HaliHannigan's Cupcakery

I'd been hearing rumors of this new cupcake shop in our neighboring town of Jackson for awhile now. So while I was out running errands the other day, I stopped in to HaliHannigan's to take a peek. I cannot lie...and also to conduct my own taste-test. =)

First of all, this place is CUTE. And charming. I wish I had a picture to show you. It's got a pink floor, to which I immediately said, "Yes, please." (Jeremy's agreed to paint our hardwood the same color. Happy Valentine's Day to me!! Also, April Fool's Day is soon, is it not?) The rest of the decor was super cute also, but the real draw, of course, are the cupcakes themselves, all pretty on display in two glass cases.

They offered 4 cupcakes for $10.00, which seemed reasonable for beautiful (and delicious) cupcakes. They had about 10-15 flavor offerings and the cashier told me the varieties change constantly - their Facebook page will continually spread the news of the current menu options. I could tell they had a great selection of Valentines cupcakes at this time of year, so I wanted to be sure to tell you about about this place before this weekend. In case you live around here - and in case you're not a baker or you're too busy or you're what-have-you...

I picked out the Peanut Butter Chocolate Explosion, Cherry Cheesecake, Turtle Cheesecake, and Chocolate Raspberry. We had friends in town for the FHU Bible Lectureship this week (and had such a great time with them!) so we had a cupcake-tasting party after one of the evening lectures. I had given my mom the turtle cheesecake one, but we really had plenty left to taste because our friend Matt doesn't really like sweets. (Something I will never understand.) Jeremy, Julie, and I are the normal ones - and we enjoyed every bite!

My mom's Turtle Cheesecake

Chocolate Raspberry

Cherry Cheesecake

Peanut Butter Chocolate Explosion

The consensus: The Cherry Cheesecake one was incredible! And the hands-down winner. The tastes and textures were amazing. Running a close second was the Chocolate Raspberry, which had pink edible glitter. (Pink glitter that you can eat!! Oh, yeah. Happy day.) We were so sugared up that we barely even got to the PB and chocolate one. It was good, but we were all partial to the others.

From their Facebook page, it looks like they will also have chocolate covered strawberries and some other fancy Valentine treats during the next few days. Mmmm! HaliHannigan's Cupcakery is located in The Columns, near Ashley Furniture - and whatever gym is over there. ;) You should check them out. I think they're pretty sweet. And no, they're not paying me to say so. =)

Happy Friday!
Kristen

Frosting Roses

First of all, a note about the fact that I'm changing up the blog. I've posted a grand total of THREE times in the last year. Just never got into it...but life has changed since then. And now I have more time to write. And I want to write. And I have different (and more fun) things to write about...like cupcakes. =) 

I changed the title, too. Though I, too, have pet peeves, I really have problems with people whose blogs are continuous complaints. I'd rather focus on positive things...and some of those positive things are literally sweet (like cupcakes)...hence, the new name. 


Alrighty then. I've been talking up the cupcakes, but really, I want to share something else first. I was going through some old emails the other day. Emails I'd gotten, emails I'd sent in return. This was before the days of Facebook, so I emailed quite a lot - especially since my best friend had moved to Paraguay to work as a missionary. For five YEARS. I was an unmarried twenty-something...and I've gotta admit that many of those emails to/from my good friend had to do with dating and boys and all the angst those topics involve. And I'm not even a dramatic person! Yeesh. To fully jump back inside my mind during those years was quite the experience. To see how I've changed...and how in some ways I'm exactly the same. And I was thoroughly amused by these old emails; I laughed out loud so much while reading over them. I'm going to share one of them now - not one of the dating ones, mind you. You won't find that here! Unless I severely edit one for the blog sometime. As my mother always told me, "You don't have to tell everything you know." 


Back to the email for today: this one was written about a cake decorating class I had been taking at the local Hobby Lobby. See, there's the cupcake tie-in. Kinda. ;) Oh, and the notes in italics are ones I've added for clarification for the purposes of this blog.

Ashley-

   Hey, as I was writing the subject line (something like "Nothing Much Here") and felt it really was the truth, it occured to me that I forgot to tell you about my very last cake decorating class this past Monday. Well, you know the problems I have been having with all that stuff and that I was sick to death of it all. Since I didn't have much planned for this past weekend when I got back home from purchasing my CD (John Mayer's Room for Squares - the day after it came out. CDs...huh. When was the last time I bought a CD?!) and relaxing at Davis-Kidd, I dragged out everything pertaining to the making of frosting and got to practicing. I brought my Bose CD player into the kitchen and put John Mayer on "repeat" and just buckled down to perfect the rose. 

The class is always so rushed and I had finally realized that I had to practice between times or I would never get it right during class. What a concept, I know...Anyway, I worked and worked and fussed and fussed and seriously contemplated taking up cursing, just for the day. (Disclaimer: No, not really. If you knew me, you would know how comical this is.) You know I don't have a bad temper, but I finally decided that cake decorating was not going to help me get to heaven....and that it might even hinder me. So I would get really ticked every once and awhile. I would grumble and growl and then finally throw the offending "rose" that had taken the strange form of a mushroom onto the counter - it had a satisfying splat - and then stomp off to read the funnies and let John soothe my soul. Amazingly enough, it worked. Then I would take it up again, but still not ever completely "getting it." 

I gave up for the evening, but started up again the next afternoon and then again after the gospel meeting that night. My dad even tried to help me out, (this was the phase of life between college graduation and first job/apartment, so I was living at home) but finally in an unexpected turn of events I made a rose that actually looked like a rose instead of a really flat cabbage. There was great rejoicing in my kitchen that night! I made another one, just to ensure it wasn't a fluke. Nope, no fluke. After all the hours I had spent, I had finally done it. It was all a piece of cake (pun intended) after that. The next night in class I whipped out rose after rose and put them in a bouquet on the top of my two layer wild cherry cake with cream cheese frosting. I even did a nice leaf border around the bottom of each of the layers (it is important at this point in envisioning this cake to know that the top layer was slightly smaller than the bottom one). I felt so...so competent when I was done. Wow, I'm actually sighing with relief and pride even now as I'm writing this. Words can really make you relive the moment. I guess that's why I like them so much. 

   I'll end the story with saying it was almost painful to watch the people at work cut into it. They all really enjoyed it, which appeased me, as I had been tempted to shellac it and place it on a pedestal in my room at home. Well, I hope you are having a great day! I'm thinking about you!

Love always,
Kristen

(I'll have to dig out the picture of that cake sometime...but that was in the days before I had a digital camera. Boy, things have changed! I'll leave you with a picture of my friend Ashley, on right, and me, well, on the left. We were tea partying that day - this was after she moved back from Paraguay. Yea!)