Icing on the (Cup)Cake
You’ll probably notice that even though I don’t live in Bellingham, I spend a lot of time there. Not only do I have family in the area, but I love to explore all the cool and funky places. And one of my favorite things to do is go to their wonderful farmer’s market. It’s open from April to December and if you’re bundled up, you can be rewarded with something hot to drink and some of the coolest vendors. I had gone often all summer, but this was my first December visit. I made my way around to all the familiar faces, but spied something new out of the corner of my eye…cupcakes! My guy and I were pretty hungry, so we went over and met Liz Kovacs. She’s the owner and chef behind Icing on the Cake, a local company who makes fresh baked gourmet cupcakes.
We tallied up our remaining small amount of cash and looked at our options. She had two flavors left after a busy morning, so we bought one strawberry and one chocolate “black and white” cupcake. One bite, and I was impressed. My strawberry cupcake was a madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with strawberry preserves filling and fresh strawberry buttercream frosting. What followed was a lot of talking with my mouth full as I signalled to my guy that I wanted to trade bites. He had the dark chocolate cake with creamy buttercream frosting with dark belgium chocolate drizzled on top. I generally don’t order chocolate cake anywhere since my grandma’s wartime recipe is my favorite. Against hers, every other chocolate cake seems lacking. So I braced myself for what I figured would be an ‘okay’ cake. I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong. It’s the closest thing to my grandma’s recipe that I’ve ever tasted…moist, chocolatey, and not boring. I think they knew I liked it because I was back to talking with my mouth full again (something I don’t normally do, I swear).
We went back for seconds after some change scrounging and then went to our pre-planned lunch to eat lightly. I emailed Liz later for a list of her other wonderful flavors and she sent me this:
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
APPLE SPICE ~ Spiced apple raisin cake with buttercream frosting
BANANA CHOCOLATE ~ Fresh banana cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting
BLACK AND WHITE ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with creamy buttercream frosting with dark belgium chocolate drizzled on top
CARROT ~ Spiced carrot cake with cream cheese frosting
CHOCOLATE ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with creamy chocolate buttercream frosting
LEMON ~ Fragrant lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon cream cheese frosting topped with zest
MOCHA ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with melt-in-your-mouth mocha buttercream frosting topped with an espresso bean
RED VELVET ~ Moist light chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting sprinkled with chocolate chips
STRAWBERRY ~ Velvety madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with strawberry preserves filling and fresh strawberry buttercream frosting
VANILLA ~ Velvety madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with vanilla bean buttercream frosting
WHITE CHOCOLATE ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting
WHITE RASPBERRY ~ Velvety madagascar bourbon vanilla cake with raspberry preserves filling and white chocolate cream cheese frosting
Holiday Flavors:
MINT ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with creme de menthe buttercream frosting
PEPPERMINT ~ Moist dark chocolate cake with peppermint schnapps buttercream frosting
SPICED PUMPKIN ~ Spiced pumpkin cake with buttercream frosting and a dash of cinnamon on top
I wish I had my camera that day, so I could show you how beautiful they looked, but you’ll just have to use your imagination and the cupcake cookbook picture above.