Wii LOVE Cupcakes!!!

Saturday night I had a few ladies over to play some Wii! We busted open my newest game, Gold's Gym Dance Workout. Together, four of us burned the equivalent of a piece of bacon and a chicken nugget. That was the good news.

The bad news was, earlier in the day, my lovely sister (I'd insert a blog link here if she had one...Sister, get one!) and I were shopping in the City, and utilized the restroom at Starbucks. As we exited back on to O'Farrell, Laura freezes, points, and says,

"What is that? Is that a cupcake shop? It is a cupcake shop. We are going there."

with more force and demand than I have ever heard from her. (She is more serious about cupcakes than I am!)

Obviously, I was not going to object. We did a little more shopping, and made our way back to, Cako (really, with the name? Not to mention the fact that their logo looks like it say "caka", anyway). On our way over, we discussed what flavors we wanted and whether we wanted to eat them now, or later. Red Velvet would be a must, but there would be more flavors to choose from.

CuppaKim: What if we just get half a dozen, and then we can pick a few different flavors and we can have them tonight?

CuppaSis: Ok, but how about, we just get a dozen!!!!

CuppaKim: ...OK!

Once in Cako, we let a few customers go ahead of us, since our order was going to be slightly high maintenance...in the end we bought a dozen, and got one free:

1 x S'mores
1 x Caramel
1 x Oreo
1 x Pink Champagne
1 x Nutella
1 x Coconut
2 x Mint Chocolate
2 x Chocolate Strawberry
3 x Red Velvet

Laura brought the Nutella to her husband, Matt. I dropped off a Chocolate Mint to my dad. And that left 11 cupcakes for 5 girls. We MAY have had eyes bigger than our stomachs.

I must also give Laura credit for reminding me to use my cupcake stand - SO CUTE.


And major shoutouts to Cari, who had previously given me these incredibly appropriate napkins:


I think the cupcakes were a hit:


But then again, when are they not?

Jett Cakes: Take 2

Last Tuesday, I took an inaugural visit to the Jett Cakes Truck - it was fabulous.

When I returned to work that afternoon, I had one cupcake left to deliver - so I put it in the work fridge. When I took it out to take home one of my coworkers asked what I had, I told her about my Jett Cakes adventure (she actually is the one who told me about Jett Cakes in the first place!)

Anyway, on Friday, she decided to track down the truck and get a few cupcakes for her brother-in-law's birthday - and was kind enough to take orders from the rest of the office!

I had decided that I already had hit my cupcake quota for the week, and passed on the offer. In the mean time, I tweeted Jett Cakes to find out what flavors were offered that day.

I probably shouldn't have done that because what I got back was the following:

Today's flavors: chocolate, choc mint, vanilla, lemon, apple, red velvet, banana nutella, coconut, choc/vanilla swirl, caramel fleur de sel

Do you see that last one? CARAMEL FLEUR DE SEL? That would translate to Salted Caramel. I love salted caramel. LOVE.

So, of course, I emailed my coworker and changed my order - and threw in an extra chocolate mint for dad.


Please do not divide by when I tell you the caramel fleur de sel may be the best cupcake I have ever had, EVER.

The coarse salt was generously sprinkled over the caramel colored icing, which made me a little nervous, but at first bite, the zip of the "sel" paired with the sweetness of the icing was similar to that same experience you get from a chocolate covered pretzel, which leaves your mouth saying:

WHAT IS THIS AMAZINGNESS I AM TASTING!?!

The cupcake beneath had the most unique texture, the outer edges had a chewiness to them, a little bit like a a crust that had been glazed with a bit of sugar. Combine the two and what you have is a cupcake that is utterly

Heavenly.

Yumi-ness

If you live in San Mateo, you know about Yumi Yogurt.

In fact, you probably LOVE Yumi Yogurt.

You are willing to wait in line for 20 minutes in the 90 degree evening heat on the hottest night of summer just for a child's size fro-yo. (You know, when summer nights are actually hot, unlike this year, BOO!)




So, of course, I follow Yumi on Twitter.

At this point, are you thinking, "Where is she going with this, this is not a blog about frozen yogurt!"?

I'm getting there...

The whole point of following the Yumi Twitter is to get the listing of daily flavors (so convenient!).

On Thursday, right as I was leaving on my lunch break to run some errands, Yumi tweeted their day's flavors, including, get this, Carbolite & WowCow Pumpkin AND Cupcake!!!

Suddenly, my errand route included a stop at the Yumi.

I sampled the Pumpkin, delightful as always. I love that Yumi is ushering in the fall season, and I have been feeling fall-ish ever since.

But in the interest of this blog, I got a full cone of Cupcake.


