Emily's Cafe & Desserts

There's a brand new vegan cafe and bakery in town and inasmuch as there is a vegetarian in my life, I couldn't wait to check it out. Emily's Cafe, located at 4901 Springarden Drive in the Coldspring/ Mt Washington-ish part of town, is a beautiful, clean and airy space serving breakfast and lunch and delicious, store-made baked goods.

I've written before about people's apprehension when it comes to vegan baked products. People have an understandable fear that their vegan donuts are going to taste like a hamster cage. But Emily's homemade desserts are so delicious that you are guaranteed to forget they're also good for you. Cupcakes range from black bottoms to coconut, chocolate, pumpkin, and carrot: each is moist and loaded with a flavor profile that will appeal  to everyone from the littlest sugar bomber kid  to your mother-in-law who won't want anything "too heavy."

There are pies, donuts, and cakes, too, all made in-house, all certified vegan. Emily does custom orders, custom cakes, event favors, and gourmet pretzel rods as well. You can view the complete menu here. And if you can't make it to the store, Emily's ships via UPS within the continental US! I am not exaggerating when I report that the carrot cake cupcake was without question the best carrot cake cupcake I've ever had anywhere - extremely dense, loaded with carrots, nuts and raisins, and topped with a slightly citrus-y cream cheese icing that prevented the kind of cloying belly busting effect a carrot cake cupcake can leave with you. The black bottom cupcake was moist throughout, with the not-very-sweet chocolate cake offsetting the cream cheese/chocolate chip filling. These are serious, adult cupcakes that still bring out your inner 4 year old because, after all, who can eat a cupcake and be a stick in the mud adult?!

The cafe is open all kinds of crazy-mad hours (6:30 AM to 4 PM, Mondays through Fridays and 9 AM to 2 PM on Sundays) and is an adorable little oasis of serenity in the middle of the city. This is the kind of place that you know I champion - owned and operated by locals, with a small, earnest operation - and I'm hoping they have all kinds of success. The cleanliness of the cafe and outrageous freshness of the bakery goods won me over immediately and have made me a huge fan of Emily's Desserts.

Emily's Cafe and Desserts is located inside the stone mansion at 4901 Springarden Drive; phone 443-858-7045. Open Mondays through Fridays from 6:30 AM to 4 PM and Sundays from 9 AM to 2 PM.

Gingerbread House Fun

We took three of our favorite little kids, ages 6, 5 and not-quite-4, to the Cake and Wedding Cottage last weekend, where we all participated in one of their gingerbread house-making workshops. What a huge amount of fun that was!

Kudos to the great ladies at the Cake and Wedding Cottage, especially Ms. Tammy, our instructor, who patiently demonstrated the finer points of gingerbread house construction, including how to apply Necco wafers to a roof and the all-purpose method of using royal icing as g-bread house "glue." There were about 15 kids (plus some helping parents and grandparents) in our session, ranging in age from 3 to about 16, and everyone universally had a blast.

The 25 dollar fee buys you an hour-long g-bread house-making session, complete with instruction, and all materials are provided. The class is incredibly organized. Ms Tammy had many pastry bags full of royal icing all set and ready to go when we got there, and everyone received a pre-baked, pre-assembled gingerbread house to work on. Each participant also gets a bag full of candies and plastic decorations to use - everything from Necco wafers to marshmallows, spearmint leaves, gumballs, jujubes, and starlight mints. And Ms Tammy's philosophy of gingerbread house decoration appears to be the very Eastern "Let a thousand flowers bloom." In other words, however your kids want to decorate their houses, Ms Tammy fully supports their artistic vision.

At the end, of course, everyone gets to take his or her gingerbread house home. I was so impressed with this class from beginning to end: it's very organized, the teacher is extremely kid-friendly, the supplies are plentiful (and if you need more, Ms Tammy will cheerfully provide them), and the store even supplies boxes to tote your creations home. The class lasts for an hour, which is just the right amount of time to complete the project and help clean up. If you've ever wanted to make a gingerbread house but have been totally daunted by Martha Stewart's methodology, this is the class for you (take a child with you for cover.) Littler kids will need some help, especially in squeezing the icing out of the bag, but our 6 year old was pretty adept at doing most of the steps himself. And even though he's a tough guy, he had a ball taking the class:

There are three gingerbread house workshops left in 2009; you can get all the signup info here.

The Cake and Wedding Cottage is located at 8716 Belair Road in Baltimore; phone 410.529.0200.

