Muffin Tin Chef Signed Copy Giveaway

Last week, I shared two recipes inspired by Matt Kadey's book, Muffin Tin Chef: potato and egg cupcakes and stuffed French toast cupcakes.  This week, I'm giving away a signed copy of the book so one lucky reader can explore 99 other ideas!

I'm using Rafflecopter to run this giveaway. It's something new to me (you may have seen it on other blogs), and I hope that you will find it simple to use. Let me know what you think in the comments! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cupcake Lover Charm Necklace Giveaway

Update 2/18:  The winner is Erica Sharp!  Congrats! If you didn't win the necklace and would like to purchase it, Sarita is now offering 15% off to Cupcake Project readers - just enter the code "Cupcake Project" when you check out.  

This cupcake lover charm necklace from SaritasJewelryBox is my new favorite Etsy find.  The free one Sarita sent me is now my go-to necklace (if you've run into me recently, I've probably been wearing it).  It's hard to not be charmed by the mini versions of my baking supplies.

I wish I could give one of these necklaces to each of you - Oprah style.  While that's not possible, thanks to Sarita, I am able to give one lucky winner a necklace they will treasure.

How to Win a Cupcake Lover Charm Necklace

Cupcake T-Shirt Giveaway and Coupon Code

Update: The contest is now closed.  The winner is Rather Crafty Mary. Congrats!  Thanks to everyone who entered.  I loved reading through all of your fun stories!

The other day, I found my journal from age eight hidden in a pile of boxes that had recently been moved from my dad's basement to my basement.  Have you had the conversation with your parent when they point out that you now have your own basement and should be storing your own crap?  Reading the journal was a peek into my childhood self.  It's unnerving how much I didn't remember.

Business Time: Announcing New Save Recipe and Pinterest Buttons - Plus a MOO Card Giveaway

My MOO cards

Update:  This contest is now closed.  The winners are: commenter 1 (Erika), commenter 122 (Mandra), and commenter 104 (Kittie).  Thanks to everyone who entered!

Let's talk business for a few minutes.  Cupcake Project has a couple of new features designed to make your life easier.  First, I'll share them with you, and then I'll tell you about a sweet MOO card giveaway (MOO cards are business cards, but you'll love them even if you don't have a business - I'll explain why later).

Small Business Saturday - Vanilla Bean Giveaway and Coupon Code

Photo courtesy of IndriVanilla

When the Cupcake Project Explorers and I came up with the recipe for the Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes, we learned that nothing gave the cupcakes as much of a true vanilla flavor as a real vanilla bean.  Although I am a tremendous fan of vanilla bean paste (it makes the best vanilla buttercream frosting - read the comments on the post if you are a doubter), in the cupcake itself, nothing works like a bean.

Beans, however, can be pricey.  I've seen vanilla beans sold for as high as $7 for one bean.  For a quality bean at a cheaper price, I've recently turned to IndriVanilla.  IndriVanilla is a small business owned by Whitney, a PhD student who wanted a cheaper, better-quality bean. She found a way to procure the beans and decided to create a business out of it. "Middlemen, referred to by the farmers as 'traders,' pay vanilla farmers very little for their prized beans. IndriVanilla was born to provide more people besides myself with high-quality, low-cost vanilla. I buy direct from the farmers at their asking price."

IndriVanilla charges just $0.50 for individual beans and as little as $0.30 each if you buy in bulk.  Plus, IndriVanilla is offering a 10% discount to Cupcake Project readers; just enter the code "thecupcakeproject" at checkout.  (Full disclosure: supporting her small business also supports mine.  I get a small commission every time that code is used.)

How to Win Some Vanilla Beans

Giveaway - Ice Cream Happy Hour Book and Sucre and Spice Ice Cream Spoons

If there were a Greek system for desserts, ice cream and cupcakes would definitely be sorority sisters.  Ice cream made it into my list of top ten frostings, and each May I hold an Ice Cream Cupcake contest on this blog (start thinking about your entry now!).

As you know, I like taking cupcake flavors to unexpected (often alcoholic) places, and the book Ice Cream Happy Hour does the same thing for ice cream.  In fact, many of the boozy cupcakes I have created mirror the ice cream flavors that are found in this book.  Here's a list of some of my cupcakes that have related ice cream recipes in Ice Cream Happy Hour:

• Eggnog cupcakes
• Pina Colada cupcakes
• Margarita cupcakes
• Mojito cupcakes
• Mimosa cupcakes
• Mudslide cupcakes
• Hot buttered rum cupcakes

I know how much I loved these flavors as cupcakes and I'm looking forward to trying them all as ice creams! I already tried the butter pecan ice cream with brandy and highly recommend it!

