The History of Brooklyn Black Out Cake

For Black Friday we have a new flavor that's not only tasty but has a really neat history.....Chocolate Blackout Cake was developed in Brooklyn, New York during World War II, named after the blackout drills performed by the Civilian Defense Corps.

A Blackout was performed so Ships when sailing off to battle could not be spotted by enemy planes. City lights were turned off and windows were covered with black material. They had drills like fire drills to practice for the real thing.

Chocolate Blackout Cake is a rich chocolate cake that has a filling of Rich chocolate pudding and is frosted with the same rich pudding and covered with some of the cake crumbs, made popular by Ebinger's bakery that had stores in Brooklyn, New York.

Holiday Deal

To kick off our  holiday season we are offering a very special holiday deal!! Starting today we will  be selling gift cards at a discounted rate. We will be offering two separate deals that will  be valid from 12-1-11 to 12-1-12. These will make a great Christmas gift (be sure and purchase one for yourself as well )We do have limited quantities available so come in and get yours soon!!!

DEAL #1
$10 (regular price $15)  
Gift card good for 1/2 dozen regular size cupcakes. Not to be combined with any other offer. Must redeem entire card in one visit. *No cash value CARD EXPIRES 12-1-12

DEAL #2
$8  (regular price $16.25)  
Gift card good for 5 regular size lattes. Not to be combined with any other offer. Limit one per person per visit. *No cash value CARD EXPIRES 12-1-12

Update on our new location....

We are so happy to announce that all of our plans have been accepted by Mecklenburg County and we have approval to start the work that we need to do. We are on track to open December 1st!!! It has been a rough couple of weeks but we made it through and we are even more excited about the new spot :) We will keep everyone updated on the progess, in the mean time come and see us at our current location..... We have some great Fall flavors and for the next couple of days Bebe Gallinis next door is doing a Holiday Open House. They have some really great stuff that you won't want to miss!

Halloween Cupcake Flavors

We have updated our Monday menu for anyone that would like to place an order for Halloween. We have some really fun flavors and decorations!!! Here is the Monday line up......

Witch's Hat:
Chocolate cake filled with a whipped orange scented mousse, topped with orange butter cream and finished with a chocolate witch's hat.

Halloween Sunset:
This a a cupcake version of the sunset cocktail (for the grown ups) Vanilla tangerine cake infused with a rum and grenadine syrup, topped with a whipped tangerine scented butter cream.

Black Bottom Spider Web Cheesecake:
Chocolate cake with a baked in cheesecake center, topped with chocolate butter cream and finished with a chocolate spider web.

Ghostly Pumpkin Spice:
Our pumpkin spice cake topped with a whipped meringue frosting in the shape of a ghost with mini chocolate chip "eyes".

Halloween Sugar Cookie:
Our classic sugar cookie cupcake with halloween sprinkles.........

Spooky Spider Signature Chocolate:
our signature chocolate cupcake is in disguise as a spooky halloween spider!

Update on our new location....

We are very sad to announce tonight that we are not going to be able to open on October 31st as planned. There has been some issues with the county as far as zoning and requirements. We are not sure at this point how long it will be but we hope within the next month. We should know more tomorrow after we hear back from the architect. As for now we will remain open at our current location and we will proceed with our Wine and Cupcake tasting as planned (just not in our new location)  We truly appreciate all of the love and support that we have received from all of our wonderful customers and friends. It was just a year ago that we were having trouble getting our home kitchen inspection scheduled in order to be able to bake the cupcakes at our house in time to open at the Carolina Art Garden.  We have come a long way in a short time and we plan on overcoming this obstacle just as we have others in the past. Soon this little old brick house will be filled with beautiful art and the smell of coffee and cupcakes!!  We will post updates as soon as we have news.

Official Grand Opening Scheduled!!!

We plan on being open for business in our new location on October 31st!! We will be giving out a free mini cupcake to everyone that comes in costume from 4pm-9pm. We have some great Halloween flavors planned and can't wait to share our new shop with everyone.

