Cereal and Gluten-Free Cupcakes

Not one of the most serious of baking endeavors, but certinaly one of the most fun and worth documenting anyways.

Music to bake to: Franz Ferdinad.
Drink to bake with: Cherry Coke Bacardi Slurpee.

It all started with a visit to the Shoppe. (http://www.theshoppedenver.com/) I just read about this place in the new 5280 the day before. It's a cupcake, coffee, cereal shop; all three of my favorite things! My bff and I had to go check it out stat, especially since they advertised a gluten-free cupcake for my gluten-free friend. I had the best cereal of my life called Eff'in Nuts (honey-nut cheerios with walnuts and peanut butter chips) and a cup of coffee the size of my head. I didn't try any of the scrumptious looking gluten-ey cupcakes, but the gluten-free cupcake left something to be desired. The cupcake was more like mousse fudge molded into the shape of a cupcake.

So, not having satisfied our gluten-free cupcake desire, we headed to Whole Foods to buy some gluten-free cake mix and make our own. We went for the 365 brand of chocolate cake. This is my favorite brand of gluten-free baking mixes. The brownies are killer. No really. Best brownie mix ever- in all of brownie mixes. The cake mix isn't as good as the brownie mix, but at least our cupcakes resembled actual cakes.

Here's what the finished products looked like. Gluten-free cakes don't rise quite the same as gluten-filled cakes.

Doty showing what serious work gluten-free cupcakes are.

Ahhh... perfect Saturday afternoon activity.

We attempted to make vanilla frosting, but frosting is my biggest area of improvement. I added way too much milk (soy, which I don't think I should try in frosting again) that no amount of powdered sugar could correct. Overall, with my delcious bowl of cereal from the cereal cafe and taking gluten-free cupcakes into our own hands, I would say the afternoon was a huge success!