Introducing: Strawberry Fields, originally uploaded by Sweet Lorraine Bakeshop.

Our newest cupcake features a strawberry cake, a layer of chocolate truffle cream, and strawberry buttercream frosting.

Yay! Sweet Lorraine Bakeshop was featured on Southbound today, a website for people who live in the South of Metro Manila (which is where we are).

I’ve been a reader of Southbound for a long time now- long before this little baking biz was born- so you’ll understand how excited I am to be featured there.

Go read Have a Sweet Lorraine Valentine on Southbound now- I’m so glad they enjoyed the goodies.

Now taking orders for Valentine’s Day cupcakes. Contact us for details!

A very Happy New Year to our customers and visitors!

2008 was a tough year in many ways, but starting this little business we call Sweet Lorraine Bakeshop is definitely one if its brightest highlights! Baking cupcakes and cookies is something we LOVE doing, and it’s such a pleasure bringing pleasure to others through our baking.

We promise more deliciousness in the coming year Happy 2009!

Thank you all for supporting our little home-based bakeshop! We hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones.

It’s Christmas in four days (!!!) and we’re no longer taking Christmas orders. However, we ARE taking orders for your New Year’s Eve celebrations! If you’d like to get some scrumptious cupcakes or delicious cookies for New Year’s Eve, please let me know soon so we can schedule it for you.

To order: fill out my contact form, or send a text message to (0915) 116-6303. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Holiday music is playing all day here at the Bakeshop: we’ve got our Christmas Cupcake Gift Boxes available! Here’s a peek at one:

Download our Holiday Menu for prices and more »

We’ve just released our Holiday Menu! Please visit the Bakeshop to download it (in PDF format).

Although we offer other products at the Bakeshop, cupcakes count for about 90% of all our orders. Which is why I’m so excited about the Food Network’s Challenge Cupcake:

The smallest cakes get the big-time treatment. Six top cake teams fight to create the tastiest cupcakes in America, and then decorate and stack the little treats into showpieces you have to see to believe. Chef Scott Liebfried hosts this unprecedented winner-take-all competition.

Tune in on November 8th, at 8:00 PM (ET/PT) to catch the challenge. You can learn more about the Challenge Cupcake, and get two lovely-looking recipes (for Devil’s Food Cupcakes and Milk Chocolate Cupcakes), at the Food Network site.

Over on Serious Eats, one of my favorite sites, Ed Levine lists attributes of the perfect cupcake for him. Do our cupcakes qualify? Let’s see…

The cake has to be moist, light, and tasty in its own right, a difficult combination to pull off

Moistness was always one of the top deciding factors when we were recipe testing for our cakes. I’ve also found that “lightness” usually follows, as the moister the crumb is, the less dense it is. As to whether our cakes our “tasty”- oh, yes. Very tasty

The frosting has to be smooth, also light, not too sweet, and deeply flavored

We’re especially proud of our frosting. It’s too easy to mix up some powdered sugar and butter and call it “frosting”, and we never do that. Also, our customers’ first reactions are usually, “Ooh, not too sweet!”

A cupcake doesn’t have to be huge. Cupcakes have become like bagels in this town, and like bagels, bigger is most assuredly not better. Size matters in cupcakes, but not in the way that you think

Our cupcakes are standard American size, which means they aren’t too big, and aren’t too small.

Listen up. This last quality is really important. A great cupcake has to have the proper ratio of icing to cake. Other people may have different ideas, but I think there should be a 1 to 3 ratio of icing to filling. This hasn’t been scientifically proven, but my guess is that Harold McGee and/or Jeffrey Steingarten will weigh in on this topic very soon.

While I respect this frosting-cake ratio preference- indeed, I personally agree with it!- the fact is that many, many people want a lot more frosting on their cupcakes than that. For example, I’ve gotten more and more orders for “frosting shots” (they want to do away with the cake completely!)

So do I bake perfect cupcakes? I don’t know- but I do know that not a single cupcake leaves my kitchen without passing my own “perfection” test.