MandiCakes Photos

NEW PHOTOS

I've really been pushing to get MandiCakes going. Name reservations, EIN's, business license, business plans, blah, blah, blah... So much to do!! In the meantime, as I've been creating things, I've been taking some pictures along the way for the website. What do you all think? Would love some honest feedback. :)

Here are some delightful vanilla buttermilk cupcakes.

Miss Strawberry Cupcake.

Oatmeal Carmelita Bar. Egh.

Oatmeal Carmelita Bar 2.

Oatmeal Carmelita Bar 3. I think this one is my favorite out of these.

Brownies.

More Brownies.

More & more brownies.

I still have so much of this at my house. Even after sending one batch off for an order & one to a party... Crazy. They're so rich, they go such a long way...

I looooove brownies. My hips do not.

Okay, last one.

The end. Will keep you all posted! Hoping to have the ol' website up in the next couple of weeks. While MandiCake truffles aren't ready cause packaging isn't done yet... I want to get started asap doing catering in L.A. Lots of opportunities have been opening up. YAHOOEY!!!! :) :) :)

'My Sweet & Saucy' Shop Review

'MY SWEET & SAUCY SHOP'
REVIEW

6400 Stearns Street

Long Beach, CA 90815

562-397-9190

When the lightbulb came on in my small brain that I wanted to do a wedding cake and use fondant for the first time, I began googling around for tutorials. I happened to stumble upon a very, VERY cool blog.

Melody was studying to be a teacher when she up and decided to go to cooking school (I love those kinds of stories). And PLEASE, take a look at her now: http://www.mysweetandsaucy.com/

Her wedding cakes and dessert spreads are absolutely gorgeous and from an hour & a half away, I've become a huge fan! Her stuff looks both beautiful AND delicious-- an amazing feat! When I learned that she was opening up her own shop I knew I'd have to drag the Ipod out on a Sunday (like I had to twist her arm- HA!) and make a day of it.

And thus began the Great Baked Goods Massacre of 2009...

So gather 'round, children, and let Ol' Mandi tell you of the cakes that were slaughtered and lost on a hot summer day... the day of August the 9th...

*Ahem*

Ipod & I visited The Sweet & Saucy Shop and I tried to act cool and collected like I don't stalk Melody. And while I do not stalk Melody, I DO stalk her blog. There I said. Stalk it yourself, people! Look at those pictures!! HOLY FREAKING DELICIOUS, BATMAN!

We walk in & the shop is incredibly lovely & simple and the girl behind the counter is very nice & helpful. She was trying to explain to me what everything was & I wanted to be like, 'Um, yeah. I'm one of Melody's blog readers? I already KNOW!' and continue to file my nails. BUT I played it cool. Whatever. ;)

She was really very nice.

Then I spotted Melody's mom. She is soooo absolutely adorable and sweet! What I almost said was, "Oh my gosh, it's so wonderful to meet you! I've heard so much about you! I read Melody's blog and I just love how supportive you both have been to her and what a beautiful family working together, now that your partners and you just make people feel so comfortable with your kindness and warm spirit--" and then I would start crying. Because that's what I do. Cry at the most weirdly inappropriate times, especially when I'm overly tired. So I didn't. I said, "Hi, I'm one of Melody's blog readers. It's so great to be here."

Then I spotted Melody. My roommate gave me a weird look like 'Uh, you came all this way. Aren't you gonna say hi?'

HELLOOOOO!!??? AND NOT PLAY IT COOL!!!??? Puh-shuh!!! Melody & I have a mental connection people. Bakers are like that. She knew I was there. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the couple who came in for a wedding consultation or the fact that I didn't want to bother her. Nothing at all.

Then Eric, her husband, came out & we chatted with him for a few minutes. Everyone was just so nice! They all just want her to succeed. It's really very, very endearing.

So! Long-winded story short... what did I get? And for the love of monkeys in Uganda, did it taste as good as I'd imagined...??? Inquiring minds want to know!!!

I bought a TON of stuff. Like... one of everything.

Then Ipod & I went to Fritto Misto on the way home cause Ipod hasn't stopped talking about it since she went months ago. Very cheap and VERY delicious.

The 'Pod had Gnocchi Garganzola. It was WONDERFUL. (And keep in mind, Ipod's four major food groups are: chicken nuggets, ketchup, coke and sweet tea).

WOW.

(She picked out the tomatoes so she could "decide when she wanted to eat them.")

I had Pasta Pancetta. When I took a bite, millions of fairies were born.

DELICIOUS.

But this was an appetizer for the main event.

And the main event was getting restless!!!

It's not right for a sugar cookie and a chocolate peanut butter cakeball to be left alone.

It's not right I tell you!

So we took them out & let them breathe a bit.

Here we have:

Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcake (YUM)

Candy Bar Cupcake (YUM)

Red Velvet Cupcake (YUM)

Chocolate Cupake with Peanut Butter Frosting (DOUBLE YUM).

(I dropped it on its' side- hee hee- whoops).

Sugar Cookie (YUM).




The chocolate peanut butter cakeball pop.



Herrow!




