And now, without further ado, the winners are:

Best Tasting: Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Krista Arndt from The Grand Bakery took home the “Best Tasting” award for her delicious Caramel Apple Cupcakes. Our judging team couldn’t stop raving about these ones, uttering claims to the tune of “best tasting cupcake…ever!”

Best Decorated: Butterfly Gingerbread Cupcakes

Alessandra Ocampo from Swt Cakes won the “Best Decorated” award for her stunning Butterfly Gingerbread Cupcakes. Flutter by, butterfly!

Most Creative: Party Hat Cupcakes

Pamela Perovic from Cake It Up a Notch stole the show for the “Most Creative” award. Party Hat Cupcakes for the Children’s Museum’s 6th Birthday Party? A match made in cupcake heaven!

Best in Show: Canadian Hostess Cupcakes

Although we originally planned to only have three competitions, our judges thought it would be a cupcaking sin to not show our love for Krista Arndt from The Grand Bakery’s Canadian Hostess Cupcakes. A sophisticated twist on the classic Hostess Cupcakes, Krista’s version uses only the finest ingredients and is topped with the most Canadian of two-letter words. Truly, our Best in Show!

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered! Stay tuned for pics of cupcakes from all of our wonderful bakers, coming up on the blog this weekend!

Photos by Michelle Villagracia/flickr

Party-themed cupcakes for the Children's Museum's 6th Birthday!

The first ever CupcakeCampKW has come and gone, and we here at CCKW HQ are still in a sugar coma. With over 400 delicious, beautiful cupcakes in attendance this past Saturday at the Children’s Museum, we think it’s safe to say that all of our Bakers and Eaters left with very full tummies – we’ve already heard of a few participants who took a much-needed nap afterwards!

We want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who helped make this event such a success and so much fun! Tons of cupcakey love to the Children’s Museum for letting us join in on their birthday celebrations and to our fantastic sponsor Yelp for supporting the event! A sugary thank you to our four lovely and talented judges, Monica Fitzpatrick and Michelle Villagracia (from CupcakeCampTO), Kat Foster (from Yelp), and Carole Zettel (from the Children’s Museum) – you all had a very tough job in tasting so many yummy cuppies! And, most importantly, the biggest and most delicious thank you of all goes out to all of our Bakers and Eaters, without whom this event never could have happened! Most amazing collection of cupcakes that the KW region had ever seen in one room? We sure think so!

Just because the event is over, don’t expect this blog to start sleeping! We’ll be doing some more post-event blogs this week, highlighting the competition winners and their beautiful creations, and linking you towards photos and coverage of the event. If you took pics at the event too, please add them to our Flickr pool or e-mail them to us! Stay tuned for more CCKW news and pics later this week!

Photo by Michelle Villagracia/flickr

CupcakeCamp KW (hearts) Yelp

We heart Yelp. We really really do.

Yelp has wonderfully agreed to be a sponsor for the very first CupcakeCamp KW. We, however, think that “sponsor” is a bit snooty and doesn’t quite capture our relationship’s true essence. Really, we like to think of Yelp as our BFF.

So what’s a Yelp? It’s where a bunch of great people get together to talk local. It’s all about sharing news, views, and reviews on everything in your community. It’s where we personally turn to when we want to get a bite to eat and have that unquenchable craving for Pad Thai but can’t satisfy from our local joint because it’s closed for the summer. Or when we’re looking for a quiet place to run away to with our laptops that has great tea and WiFi. It’s where we find new businesses that we’ve never heard of that are must-visits and places we’ve heard about that are must-avoids. But most of all, it’s a place to find new friends.

The yelp.ca homepage: it's pretty!

For those hailing from lucky communities like Toronto, that are blessed with fantastic community ambassadors like Kat F. (and did we mention that she’s a baker?!), you can expect sweet outings like Cupcake Crawls and night-time adventures to find the best Sangria in town, and much much more. Can you ask for any more fun?

And then there’s this thing called Yelp Elite. But you’ll have to find out about that on your own… ;)

Yelp, much like CupcakeCamp, is a San Francisco export but comes in all sorts of local flavours including our very own Yelp Kitchener and Yelp Waterloo (and nearby neighbour Yelp Toronto). Check them it and fall in love. We know you will.

With less than a week left until CupcakeCamp KW, we here at CCKW HQ (that’s a lotta letters!) are getting extremely excited – and we hope all of you are, too! We’ve already got lots of bakers registered, but we’re still looking for lots more! The deadline for baker registration is Thursday, September 17, so if you’ve been thinking that you want to bake some goodies but you’ve been too lazy to actually register, go do so now!

