Attempt at Re-Creation

My friend Jamie introduced me to the fabulousness that is "The Flying Cupcake" while we were in Indy together.   In January of this year, Jamie's birthday was approaching and we were about to be working together again, this time in Sarasota, Florida.  Immediately I went to the "Flying Cupcake" website, hoping to order a dozen of Jamie's favorites and have them shipped to Sarasota.  My only problem was that they don't ship cupcakes.  How disappointing.

This left me with no other choice but to bake the cupcakes myself.  I set out on an attempt to recreate greatness from "The Flying Cupcake" - Jamie's favorite, the Razzamatazz.  

I had been in Sarasota for about a day, and it was already Jamie's birthday so I had to get to work.  The first step for me, when tackling a baking project this big: Call Sarah.  My friend Sarah is the one person I know who loves baking probably more than I do.  And she lives in Sarasota, so of course she was the perfect partner in crime for this experiment.  

We started with a recipe for Dark Chocolate Cupcakes.  I'm a horrible person because I can't remember what recipe I used, but I can tell you that for other cupcake adventures I have used this one and the cupcakes are delicious.   To make them Dark Chocolate, all I do is substitute Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa in place of the unsweetened Cocoa.  

As the filling, I used a jar of Black Raspberry Preserves.  You can use Red Raspberry Preserves too, but I really wanted something seedless and that was only available at my store in Black.  As the frosting, I used this Raspberry Buttercream (which was amazing!) and topped it with a fresh raspberry.  I think they came out pretty tasty.

What matters most is that the Birthday Girl was all smiles upon receiving her surprise treats.

It was a successful mission at least, and it lead to many more missions throughout the 4 months I was in Sarasota.