizza maker”.  You should have seen me go.  I was smacking it down, stretching it out, kneading it, twisting it, poking it with toothpicks to add colour to it, and because I’m silly, sniffing it.  Mmm, sugary.  Anyway, the fondant fun called for 18 olives with little pimentos in the centers for a corporate cupcake order, so there I was with a dish of different food colourings, a container of toothpicks, and some white fondant to start things off. 

Being at Le Dolci is like being in art class and oh how I’ve missed art class.  The last time I was in an art class was in 10th grade and sadly, for reasons I’d rather not hash out right now, life went in a different direction and my art classes stopped after that.  But art class was the best.  You came in every day with your trusty art kit for a solid hour and and a half to work on whatever project you were working on at the time whether it was moulding clay, watercolour, printmaking, or drawing and the best atmosphere was the best.  You sat on your art stool with your classmates and friends with the radio on in the background and the time just flew by.  And that’s exactly how I felt as I sat in the studio squishing and stretching sweet fondant, and sticking toothpicks into containers of food colouring, quietly trying to achieve the desired olive colour of the company’s olive logo.

And as luck would have it, it took me only one attempt to get the right colour for the first olive!  SWEET.  A dab of leaf green and two dabs of brown did the trick for the first test olive, so all I needed to do was duplicate the colour for a larger ball of fondant big enough to make 18 olives.  I think they turned out okay!  They’re not perfect, but I’d say it’s decent for my first time working with fondant.  I thought it’d be cute to stick a few toothpicks in them for the photos to make them look like martini olives, hee.  With or without – invisible – drinks, every day is a cupcake party at Le Dolci and I can’t wait to keep doing more things with the frosting making, cupcake baking, and fondant squishing 😀

*****

Le Dolci is a private studio located at 75 Portland St., just east of Bathurst near King St. West.  The studio hosts cupcake decorating classes and handles catering for both corporate and personal events.  For more information on classes, schedules, rates, and more, visit their official website here and their Facebook page here.

For the Sweet Princess in All of Us – Fudgy, Chocolate Frosted “Fairy Flower” Cupcakes from All The Best

This post is for all of us girls who used to put on glittery fairy wings and dreamed we could fly.  For all of us who love sparkly things.  For all of us who know how to enjoy the sweet things in life.  For those of us who used to skip along, picking flowers up along the way.  For those of us who are sugar and spice and all things nice, but who can still kick major ass when the situations calls for it.  This post is for every cupcake lover out there who loves all things pretty and all things chocolatey, fudgy, and deliciously frosty.  I present to you, chocolate fudge frosted cupcakes from gourmet market All the Best!

Like many of my foodie discoveries, All the Best was unexpected and accidental.  Over a year ago, I had never explored the Summerhill and Rosedale area (so basically the stretch of Yonge St. north of Bloor but south of St. Clair) so one day I thought, “I wonder what’s there, let’s give it a whirl” and did that day ever turn out to be a fun one!  Even though it wasn’t a part of town I initially thought of as foodie, I was excited to see what was around and there were some real nice finds, things like tea shops, gourmet pastries shops, and individual stores for cheeses, meat, and fish. 

All the Best, located on Yonge St. just steps away from Summerhill subway station, is a catering and gourmet food business and a meca of foodie goodness.  Like Daniel & Daniel in Cabbagetown, it’s a great place to pick up salads and food for picnics and lunches to go.  Up in the front, there are loaves of fresh bread and baguettes, and shelves upon shelves of jams, jellies, preserves, honey, tomato sauce, pesto, spreads, coffee beans, candies, chocolates, and packages of sugar cookies and sweets.  Further in the back, you’ll find the gourmet cheeses, and deli sandwiches and salads.  They also offer a selection of seasonal kitchenwares and accessories, as well as cookbooks.  Right behind the deli sits the bakery full of tarts, meringue shells, cakes, and rows and rows of sugar cookies.  Oh, and cupcakes of course 😉 

On any given day, All the Best offers four flavours of cupcakes for $2.75 a pop: red velvet, carrot cake, vanilla, and chocolate.  Think fun cupcakes with lots of coloured sprinkles, sprinkled sugar, and thick frosting.  I’ll definitely report back when I see other flavours, but for the time being, All the Best focuses on several simple flavours of cake and frosting with dainty, pretty toppers and decorations.