Another Thanksgiving Alternative: Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

Here's another alternative to traditional pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving this year: Paula Deen's pumpkin gooey butter cake. Paula has an entire squadron of gooey butter cakes in her repertoire, from standard to chocolate to toffee and pumpkin. These are extremely sweet and, well, gooey desserts the basis of which is an actual boxed cake mix - so you can't beat them for ease of construction.

According to Wikipedia, gooey butter cake originated in St. Louis (birthplace of Chuck Berry, so you know it has to be cool.)  A recent piece in the New York Times tells of the writer's enchantment with gooey butter cake which she describes, as only someone for the NYT could, as "like a babka.... like a cheesecake....but stickier." The pumpkin gooey butter cake made from Paula Deen's recipe and depicted above was not at all sticky, but definitely a big, huge, sweet thing, and since its basis is a boxed yellow cake, I couldn't get past the taste of boxed yellow cake in my mouth. While I am normally a huge fan of La Paula, this dessert was just a bit of a belly-buster to me, and was not my favorite. The NYT recipe for gooey butter cake calls for making the cake's basis with yeast, from scratch, rather than using a cake mix. And the NYT recipe does not utilize cream cheese, whereas Paula's uses an entire block; perhaps this is why Paula's cake is a big, giant sweet bomb. I guarantee you, if you have to go anywhere this holiday season where there are going to be relatives, after you knock back a few Valium, make some version of a gooey butter cake; you will be the hit of the parade. I absolutely guarantee it.

A gooey butter cake made with a cake mix takes virtually no time to make at all - a definite plus in my book at the holidays. This pumpkin gooey butter cake is not overly spice-laden, either, so if you have a dad like mine, who can barely tolerate pumpkin pie, and then only one slice, once a year, this might be a good alternative for him. Be forewarned: there is nothing light, or subtle, about a gooey butter cake. But it's sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

Baltimore's Chocolatiers

Want to make a long-time Baltimoron mad? Choose up sides in the "Rheb's versus Wockenfuss" debate. I can think of no more hotly-contested issue regarding Baltimore's food scene, other than the proverbial "who makes the best crabcake" lightning rod. I believe a person's answer to the "Rheb's versus Wockenfuss" question is a Henry Higgins-like tool that pinpoints pretty closely what part of Baltimore a person hails from.

Now that we've passed through the grisly portal that is Halloween and its attendant sugary (and often stale) mass-produced candy, I thought it an appropriate time to do a roundup of the chocolatiers working here in Baltimore. Baltimore's chocolate candymakers fall pretty clearly into two camps: those who make the more traditional, old-fashioned chocolates and those who are today called "artisanal" chocolatiers. I'll also take a spin past my favorite little spot to run to when the desperate need for a good, non-grocery-store candy bar overtakes you.

If I were condemned to the kind of hell in which I could only eat one kind of chocolate candy for the rest of my life, it would be Rheb's chocolates. I admit to a zeal for Rheb's candies that borders on fanaticism. I grew up, and my parents still live, within falling-down distance of Rheb's flagship store on Wilkens Avenue, and all the houses we visited when I was a kid - those of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends - always had a box of Rheb's on the table at all times. The ladies of Rheb's kept records of people's special favorites; those records, handwritten on index cards, reflected a customer's own personal "mix," and if you go to the store today you can find out what my mother's, grandmothers', and my own "mixes" are. (Mine is heavy on the chocolate buttercreams, in case you were wondering.) Rheb's makes all its candy in the basement of the house adjoining the retail store, and the store is an absolute gem of cleanliness, hospitality, and decadent chocolate smell. Rheb's used to have stores in the Lexington, Hollins and Belair Markets, too, but if you want some Rheb's today, you have to go the Wilkens Avenue store, or buy online.

Rheb's chocolates come in milk and dark varieties. So loyal to the brand are Rheb's customers that you virtually can't get near the store around the traditional candy-centric holidays of Christmas, Easter or Mother's Day. I have literally stood in line for an hour at the Rheb's in Lexington Market just to pick up my family's orders for Christmas; it's not unusual to be behind a customer at the holidays who's ordering ten boxes, all with particular mixes. Here's a little segment on WYPR devoted to Rheb's and its cultish followers. Although my daughter has traveled the world and is a sophisticated PH.D. student now at the University of Chicago, she is always happy when I send her a box of Rheb's truffles. When my family and I returned from a holiday in Switzerland with Swiss chocolate truffles carefully transported in our carry-on luggage, my mother took one bite and rendered her verdict: "Not as good as Rheb's." She amended that quickly: "Not nearly as good as Rheb's."