Lucky for you, you've got a chance to win Ice Cream Happy Hour and give the recipes a try yourself.  As a bonus (read this in your best infomercial voice), the winner will receive a set of 20 totally adorable ice cream spoons from Sucre and Spice - in any style that you like!

How to Enter

Cupcake Boxes from Bake-A-Box - Review, Giveaway, and Coupon Code!

A Tale of No Cupcake Boxes: Do Not Try This At Home
(like a certain author of this blog)

It was a sunny day and Blogger X loaded her cupcakes into plain bakery boxes (not cupcake boxes with cupcake inserts).  She carefully held the bakery boxes on her lap while someone else drove (it may have been a photographer to whom she was married). One cupcake with a mind of its own toppled over to its demise. Of course, it didn't die alone.  The cupcake managed to take down several of its neighbors in a grisly, messy murder.  Blogger X tried to blame the driver.  Perhaps he took a turn too fast.  But, Blogger X only had herself to blame; she needed cupcake boxes!

Where To Buy Cupcake Boxes

Mixing Bowl Cover Giveaway

Often, I'm in the middle of frosting cupcakes when something comes up - forcing me to stop (e.g. my son woke up from his nap and needs to walk down the block to see the train NOW or the world will end).  I decide to cover the bowl to protect the frosting from uninvited house guests (I'm not talking about hungry neighbors with spoons, but rather evil flies that let themselves in during the one second that our door is open). At this moment, I always wonder how to best cover the mixing bowl.  Here were my options as I saw them pre-amazing-mixing-bowl-cover:

Questions and Answers About Whales and a T-Shirt Giveaway

Update 9/1/2011:  This contest is now closed.  The winner is Grace Sheese!  Congrats, Grace!  Thanks to everyone who entered!

One of my son's favorite books is Everyone Poops.  Everyone Poops reveals some important pooping facts (some animals poop on the go, while some stop to poop) and has some fun pooping humor (a one hump camel has a one hump poop, and a two hump camel has a two hump poop).  However, it leaves us with some vexing questions.  The book asks, "What does whale poop look like?" and it provides no answer.  Here's the answer:




I know. I know.  You didn't come to a cupcake blog to learn about whale poop.  So, let's talk about whales and cupcakes.

Is this not the cutest whale cupcake shirt that you've ever seen?! 

Want to win one? The shirt was a gift to me from Hey Cupcake! Threads and they are offering one to a Cupcake Project reader!

Here's how to win:

Maverick Digital Candy Thermometer Giveaway

I have patience in some areas of my life.  In one of my pre-cupcake jobs, I trained computer neophytes, walking them through such basics as how to use the arrow keys to navigate in a document and when to double-click vs. right click (making sure to clarify that right click does not mean to write the word "click" in Notepad).  These days, I can sing Itsy Bitsy Spider to my toddler and still enjoy his wide mouthed grin on the twentieth rendition.  However, when it comes to standing by a stove watching the number go up on a candy thermometer, I have zero patience.  I tend to walk away and come back just in time to see my caramel/candy/anything in my pot burnt and inedible.  I always set a timer that beeps to tell me when my cupcakes are done, but I had never seen a candy thermometer with any kind of alert feature.

Twitter to the rescue:


I asked my tweeps if anyone had heard of a candy thermometer that beeped when it reached the correct temperature.  Gesine Bullock-Prado, author of Confections of a Closet Master Baker: One Woman's Sweet Journey from Unhappy Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker, responded right away to tell me about the Maverick!  This was the thermometer of my dreams (if I were to dream about thermometers).

Goodbye, Scary Cupcake and a Snap Stories Giveaway

While a few of you, like my mom, thought this cupcake was cute...

...most of you seemed to find her frightening.  I could blame the designer of Ms. Cupcake (who shall remain nameless - but it's someone in my household). However, since it was designed based on a sketch that I drew, I can only blame myself. 

Luckily, I recently renewed a friendship with an incredibly talented illustrator, Emma Hand of Snap Stories.  Emma agreed to make my blog look pretty (bye bye, scary cupcake) in exchange for some commercial and family photo work from J. Pollack Photography.  Win win!!

I LOVE the illustrations that Emma did for my blog (the RSS button is my favorite - how about you?), and I'm also really excited about our plans to work together on some projects down the road (no hints yet).  But, despite all of the work that she did for my blog, the best thing that she's done for our household may be designing my son's favorite board book.