If you’re already planning to grace us with your awesome presence on Saturday, why not help us spread the word? Mentioning that you’re coming to CupcakeCamp KW in your Facebook and/or Twitter status, making one of our super cute posters your Facebook profile pic, RSVPing on our Facebook event page (and sending FB invites to more friends!), and telling all your friends about the wicked awesome event you’re going to this weekend are all fantastic ways of spreading the word and helping us out.

Any questions in the week leading up to the event, give us a shout! Can’t wait to see you all there!

Needless to say, it was a lot of fun. All the questions were very well thought out — some deeply philosophical questions even, that every cupcake enthusiast should give some thought to (e.g. Is is okay to use coffee as a side beverage when enjoying cupcakes?).

Here’s a clip of our segment on the 570 Food Show.

We wanted to thank Andrew for letting us come on the show and chat about cupcakes and CupcakeCamp KW. Check out his amazing show Sundays at noon on the radio at 570 AM or stream it online at 570news.com. You should also follow him on Twitter.

Linkages related to stuff we talked about:

• Yelp.ca Cupcake Crawl (it was as delicious as it sounds, trust us!)
• CupcakeCamp KW Baker Registration

Click to download the PDF and share it with your friends!

We have a theory here at CupcakeCamp KW HQ: everything is much more fun (and delicious) when cupcakes are involved. Counting is no exception (in fact, we think it would make for a perfect after school recreational course: Counting with Cupcakes (TM) — coming to a recreation centre near you soon!)

Before we get sidetracked (recounting all the cupcakes we devoured this weekend), here it is, cupcake fans: a fancy schmancy poster for CupcakeCamp KW. Cute, or what?

Feel free to download, print, and share with friends and non-friends. Trust me, they’ll love that you did. :)

Oh, and we’ve got other goodies coming soon. Graphics and such for your blogs and Facebooks so you can tell everyone how excited you are about CupcakeCamp. Cool?

Update (20 minutes later): Okay, okay. We know that you’re just as impatient as we are. So, here’s a little bonus banner that you can get started with (click to get the full-size image):

Stay tuned for more finalized graphics this week! And if you haven’t yet registered to be a baker for the event, what are you waiting for? And, as always, keep on spreading the cupcake love!

CupcakeCamp KW + The Children's Museum

Dust off your cupcake aprons, it’s almost eating time!

So a little birdie told us that The Children’s Museum is having a birthday party in September. And we thought, “What better way to celebrate than with cupcakes?” That’s right cupcake fans! We have a date and venue set for the first ever CupcakeCamp in Kitchener-Waterloo region!

Basic details for now (with more to come!)

September 19, 2009

The Children’s Museum (downtown Kitchener)

Watch for the baker registration form and other details to go up on the website sometime this week. In the meantime, if you have questions, let us know!

Martha stewart's bumble bee cupcake

I saw a promo on Martha Stewart’s cupcake cookbook. The cookbook has countless recipes for making creative, tasty and attractive cupcakes. I thought these recipes would not only be interesting and drool worth but also helpful for fellow cupcake camp bakers. If you have  ‘cupcake’ block, this  get those creative thoughts flowing. One such cupcake is the marzipan bumblebee on a piped flower. This cupcake is beautifully designed and I thought it was worth sharing. Pay attention to the exquisite detail on the bee and the piped flower. The marzipan and icing were cleverly used to mimic a bee resting on a flower. This is just one small example of what could be done with a few baking ingredients and a splash of creativity. Let’s get baking!!!

The link :
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/marzipan-bumblebee-on-piped-flower?lnc=ae0cdc53f03ee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=taxonomylist_food_cupcake-recipes

Mark your calendars!

Yes, things have been quiet here at CupcakeCampKW HQ, but never fear! The wheels are in motion, the batter is being mixed, and the oven is heating up! But before we start on icing, we want you (yes YOU) to join us for a volunteer / planning meeting next week. We have a lengthy todo list that needs doing, and we’d love your help!

That said, we’re gathering next weekend to talk about all the ways you can lend a hand. Hope to see you there!

CupcakeCampKW Volunteer / Planning Meeting

When: Saturday, May 20, 2009 @ 12pm

Where: Room 2143 -  Student Life Centre, University of Waterloo

Cupcakes will be provided ;)

Planning on attending? Let us know:

Upcoming.org, Facebook, or email

Photo by Mike Rohde/flickr