Thus you can imagine my surprise when, as I was working at a big Baltimore law firm as a young associate, one of the staff secretaries announced to me that Wockenfuss was the best chocolate candy in all of Baltimore. "Wockenfuss?" I asked her, to be sure I heard correctly. "I like Rheb's," I volunteered. She shook her head dismissively: "WOCKENFUSS," she pronounced, as if that were all that needed to be said. Case closed, her body language told me, as she added for emphasis: "WOCKENFUSS."

Until that moment, I had never associated Wockenfuss candies with Baltimore. I'd thought of Wockenfuss solely as an outpost of fudge in Ocean City. But how wrong I was! Wockenfuss Candies have been around since 1915 (Rheb's, the upstart, "only" dates back to 1917) and now have eight stores from Bel Air to Ocean City. The candy is much in the same traditional style as Rheb's, with milk and dark chocolate varieties; the two pictures above show boxes of Rheb's (top) and Wockenfuss (bottom) mixes, and although the two candymakers sell similar styles and varieties of chocolate, there is a distinct difference in freshness, creaminess, and texture, between the two. Blind taste testing for the purposes of this posting always resulted in the tasters' abilities to distinguish between Rheb's and Wockenfuss. Both Wockenfuss and Rheb's make excellent, satisfying, creamy chocolate candies. Piece for piece, the Wockenfuss candies are slightly larger, denser, and less "pillowy" than Rheb's:

Those are Rheb's milk and dark chocolate buttercreams, and a Rheb's sea salt caramel at the top; the Wockenfuss milk and dark chocolate buttercreams and sea salt caramel are at the bottom. Inside, the Rheb's buttercreams are fluffier and creamier in consistency; the Wockenfuss buttercream centers are chewier and more caramel-like in consistency, and which you would prefer would entirely be a matter of individual preference, because both hit you straight in the chocolate jones part of your soul:

That's a Rheb's chocolate buttercream at the top and a Wockenfuss buttercream at the bottom. And just to round out the picture of Baltimore chocolate candymakers creating candies in the traditional style, here are Naron chocolate buttercreams in milk and dark chocolate:

Naron, I believe, was founded in 1945 by a graduate of Baltimore City College and sold in 2001 to a corporation which owns Mary Sue and Glauber's candies as well. And no self-respecting Baltimoron can fail to know the words to the Mary Sue Easter Egg song! Naron chocolates can be bought at many local grocery stores; the venerable Eddie's has a chocolate candy case filled with Naron's chocolates. Below you can see a photo of three chocolate buttercreams, from Rheb's, Wockenfuss, and Naron, respectively:

Both Wockenfuss and Rheb's sell at their retail outposts (Wockenfuss with eight stores, one of which is on Belair Road in the city; Rheb's has only one store, on Wilkens Avenue) and via etail. I have not found anywhere to buy Naron chocolates other than at local grocery stores. While Naron continues to be a Baltimore business making chocolate candy in the traditional style, it is not in the same league as Rheb's and Wockenfuss. the titans of traditional Baltimore chocolate candies. The Naron candies, when taste tested for this posting, suffered from a pronounced lack of freshness when compared to the Rheb's and the Wockenfuss buttercreams. Rheb's, especially, won the freshness challenge, even though all three brands were purchased, and eaten, on the same day. One of the candy taste testing panel who helped with this posting pronounced the Naron buttercreams "Easter 2001." Yikes. People from the North and East of the City are going to answer "Wockenfuss" when asked for their favorite chocolate candies; people from the South and West will answer "Rheb's" to the same question. My intern, who lives on the Northeast side of town, is a mad devotee of Wockenfuss's dark chocolate pistachio marzipan.

But life in Baltimore's candy world is not all chocolate buttercreams and caramels, for here we have a handful of chocolate craftspeople who are true artisans, making small batches of European-style candies by hand. The undisputed king of this realm is Larry McGlinchey, owner and megastar of Cacao Lorenzo Chocolatier. I've written about Cacao Lorenzo several times on this blog, because each time I've gone to Cacao Lorenzo I've been deeply wowed not just by the quality and consistency of quality of the candies, but also by the exquisite, over-the-top presentations. These are the kinds of candies you feel honored to eat, so carefully and thoughtfully were they crafted. Visiting the store is not the typical "kid in a candy store" experience; here, boxes and samples of the latest confections are on display, but there is no large glass-fronted candy case, and all the magic happens, literally, behind the curtain. Cacao Lorenzo is dedicated to an educated customer base, as well, with a lot of information about chocolate and its history available both at the store and via the website. Cacao Lorenzo does custom chocolate work for weddings and events as well as for corporate gift-giving, and can ship to your lucky beneficiaries. Truffles come in milk, dark and white chocolate; with poire William cream and hazelnut gianduja. Bonbons may include lavender flower water, kirsch, chestnut, or cappucino. Every single piece of candy from Cacao Lorenzo is a stunning work of art. The big photo at the top of this posting shows a closeup of an assortment from Cacao Lorenzo. Just before my family and I fell on it.