Personalized Apron Giveaway from The Smart Baker

My baking math skills are embarrassing.  One of the many stories about my baking math shortcomings (that I probably shouldn't share) takes place at my friend Bryan's house. Someone needed three teaspoons and Bryan handed them a single measuring spoon.  I looked over and said the line that I will never live down: "Wow!  You have a three teaspoon spoon?"  If you don't get why that is funny, you definitely need The Smart Baker's Cheat Sheet Apron (shown above).

This is How I Roll

Hi!  I'm Stefani Hope Pollack.  I live in St. Louis, Missouri and I've mostly kicked the NY accent from my Long Island youth (just don't ask me to say "horrible").  When I began this blog in 2007, I was a full-time technical trainer.  I did not consider myself a baker, nor did I consider myself a writer (although I wrote lots of corporate training materials). 

Today, answering the question of what I do for a living is a bit more complicated.  Let me explain...

...this is how I roll:

Sweet Stands Giveaway

Update: This contest is over.  The winners are Trang from Lancaster, PA, Samantha Jo Jordan from Charlottesville, VA, and  Adrienne Rankin from Greenville, SC. Congrats!

Isn't it nice to be selfish sometimes?  There's no need to share your caramel cupcake - it's all for you!  Along the same line, have you ever considered the feelings of your cupcakes?  They are so often forced into crowded conditions, sharing tight living quarters with their peers on large stands.  With Sweet Stands, each of your empowered cupcakes can have a stand of its own.

Sweet Stands (featured in my yogurt and honey cupcake post) would be so cute at your next dinner party, and Hello Hannah (the maker of Sweet Stands) has offered to give three packages of Sweet Stands away to Cupcake Project readers!


How to Win

Cupcake Corer Giveaway

Update:  The winner is Robin from Little Pat of Butter!  But, Jenny from the beautiful food blog Purple House Dirt has generously offered her cupcake corer as a second prize.  Jenny has never used it and wanted it to have a good home.  Joy from Pastries by Joy won that corer (it's just the corer, not the whole kit)!  Congrats to both of you!!

When I first heard about the cupcake corer, I thought that it had to be the most gimmicky product imaginable. For years now,  I've been happily coring cupcakes without ever using the term or the tool -  I just used a small paring knife.  But, as a recent convert to apple corers, when I was offered a free sample of the cupcake corer, I decided to give it a go.

How to Crack an Egg + A Giveaway of The Book That Taught Me

I should know how to crack an egg.  Let's look at approximately how many eggs I have cracked just making cupcakes for this blog:

Approximate years of blogging	3
* Number of weeks per year	52
= Approximate number of weeks of blogging	156
Approximate cupcake recipes baked per week	1
* Average number of eggs per cupcake recipe	2
= Approximate number of eggs used per week	2
Approximate number of cupcakes used for weekly blogging (approximate number of eggs used per week * number of weeks blogging)	312
Number of weddings for which I have baked cupcakes	3
* Average number of eggs used per wedding	50
= Approximate number of eggs used for all weddings	150
Approximate number of eggs used for cupcakes on this blog (approximate number of eggs used for weekly blogging + approximate number of eggs used for weddings)	462

I know that all of that math was a bit geeky. But, it only seems appropriate since my free review copy of Cooking for Geeks is where I learned how to crack an egg.

It turns out that I cracked all 462 of those eggs incorrectly - my skills with eggs weren't all they were cracked up to be.  Way too often, I found myself playing the game of "Try to remove the eggshell bit from the cracked egg" (the baking version of the kid's game Operation). 

So what's the trick to the perfect crack?

Win a Silhouette Digital Cutting Tool Worth $300!!

This contest is now closed. The winner is: Sarah Elizabeth Borgnis!  Remember, if you didn't win, you can still take advantage of the great deal Silhouette is offering to Cupcake Project readers.  See the details at the bottom of this post.

In grade school, I was a straight E student (our school used "E" for Excellent instead of the standard "A"). My only S (for "Satisfactory") was in spelling (hooray for the invention of spellcheck!). However, if they gave out a grade in cutting, I would have gotten my only F.  As a lefty, I could never get the school's scissors to cut - even the ones with colored rubber on the handles designating them for southpaws.

Recently, I've come across a few tutorials on how to make your own cupcake wrappers like the ones that I purchased from Sugar Cat Studio for Wedding 3.0.  They involved buying craft paper, printing a wrapper template on it, and then cutting it out.  I didn't even bother trying.  I assumed that my wrapper would end up looking like a newspaper shredded by a cat's claws.  I decided to leave cupcake wrapper making to the E+ cutters.

