New Flavor, New Happenings!

Lots of new things are taking place at my home this past week. We are undergoing some renovations with our newly purchased house and I am slowly stocking up my supply cabinet. This week my new whipped cream dispenser arrived, along with 50 replacement chargers. I may have already wasted one in my attempts to test it out, but no worries, 49 are left and ready for me to use!

We are also working on designing our logo and perhaps even a slogan. We sent off our request the other night and are anxiously waiting to see what the artist rendered for us. Hopefully by January we will be able to obtain our licenses and purchase our own site domain, instead of hiding in a blog. :)

Starting a business can be frightening and overwhelming, especially if you aren't sure what to do or where to start. I'm fortunate that my mom owned two successful businesses, one during the economic recession that still stayed afloat until she retired to be a full time grandma (and one of my favorite taste-testers). The experience has been eye opening and is the reason why Kevin and I decided to start this little bakery out of our home/online until we get a good feel of the market.

Okay...enough small talk. Let's discuss our newest flavor: Hot Cocoa!

With the time change comes the cooler weather. This weekend I opened all of the windows in my house and pulled out my favorite throw blankets to snuggle up with. I love the clean Fall air, the holiday commercials on TV, and rummaging through the Sunday paper looking for Christmas gift ideas.

I also love hot cocoa. Hot chocolatey goodness with a pile of marshmallows overflowing the cup and warming my insides (and making Baby #2 happy) always helps me unwind and remember to enjoy the cool nights, because Houston summers with their 110 degree temps are always around the corner.

This feeling inspired a new idea - why not a hot cocoa cupcake? Why not a marshmallow topping? This should be pretty easy, right?

As is the case with all gluten free baking, not so much. I lost an entire batter after an experiment went awry (my resources tell me to adjust the baking soda for my next attempt).

Back to the drawing board. On Saturday night, after much research, calculating, and measuring...and maybe a few mishaps with our homemade marshmallow frosting, here we are:

This little gem is the perfect sweet treat on a 'not cold enough for hot cocoa' type of night. It is a chocolate cupcake with a pillow of our homemade marshmallow frosting, which can be served 'toasted' or as the picture shows. I found a few candied snowflakes for garnish and voila! Both the cupcake and frosting are obviously gluten free, otherwise I wouldn't have already eaten 4 of them.

The other recipe I tried has a different direction that I'm going to attempt to steer it in this week, and if it works out, I promise to post it here.

So now we have two flavors, a pan that I'm still scraping residue off of, and a logo in the works! I hope everyone is getting as excited as I am!

Jeanne