Delishous

I have definitely been slacking on these cupcake reviews. To be honest, I have no excuse. Better late than never is what I always say. Kind of.



So last month, Hoan and I went to Delish, a bakery on 3rd Street. The area itself is a bit, oh how should I put this, haughty? No, that's not it. Just a bit more polished and sophisticated than I'm used to. But what can I say, I'm less of a city girl and more of a suburbanite. Not by choice, however.

Back to the cupcakes: Hoan got the Black & White, a chocolate cupcake with a Mexican vanilla buttercream, while I tried out their Red Velvet. Not too bad. The cakes themselves were very moist and we ate that up. But once I was finished, I realized I had about half of the frosting leftover. Now maybe this is just a personal issue, but I have yet to find a cupcake with the perfect frosting-to-cake ratio. I can't eat frosting on its own, and even having paid 2.75 for a cupcake can't justify me putting all of that excess sugar in my mouth.

Aside from the cupcakes, the bakery itself was very aesthetically pleasing--tall windows, dark color scheme, clean lines. However, the seating wasn't very efficient, with few places to sit down and enjoy my dessert, save for a red lounge chair and a few feet of counterspace.

Delish definitely blends in with its downtown surroundings. If you're looking for a cupcake to quickly grab-and-go, then I'd definitely recommend them. However, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone hanging out and having a conversation with friends here. That is, unless they don't mind standing.

au revoir (kinda)

I've decided to refrain from using this blog. Tumblr has been more comforting and besides, these posts have absolutely no (or just a meager 2 inches of) depth to them. I'm not meant to blog publicly. So I'll blog privately. Or somewhere you can't find me.

From now on, I will only talk about cupcakes. And baking-related things, I guess.

Not Kerbey Lane

I forgot how much I used to love my 50mm lens. Maybe I'll use it exclusively from now on. Or until I find I am much too close to the objects/people I want to photograph. But hey, I respect personal boundaries.

MyFace

This was a bad week. It can only get better, right? Yes!
Today, my mood was improved by good friends, good marks, good lunch.

Hey Panda

I thought a panda would look more appropriate amongst fruits, bright colors, and things of that nature because I don't have any bamboo in the house and this is the best I could do. But you know how hard it is to find good bamboo these days.




He was conceived from this chocolate mess. But isn't that how a great many things come to be? The beautiful product of some timely and fortuitous chaos. Chocolate optional.




This happened at around four in the morning. Ideal time for this sort of thing, isn't it? The place was a mess afterwards. And I was really tired. From cupcake-ing.

Blip

I was Luigi for Halloween.



The best part of the night was running down the 1st Street bridge. And also, NOT getting towed.

Thoughts on The Fountainhead so far:
-Ellsworth Toohey is upsetting.
-I would like to see the Dominique Francon that Rand pictured. She sounds beautiful and vastly misunderstood.
-Peter Keating is a jellyfish, why would he do that to poor Catherine? That poor, poor girl.. She's much too good-natured for him.
-I want to study Architecture.
-I would be terrified of a Howard Roark.

Happy flip (gah, so many puns)

I finally got around to eating at Flip Happy Crepes, something I had planned on doing for a really long time, ever since I saw them throw it down with Bobby Flay. He lost. But I don't know what that means, seeing as how I'm not an avid watcher of the show.

Okay, so back to Flip Happy. I got Nutella with strawberries.. Not very exciting and I guess you could say I wasn't feeling very adventurous, but to be honest, it really hit the spot. Nutella + strawberries is an undeniably perfect combination.


Hoan got roasted chicken with.. pesto.. and other things I can vaguely recall. It looked and tasted pretty good, but it was a bit too heavy for my liking. Only because I wasn't very hungry. Otherwise, I woulda been all over dat.


Yeah so.. I haven't gone to a cupcakery in quite a while. I'm not sure why.. just lazy and busy, I guess. Am I allowed to be both? I know, I know, no excuses! But by the end of October, I'll do another! Pinky swear!

"Sprinkle," I don't like that word

Jessica, Ara, and I had been planning on throwing a "couples dinner party" for over a month or so before it actually happened. A lot of effort went into it, seeing as how we had to finalize the meal, look up/alter recipes, buy ingredients, bake a lasagna and cupcakes using one oven in the span of four hours, go back to the grocery store because HEB forgot to bag the ricotta cheese, get Ara to drive to her house because we ran out of aluminum foil, not to mention the fact that we all had to get gussied up in a hurry before the boys arrived.

It was kind of stressful. And nerve-wracking.

But fun. And all that stereotypical banter that involves undergoing tremendous amounts of stress before having a great, amazing time that made all your efforts well worth it.

No, but really.

I made vanilla cupcakes with Nutella frosting:


Jessica and Ara made the vegetable lasagna, which I couldn't find a good enough picture of.




I've really enjoyed the triple date nights we've been having. I've never had this before where I was able to find compatible couples to hang out with (and I've got two!), and I know this can't last forever, so I'm going to enjoy and milk it for as long as I can.

Mt. Bonnell

Hoan and I went to Mt. Bonnell today in the late afternoon. I was extremely disappointed by the view at first, but that's before we found the "spot." It really was beautiful up there. And I honestly don't throw that word around very often.


He's like a Toms model.



This was when he was writing our initials on one of the rocks because I told him that's what all the OTHER couples did when they visited Mt. Bonnell.


Ha, you can't even see it. And it'll probably fade away by tomorrow. How sad.



Hmm. I really like this one.



And of course, the obligatory couple picture..


..which we're so obviously not good at.

