Midnight Baking...

Ok, maybe it's not midnight, but it was 6am on a Saturday when I woke up just buzzing with ideas. Of course I didn't go to bed until 1:30am, but how can I sleep at a time like this?! Now that I can't bake my delectable and delicious carbomb and whiskey-ginger cupcakes, what can I replace them with? I needed to find out. I needed to get to the grocery store at the break of dawn looking for extracts. I just needed to. (OCD, here I come...)

First up - rum and cokes. I'm not a huge rum and coke drinker, but I served several thousand of those cocktails in my bartending days, so there's gotta be something to them. My take on the rum-and-coke: Chocolate Cola Cake with Rum Buttercream Frosting. The result:

Almost... angelic, huh? (or my camera-phone flash is wicked bright)
The chocolate-cola cake is uber-moist and goes really well with the rum frosting. I used a rum extract, so you get the rich rum flavor without the alcoholic bite when using real rum. Maybe there is something to keeping these shots non-alcoholic...

Look for these cocktail cupcake shots next weekend at Park Here - a new indoor park in NoLita organized by OpenHouse Gallery (201 Mulberry St). I'll be there Sat and Sun 11-6p!

Up next: Grasshopper cupcake shots. I don't know anyone that drinks these old-school cocktails, but they still do teach this recipe at bartending schools, and let's face it, who doesn't love mint and white chocolate??