Twenty- five Seven

Cupcakes to die for #Flavoursome Tuesday

October 10, 2017

A cupcake is a small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, icing and other cake decorations such as fruit and candy may be applied. Wikipedia

I must admit I have a weakness for cupcakes especially my three little cupcakes – two boy cupcakes and one girl cupcake. And they have their own cupcake preferences too.

Wow Dinga, my boy cupcake, loves red velvet cupcakes while Little Po loves cupcakes of any flavour. But Ms Papaya who also has a very sweet tooth, is very particular that her cupcake is a sinful chocolate with more chocolate.

So on our last day in New Jersey, Daughter No.1 treated us to the sinful treats at The Blue Sheep Bake shop in downtown Somerville.

It was mid afternoon and really hot so there was no one about except us. Even though we knew what we wanted, it was hard not to stare at the sweets calling out “Eat Me!”

We stared at the range of cakes and were wondering what to have when Daughter No 1 announced that we’d take two Strawberry Champagnes.

Two I wondered, when she read my mind and said that she wanted one all to herself.

When I took a bite of this delicious concoction I could see why!

The pink strawberry champagne was a light butter sponge topped with a frothy pink icing that was light as champagne and sweet as strawberry.

Ms Papaya’s favourite was the dark chocolate fantasy which had a frosting that wasn’t sickeningly sweet. I know that because she allowed me a taste .

Now what could this one be ? Quite simply it was the Birthday Cake cupcake which is

any kid’s delight . A plain butter sponge cupcake with – white melted marshmallow frosting with sprinkles and aptly called s’more.

With Halloween coming up , almost everything was pumpkin so I had to try the pumpkin.

This was quite unlike anything I’d had before. A creamy cream cheese frosting drizzled with butterscotch sat atop a spicy pumpkin cake. It was something unique indeed.

And because we were in America we had to have a peanut butter cupcake which was a moist chocolate cake dipped in chocolate ganache, frosted with creamy peanut buttercream icing and drizzled with chocolate ganache. I’m unfortunately not into peanut butter so I didn’t care much for it but I can see why it’s nutty flavour can be appealing.

These were the 5 different flavours that we sampled.

The Blue Sheep Bake Shop is run by Karin, the owner cum baker who traded her passion for her profession and is now a well sought after baker for customised cakes .

I’m glad we visited this shop at the end of my visit else, I’d have been walking downtown every day!

It’s Tuesdayand exactly a week since I visited the Bake Shop. I’m back now to my everyday life and thought I’d share some flavoursome memories this Tuesday . I can still taste the flavours of those cupcakes as I write this post.

Do you have any flavoursome memories to share?

Looking forward to reading your posts #FlavoursomeTuesday
Whatever happened to plain old sponge ! #FridayReflections

October 9, 2017

The other day I walked into a cake shop

Nostalgic for vanilla sponge .

But all I saw were cakes of chocolate

Each one more exotic than the next!

There was chocolate cake with swirls of butter cream – shaded in grades of chocolate

Ombré I was told they called it while the next had a shiny sheen of smooth ganache.

The Black Forest with its whipped cream stripes and hints of cherry on biscuit base,

While the Dutch Truffle vied for space with other different chocolate cakes .

Walnuts or just plain curls of whites chocolate or cake drizzled with coloured sprinkles

Goodness me ! There were tonnes of different chocolate cake: thick, dense, rich and dark- it simply dazzled me .

What happened to the plain buttery vanilla sponge that was the ONLY cake I ever knew ?

The old fashioned crumbly, grainy sponge that went well with cream and chocolate too!

The cake we had for tea each day because it was so ordinary.

Linking this up with Sanch and Corinne’s #FridayReflections. This was my response to this week’s prompt – Nostalgic.
#MyFriendAlexa, @Blogchatter and Me

October 4, 2017
I have been blogging for almost a decade now but being an older blogger and a technophobe I find myself much like Alice in Wonderland.
- For years I struggled with traffic.Even my friends and family were reluctant visitors . They preferred to read my email rather than actually access my blog .
- For years I struggled with content , voice and niche . Do I write about myself and my bumbling journey through life ? Is my niche food, travel, parenting or just blah blah blah?
Well, I just bumbled on through this journey and came across so many interesting blogs and bloggers that I became more and more hooked .

Making friends with Alexa

Sometime last year, I came across a campaign #MyFriendAlexa hosted by Team Blogchatter. I wondered what these bloggers were talking about and bragging about their Alexa Rank dropping every day.

I was intrigued. Who or what was Alexa?

So this year I signed up with Blogchatter and its campaign #MyFriendAlexa.

My experience

To be honest I find myself a dinosaur in the world of social media . Tweeting and Twitter was even more alien than FB and Instagram and Pinterest. Till the end of the campaign I couldn’t understand what my group (group 2) was tweeting about . They all seemed so gung ho and with it that my inadequacy and unfamiliarity with the medium became quite obvious.

I must admit that the conversation went way over my head and I was a silent spectator for the most part.

I was a pretty diligent participant and foolishly thought that one only had to post 8 posts in toto. Since I was traveling from the 20th with limited or no access to the Internet, I posted 6 posts in the first two weeks only to find that I should have scheduled them instead .

Ashwini Dodani who was steering our group had made an excel sheet where we were supposed to drop our links and use this resource to share, visit and comment on others’ posts . Regrettably, I couldn’t manage this and only visited the few who visited mine. It was no wonder then that the traffic on my blog was desultory and dismal.

My visitors in August were 807 with 1715 views while my views for September were 1840 with 820 visitors .

As mentioned earlier, the generation gap between me and the other bloggers was getting markedly wider and there were just a few bloggers with whom I could identify and I assume who could identify with me .

But all in all I learnt a lot about blogs and blogging.

My Alexa Rank when I began this exercise was

1,860, 351 Globally

And 119,089 in India

Today it is 1,026,044 Globally

and 46,056 in India

My major learnings

As with every campaign I found myself getting more and more conversant with different aspects of blogging . Concepts like voice, niche and content became clearer . I began to see the shortcomings in my own blog and realised that I would have to drastically change my strategy if I need to increase traffic, viewership and of course improve my Alexa Ranking.

And of course , I learnt how to blog on the go, use features of my mobile that I didn’t know about and of course using the WP mobile App!

So all in all, it wasn’t a bad experience !

Thanks Blogchatter for introducing me to Alexa and many other interesting bloggers.

This is my round up post for #MyFriendAlexa with @blogchatter .