It all started with a sweet offer:
Wife craving cupcakes but didn’t feel like baking. Sweet husband offers to bake cupcakes. Wife laughed at this offer. Husband remarked that his cupcakes are better than wife. Wife says, Game on…
We decided to bake up four dozen cupcakes for close family and friends and let them be the judge of whose cupcakes are better. The judging was based off: taste, moistness, frosting and creativity. We baked two categories of cupcakes to go head to head: one classic flavor and one couture (or “It’s My Prerogative”).
Mike took a few weeks to finally decide on his flavors (with the support and encouragement of his all-male carpool buddies). Classic will be a play off the Hostess cupcake which he coined as the Fauxtess. His couture cupcake is a churro cupcake with dulce de leche and vanilla Swiss Meringue buttercream.
Fauxtess cupcake (left) & Churro cupcake (right)
I decided on doing a coconut cupcake for classic called the Haupia cupcake. Haupia is a Hawaiian dessert that I fell in love with when we went to Maui a few months ago. The Haupia cupcake is a coconut cupcake filled with haupia filling and whipped cream topping. I decided this challenge will be a good opportunity to try it. For my fancy-schmancy cupcake, I went with a spumoni cup which was half cherry batter and half chocolate batter with a pistachio Swiss meringue buttercream. I have to confess I came up with this idea to win Bao’s vote. Hahaha.
Haupia cupcake (left) & Spumoni cupcake (right)
So last Sunday we threw it down. Before he had even ONE cupcake in the oven, Mike turns and says to me, “I’m already tired.” Oh, he’s a goner. LOL. It was a lot of fun and we will definitely be doing it again. I had so much fun tasting and working WITH Mike on our recipes. We stayed up all night baking and tasting each others cupcakes.
All the cupcakes were delicious. I have to admit when I ate that churro cupcake, I thought it was over for me. It was definitely something I want to eat again. But at the end, the baker beat out the family chef with the haupia cupcake…coconut cupcake won of all things!