Wow. Talk about decadence. Windy_Sydney posts this devil's-food-cake cupcake topped with vanilla frosting (tinted green) and garnished with a mint chocolate brownie and mint chocolate sauce. Refreshing!

Here's a picture for all of you frosting lovers out there. I've always been more of a cake girl than a frosting girl, but I know plenty of you out there will be positively salivating out there at the sight of this treat. It comes to us Marilyn of Simmer Till Done and along with the picture, she posted the recipe for that lovely buttercream so that you too can make a highly frosted cake of your own.

Yep - 50,000. In honor of the holiday, University of Maryland bakery staff took two months to make the confections, which are being stored in various freezers all over the College Park campus.

UMD officials expect about 80,000 people to attend the event today, which is free to the public.

The numbers are unbelievable: the ingredients were $14,000, which were paid for in part by corporate sponsors, and the total calorie count for all 50,000 cakes is a staggering 12.6 million. Take that, Weight Watchers.

Oh - and the photo? Courtesy of rockin' Slashfood Flickr user Cupcakequeen.

And now, to continue with the absinthe trend...

Coconut and Lime author Rachel Rappaport's recipe for her cupcakes caught my eye right away. They're really simple - flour, sugar, milk, butter, and the most important part - 1/4 cup of absinthe.

Rachel recommends Kübler Absinthe Superieure absinthe, which is what she chose for the cupcakes, but feel free to substitute another brand if you so choose.

She tops the cakes with her green fairy frosting, which also contains a drop of absinthe, as well as a few drops of green food coloring to give it that light, fresh look, and tops it off with - what else? - a sugar cube. Perfection.

I have a confession. That half of a cupcake you see right there, well, I actually was the one to eat it. Last Saturday morning, Scott and I went to Reading Terminal Market for brunch and grocery shopping. We bought a bunch of food and, as we were leaving, made a stop at Termini Brothers, one of the best and oldest bakeries in town. They've had a stall in the market for years and are known city-wide for their canoli, cakes, cookies and other baked goods.

We waited until we got home to bust into the cupcake and he got to it first and slicing it in half so that I'd get a fair portion. The color of the sprinkles was appealing and light in the apartment so good at the moment that he snapped a picture of the half eaten cake. Oh cupcakes, what you do to us!

There are some tschochkes that are so irresistibly cute, so miniature and fun, that we just have to have them.

For me, it's a Yummy Donut keychain by kidrobot, designed by super-talented, Pennsylvania-based My Paper Crane designer Heidi Kenney. If you think these donuts are cute, just wait 'til you see the rest of her work - she knits plush food accessories like eggs, milk cartons, and ice cream sandwiches, complete with little smiley faces and rosy cheeks.

The keychains are about one inch by one inch, and each are different - but the boxes aren't labeled, so the "flavor" you get is a surprise. I wound up with Honey, a shy lemon-glazed, but there are tons of them available: from Sugar Daddy, a jolly chocolate-glazed with sprinkles to Pinky, a smiley hunk of chocolate cake with pink frosting to Cris Cringle, who sports white frosting accented with red and green sprinkles.

And at $2.95 a pop, you can afford to start a collection. Go on - you know you want one.

It's been a long day here at Slashfood, though with such a sugar high off all the candy we threw at you, it probably seemed to go by fairly quickly! To round out our day of candy in honor of Halloween, let's have a dessert made in the spirit of one of many people's favorite candy, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- chocolate and peanut butter in one.

To make this cupcake, I baked chocolate cupcakes. To be quite honest, whatever chocolate cake recipe that works for you, works for me because in the end, the most crucial part of the cupcake is the Fluffy Peanut Butter Frosting. I've made peanut butter based frosting before, but I used a slightly different recipe this time

Combine ½ c. softened butter with 1 c. creamy peanut butter (if you like crunchy, use crunchy, which is what I've done before). Add 2 c. powdered sugar (sifted after measuring), and up to ¼ c. heavy cream until you get the consistency you want.

Frost your cupcakes, then top with all those leftover Reese's Peanut Butter Cups!

There are some combinations of food that just taste good together. Cheese and crackers. Peanut butter and celery. Tuna salad and mashed potatoes. What? You mean not every family ate those two items together? It is actually quite delicious (and fun to mold). Another classic combination is donuts and coffee. Over at the Cupcake Bakeshop, Cheryl has reimagined that traditional pairing by turning it into a cupcake (topped by a small, homemade donut). She is one of those bloggers who's food photography makes me drool every so slightly each time she puts up a new post.

Photo link

Wow.

When I saw these, all I could say (in my head, of course) was "Wow."

