Mark your calendars: Greek Fest and Cupcake-palooza

Nashville friends, this month is just not the month to be on a diet. Next weekend, September 10th, 11th, and 12th, it's Greek Fest time again at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church on Franklin Road. Tickets are just $2 for lots of entertainment and access to the most amazing food. I don't see it on the menu, but I can't imagine they won't have my favorite, saganaki. And I'm seriously looking forward to more loukoumades. Oh, and tiropita. Oh, and dolmades. Can you tell I'm excited? Just like last year and the year before and the year before that.

Opa!

And at the end of the month, September 25th from 5:30 to 8pm there's a really cool fundraiser at Fido for the Books from Birth organization of Middle Tennessee, Cupcake-palooza! If you're not familiar with this group, they're associated with Dolly Parton's Imagination Library and they send books to signed-up families with babies/kids under five for FREE. It's a wonderful organization and this event? Holy cow, ALL YOU CAN EAT CUPCAKES. Yuh huh. And not just any cupcakes, but cupcakes from the best cupcakeries in the area. My top two favorites--Cupcake Collection and Cuppycakes (winner, in my opinon, of The Great Cupcake Taste-Off)--are both participating. Sadly, I'm going to be out of town that weekend. But you should go. GO! Because not only does a paltry $10 per adult (just $3 for kids!) go to a fantastic charity, but it's ALL YOU CAN EAT CUPCAKES. !!!!

The Great Cupcake Taste-Off

Claudia of cook eat Fret hosted a cupcake challenge at her home and I was lucky enough to score an invitation. Four area bakeries plus a mystery entrant that turned out to be homemade cupcakes made from The Cake Mix Doctor recipes. Other bloggers who may report in soon include Fluffernutter from Tupperware Avalanche, Joy who Cooks (and knows a thing or two about dessert, for sure), and Diana from Tempus Est Nunc. Amybakes, a commenter over at Bites was there, too as well as some of Claudia's fans plus the special bonus of local chefs from Ombi and 360 Bistro. This was definitely a crowd that would put the great cupcake debate to rest.

Or so I thought. We had some disagreements and I believe Claudia will be posting results soon, but here's my take.

First up is Gigi's Cupcakes over on Broadway, not far from Music Row. I picked up the cupcakes from Gigi's and paid special attention given that I'd read that the service was less than great. But despite having a brisk business for 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, I thought that the service was fast and friendly. The display and selection of cupcakes was reminiscent of a Baskin-Robbins, too. Lots of flavors, beautiful cupcakes, great display. So how's the taste? Well, the chocolate with chocolate frosting was one of my favorites. The cake was moist and very chocolatey and the frosting was light and fluffy and not overpowering or overly sweet. But the lemon cupcake with lemon frosting was near the bottom of my list. The flavor tasted unnatural and it was overall too sweet and sugary for my taste. At $3 per cupcake, Gigi's is rather expensive, but I may go back to try the Red Velvet and some of the other intriguing flavors. I think the lemon cupcake may be an anomaly.

Next up is Dulce Desserts on Villa Place at Edgehill, also very near Music Row. They also had a decent walk-in business and friendly and efficient service. Their cupcakes are beautiful and I was very much looking forward to the dulce de leche and Italian almond, but I was very disappointed. The frostings from Dulce Desserts were very oily--like that whipped frosting on cheap bakery cakes. It left a film inside my mouth that took several swigs of soy milk to remove. I will say that the cake part of the Italian almond was very good. And the cherries in the frosting were a good addition, but I just didn't like that frosting at all.

The third bakery was Sweet 16th in East Nashville. I don't have a lot to say about these cupcakes other than they were good. Not great, but good. Bakery standard--definitely good enough for serve at a party, but not as a special treat, necessarily (though I think that's fairly typical and is by no means meant to be an insult). The carrot cake version was very good as was the banana cupcake, but they tasted like mini cakes rather than a special cupcake. They did, however, include a bonus cupcake: a Little Elvis. I didn't try it, though because I don't like peanut butter flavored desserts.

The final bakery was Cuppycakes in Spring Hill. I have now tasted heaven and it is the Sweet Lemon Drop cupcake from Cuppycakes. Wow. Just wow. I'm not a fan of mocha flavoring, but the SO is and he said that their Mocha cupcake was also very delicious. I also tasted the black raspberry (good considering I don't care for raspberry flavor generally) and the chocolate/chocolate (which was good, though the cake was a tad try). Regardless, let's just say that if I ever need cupcakes or a cake for any event, Cuppycakes will be the baker I use. Their cakes were (mostly) moist and the frosting was rich without being oily or too sweet. Great all around. Check out their Cuppy Cast. I'd kill for a Snickerdoodle cupcake right about now.