Glarus Chocolatier, with stores in Harbor East and Timonium, makes preservative-free European-style chocolates, emphasizing particularly their truffles and chocolate bars. They do beautiful and sometimes whimsical seasonal specialties as well, and have launched their online ordering service if you are feeling particularly lazy and unwilling to fall into the traffic jam that has lately become Harbor East.

Since 1985 Albert Kirchmayr has been crafting fine German-style chocolates in the form of bonbons, truffles, and molded seasonal specialties from Santas to turkeys and pumpkins. Kirchmayr seems to be more widely in distribution than either Glarus or Cacao Lorenzo - you can find Kirchmayr chocolates at Wegmans and Eddie's, for example, whereas with some minor exceptions, you have to go to Glarus's stores or to Cacao Lorenzo directly to buy their candy. (That's not completely true, but it's mostly true; if you're lucky, for example, you can find some Cacao Lorenzo candy at a couple of local outposts. But for the big Mac Daddy selections of Glarus or Cacao Lorenzo, you need to go to their stores.) I am always completely entranced at the holidays by Kirchmayr's molded turkeys and Santas; I'm a sucker for those. The assortment depicted in the photo above shows my favorite Kirchmayr bonbon, the layered gianduia (the one with multiple strata of chocolate, like a grownup, bite-sized, Snickers bar.) Kirchmayr also makes gorgeous striated chocolate dessert shells, which make beautiful, spectacular desserts when filled with berries, mousse or ice cream. Because it's more readily available than the other fine European chocolates made in Baltimore, I think Kirchmayr might suffer a bit in the popular imagination (because, perversely, we always want what's harder to get); and in that way I tend to think of Kirchmayr as the Berger cookies of Baltimore's chocolate world - delicious, and uniquely Baltimore, and very chocolatey, but since widely available, not thought of as that exotic.

Because no single human being could possibly have eaten all the chocolate candies shown in these photos and lived to tell the tale, I enlisted my intern, who enlisted some of her friends, for a chocolate candy taste test. The tasting panel consisted of a handful of super-sophisticated athletes from Friends School, who, may I say, went completely gaga for the Kirchmayr chocolates. One student wrote: "I had no idea what freshness was until I tried those!" ~ a pretty good testimonial, I'd say. The students further commented that the common thread of the Kirchmayr candies was the "complex, bold, and delightful flavors." (Kudos to the English department at Friends, right? These kids can write!) And the students particularly singled out the Earl Gray tea bonbon from Kirchmayr as their hands-down favorite. As the intern so eloquently put it, "I know it sounds disgusting but it is absolutely amazing and should be a must when you get your box of chocolates." All in all, the panel pronounced the Kirchmayr chocolates "heavenly" and "amazing," so I am expecting a stampede stretching from the Friends soccer field to Kirchmayr any day now.

A special mention should go out to Sweet Cascades, on Main Street in Ellicott City. Sweet Cascades makes its own chocolate candies, too, and is a lovely combination of old-fashioned sweet shop (like Wockenfuss and Rheb's) and funky, uniquely themselves, candy products. Sweet Cascades also offers chocolate-making classes, which I think would be a whale of a good time; and there's just something so darned earnest and fun about a candymaker in Maryland who puts Old Bay in the chocolate! The Sweet Cascades store is located pretty much in the middle of the Main Street shopping zone of "olde" Ellicott City which, I recognize, is not technically "Baltimore," but is so good and special that I thought it deserved a shout out here. I really love the folks at Sweet Cascades, who will do just about anything to please you with their candy.

Not itself a chocolate candymaker, but a chocolate candy seller, Ma Petite Shoe holds a special place in my heart as a purveyor of all kinds of interesting chocolates (including Cacao Lorenzo), most in bar form. Here you can find chocolate bars with green tea, chili, olives, hazelnuts, even bacon! And candy bars with names like "cocoon" or "tranquility" (or, if you're trying to match my own personal mood, something more like "honk horn loudly and look frazzled.") I love the entire thang of Ma Petite Shoe - a store devoted to two perennial gal favorites, shoes and chocolate. You really can't come away from Ma Petite Shoe without a smile on your face, but if you're not up to the misery that can be parking in Hampden, you can order chocolates from Ma Petite Shoe online here.

