Product Description

Cupcakes have captivated the nation, and Clare Crespo makes them like no one else. Crespo bakes up trompe l'oeil cupcakes for every occasion, proving they can look like balls of yarn, fried eggs, or peppermint candies - and taste just as fantastic as they look. Cute, accessible, and colorful, this cookbook contains 35 wildly inventive recipes, including: Cupcake Burgers: Chocolate and yellow cupcakes sliced and frosted to look like a burger topped with lettuce and tomato on a sesame seed bun; Cubcakes: Caramel cupcakes frosted to look like a koala, panda, and grizzly bears; Pollination Cupcakes: Honey-flavored cupcakes frosted to look like flowers, topped with candy bees; Six-Pack Cupcakes: Cola-flavored cupcakes stacked and iced to look like a six-pack of soda. In her acclaimed debut title, The Secret Life Of Food, Crespo created recipes that rallied families to approach birthdays, holidays, and picnics with devilish creativity. Enthusiasm for Crespo and her food creations landed the irrespressible author on Today, Good Morning America, and a raft of cable shows, including the Food Network's Extreme Cuisine, Top 5 and Roker on the Road; HGTV's Smart Solutions; and the Style Network's You're Invited. The book also garnered high praise in publications as diverse as Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38846 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 80 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780971793569
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Clare Crespo is the author of The Secret Life Of Food. In addition to appearing frequently on television, she writes monthly columns for Elle Girl and Tokion magazines and is a regular contributor to Nick Jr., Readymade, and Family Fun. Crespo's ingenious, irreverent recipes caught the eye of Hostess, who has hired her to help create new recipes that involve classics like Twinkies and Sno Balls.

Customer Reviews

Cute, but unrealistic photos.
If you are looking for inspiration, thie cover of this book will suffice. I often make cupcakes for kids' events, and got a few new ideas.

However, Ms Crespo violates rule number one for excellent food books: the cupcakes pictured are not always made according to the directions she gives.

I've already run across two examples. First, the Panda cupcakes (and other cupcakes with a white frosting base) are not made with vanilla buttercream frosting as stated. This frosting is cream-to-light-yellow in color since it is made with yellow butter and brown vanilla extract. The crisply white frosting in the photos is simply not vanilla buttercream. Second, the directions for the Crop Circle cupcakes calls for the cupcake to be frosted entirely, then scraped away. It does not take a cake expert to see that the example in the photo is not made that way--the frosting was piped on in a circular pattern, not scraped away at all.
These issues aren't so egregious, but undermine the basic premise of the book (which is that these are cupcakes that you, too, can make at home). I would recommend that the interested buyer simply look at the examples shown on the cover for inspiration, and use their own ingenuity, rather than purchase the book.

Extra yummy, extra fun!
I fell in love with this book when I had only seen a brief booklet of its photos. How can one resist a cupcake that's shaped like a flower, with a bee pollinating it? Or the koala and panda cupcakes, which are my absolute favorites. I don't even bake, but I still adore this book, and am happy to report that a friend made the panda and koala cupcakes for my birthday and they were just as adorable and delicious as they looked. Clare Crespo is a true food genius and I'd recommend this book for kids and adults of all ages. If you are ever feeling down, one look at Hey There, Cupcake! is sure to cheer you up. The photos and recipes are creative and cheerful and truly do the delicous treat that is the cupcake justice. Eat up!

Leader in the Cupcake Derby. Highly Recommended
`Hey There, Cupcake!' by culinary writer, Clare Crespo answers the burning question of where can I find a good cupcake recipe when I need one. This is actually the second cupcake book I am reviewing and I am happy to have both; however, if asked, I will definitely recommend Ms. Crespo's opus over `The Artful Cupcake' by Marcianne Miller.

First and foremost is the fact that Ms. Crespo's book is simply more fun, and I suspect that is what cupcakes are all about, aside from being, in Ina Garten's words `a delivery system for icing'. Both books are a bit light on recipes for the `cake' half of the cupcake team. Neither has a recipe of, for example, a carrot cake cupcake. I have also just noticed that neither has an index, although you will probably not really miss it, unless you happen to be looking for a carrot cake cupcake recipe.

Ms. Miller is less a culinary writer than a `crafts' writer, as I pointed out in detail in my review of her book. Oddly, `The Artful Cupcake' has a lot more general information on cupcake tools, general techniques, and ingredients. Ms. Miller handles the writing on baking and the cupcake designs are actually done by visiting crafts people. So, Ms. Miller is more of an editor than a true author. Ms. Crespo, on the other hand, seems to have done all the writing and cupcake designing chores on her book. As proclaimed by her subtitle, '35 Yummy Fun Cupcake Recipes for All Occasions', I repeat that Ms. Crespo's book is simply more fun. Among other things, this means it is a much better book for younger bakers. In fact, while Clare does not push this point too much, there is a sense about the book that it was written for a young audience, without actually talking down to the reader.

Aside from fun, one excellent advantage of Ms. Crespo's book is the fact that it does offer a lot of designs for specific occasions, especially specific occasions not generally covered by other pastry design books such as a knitting party (Ball of Yarn, Needle and Thread), New Years Eve (Clocks), atypical Halloween (Brain, Buried Alive, Eyeball, Brain), graduation (Brain, Coin), Superbowl (play-off) and so on.

Unlike some of Ms. Miller's designs, most of the decorations by Ms. Crespo are relatively easy, making excellent use of the kind of props you will find in a well-stocked craft store. I got the sense that these designs are very similar to the kind of skill and sense of humor we find behind some of Thomas Keller's more famous dishes where one kind of dish is made out to look like another, as with his famous doughnuts and coffee dish. Speaking of which, there is even a cupcake here that does an excellent job of masquerading as a cup of coffee, if served in a plausibly heavy white diner mug.

The book begins with a simple recipe for THE classic cupcake with white crumb and a vanilla butter cream icing, tinted pink, with a cherry on top. If I were teaching from this book, I would definitely encourage students to do this first. All cupcakes in the book are based on ten (10) cake recipes and six frosting recipes. This means that if you master a fair number of these sixteen recipes, you are well on your way to impressing friends and family with great cupcake improvisations.

My only reservation about the instructions in the book are that some directions for the decorating schemes would have been greatly improved by a few simple diagrams, especially if the book is to be tackled by young adults. It took me at least two or three tries to adequately visualize how one was to accomplish the design from the words in the directions. Compliments to Ms. Miller for providing such illustrations on a few of her more difficult designs.

As both of these books are relatively inexpensive, especially with a reasonable discount, I recommend them both. Ms. Miller's designs are much more suitable for grown-up occasions while Ms. Crespo's designs work much better for kids as both audience and sous chef to an adult who knows their way around a bag of King Arthur.

Highly recommended for original, entertaining cupcake designs.