• InvisiblePeople.tv
• Angel Acres Horse Haven Rescue
• American Tortoise Rescue

It was a really great event. So many great flavors and displays, so much culinary creativity under one roof…and finally, so many wonderful people.

• We were fortunate enough to have our table next to Sugar Babies who won honors in both the first and second tastings. They had an amazing, eye catching display and provided a “swag” bag to everyone who came to their table. Check out their website and look for their cupcake truck in the LA area.
• We had the pleasure of meeting Chef Amy Jurist at the event. I had read about her famous underground dinners in LA Magazine and was excited to see that she was going to be a baker as well. It was great chatting with her about some of the unusual dinners she has done and we are looking forward to attending one in the near future.
• There was a wonderful Harry Potter themed table….not sure the name of the baker(s) but I will post as soon as I find out.
• Half Baked had a great spicy pumpkin cupcake, Shweet had an amazing strawberry cupcake, Jackie Brubabaker had a Jack Daniels cupcake…check out Cupcake Camp LA for a complete list of the bakers with their respective websites.

Victor had read about this event on Digital LA. I thought he was suggesting it just as an event to attend, but then he mentioned that maybe I participate as a baker. An intriguing suggestion indeed! I signed up and started experimenting with recipes. Our oven promptly died about 3 days later. Just when I was getting caught up in the excitement of selecting and experimenting with flavors, a roadblock of such magnitude! To say I was bummed is an understatement… I started thinking, maybe this happened to up the stakes? Maybe making 100 cupcakes in a regular oven is too easy for me…

After doing to some research, I found out in some countries many folks don’t have ovens (Korea for example) and make cakes by steaming them. I also found some online forums where people were discussing baking in a table top convection/toaster oven which was probably a more realistic alternative…steaming 100 mini cakes might a bigger challenge than I could handle. That night we went out and got a Black and Decker model at Target which fit my 12 cup cupcake pan. Perfect….

It took a few more baking experiments to get a feel for how long to leave the cakes in the oven without drying them out, but basically I was back on track. This actually felt appropriate, like I was returning to my Easy Bake Oven roots…except I wasn’t cooking with beer when I was a kid.

The Cakes
My cakes, starting from lower left and headed clockwise: Chocolate Guinness with a Molasses Buttercream, Chocolate Cake with a Cream cheese and coconut filling and vanilla buttercream, Chocolate Coconut Cake Balls made with Scharffen Berger Dark Chocolate.