DC area cupcake happy hour event

I received an email from one of my readers about a cupcake event at Sticky Fingers in DC. In case you haven't heard of them, they are one of the top vegan bakeries around here :) Even though I'm not vegan, I'm a big fan of their brownies which don't even taste vegan to me. Oh and guess what they ship! But I'm lucky enough that even though I don't quite live in the city, they sell them at a local whole foods/organic store near me! Jealous?! haha... Okay well back to what I wanted to tell you. Sticky Fingers along with Scharffen Berger Chocolate and TuttiFoodie is having a cupcake happy hour to kick off the Chocolate Adventure Contest 2010. Here's more info from the email:

I'm helping my aunt, founder of www.tuttifoodie.com (kind of like Daily Candy for foodie types, maybe you've seen it!), promote the Chocolate Adventure Contest here in the DC area. We're holding a launch party (a cupcake happy hour!) at Sticky Fingers Bakery in Columbia Heights on Wed, October 6th from 5-8. The first 100 guests will enjoy a complimentary Chocolate Adventure cupcake made by Sticky Fingers - which means it will be fabulous and vegan and include one awesome contest ingredient - stout! I'm kind of excited to try it :)

The Contest: We’d be grateful if you could tell your readers about it. They can make their own tricked-out cupcake in the privacy of their own kitchen between October 1 and January 1. Grand prize is $10,000 and a feature in Food Network magazine. And the winner gets to ride around on a cupcake truck in NYC that’ll be handing out the grand prize winning cupcake.

Click image to enlarge

Thanks for the info Meg! Unfortunately I will not be able to attend - grad school just gets in the way of all the fun things :( Hopefully one of you all will be able to attend though!! (Did I read FREE cupcake?! and it has beer in it?!) Enjoy!!

ps - Even though I can't make it to the launch party, I'm definitely thinking about entering this contest!!

Cupcake Camp DC

I attended Cupcake Camp DC yesterday - talk about cupcake overload! I think overall it came together - being the first one and all. Some bakers pulled out last minute and they weren't sure if we would have a venue or not, but they were able to find a new one in time and some people (like me) made extra cupcakes. As for the venue, it ended up being at FunXion in DC which I had never heard of or been too. It was a little cramped and claustrophobic at times making it hard to get cupcakes when they brought them out each round. If there was more space I'm sure this would have been easier. But, I guess we should be thankful they let us use the venue last minute... and even though the bartender was a little rude to people (like not giving some people tap water!) But besides all that... I enjoyed the event overall! It helped I won something in a raffle: 2 free admissions to the Celebrity Cake Challenge to the NCACS nest year! HOLLA!

Silly me forgot to take pics of my cupcakes,
so I snapped a pic from some random person before they ate it

My entries:
~ Home brewed chocolate stout cupcake with Bailey's chocolate ganache and frosting (I think these may have had too much Bailey's which over powered the taste of the cake)
~Mini ginger citrus cupcakes (I think these came out too sweet)

Cupcake catastrophe

The view

Fun flavors

Slowing down and only 3 cupcakes in...

Started to collect some for later to try :)

Washed them down with my expensive drink (forgot it was DC when I ordered this)

Judges table!

This winning cupcake!
Chocolate covered strawberry from my friend Rene of Rene Takes the Cake!

Rene and I :)

And that was cupcake camp in a nutshell. Some thoughts for next years cupcake camp:
~Bigger venue (I understand that the first venue bailed so I'm still happy they were able to get a place last minute venue)
~Instead of bringing whole cupcakes out each round, it should be tastes of cupcakes cut into fourths for the big cupcakes (people would grab up the whole cupcakes and the people in the back couldn't get any. People couldn't even finish cupcakes anyways. If they did pieces, then at the end they could put all the cupcakes out and people take home what they like)

Those were my only real issues I did have a fun time! Props to Nicole for putting together all of the event! Thank you! Until next year ;-)