Sweet, tasty, delicious. And, only approximately 150 calories (boosh!).

Not distinctively cupcake-y, but scrumptious nonetheless.

A Few Housekeeping Items!

Hello Faithful Readers!
Just wanted to let you know about a few changes you may see around the blog! If you haven't yet, check out the new blog header - scroll up - (Google Reader users you can click through).

Also on the right column is my very new, very CUTE button! Copy & paste the HTML to your blog's blogroll to spread the word about A Cuppa Kim. (Thanks in advance!)

Both the header and the button were designed by the lovely Becky Lee over at Adopt Africa Digital Designs. She is really talented and offers affordable blog designs. I have to say, working with her was a lot of fun - she communicated really quickly, took my vision and used her own creativity to make the cute icons that you see now!

So, thank you Becky Lee!

Otherwise, stay tuned, I have a few more posts in the works, hope to have them up shortly.

<3

Keep On Truckin'

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret...

Cupcake Trucks.

Oh, no she didn't.

But, she so, so did.



The cupcake truck, owned by Marianne Jett aka JettCakes cruises around the Peninsula peddling her pretty pastries, and I have been dying to check it out.

The truck usually parks near my work about once a week (sometimes more, sometimes less), but I hadn't really had the opportunity to stop by.

Yesterday, before I left to my weekly lunch date with the lovely Wendy, I saw on Twitter, that JettCakes would be nearby! Hey! Hey!

I swung by, and after parking illegally creatively over at Oracle, I walked up to the uber cute IceCream Cupcake Truck.

Since Wendy just turned Thirty, Flirty, and Fabulous, I wanted to snag some treats to celebrate! I picked up half a dozen: three Red Velvets, one Chocolate Mint, one Carrot Cake, and one Chocolate Banana.

JettCakes run $2.50 per cuppa-cake, which in the world of designer cupcakes, is definitely reasonable.

I let Wendy pick her poison, and she chose the irresistible Chocolate Mint - I mean, who can resist a cupcake garnished with an Andes Mint? I could smell its deliciousness as I opened the box.

I, of course, chose a Red Velvet. Yeah, and the biggest one too. Whoops. I bit into it, and the cupcake was so amazing it started to crumble in my hand - time to grab a fork. I finished up that puppy utilizing the utensil - and it was SO, SO good.

Of course, I let the Birthday Girl select another treat to satisfy her Prego cravings - and she chose the second Red Velvet.

After lunch, inspired by JettCakes, it was almost like Ravigail became a Cupcake-SUV in her own right, and the Chocolate Banana and Carrot Cake were delivered to the parental units, and the final Red Velvet to the sis.

So, the secret's out.

Bottom Line:
Cupcakes.
From a truck.
Practically delivered to my door.
Red Velvet.
and other creative flavors.
YUMMY.

Jett Cakes absolutely deserves 5 out of 5 sugar cubes!

A Cuppa Warnemunder Morgensonne

Say what?

Yeah, that is one of the teas that I picked up abroad.

For some reason, I had it in my head that it translated to the Warnemunde Morning Blend...

From what little German I know, I should have guessed something different...it seems German words are whatever the sound most like in English...hence Morgen = Morning (I had that part down) and Sonne = You guessed it, SUN.

Anyhoodle - this local Warnemunde find isn't your standard morning breakfast black tea blend...


Nope, it is a fruity, colorful, textured, herbal (I'm guessing here, since I can't read anything on the bag) variety.

So it was quite to my delight when I opened the little bag and found a mixture of tea that actually looks more like a trail mix than tea!

But my first morning back Stateside I brewed myself a little cuppa (in my uber chic, uber functional, Danish designed mug, that cost more than I'd like to admit...but that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE and no, you can't borrow) - and sipped on this cranberry colored, tangy treat!

Pirate's Booty

So...last week I was sailing the Seven Seas Countries.

Along the way I did my best to bring home some relics from each stop. Mostly, I was on the hunt for TEA!!!

I brought the most tea home from England.

I got the priciest tea in Denmark.

I was delighted by the fragrance of tea from Germany.

I bought a boring pack of Lipton in Finland, however in varieties we don't have in the USA

and I found Royal Tea in Sweden.

I also bought two tea containers, and two overpriced, but absolutely fabulous, mugs.

So next time you are over, be sure to ask me to brew you a hot cuppa, I have plenty to go around.

Birthday Lovin'

Some of you know I turned the fabulous age of 29 at the end of last month...

A few of you showered me with some serious Tea goodies...

One of you, knowing my other love, gave me this Juicy lil bobble:


Cupcake Jewelry? Pretty, please!

With a cherry on top!