Scharffen Berger Chocolate Adventure Contest Launch!

To kickoff the 4th Annual Scharffen Berger Chocolate Adventure contest – theme: cupcakes, a bunch of food bloggers were invited into the kitchens at Astor Center for a cupcake competition and the secret ingredient reveal.

When I arrived a little late, I was handed this drink, a Mango-cocoa martini.  I didn’t taste any mango, but it was pretty chocolatey and strong on the alcohol.  (Like my fingerless gloves?  I love these!  I took them off while we prepped the cupcakes, though.)  There were hors d’oeuvres floating around that I missed out on unfortunately, but I saw one and it looked like a rib.  Seriously.  I am curious how anyone ate those without getting it everywhere… But any case, we were told all the recipes came from past winners.  That was pretty cool!

Secret ingredients!

You may remember last year, I attended a similar event kicking off last year’s chocolate adventure with Elizabeth Falkner.  Well, she was back!   We were split into two teams via random drawing, one on her side…

… and one on Johnny Iuzzini’s side!

I really liked Falkner’s laidback attitude and casual style last time, so I lamented being chosen for Team Iuzzini. 

His cupcake sounded interesting, but when he kept telling us that he’d feminized it for us, I was a bit annoyed.  Anyway, I was tasked with making the poprocks, along with Cecily, Blondie & Brownie. 

Close-up.  Interesting, right? 

Blondie (foreground) & Brownie (background) hard at work decorating cupcakes while I take pictures.   

Hmmm, my cupcake.  I thought it looked good when I did it – I was happy I didn’t blast frosting everywhere cuz I’ve never piped in my life – but now that I see the picture, those uneven blobs look awful, hahaha.  I don’t have the center gloppy white stuff because I’m allergic to coconut, and it was made with coconut, so I opted out…

All lined up and blogger-made.

Whoever made this one did a MUCH better job than I did with the piping, haha. 

Team Falkner’s offering with spicy peanuts and lots of ganache. 

The goodie table, which got mauled at the end of the night.  Mmm… chocolate… for baking, and for eating!!!  NOMMY

Here’s a cross-section of my cupcake – stuffed with a raspberry, chocolate buttercream, poprocks, …….

Here’s a cross-section of the Falkner cupcake, which was filled with … I don’t know.  But it was the end of the night, onto judging and……..

TEAM IUZZINI WINS IT!!! 

The Scharffen Berger folks didn’t send us home empty-handed, of course.  Along with a ton of other chocolate goodies, and some secret ingredients, they thoughtfully included a box of…

… the two challenge cupcakes, so we could taste them ourselves and judge what’s up!  These were not blogger-made. 

The Falkner cupcake (which I have the recipe for, if anyone wants it – just ask), which was comprised of dark chocolate fudge frosting, molasses fluff filling…

And the Iuzzini cupcake (which I also have the recipe for, just ask!), which was

Cross-section of the Falkner cupcake – the molasses fluff filling was pretty creamy, but the top layer of ganache was super dense and way too chocolatey.  The spicy peanuts were nicely spicy on their own, but seemed lost in the grand scheme of cupcake.  (And this contains coconut oil, for those who might find such things interesting.)  I was pretty meh on this.

And a cross-section of the Iuzzini cupcake, which had a lot of flavor but none were overwhelming or very sweet.  I actually wouldn’t say I liked this cupcake all that much, but I liked it more than the other one since the other one was a gutbomb and left me feeling sticky-sweet, while this one was much lighter in flavor. 

Both cupcakes were definitely interesting to try, and I was very happy to have been invited once again to kick off the contest.  Definitely check out the contest website and see what this year’s adventure ingredients are, and try to make a cupcake with at least one of the ingredients – grand prize is $10,000!!! 

Good luck!  And thank you again to Scharffen Berger for inviting me to participate in this awesome event – thanks even more for the chocolate that will put me through this holiday season of baking and eating