And if you need photographic proof of the point at which this posting began - that there were always boxes of Rheb's candies about in all the houses of all my relatives from time immemorial, this black and white photo shows me, my mother, aunt and a bunch of cousins in the living room at my grandparents' house on Westport Street on Easter Sunday. (Vanity precludes my identifying the year, but as you can tell from the clothes, this wasn't exactly taken yesterday.) That's me, the baby on the right, with the Jackie Kennedy-esque stylish dark-haired mom. And down front, on the left.....the box of Rheb's...... open, because we're already demolishing it.....(there's probably some melted Rheb's chocolate in that bottle my mother is feeding me.)

Here's all the basic 411 to get your chocolate candy jones addressed:

Rheb's Candies (the Louis J. Rheb Candy Company)

3352 Wilkens Avenue

410.644.4321; 800.514.8293

Mondays through Saturdays 8:30 AM to 4:45 PM

Wockenfuss Candies

8 locations; city store at 5420 Belair Road

410.483.4414 (locally); 800.296.4414

store hours vary by location; Belair Road store's hours are 9 AM to 6 PM, Mondays through Saturdays

Cacao Lorenzo Chocolatier

1818 Pot Spring Road, Timonium

410.453.9334

Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 6 PM; Saturdays, 10 AM to 5 PM; closed Sundays

Glarus Chocolatier

9 W. Aylesbury Road, Timonium and in Harbor East at 644 South Exeter Street

410.252.6601; 866. GLARUS.1

store hours vary by location

A. Kirchmayr Chocolate

9630 Deereco Road, Timonium

410.561.7705

Mondays through Fridays, 9 AM to 5 PM; Saturdays, 10 AM to 5 PM; closed Sundays

Sweet Cascades

8167 Main Street, Ellicott City

410.750.8422

Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 AM to 6 PM

Ma Petite Shoe

832 W. 36th Street (The Avenue)

410.235.3442

Mondays through Thursdays, 11 AM - 7 PM; Fridays, 11 AM - 8 PM with a chocolate happy hour from 6 PM - 8 PM (that's two hours of chocolate happiness!); Saturdays, 11 AM - 7 PM; and Sundays, noon- 5 PM

Doing Good Works, One Cookie (or cupcake) at a Time

I have a pretty cushy life, and if you are reading this blog, you probably have one, too.   I have the luxury of baking things, and scouting out sweet stuff to put in my mouth, and I write about it, and some days my biggest worry is whether the lighting on my food photos was good enough, or whether I should have used the Lindt chocolate instead of the Bensdorp.  I have this cushy life because many people work very hard to make sure that I can, and among those people are the men and women in our military.  Regardless of my political views (for the record, I'm such an ardent pacifist that you might go so far as to call me a "coward"), I thoroughly support the troops, who work for low pay, at great risk to their own lives and safety.

I was thrilled to read only days ago about a wonderful organization called Baking Gals, a loose coalition of bakers across the country who every month make treats and send them to troops deployed in a war zone. Baking Gals' credo is simply this: "Our goal is to show our support and send a little bit of home to remind them that we appreciate all that they do for our freedom." I signed up instantly. It's easy to join, there are just a few rules, and especially at the holidays, when you'll be baking anyway, it would be an absolute snap just to make a couple extra dozen cookies and ship them to people who would truly appreciate your thinking of them. Do you cry when you hear that song "I'll Be Home for Christmas"? Then bake a few cookies. And don't stop at the holidays - keep the treats going until there won't be any troops deployed in war zones needing cookies anymore. Is baking extra cookies too much effort, but you want to support the organization's mission? You can donate directly, via PayPal, here. Or you could buy some cool Baking Gals Stuff here.

Another tremendously worthy endeavor in which you can participate comes from Cookies for Kids' Cancer, founded by Gretchen Holt Witt, whose son Liam was diagnosed in 2007 with stage IV neuroblastoma. When Gretchen held a giant bake sale that raised over $400,000 to support pediatric cancer research,she realized that she had harnessed the power of her friends and fellow bakers for good. Since that initial event, Cookies for Kids' Cancer has inspired more than 200 bake sales and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for pediatric cancer research. You can support this amazing nonprofit in several ways: by holding your own bake sale (Cookies for Kids' Cancer has all you need on its website to help you get started); by purchasing cookies specially-made for Cookies for Kids' Cancer, with the profits going back to the organization; by buying some very cool swag; or by making donations directly.