Things changed when I got an email from Shelly at How Does She asking if I would be interested in reviewing a Silhouette digital cutter.  Yes, please!  A digital cutter, for the uninformed (like I was), works like a printer - only instead of printing, it makes perfect cuts!  I cut the wrapper above using the Silhouette, and look what else I made:

Even though I am a complete non-crafter, I'm already thinking of other ways that I could use my machine: fancy cards, t-shirt designs (with vinyl transfer paper), scrapbooking, gift bags, and so much more.

You want one, don't you?  Thought so! :)

Luckily, Silhouette gave me an extra one to give away!  Here are the details:

Cookie Spread - Review and Giveaway (12 winners!)

Imagine using a Biscoff cookie as you would use peanut butter.  You could smear it on bread, dip veggies into it, eat it by the spoonful, or, in my case, use it as a frosting.  Imagine no more, my friends; such a thing exists.  It's called Tamarin spread and it's the cinnamon cookie lover's Nutella.  I think my dad summed up this product best when he said, "You'd better take this away from me, I could eat way too much of this stuff."

I know that Tamarin spread is no health food (you're spreading a cookie on bread) but I love that it has a simple ingredient list: flour, sugar, rapeseed oil, baking powder, soy lecithin (for smoothness), salt, and spices.  When I talked to my contact at Tamarin, who sent me the free spread, he told me that they actually make the speculoos (the generic name for Biscoff) cookies in the traditional way, then smash them to a powder to make the spread.  Neat! 

Tamarin spread has been available overseas since 2008, but the company is currently trying to break into the U.S. market. While you can buy Tamarin spread online, it may not available at your local shop (check here to see if they sell it near you). 

The folks at Tamarin were nice enough to give me one dozen jars of the spread to give away.  Here's how you can win:

• I'll randomly choose six winners from people who leave a comment on this post. Tell me why you want to try the Tamarin spread and be sure to include your email so that I can contact you.
• I'll choose the other six winners randomly from people who join my newly created Facebook fan page and comment on the status update where I talk about this contest.  I'm really excited about my new Facebook page and I hope that it becomes a fun interactive extension of this blog.

Details:  The contest is open to U.S. residents only and ends on Tue., July 27 at 11:59 PM CDT.   No one can win more that once, but you can enter two times - once on the blog and once on Facebook.

Update: The blog winners are listed below.  Check the Facebook page for the Facebook winners. Congratulations to all the winners!

• Vivian mac, who said, "Sounds yummy! I'd make a biscoff sandwich with Tamarin. :)"
• Rebecca, who said, "I love Nutella, especially on a crepe with bananas and whipped cream. I wonder if this would taste equally as good?"
• Jeff and Corrine, who said, "yum...I must try this!"
• Sourkraut, who said " Holy cow! I absolutely must win this! My family is German so even though I grew up in the states we were frequently treated to German delicacies, especially around the holidays. One of my favorites was always Spekulatius, which is, you guessed it, the German version of speculoos. Even if I don't win this contest I'll have to track down a jar of this fantastic-sounding stuff. It'll bring back a taste of my childhood!" 
• Anonymous, who said, " I want to try it as I love cinnamon and sugar and have never been a fan of Nutella..but wanted my own spread w/o chocolate!"
• Anonymous, who said, "This is the first i have ever heard of this spread and it sounds amazing. Speculos cookies are a family tradition. my mom has learned these from her mom who brought the recipe over straight from belgium. If i win this, i would actually give it to my mom b/c of her love of these cookies and it would be great for her to have another happy memory of her mother."

The Flavor Bible Review and Giveaway

Update: This contest is now closed.  I'll be announcing the winners at the end of the month.

All bakers are supposed to have shelves and shelves of yellow, dog-eared cookbooks.  Well, I don't.  When seeking out new recipes or recipe inspiration, I seldom turn to printed material; rather, I typically look to my fellow food bloggers. I browse sites like Foodgawker and Tastespotting and use Food Blog Search.  I also rely heavily on Google and shared recipe sites like All Recipes.  

My online searches, however, have never led me to anything even remotely like The Flavor Bible.  The Flavor Bible is not a traditional recipe-laden cookbook.  It is a guide to flavor combination that makes coming up with your own recipes so much easier! Since receiving a free copy of it, I've used it several times a week!   Remember my pistachio cupcakes with rosemary?

Win a Real Toolbox Filled with Cupcake Supplies + A Copy of "What's New Cupcake?"

In case you haven't yet heard, a cupcake book made The New York Times Best Seller list.  It's called What's New, Cupcake? and I'm giving away a copy of it - plus a giant toolbox filled with cupcake supplies!