Our official Grand opening will be celebrated on November 1, 2011 from 6pm-9pm. We will be doing a wine and cupcake tasting featuring Carolina Heritage Vineyards. Our special guests from the Butter Bean Village will be partnering with us to host this special night. We had not planned on doing another wine and cupcake tasting this year but we have had so many requests that we thought it would be a great way to celebrate our move. The wine and cupcake tasting will work the same way as in the past. $5 per person (includes 4 wine tastings and 4 mini cupcake pairings)  You can register online at http://www.justbakedlkn.com/ .

                          



Just Baked Cupcakes & Coffee House is moving!!!

We have some really exciting news that we could not wait to share with everyone!! We will be moving on November 1, 2011. Our new location will located  very close to our current location but we will have road frontage and most importantly an on site kitchen!! Since we have opened, our business has grown beyond what we could have ever asked for or imagined. We have truly been blessed and we are so grateful for this new opportunity. We love Oak Street Mill but unfortunately we are not able to bake on site and that in turn makes it very difficult to keep up with the demand. We never want to have to turn customers away because we are sold out of cupcakes. Not only will we be able to bake more when our supply runs low but we will also be able to offer more variety of muffins, scones and brownies. We will be opening earlier and closing later and we will also have a private room for meetings. The upstairs will be occupied by a very talented local artist. Chris has some really great plans for the coffee house part of the business that you will not want to miss! There will be more information coming soon!!! Thank you to all of our customers for a great 1st year.....we look forward to many more!!!

2011 Cupcake Photography Contest Amatuer Category

After careful consideration we are ready to announce the winners of the amateur category. Thank you to everyone that entered our contest. We would like to offer each of our contestants a free cupcake. Thanks again for all of the beautiful pictures!



GRAND PRIZE WINNER!!!
Kimberly Sweet
You win 2 dozen free cupcakes and a $20 gift good towards any items on our coffee menu.





SECOND PLACE GOES TO.....
Jessica Rocklein
you win 1 dozen free cupcakes and a $10 gift card good towards any items on our coffee menu




THIRD PLACE GOES TO..
Simone Stratman
You win 1/2 dozen cupcakes plus a $5 gift card good towards any items on our coffee menu

We have 7 runners ups in the amatuer category. Each runner up will receive a free cupcake and latte!!



 



 

Tracy Barron

Taylor Overcash



Amanda Pace

 

Sara Kay Mooney

Theresa Wengel

Cindy Washam

Jessica Polman



2011 Cupcake Photography Contest

WOW!!! We have had so many wonderful entries in our first annual photography contest. The judges had an incredibly hard time deciding but I think we have our winners!! Thank you to everyone that entered we feel so blessed to have received so many beautiful pictures. We plan on holding another contest next year so be sure and enter again :)

First Place in the Professional Category goes to.....

 Candy Howard
2 dozen cupcakes plus a $20 gift card good towards any items on our coffee menu



Second Place in the Professional Category goes to.....
Jacki Summey
1 Dozen cupcakes plus a $10 gift card good towards any items on our coffee menu

*There were only two photographers in our professional category so we do not have a third place winner this time. Thank you Candy and Jacki for your beautiful entries!!! 

Strawberries & Cream Cupcake

This beautiful photo collage was done by our daughter Madison.... It makes me smile just to look at it :) Our strawberries & cream cupcake is so light and flavorful, it reminds me of Summer time. We start with a vanilla cake filled with our house made strawberry puree, top it with a fresh and light strawberry butter cream and finish it with a juicy ripe strawberry slice!

Black Forest Cupcakes: Chocolate cake topped with a dark chocolate ganache, vanilla butter cream, black cherry sauce and finished with dark chocolate shavings.

NEW FLAVOR TODAY: One of our newest flavors that we created is Orange Cream. It tastes a lot like an orange creamsicle :) Perfect for the warm weather that is coming up. We started with a vanilla orange cupcake infused with orange zest, filled and topped with whipped orange cream frosting and finished with bright orange sprinkles.

New flavor today!!! What could be better than Chocolate and Banana???? We started with a moist chocolate cake enhanced with the addition of banana, filled with rich chocolate fudge, topped with a creamy banana butter cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce and finished with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts.

We are now opening at 7am for coffee, scones, muffins, pastries and of course the star of the show CUPCAKES!!!! We have free wi-fi so please feel free to come in for your meetings!!!!