Show your sweet side this holiday season by supporting one of these wonderful organizations. If you have other ways in which you reach out to those in need through your kitchen, or if you know of other groups the baking community can support, email me.

A Thanksgiving Alternative: Sweet Potato Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

If you have children, and especially if you have kids who are away at college but are coming home for Thanksgiving, you can skip this post. Because as all we moms well know, when you have kids you must - you absolutely must - keep up all the family traditions, without any variance whatsoever, until your kids say you can't. Which happens I'm not sure when, because I am still putting up at the holidays the advent calendar that my mother made for my daughter back when my daughter was 2 years old. As Tevye says, tradition.

But if you are a more adventuresome sort, and you're sick to death of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, here's a nice substitute that hits the same flavor notes as a traditional pumpkin pie but still offers something slightly different. I based this recipe nearly entirely on the work of the great Paula Deen, whose recipe for Pumpkin Cake with Maple Frosting appears in the November/December 2009 issue of Cooking With Paula Deen. Just to have fun with the recipe, I made some of the batter into cupcakes, which I topped with the icing from the recipe and then with crystallized ginger; after making a dozen cupcakes, I used the remaining batter to make a single layer cake, which I topped with the icing and sugared cranberries. The cake looked spectacular and the cupcakes looked adorable. You could put your own spin on this recipe by topping your cake with candied nuts, or pumpkin seeds, or anything you think would be great. So here's my take on Paula Deen's original recipe, with my few changes added:

Sweet Potato Cake with Maple Frosting

yield: 1 dozen cupcakes + 1 small 9" layer, or 1 large 9" cake to be cut in half

1 c. butter, at room temp

2 c. firmly packed brown sugar

4 eggs

1 15-oz. can sweet potatoes/yams

3 c. all-purpose flour, sifted

2 tsp. baking powder

1.5 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. whole milk

a jolt of pumpkin pie spice

maple cream cheese frosting (see recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350 and prepare your pans: for the cake pan, grease the pan or spray it with nonstick baking spray, and for the cupcakes, place muffin cups in the wells of the muffin pans.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. (Why do you need to add the eggs one at a time, rather than all at once? You build more volume in the cake batter by adding the eggs one at a time and beating them thoroughly until they're fully incorporated, then moving on to the next egg. Adding all the eggs at once won't materially alter the flavor of the cake, but the batter won't be as airy as it will if you do it as called for in the recipe.)

Empty the can of sweet potatoes into a bowl and mash them with a potato masher. Add the mashed sweet potatoes to the mixing bowl and mix well.

Sift the dry ingredients together and add them, alternately with the milk, to the batter. Begin and end with the flour mixture. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans and bake until done - about 20 minutes for the cupcakes and about a half hour for the cake, depending on your oven and depending on what incarnations your batter is taking. (Cupcakes take a much shorter time to cook than does a single layer cake; a single layer cake takes less time to cook than does a heavier amount of batter. You'll know when your treats are done if you use a cake tester, or your experienced finger applied to the center of the confection.)

Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool thoroughly. The cupcakes can be removed from the pans immediately to cool. When cooled, top the cakes/cupcakes with the cream cheese frosting.

 Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

12 oz. cream cheese, softened

3/4 c. butter, softened

2 Tbsp. maple syrup

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

4.5 c. confectioners' sugar

Beat the butter and cream cheese together in the bowl of a stand mixer until well blended. Add syrup and cinnamon and combine. Gradually add the confectioners' sugar and beat until the mixture is creamy and spreadable. Spread on the cooled cake or cupcakes.

To make the sugared cranberries, pick through your fresh cranberries to get the best-looking ones and to be sure the berries are free of stems. Dunk them in egg whites, making sure the berries are coated all the way around.

Roll the wet berries in granulated sugar, coating the entire berry, and place the berries on a wire rack to dry.

After icing the cake, I piped little mounds of icing on the top using a star tip, then sat one plump berry in the center of each mound of icing. The sugared cranberries are edible, but they will be tart as well as crunchy, and have been dipped in raw egg white - so you might want to think of them strictly as garnish.

Inhalable Chocolate!

Click here to see Mo Rocca (very funny guy) and Frank Bruni (author and former NYT food critic) tackle the future of candy, eat snakeskin-flavored candy, and take some hits off inhalable chocolate called Le Whiff.