Cupcake Battle!

One of the things I love most about our spouses group is all of the fun and creative events we host. Recently, my friend Starlyn hosted a cupcake battle at her house. Everyone made a dozen of their best cupcakes, and we had some very special judges critique them on presentation and taste. The winners received a gift certificate! We felt like we were on an episode of the Food Netwark - but we got to eat the spoils of our labor. =^)

Lately I've been on a health food kick so I decided to go for points based on how good my cupcakes tasted considering how few calories they had. I made celebrity chef Curtis Stone's 60 calorie vanila cupcakes with a raspberry puree and fresh berries on top. They were OK - but definitely not as tasty as the sinful creations the other girls whipped up.


There were all kinds of flavors - sweet Georgia peach, tiramisu, coconut, strawberry, lemon blueberry, etc. We set them all out on Starlyn's dining room table and munched on veggies while we waited for the arrival of the judges.

Our judges were some young girls from around the neighborhood who were very excited to taste all of our creations. They took their job very seriously. They scrutinized the decorations then had a pow-wow to decide the winner for presentation. The clear winner was our squadron commander's wife Marlie who made some Finding Nemo inspired cupcakes using sour candy to make turtles on top of her vanilla cupcakes.

When it came to the taste test, they took notes and then took swigs of water between each one to cleanse their palate before tasting the next one so they would experience the full impact of the flavor. In the end, they chose the tiramisu cupcakes my friend Becky had made.

Taste testing

They were so cute in their aprons and caps!

After that came the best part, when we got to sample all of the cupcakes. They were all SO delicious! After our first few bites we all realized that we probably should have had a salad battle instead... But that's OK. You've got to indulge from time to time.