Carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. One of my friends made these for a Chellie Pingree fundraising event that happened last night. They are amazing! I brought in a few of the extras to work today to share. I managed to only eat two, sharing the rest of the them with some very happy coworkers.

Ahimsa Custom Cakes

Today I went to the Vegetarian Food Festival at the East End school. I wanted to go last year and the year before, but something always managed to come up, making me unable to attend. This year, once I realized that it was happening this weekend, I made the decision that I had to go. A big draw for me was the free food samples (I love free food!). There was food to try from Green Elephant, Blue Elephant and a few other vendors were also offering samples for visitors to try.


I think that Blue Elephant had the best display for their samples. It was exciting for me to be able to try food from places that I have not been to yet or might not be able to try (for various reasons), such as Blue Elephant or Girl Gone Raw. The specific draw this year for me, was the hope that Ahimsa Custom Cakes might have samples that I would be able to try. I "like" them on Facebook, which allows me to see new cake photos in my news feed every so often and it always intrigued me how they only made vegan cakes. I love vegan food in general and I love to try new vegan cupcakes specifically. I will be honest and say that the cake samples were not actually cupcakes, but they were served in tiny little cups, so I will stretch my definition of a cupcake to include that.

The cupcake on the left is the French Toast cake with Maple Cinnamon frosting and the one of the right is a Double Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Bean frosting. It's always hard to determine a cupcake's quality based on such a tiny sample, specifically this time since I did share my sample with another person and they shared theirs with me. That just means that I can't go in depth in my judgment of the cupcakes or the frosting, since I really only had a brief taste for each one.

Both cupcakes were very moist and delicious. The French Toast cake was definitely the favorite out of the two, with a very strong cinnamon flavor and a very smooth frosting. The chocolate cake was also good, but I felt like it would make a better Whoopie pie than a cake. Specifically because the frosting was gritty, just like the Whoopie pies of my youth that I loved oh so much. I have been looking for a Whoopie pie with a gritty sugary filling for years, but have yet to find it. The Vanilla Bean frosting would make my ideal Whoopie pie filling and I think that is really the only reason that I immediately made that Whoopie pie connection. Plus, as a Mainer aren't Whoopie pies supposed to be on my mind at all times?

The French Toast cupcake was also a little more attractive than the Chocolate one, but that was only because the poor chocolate cupcake's frosting had been stuck to the cover of the cup, which might have occurred because I tipped it over a few times...

So adorable! I am pretty sure that if someone didn't already know that the cakes Ahimsa Custom Cakes makes are vegan, that they would be able to tell at all. They also make sculpted cakes, which you can see some samples of in the portfolio on their website:
http://www.ahimsacustomcakes.com/Home_Page.php

Wild Oats Bakery

I often have doctor appointments in the morning over in Brunswick, which makes me extremely happy since I can stop into Wild Oats after the appointment to get breakfast and a treat for later in the day. For breakfast I like getting the morning glory muffin or sometimes a bagel if the mood hits. Recently on my trips in I have been buying cookies, but the last time I went in I decided to get a cupcake. Their cupcakes are massive. Usually, I would cut it in half and either share with a friend or save the other half for later, but that day I decided to eat the whole thing. I think it had a lot to do with the fact that it was a really good chocolate cupcake.

I unfortunately didn't write any notes down about this cupcake, but it was good. Much better than the carrot cake cupcake I had there previously. I loved the sprinkles and the cake was dense, moist and delicious. If Wild Oats is open and I am in Brunswick, I always go in to buy a treat or three. They have an amazing cookie and dessert bars section, as well as fantastic prepared foods.

Tulips Cupcakery- Mini Cupcakes revisited

The first time I had Tulips Cupcakery's mini cupcakes, I wasn't won over by them entirely. I love mini anything, so that alone made me like them, but the cupcakes themselves were not as mind blowing as I had hoped for. This time around, a little over a week ago at this point, they finally succeeded in making me a fan.

At Kamasouptra (in the Portland Public Market) there were at least three flavors available that day: chocolate with raspberry frosting, vanilla with vanilla frosting and lemon with raspberry frosting.

All three cupcakes were moist and very tasty little treats. In my notes I said that they were "tiny pillows of delicious" and they definitely were.

The lemon cupcake with raspberry frosting had a nice light lemon flavor in the cake and it had an overall tartness to it. The frosting was light and creamy.

The vanilla cupcake was light and fluffy. The frosting was a little more solid than the raspberry frosting and was a delicious vanilla butter cream.

My favorite out of all three of the mini cupcakes was the chocolate with raspberry frosting. The cupcake was moist and had a nice chocolate flavor to it. The frosting was again the light raspberry frosting that was on the lemon cupcake, but the combination of the moist chocolate cupcake and the light frosting made the experience reminiscent of eating a truffle from a fine chocolatier.

I could have eaten so many of these tiny cupcakes and I'm glad that I had saved the chocolate one for last. The amount of frosting on top of each one of them was the perfect amount to complement the cupcake. One of my pet peeves with cupcakes is having an obnoxious amount of frosting. It is often enough to simply put enough on that will complement, while not overwhelming. However, there are also times when I do want a lot of frosting, so perhaps it just depends on the day and the cupcake. Tulip Cupcakery's cupcakes do not need a lot of frosting and I'm glad that they simply put enough to highlight the flavors.

Tulips Cupcakery's cupcakes are available at Kamasouptra in the Portland Public Market and other locations around Portland. Check out their website http://tulipscupcakery.com/ for more information.