strawberry is back & battling a food war in SF!

So...my "few days of moping around" turned into several weeks of moping around, but I think the pity party is finally over. I still want to write a bit more about my last few Chinese experiences because I couldn't while I was there and I never finished my top ten list from my Xi'an/Beijing vacay. But...that will be for another day.

This past weekend, Twin & I competed in a Mini Cupcake Clash! in San Francisco put on by SF Food Wars (my internal links aren't working for some reason, the site is www.sffoodwars.com). There were 22 competitors, some were even representatives from actual bakeries, and every entry was completely different. Most mini cupcakes were sweet, but there were a couple of savory competitors which...I don't believe in. After all, a savory cupcake is just a muffin, isn't it? Here's a selection of 19 of the entries--our entry is on the right nearest the anonymous hand:


Our team name was "Double the Yum!" and our entry was "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time" a cupcake infused with peanut butter and strawberry jam in the batter with chopped up peanuts baked in as well, then piped with whipped strawberry jam (nothing added to it, just makes it smoother and easier to pipe), and topped with a rosette of peanut butter butter cream and a rosette of strawberry butter cream. We were required to make at least 70 mini cupcakes, but there were going to be 200+ people at the event so Twin decided to be on the safe side and make 500 mini cupcakes. She likes to be really safe.


So, like, I could eat an entire jar of peanut butter in one sitting (never attempted it, but I'm fairly confident it would be possible) and I absolutely LOVE PB&J sammies so this was the most awesome mini cupcake entry ever. They seriously tasted exactly like a PB&J sammy...only better, which I didn't think was even possible.


We found some legit t-shirts on CafePress to represent team Double the Yum in style and Twin came up with a cute idea of re-creating the classic "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" dancing banana for our table display. While Twin baked for approximately 11 hours straight, I spent my time crafting some PBJ banana men and providing moral support ("...so you're sorta almost done. Kinda.")


The banana men were our cheerleaders throughout the day, "Go team, go!"


The banana men totally stole the show! Several attendees asked us to sing the song and do the little dance and we were def all about it. I even caught a few people "secretly" videotaping me as I made our two hand-held banana men dance and sing. Our table display ROCKED the competition...no one even came close to be as themed and cute as we were.


I'll be posting a separate post with pictures of our competitors and the rest of the Mini Cupcake Clash. There were a lot of food bloggers and other members of the press in attendance, Twin & I were interviewed a few times:


Ha! I hope we end up in one of the zillion articles bloggers are going to write about this event.


The day was seriously SO MUCH FUN! Our friends and family came out to support us and we got to meet a lot of cool cupcake loving people. I was also psyched to meet several food bloggers, and one very famous cupcake blogger! Simply being given the chance to compete was an honor (there were a TON of entries), and it was shocking and wonderful to receive 2nd place for People's Choice!!! Here we are receiving our loot:


We got medals that have baking caps and whisks on them, a re-usable grocery bag (<3 it so bad!) $50 worth of Method cleaning products, $50 cold hard cash moneyz, a free one-year subscription to SF's 7x7 magazine, and two cupcake cookbooks! PLUS!!! We got to meet the famous Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake (www.cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com)! She was totally fun and even grabbed a banana man for our photo op.