THEN WE GOT HOME & PARTOOK OF THE GOODNESS THAT IS 'MY SWEET & SAUCY'!!!



Cakeball Pop.

Do you see the moistness?

Do you see it?

DELICOUSNESS.

Sugar Cookie. Royal icing with lemon. I prefer almond in royal icing cause that's part of my childhood (and I'm nauseatingly sentimental) but this was delicious regardless. So many pretty sugar cookies are thin, crispy and taste like pooedly oodely. This was actually a real, live cookie!

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CUPCAKE.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

I LOVE YOU.

Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcake DOWN!!!

(It fell over when I continued to cut out little slivers 'just to taste.' Yeah right).

Candy Bar cupcake, chocolate ganache in the middle.

By the way, these cupcakes were WAAAAY better than 'More' in Chicago. They taste homemade-- not frou-frou homemade-- but REAL homemade in the BEST way. They are moist & creamy & beautiful. You don't need bells and whistles. Just a darned good cupcake.

All kidding and joking and weirdness (I can't help it) aside, Melody has a great shop here and her stuff is really fantastic. If you're looking for moist cake and flavor, it's definitely worth a trip to Long Beach.

So Miss Melody & Family, congratulations and good luck on such a wonderful place! You should all be incredibly proud. Everything was delicious. I hope to be back again real soon! :)

MandiCakes

MandiCakes

My roommate Kelli, who I lovingly refer to as 'Ipod' had a table read on Saturday for a KICK @$$ play she wrote. To keep the talent happy (and by 'the talent' I'm referring to our dear, wonderful unpaid friends that live for this stuff), she asked me to make cupcakes. YAY!!! I always love excuses to make cupcakes!

Note: In our circle of friends there are two Kelly/Kelli-s. Kelly with a 'y' and Kelli with an 'i.' My roommate, Kelli with an 'i,' somehow had her name changed by the group and became 'I-pod.' Who knows. But it annoys the heckfire out of her so we continue to do it. :)

But the table read was a BLAST! Say hello to Dawn, Candy and Jacoley Poo.

Marie Pettit (http://www.mariepettit.com/), Randy (we wrangled him into reading) and Karen.

This was our intermission break between acts.

It was cupcake time!

Brian, the potential producer and my roomie, the aspiring and ridonkulously

talented Kelli Bowlden.

And now... the ladies, the cupcakes themselves.

Say hello to BLACK FOREST.

NUM. I just happened to have some Bing cherries (which is weird cause I'm not a 'havin' Bing cherries around' kinda girl) and thought how fun it would be to make these pretty cakes! I adapted the recipe again from 'Cupcakes' by Shelly Kalldunski.

After a super rich devil's food cake, I added a layer of rich chocolate icing. Then I stewed the fresh cherries down to a syrup & folded them into some homemade whipped cream. DELICOUS.

These ladies wear whipped cream like they-uh headed to-a debutant ball!



And then came the Lemon Blueberry Crunch Cupcakes. Mmm...



They were ooey, gooey and delicous. Just wrong on every level.



And then I did a mini Salted Caramel Cupcake which was so cute! I think I added a little too much sea salt, though. They were a tad more savory than anticipated.

And then these were the big boys. Salted Caramel. Sloppy and delicous.

They were overly gooey.

I'd say it was a mistake but was it?

I mean, herrrrooooow... YUM.

What hoppened is that I made the salted buttercream the night before and kept the frosting in the fridge overnight. When I went to hurriedly frost the cupcakes the next day I forgot to dethaw it. Oops. It was hard as a rock.

To remedy this (I still chuckle), I put the bowl of frosting over a double broiler. Not because I thought this would work AT ALL but because-- hey, why not?

So rather than a homemade buttercream folded with caramel drizzle, it turned into soupy caramelly goo with hard chunks of cold homemade buttercream. HA! At this point, I didn't care. I just spooned it onto each cupcake like a cafeteria lunch lady. And seriously? YUM ANYWAY. :)

Word.

The words 'beautiful disaster' come to mind.

'More': Cupcake Review

'MORE?' OR LESS?

Another trip to Chicago and cupcake review starring:

more

1 East Delaware Place

Chicago, IL 60611

The Sweet Lovin' Man sent me an article a while back about a place that had recently opened in his 'hood. I get excited when he sends me articles about things I love. Those "things" always being cupcakes or brownies or, you know, FOOD in general. And he agreed to take me next time I came to town. Keep in mind, this is ONLY a-cuz he heard about there being a bacon maple cupcake. (He nasty).

And here's what we ordered:


Left from top to bottom: Salted Caramel, Red Velvet, Acai Berry, Black & White. (Missing from picture: Bacon Maple- Hmmm, very curious).

They were... interesting.

The Black & White was my favorite. It was the moistest 'cake outta the bunch. And really, that says something right there. Maybe I crazy snort the lines but whenever I've tried chocolate 'cakes from other stores, they always tend to be the most dry. That fact that this one ended up being the moistiest (hee hee, I love making up new words) only made me say, "EEKS."