We had a great turn out for our last cupcake and wine tasting. For April we featured Tree House Vineyards from Monroe, NC. They actually opened for business last Novmber almost the same day that we did. They have really great wine and a great story behind their vineyard. Check out their website at http://www.treehousevineyards.net/ We are preparing for our next Wine & Cupcake tasting that will be coming up Tuesday May 3rd. We will be be announcing the vineayard in a few days, so check back soon :)

We held our second monthly cupcake and wine tasting on March 1, 2011. It was so much fun and we had a great turn out again. This month we featured Rocky River Vineyards and paired each of their wines with a cupcake. There is a great blog article about the event at http://diningoutsideofthebox.blogspot.com/2011/03/cupcake-wine-tasting-awesome.html?spref=fb This is an awesome blog with lots of great information.....

Article in Davidson News Paper

http://davidsonnews.net/foodanddining/2011/02/10/in-cornelius-a-day-for-wine-and-cupcakes/

I just wanted to post a link to our newspaper article about the wine and cupcake tasting. It was a very nice article... the only correction would be that it's Chris Wallace not David :) Can't wait until our next wine and cupcake tasting March 1st!! It is going to be great....

LIVE MUSIC FRIDAY NIGHTS

We now have live music every friday night from 7-9pm.... we had a great turn out last week. This week Rob Jones will be doing a CD release. You will not want to miss it. We are also doing wine and cupcake tastings the first Tuesday of every month. Hope to see everyone there :)

Be Mine Chocolate Cream Filled Cupcakes

Our new and improved logo.... we have incorporated the coffee shop and our new name is JUST BAKED CUPCAKES & COFFEE HOUSE. We are now serving lattes, espresso, cappucino, Two Leaves & a Bud Tea and really amzaing PEETS coffee from the West coast.

Three New Cupcake Flavors

 CHOCOLATE TOFFEE CRUNCH: chocolate cupcake filled with toffee sauce, topped with a vanilla butter cream and our own hand made English toffee.

 TRIPLE VANILLA: vanilla cupcake filled with fluffy vanilla bean cream, topped with creamy vanilla butter cream and vanilla soaked sugar crystals. You can see why we call it triple vanilla!!!

LITTLE ITALY: with a name like this how can it now be good? Our version of our favorite Italian dessert "TIRAMISU"  coffee rum soaked cupcake topped with a creamy white frosting, a dusting of cocoa powder and a single chocolate covered espresso bean.



Churro Cupcakes: vanilla cupcake swirled with cinnamon, filled with fluffy cinnamon cream, topped with a cinnamon butter cream and tiny churro sticks. 

Carrot Pecan: Moist carrot cupcake topped with a whipped cream cheese frosting and toasted pecans.

Caramel Mocha Cupcakes

NEW THIS WEEK!! Caramel Mocha: espresso chocolate cupcake filled with house made vanilla bean caramel, topped with coffee butter cream, caramel drizzle and a single chocolate covered espresso bean.

Campfire Smores Cupcakes

Craving a smores but don't feel like going out in the cold weather to build a campfire? Try one of our smores cupcakes.....
Campfire Smores: Chocolate cupcake topped with creamy chocolate butter cream. graham crackers, chocolate bar and real toasted marshmallows.

Black Velvet Cupcakes

We created this cupcake for a chocolate cupcake recipe competition. We had to use one of several ingredients.... we chose Guiness. The Black Velvet has been a huge hit at our store, we will find out in March if it was a huge hit with the judges :)

Black Velvet Cupcake: Guiness chocolate cupcake, infused with a hint of fudge, topped with ribbons of champagne butter cream and chocolate curls. The idea came from the drink Black Velvet which consists of pouring Guiness in to a glass and topping with a layer of Champagne. I do not drink but I can tell you the flavors in the cupcake are amazing.

White Chocolate Raspberry

This is a recreation of the birthday cake I made for my husband the first year we were married. The birthday cake was my first attempt at actually making a vanilla cake from scratch. It literally took me most of the day to make the cake. It consisted of three layers, raspberry puree, whipped cream frosting and the outside was completely covered in sliced almonds. I only wish I had thought of cupcakes at the time!! Anyway back to our new flavor......

White Chocolate Raspberry: Vanilla cupcake filled with our house made raspberry puree, topped with whipped white chocolate butter cream, raspberry drizzle and decadent white chocolate curls.