Does the name Johnny Cupcakes ring a bell to anyone? Well if it doesn’t, it should and it will.

Johnny Cupcakes all started when a young man named Johnny was given the name Johnny Cupcakes while working at Newbury Comics. He used this nickname as inspiration for designing t-shirts with the  name ‘Johnny Cupcakes’ on them, obviously the t-shirts had Cupcakes on them! (click here to read more about his story)

He started selling these t-shirts out of the back of his trunk, and people went wild for them. And people are STILL wild for them. He has 2 east coast shops, one in Hull Massachusetts and one in Boston Massachusetts. He also has a brand new store that just opened up on the west coast in LA.

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Before I start talking up the cupcakes.  I just want to say that I hate horns.

I am starting to dream that we are suffering a plague of mosquitos (millions of them) and am slapping myself awake at a very unfriendly hour!

If you do not know what I am talking about, then you obviously haven’t got a fever! :) World Cup Fever that is!  But some amazing bakers around the world have and they have been cooking up their support since the opening game on the 11th June!  And speaking of that game, Grace who bakes at Cupcakes by Design in South Africa created these for a client’s Friday Football celebration.

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Carrie Middlemiss with her couture

I’ve written before on ATC about how cupcakes can make jobs and how cupcakes can be classy. Because of the success of Bella Cupcake Couture, purveyor of chic textile-inspired cupcake wrappers, I now get to write about how cupcakes can do both at the same time.  BCC founder Carrie Middlemiss, formerly a marketing and events rep at the now defunct Washington Mutual Bank, went from “pink slip to pink frosting” when she was laid off early last year because of the bank’s collapse due to the economic downturn. Continue reading »

POM Wonderful recently sent us here at ATC some of their pomegranate juice to test to see how it works as an ingredient in baking cupcakes.  After looking around online to see what types of pomegranate cupcakes are out there (and one unsuccessful attempt* at replicating an online recipe) I decided to use an ingredient that compliments pomegranate juice.  I decided to bake banana cupcakes with pomegranate cream cheese frosting, topped with cocoa sprinkles.  I altered the banana butterscotch cupcakes from Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans and cut down the POM cream cheese frosting recipe from the POM website. The end result was a unique and delicous cupcake, recipes below.

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And the winner is…

Kristina
June 20th, 2010 at 10:20 pm

Mr Big’s first name, John, was not revealed until the last episode of the last series. =D

Congratulations! Please send your mailing address to [email protected]. Thanks to all who entered and commented on the crayons. Special thanks to Screentours for sponsoring this awesome giveaway!

I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before, but of course we can have cupcakes for breakfast!  Just call them something else!

According to SeriousEats.com, these cute little cakelets make the perfect brunch!

Brown Sugar Breakfast Cakelets

-makes 12-
Adapted from The Improvisational Cook

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
2 large eggs, preferably room temperature
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup whole milk mixed with 1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease and flour a standard 12-cup muffin tin (you can use a bit of the melted flour and a teaspoon or two of the flour to do this).

2. Put the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and whisk well to combine thoroughly.

3. Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until blended and frothy. Whisk in the sugar and beat until well blended, about 1 minute.

4. Whisk the flour mixture into the egg-sugar mixture, using as few strokes as possible and stopping just before the two are fully combined. Then whisk in the milk-yogurt mixture, the melted butter, and the vanilla. Pour the batter into the muffin tin; each well will be a little more than half full.

5. Bake for 15 minutes, or until a tester emerges clean. Set the muffin tin on a rack for 1 minute and then use a knife to flip each cakelet sideways in its well to cool completely.

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons plain yogurt

Procedure

Beat all ingredients together until uniformly combined, soft, and fluffy. Use immediately or store in refrigerator.

Reading about the new release of 4.3.2.1, an new gritty thriller-action style movie in which the main characters, four women, encounter diamond thieves I came across a cupcake loving actress. Jo, is one of the four leading women in the movie and is acted by up and coming American Emma Roberts, star of Hotel for Dogs and Nancy Drew.  Apparently she loved her time in London, especially visiting the Hummingbird Bakery.

Of course I was intrigued and had to check out their site, and it is mouthwateringly good. The red velvet cupcake is reputed to be heavenly, and it seems Emma Roberts agrees.  In a story on Music Rooms, she explains her lack of love for vegetables, and admits that in fact the cupcake diet was her favorite!  Who could disagree with that!

Check out these cute velour pants

embellished with a crystal cupcake,

available at Spoiled Brat.

A little pricey, ringing in at £155.00, which is about $225,

but it might be worth it to get to wear a sparkly cupcake on your hip?