I call these my “fairy flower” chocolate cupcakes!  So pretty and so cute, they make me want to prance around sprinkling fairy dust on everything.  These are chocolate cake cupcakes with rich, thick chocolate frosting and adorable edible, sugary candy flowers dotted with a tiny edible pearl.  While the cake is good, it’s the frosting that wins me over.  It’s SO DAMN GOOD.  It’s sweet without being cavity-inducing sweet and the thickness of the frosting is perfect.  It’s not a thin buttercream, yet it’s not a super thick frosting that will stick to the roof of your mouth.  It’s the kind of chocolatey, rich frosting that you imagine yourself secretly dipping your finger into on a cake.  And the pretty edible flower was melt-in-your-mouth sweet.  It was such a nice touch. 

On this particular morning they had so many pretty colours of candy fairy flowers on their chocolate cupcakes: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple.  How does an indecisive girl like me choose which cupcake she wants?  Take a wild stab and guess how I chose the colour I wanted.  Answer: I chose the pretty lilac purple one because it matched my outfit 😀  In a world where cupcake flavours know no boundaries, sometimes it’s really nice to have a good old fashioned fudgy chocolate cupcake with amazing frosting that makes you want to eat it by the spoonful.

*****

All the Best Fine Foods is locted at 1101 Yonge St. just south of Summerhill subway station on the east side of Yonge St.  It is next to Harvest Wagon and across the street from The Rosedale Diner.  For more info, check out their website here.

Who’s Your Gnomey? Frost Me Cupcakes and Garden Gnomes on Display at The Cupcake Shoppe

I know there are plenty of you out there who are in love with cupcakes and gnomes (I’m looking at you, Brandy), so this one’s for you! 😀  I love The Cupcake Shoppe’s window displays and they change them frequently year-round based on the seasons, holidays, and special occasions.  They had different displays for Christmas, Valentine’s, Hallowe’en, Father’s Day, summer, and a slew of others.  They don’t allow photos inside the cupcake shop so getting adorable squeal-inducing photos of their displays is the next best thing.  I’ve taken numerous photos of their window displays, but this is the only batch of photos that actually turned out decent.  All the others either had too big of a glare from the sun, too obvious a reflection from the window, or something else just as annoying.  The gnomes are adorable, the colours are gorgeous, and the cupcakes are beautifully frosted.  I think this is by far my favourite display (the mini watering can and wheelbarrow just kill me) and because Gnomeo & Juliet is one of my favourite movies EVER, I just had to throw in the “Who’s your gnomey” bit in the post title.  Hee. 

These are The Cupcake Shoppe’s chocolate Frost Me cupcakes where the frosting is of a thicker consistency and texture and of a slightly sweeter taste which differs from their normal buttercream.  The Frost Me cupcake ($2.65) is adorned with chewable gumball-like candies on top and frosting colours change seasonally, so at the moment the cupcakes are of a bright grass green with chocolate cake.  Other than their seasonal limited edition flavours (like the candy cane one for the winter holidays and the spice cake for the fall) and special occasion decorations (for Valentine’s, for example), Frost Me is the only cupcake that changes colours on a consistent basis.  So feasibly, you could eat your way through the rainbow throughout the year, ha!  Hopefully I’ll be able to bring you all another Cupcake Shoppe post soon, so in the meantime, enjoy the photos.

*****

The Cupcake Shoppe is located in the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood at 2417 Yonge St., north of Eglinton on the east side of Yonge St.