It was good. A good cupcake. I've tasted better cupcakes for sure. But good. Solid with a side of "egh." But good. And the curls are pretty. Word.

Salted Caramel. This cake was vurrrry dense which I suppose it needed to be to hold up such an attenuate (if you will) salted caramel sauce. The salted caramel inside was lovely and delicious. But the cupcake itself was just so drrrrrrrrrrrry.

Now granted, this could be a personal choice matter. I, personally, would rather have a moist cupcake falling apart in my hands and its remnants drizzling down my face like a T-Rex chomping on a just-a-step-behind Brachiosaurus whose last words happened to be, "Hey guys, where's the fire?"

BUT I can understand how other people live.

"Other people" definition: People that have manners and jobs to get back to on their lunch hour. People whose bosses may potentially frown upon having splotches of caramel all over their cashmere sweaters. HA! I live no such life. And I was in a t-shirt.

I'm sorry, Salted Caramel... I wanted you to be sooo much more...

Red Velvet. I'm not a huge fan of red velvet. It's not my cake of choice like it seems to be with so many other people. But I always order it because everyone has it and therefore I can weigh the reds against all the other reds I've tried at various shops. Sadly, this was a very lackluster cupcake. They were all very dense & dry. The frosting was the best part and even that was "just good." They're comparable to 'Fox and Obel' or 'Fox and Overpriced' as the Sweet Lovin' Man likes to call that store.

"WOW, MANDI, YOU'RE A SELF-RIGHTEOUS SNOB!!! YOU DON'T LIKE ANYTHING!! YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN BAKE, DO YOU? I BET YOUR CUPCAKES SUCK!! YOU'RE ONE OF 'THOSE' PEOPLE, AREN'T YOU!!??" writes Linda from Memphis.

Well, Linda- thank you so much for joining us, by the way... My answer is this: maybe I am. But I really don't think so. I LOVE giving credit where credit is due. Case in point:

Once upon a time I heard the hype about Sprinkles and my ears grew red and I gritted my teeth. I stomped in & said, "I hate hype! I hate all these people vomiting the word 'yummy' all over themselves! Let me try your crappy Beverly Hills-only-the-rich-can-afford-them-red-velvet-cupcakes!!!" And a shaky handed employee slid one over to me with a meep and I consumed on the spot.

That's all a lie. This next part isn't.

It was the most amazing cupcake I've ever had. And D************MN IT (*does an angry dance*) I wanted to hate it. Maybe if I went back it'd be dry or it wouldn't be what I remembered. But I believe the word that came out of my stuffed mouth at that moment was a four letter F-bomber.

Sidenote: Sometimes eating really good food gives me the mouth of a drunken truck driver sailor. God knows this and I imagine he looks deep into my wide-eyed blue eyes, scruffy hair and cupcake-smacked face. He gives me a loving pat on the head and then says, "Someone really needs to stopping feeding you."

But THAT, ladies and germs, is how you do a red velvet cupcake. I was wrong. I bowed. I was gracious. I handed over my "I'm an authority on all things" membership badge. It was a sad, and weirdly blessed, day.

The rest of the flavors at Sprinkles I tried and they were all 'pretty good.' But that red velvet... I KNOW I can't do. So I give props where it's due. And for all I know, based on my taste and preferences, this cupcake at 'More' was less. Much, much less. Very sad. And very sad I probably have not been the first person to use that tagline.

Acai. Hmmm... I only tried a tiny bit of this one and I honestly remember thinking, "Huh." The cupcake itself wasn't memorable because I seriously don't even remember the flavor of the cupcake. But I do remember thinking the frosting had a different, lighter texture. Like a cross between whipped cream and buttercream. I didn't really like it.

I'm sorry, you guys!!! I'm a no-fun grouchy-puss!!!! I know!!! Maybe my next blog will be cupcakes that I'VE made and then I can have other people critique THEM. And they can be all, "The constitution of your mediocre cupcake is too airy & moist for a 'cake with a caramel filling. And your red velvet was wildly uneventful and could have been taken out of a freezer at Dominick's."

And that's fine. Truly. I LOATHE false praise, believe it or not. And I'm pretty sure all of my friends are full of poodely-oodely and just tell me what I want to hear.

That why I LOVE when I have those 'Sprinkles' moments where something just blows you away. Or where you blow yourself away. It restores your faith in a $4.25 cupcake. When it's art, beautiful and delicious, it's sooo worth it. When it's a knock off and mediocre, it's just hype.

You still hate me.

Anyway, the bacon maple was... what the french would call "bacon-y." IT HAD BACON BITS IN THE CUPCAKE, PEOPLE!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I thought it was ridiculously nasty. And that is 80,000% personal choice because The Sweet Lovin' Man (who devoured it immediately) thought it was the greatest thing on the planet. And I haven't kissed him since.

In all fairness, the above article that he sent me DOES say, the savory 'cakes are what they're known for... so... there ya go. Maybe I'm just more a sweet girl than a savory one.

So hopefully next time I visit, the SLM will humor me some more & take me to another exciting destination! From thousands of miles away, I hear him say, "The gym."

*sigh*