This is just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day to enter our Sex and the City Tour giveaway sponsored by Screentours. Please click here to enter!

Last week I discovered environmentally friendly cupcakes and the Build a Green Bakery in New York, and I got to thinking about how you can think green with your baking at home, or should I say brown?

Most cupcake liners are bleached and waxed, making them perfect for all our party needs, but when I am at home and need a fix, do I really care if the wrapper has colored polka dots on it? Lets face it, the little wrapper no matter how cute is going to end up in the bin anyway!  As long as my cupcake tastes good, I’m happy.

Unfortunately the eco-friendly options in Australia are limited so for now when I want a green cupcake, it will need to cook in its ‘birthday suit’ opposed to its ‘birthday wrapper’!  However in America, two companies produce these little brown babies; If You Care and Beyond Gourmet.

Understandably, they are well ‘brown’ and yes, a bit ‘boring’, so for those times when you need something a little more fancy, Green Party Goods has a number of different green options for home baking and display!  One great option they offer is the eco-cupcake stand, because who really looks at what the stand is made of? Especially when it looks so good decorated with a little bit of ribbon.

Two of my guilty pleasures are joining forces:  Cupcakes and Farmville.

Farmville is the great time-sucking application on Facebook.  It is a seemingly simple game which gifts you with a virtual farm, on which you can design your avatar, buy a puppy that will follow you around, and then you can plant and harvest your own crops.  I avoid real life tasks I should be doing by planting virtual coffee, lilacs, carrots, and pumpkins.

The game is ridiculously popular.  Farmville has over 82.4 million active users.  That’s more than 1% of the entire world population.  The game started one year ago today, and in celebration of the birthday, the newest crop in Farmville’s lineup is … you guessed it!  Cupcakes!  I can now plant cupcake seeds, and 8 hours, later, I can harvest them!  Could it get any better?

Here’s my (beautiful and virtually yummy) first crop:

I would have never thought that chocolate and pear would go together, but it looks like The Cooking Ninja has made that happen.

Check out her yummy looking recipe for Chocolate Pear Velvet Cupcakes!

Oh My Yumminess! (is that even a word?? hah, well it is now!)

I find it hard to not think about yummy cupcakes at the best of times!  But how would you go with a cupcake tattooed on your wrist?

Earl Nixon is a tattoo artist in California and he has done many a cupcake tattoo, and sent us these fantastic designs from his collection.  These two were my favorite and capture Earl’s style which he describes as traditional, but a with a new school twist incorporating bright colors and crazy cartoon style.  But these are by no means the limit to Earl’s cupcake creativity!  His portfolio includes funky cupcakes with cherries and also a spooky cupcake with bat sprinkles and a little skull on top!

The third season of HBO’s award-winning vampire drama premiered this past Sunday,

and cupcakers did what they do best! 

They celebrated in sweetness!

The Sweetness Bakeshop in South Miami, Florida

served up these True Blood tasty treats:

And an ATC fan sent in this picture of her very own Red Velvet True Blood creation:

(Thanks Emily!)

Show your dad how much he means to you by baking him something special for Father’s Day!

A Grate Gift for Dad Cupcakes from Disney’s Family Fun Website

These are so cute and it is something you can make with the kids for the man in your life.

What else do you plan on baking for your father on Father’s day?

On Sunday, the LA Times paid tribute to beautiful cupcakes by posting a gallery of gorgeous cupcake images!

Here’s my favorite:

Or maybe this one is my favorite:

I just love it when cupcakes get the attention they deserve!

 Check the rest of them out here!

I know that cupcake obsession appears to be a predominantly female hobby but let’s not forget those awesome men out there that love these sweet treats too!   I know that we  have a strong male following here at ATC and I want to recognize their cupcake needs too.   So today I found some items on Ebay and Etsy that would make great Father’s Day gifts. 

Johnny Cupcakes Shirt $49.98

Have you seen another good Father’s Day cupcake gift? Click on the comment area below and leave us the link!

Today, I am opening the door onto the many adventures and disasters that is cupcake creation in the Apple Cupcake household!  We have three kids, Alan,15 aka Cupcake Demolisher, Zoe, 11, Cupcake Designer and Megan, 6, Baby Cupcake. Together we make mess!

These images are from two recent cupcake bake outs, the first was for Mother’s Day, that is we got my mum to bake for us, so we could have all the fun decorating!  The only problem was we ran out of cupcakes, so I started decorating the girls!  That pic is Baby Cupcake, poor thing, I had her wedged up against the coffee machine and she just had no where to run! (evil laugh).