Last up were the homemade cakes made from Cake Mix Doctor. The first was a chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache frosting. The cake did taste like it was from a mix but the frosting made up for it--it was very creamy and rich and chocolatey. The other was a vanilla cake (I think) with lemon cream cheese frosting. Many of the taste testers picked it as their favorite cupcake overall. It was definitely very good, but I preferred the delicate flavor of the Cuppycakes version. So if you don't have $2.50-3.00 to spare for a single cupcake, it might be worth checking out some of the Cake Mix Doctor's recipes. But get a pastry bag for the frosting. A beautiful swirl of frosting can make a good cupcake great.

Mmm...snickerdoodle cupcake...mmmm....

Thursday in New York City

During my short trip to New York City, I kept a notepad in my bag to record all the great things I ate. My friends were quite amused. I filled up several pages so I'm going to record my gastronomical journey around Manhattan.

My friends and I arrived in NYC shortly before lunchtime, so we dropped our bags at the hotel (in Chelsea) and hit the streets heading toward Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. I figured it would have a ton of restaurants to choose from, so there was no real plan. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that all the great restaurants were a street over but we were starving when we finally happened upon Manatus. I had a light arugala salad with walnuts and snow peas that was good, but a tad pricey. My friends weren't terribly impressed with their food (meaty stuff--I didn't pay attention to it), so it wasn't the best way to start off our trip. But the patio was nice despite having been yelled at by a passer-by who apparently does not approve of "ladies who lunch." I decided not to argue with him and his assertion that I'm "lazy" and "don't know how to cook."

I didn't fill up at lunch, because I knew that just down the way, there was a cupcake waiting for me at the Magnolia Bakery. It's listed as a must in lots of guidebooks and was apparently made famous due to an episode of "Sex and the City," though I don't recall that episode. I queued up in line and waited my turn to go in and choose my cupcake. I got a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting plus a chocolate drop cookie and toffee cookie. Here's the scoop: the cupcake was dry. The frosting was good but sweet. Almost too sweet. Cupcakes aren't rocket science, so I was surprised by the dryness. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it and the cookies were divine. My friends also got cupcakes as well as a huge slice of coconut cake that was quite good. Funny thing, earlier that day, we were looking at a map when an older lady approached us and offered help (one of many nice people I met in the city) and when we told her where we were going, she said, "Oh, no you shouldn't go there. My 12-year-old granddaughter makes better cupcakes than that place. You should go to the Buttercup instead." We didn't heed her advice that day, but we just happened by the Upper West Side location on Friday and, indeed, it was a great place. It had a much better selection (see photo) and I had a bite of my friend's red velvet cupcake (I was holding out for our next stop) and it was excellent. And it's very difficult to make a red velvet batter that's not dry. Read about the cupcake wars in New York here. It's interesting.

The sugar buzz propelled me through an afternoon of wandering around the Village and SoHo, but I was certainly ready for dinner that evening. I'd gotten several recommendations and also consulted CitySearch and settled on a Venezuelan restaurant called El Cocotero. It took a little convincing to get my friends to try it, but I think they could tell it was important to me and they knew they wouldn't be forced to eat vegetarian food. El Cocotero is quite small and it took some work to squeeze into our table, but it was actually okay being that close to other people while eating. The pitcher of sangria might've helped. If you look at their menu, you'll see it's large and not your everyday tapas fare. It was a hard decision to choose a few dishes, but I went with the
1) chiquinquira arepa (guayanesa cheese, avocadoes, and tomatoes stuffed in thin white corn pocket (similar to a pita, but so much better having been made of ground white corn)
2) tequegnos (a cheese stick wrapped in some kind of bread and deep fried)
3) cachapa con queso (a stack of cripsy small corn pancakes with cheese--everyone's favorite dish of the evening)
4) Tajadas (sweet plantains)

I can still conjure up the taste of the cachapa in my mind. It was so good. A similar, yet vastly inferior version was a popular treat at Bonnaroo this past year, I believe.

Sadly, the plantains had to serve as dessert because I was far too stuffed to have the tres leches. Next time. Next time...