At the Onset!

July 2010, a good friend of mine asked me to bake cupcakes for her birthday celebration.  They were a hit! To my surprise people thought they could sell.  I never gave this any thought and especially since I am set on continuing my career in landscape architecture.  Though in the meantime, I was eager to keep furthering my creativity and needed to find a way to have unbiased people critique my developments.    

Birthday Celebration Cupcakes

Thus, I found the Iron Cucpake San Francisco Challenge.  This is a meet up group of local bakers, friends and cupcake enthusiasts who join to face off each month.  Every month a new challenge ingredient or theme is presented and all cupcake engineers devise their interpretation of the ingredient into 48 mini cupcakes.  Both bakers and engineer supporters join in on the judging with awards to 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place based on taste and appearance, one prize for most creative, and one prize for baker’s choice. I grew to develop a variety of mini cupcakes based on the size, quantity and challenge criteria from Iron Cupcake.  It’s their challenges that offer me inspiration to research and test new flavors. 

Now specializing in mini cupcakes, I participate in the challenges on a monthly basis and low and behold I have actually won a few!  Here’s a list of my winning flavors to date:

February 2011 Filled Challenge

1^st Place Winner: Mallow Chocolate Graham

December 2010 Bake Off

4^th Place Winner: Bergamot Orange Spice

November 2010 Nuts Challenge

3^rd Place Winner: Saffron Lemon Pistachio

September 2010 Tea Challenge

1^st Place Winner: Bergamot Orange Spice

August 2010 Coconut Challenge

3^rd Place Winner: Coconut Rum

Not every flavor has won an Iron Cupcake challenge but many have won high marks amongst my group of taste testers.  The Iron Cupcake and feedback from my taste testers has given me the motivation and inspiration to continue producing these mini delights to everyone I can.  Stay tuned for what happens at the March Breakfast Challenge this Monday!