One of our disasters was when I had the great idea to chop up chocolate bars adding them to the wrappers (we had all the favorites, Boost, Cherry Ripe, Picnic etc).  Unfortunately they glued themselves to the wrapper, and the picnic ones just tasted like burnt peanut! Personally I would have tossed the little critters, but the Cupcake Demolisher came to their rescue!

Then just the other day I gave Cupcake Designer icing pens, and along with her friend Emma, Cupcake Sidekick, they designed this batch of strange looking cupcakes!

Hello Hanna has created these sweet stands, perfect for displaying cupcakes!  They are easy to assemble with no gluing or cutting necessary.  For $10.95 you get a pack of 6 white stands made from recycled paper.

All you cupcake bakers out there this is the necklace for you…

Baker Charm Necklace with Antiqued Cupcake Tin and Measuring Spoons found on SaritasJewelryBox Etsy Shop.

I think that this is the most ADORABLE necklace ever! I want it!

Now this is a first for us here at ATC!  This week we are hosting a giveaway for a Sex and the City Hotspots Tour by Screentours.

The giveaway is for a gift certificate for two tickets to Sex & the City Hotspots Tour, which runs daily (an $84 value). The gift certificate never expires so you can use it during you next planned trip to NYC.  Perhaps you are wondering how this tour relates to cupcakes?  Read the tour highlights to find out!

*Shop at the store where Charlotte bought her “Rabbit”
*Stop at “Scout,” the bar owned by Aidan
*Enjoy cupcakes like Carrie and Miranda
*Go on location to the art gallery in SoHo where Charlotte worked
*Shop at the hottest boutiques & stores in Greenwich Village
*Visit Buddakan, site of Carrie and Big’s wedding rehearsal dinner
*See new locations from Sex and the City: the Movie

To enter this giveaway, please click on the comment area below and tell us one Sex and the City show fact.  Please only enter this giveaway if you have the ability to travel to NYC!! One winner will be chosen on Monday, June 21st. 

Do you have a love for cupcakes and wine? If you do you can share those loves in one spot! On the The Tasty Cupcake & Wine Tour put on by Santa Barbara Adventure Company.

The cupcakes that they serve are of course wine infused cupcakes from Enjoy Cupcakes. The tour also includes wine tasting in the valley of Santa Ynez, a deli lunch and well versed tour guides. Check out their website for more information.

I know Heather Lynn is rooting for her own homestate of Massachusetts in what I think is All Things Cupcake’s new favorite show, Cupcake Wars. I just wanted to take a moment to mention that I will be in the cheering section for Team California, or really, Team Southern California.  I grew up around Los Angeles, which just happens to be one of the cupcake meccas of the U.S., so I’m happy to see my former home well represented.

During tonight’s episode I have been rooting for Catarah Hampshire of Southern Girl Desserts (LA) and Todd Becker of Becker’s Bakery (Manhattan Beach, CA).  I’ll do my best not to spoil anything for folks who might be catching the repeat shows later tonight, but while I am loyal to my homestate, I was actually most impressed by Hollis Wilder of Sweet! (Orlando, FL). Ms. Wilder was hands-down the most adventurous cupcaker of the bunch.  I cannot believe she pulled off good cupcakes with salmon in them!  I wonder if this will be the beginning of a new wave of savory cupcakes?  Watch out bacon!

Southbank Centre, an arts and culture center in London, recently spearheaded a new project of interest to us cupcake-lovers:  Poetry Cupcakes!

GPS, otherwise known as Global Poetry System, is a Southbank Centre project that tries to explore and map the poetry of the world.  The project is built on the idea that poetry is all around us, from gravestones to graffiti.  GPS invites people to take a fresh look at where they are and to find the poetry that inspires them.

And today I have:  poetry on a cupcake.  The project has earned a nickname:  Poetry Digest!  Ha!  Get it?  Digest!

Why didn’t my English teachers think of this?

Well hello there all my fellow cupcake lovers! How many of you out there have heard of the new show on the Food Network’s new show Cupcake Wars? Well if you havent you should check it out. It premieres tonight at 10PM on the Food Network!

I have invested extra interest in this show because one of the local bakeries here on Cape Cod will be on the show soon! Cupcake Charlie’s was founded by a husband and wife team right here on the Cape in Mashpee Massachusetts. They also have a shop in Plymouth Massachusetts. Their Cupcake War will premiere on the 29th of June @ 10pm! Check out the article on Cape Cod Times about Cupcake Charlie’s and Cupcake Wars. Also make sure to check out their audition video on there as well. Also become a fan on the FaceBook Page

I hope everyone is glued to the TV with Cupcake in hand watching the preimere tonight. And I hope all of you will be rooting for Cupcake Charlies on the 29th as well.