Hey hi hello!

Hoan surprised me with this book! And I love it! Flipping through the pages made me extremely happy and anxious. I'm so excited to try out some of the recipes, tricks and techniques, but that will probably have to wait until the madness of school dies down a bit. I'm going to have a busy couple of weeks.

Dawww, boyfriend.

One-year old Mama

This Saturday is Sugar Mama's birthday! I hope I can make it! I mistakenly told Hoan it was last weekend. Hmm.. maybe I did it on purpose.. subconsciously.

Nah.

Polkadots

It was 7:30PM when we got to Polkadots. Thirty minutes before closing time. Maybe that's why. Maybe I should go again during the daylight hours. Maybe all the goods were long gone by then. Maybe it was just a long day for everybody. Maybe.

There was no one else in there when Hoan and I arrived, but I didn't take that as a bad sign, seeing as how it was a weekday and school hadn't started yet, meaning the clientele for this location (Rio Grande & 21st, smack dab in the middle of Longhorn-ville) was still on vacation or busy moving into apartments, dorms, etc. I preferred it that way, thinking I'd get a better feel for the place and its employees without other customers around.

Not so much.

The woman behind the counter gave us our Mint Chocolate Chip and Vanilla-Chocolate cupcakes with a timid smile and not much else, retreating back to the kitchen as soon as she got the chance. The cupcakes were also lacking, considering the ratio of frosting to cake was about 50/50. Personally, I prefer more cake. The prices were also a bit steep--I paid almost seven dollars for two cupcakes.. okay, there was a dollar tip, but I digress.

Like I said, maybe I just came on a particularly bad day. Maybe all the people who have raved about this place were right. Maybe I should give it a second chance. Maybe I will.

It's a good thing I don't put much value in first impressions because if I did, I know for a fact that I would not come back, no "maybe" necessary.

I didn't like ANY of the photos I took, so here's just one. Whoops. I'll try harder next time.

Crrrrafty

I'm going to mark my calendar for this one because it's not until September 5, but holy handmade, it looks like lots of fun. It includes a craft fair, screenings of Handmade Nation, and a post-screening "shabang." Sounds very much worth my while.

More info.

Sugar Mama's

I've begun my scavenger hunt of local Austin bakeries, starting with one closest to me on South First Street: Sugar Mama's. The name is cute enough, but seriously, once you step inside, you are bombarded with cuteness--the cute decor, the cute people, the cute cupcakes, not to mention the owner's cute cute son with cute hair and cute blue eyes. What a cutie.

But anyways. The cupcakes.



This one, the Fluffernutter, was the most aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion. It's a peanut-butter-chocolate-chip cake with marshmallow frosting. It's too cute for its own good, I tell you, because both Hoan and I thought it fell short of what its looks brought us to expect. Oh well.

We also tried the Black and Tan, a moist and heavenly Guinness-flavored cupcake with cream cheese frosting (A+++), and the Pin-Up, which was your basic chocolate buttercream over vanilla. Of these three, the Black and Tan definitely takes the cake.

Huh. There's a title name for you. Takes the cake.. "Taste the cake?" I need help titling this baking adventure of mine.

Overall, I think Sugar Mama's has this awesome, friendly, laid-back, Austin vibe going for it. It's in close proximity to a handful of cafés and local vintage stores, and they even sell aprons that are, what else, really cute. I'm definitely coming back, if only to try the Southern Belle (red velvet + cream cheese) and the Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip.



A bit off topic, but Hoan ordered a birch beer, which got him a lot of attention because apparently, everyone is really curious as to what the hell birch beer actually is. The question was left unanswered.

Technicalities

This is not a baked good, but I thought it was funny. It's a cupcake.. in a CUP. Cup. Cake. Get it? Well, technically, it's a mug, but love, not labels!

Too bad it wasn't that good.. I put too much baking powder and not enough sugar. I should've added more milk. Or maybe buttermilk? Whole milk? No, never whole milk. But my mom and sister had it with some leftover frosting and thought it was fine.

Anyway, here are the pictures from last night!

The last one

I have a whole bunch of pictures from tonight, which included a trip to the Domain, dinner at NoRTH, and a riveting game of couples' Apples to Apples. It was Ara's birthday on the first of the month, so this was our celebration.

I made her rainbow cupcakes because, I don't know, I feel as if they fit her personality extremely well--colorful, bright, pleasing. But I didn't know she wasn't fond of cream cheese frosting. Yikes.. my bad.



I'll post more pictures later. Because I have a lot of them.

Cinmun

I made these cute mini-cinnamon rolls today. I needed something simple to get back in my baking groove. I don't think I'll be making these for a while though.. wayyyy too sweet. I mean, they were really good, but there was a whole lot of guilt, not to mention copious amounts of SUGAR, in every bite I took. Deciding to make and add the icing definitely did not help health matters at all. Oh well, whatever.

Next, I plan on conjuring up a layer cake using the cake leveler I just purchased. I'm really excited. No, really, I am.

Normal-face, José-face

Black heat

I'm not sure it was such a good idea to wear black on a 103-degree day. Ah, well.

There is about a 3/4 inch heel on the sandal I'm wearing, so my shoes clack-clacked all day long. I hate that noise, which is why I'm so prone to flats on a daily basis and shy away from my heels or boots. Not to mention I was going to be walking around a lot today, so heels would've been a dumb choice to begin with.

And yes, I bought (another pair of) sandals and a pair of jeans. Hoan bought a light blue button-up and a pair of boxers, both staples in any man's wardrobe, ya hear?