Though this may look like a very cute gang of B-boys, hip hoppy guys who breakdance, these are cupcakes. Su-yin, located in Australia, made these as birthday cupcakes in honor of a friend. The detail with the heads wrapped up in 'do-rags, caps, and even the Kangol hat is great, but I love the darling look of the faces. The faces are so adorable, I know for sure I wouldn't be able to take a bite (though she has pictures on her post of a half-eaten face).

More often than not, when people talk about cupcakes and the bakeries that specialize in them, New York and Los Angeles are the two cities that come up. From Magnolia Bakery and Buttercup Bakeshop in NY to Sprinkles in LA, the rest of the country gets passed over like plain cupcake for a cream-filled one. But non-coastal residents should know that there are plenty of cupcakes to choose from elsewhere in the US and, to prove this point, the Detroit News conducted a taste test of local chocolate cupcakes. Each shop was scored on a scale of 1-5, with one being poor and 5 being excellent:

• Papa Joe's Chocolate Cupcakes (4.5, $1.89) - "Sinfully wonderful!"
• Astoria Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes: (4.4, $2.50) - "Chocolate heaven!"
• Holiday Market Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes (4.2, 89 cents) - "A very grown-up cupcake.
• Party Cakes Chocolate Cupcakes (4.0, $1.49) - "Something to die for or maybe to die from."
• Cupcake Station Chocolate Lovers Cupcake (3.9, $2.75) - "Tastes homemade."
• Trifles Chocolate Cupcakes (3.9, $1.75) - "All-around great."

From the sound of it, Detroit may be better off in terms of quality cupcakes than either coast!

It's no surprise that the Cupcakes take the cake girls want you to say it with cupcakes this Valentine's Day. They have put together a list of some of the cupcakeries around the country that are offering V-day specials, whether they're flavors, prices or events that have been arranged in honor of the holiday. Their list reads like a who's who of bakeries: Cupcake Royale in Seattle, WA, Sprinkles in Beverly Hills, CA, Best Buns in Arlington, Virginia, Frosted Cupcakery in Long Beach, CA, Cake and Art in Los Angeles, CA, Leda's Bake Shop in Sherman Oaks, CA and The Cookie Jar Bakery in Houston, TX. Sprinkle's "I love you" cupcake assortment, which includes chocolate marshmallow, red hot velvet, and vanilla cupcakes packed in an XOX box, is pictured above.

Remember that some bakeries will not advertise their specials anywhere other than in-store, but just about every single one is going to have some kind of Valentine's cupcake in stock, so it's worth dropping by your favorite bakery to check out their offerings if you're not planning on baking yourself.

These cupcakes get a long, descriptive name because one glance isn't enough to tell you that they're anything other than plain chocolate cupcakes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but the addition of orange gives them a new depth and makes them a bit more interesting than they would otherwise be.

The cake itself actually just has a hint of orange, but even though it is not a very pronounced flavor when compared to the chocolate, it is noticeable enough to make the cake tie in perfectly with the frosting, which does have a very orange-y flavor. The frosting is made mellow, rich and very smooth by the use of cream cheese and is perked up with orange zest and orange juice. There is a small amount of cocoa powder in it, as well. If you want to make the orange flavor in the frosting even more pronounced, add in a 1/4 tsp or so of orange oil in addition to the other ingredients.

Moist cake, luscious frosting, chocolate and orange. What more could you want? Seconds.

Read on for the recipe.

It's a good thing that this is just a picture of the Hand Dipped, Chocolate-Covered Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes that Lolo, from Vegan Yum Yum, baked, because if they were the real thing, they would have been long gone by now. They were made by baking a vanilla cupcake directly in an ice cream cone, the "cake cone" style that is flat-bottomed and easy to stand upright. Once the cupcakes were baked they were topped off with vanilla buttercream frosting (a vegan version, in this case) and chilled slightly so that the chocolate coating would be able to set up in a crisp, crackly shell. Lolo said she used Green & Black's organic baking chocolate for the shell, simply melting it in a double boiler and quickly dipping the frosted cakes.

As it happens, the only thing keeping me from baking a batch of these right now is the fact that I don't have any ice cream cones to work with. Perhaps a trip to the store is in order....

Well, since we're getting all decked out tonight in taffeta dresses, shimmering tights, and sparkling sandals, it sure makes sense to dress up your cupcakes, too.

Okay, so maybe you won't be donning taffeta, and will, instead, be in cozying up in front of the fireplace in your sweats.

In either case, you won't be baking tonight. However, when you do go back into the kitchen, you just might want to use these gorgeous cupcakes wrappers from Traylor Papers. The cupcake wrappers feature a laser cut design around the edge that dress up your cupcakes, even if they don't have frosting (but we know you'd never go frost-less).

The wrappers are $8 for a set of 10.

Maraschino cherries are perserved, sweetened cherries that are dyed red and flavored with a little bit of almond. Sticky sweet, they aren't the most popular of fruits, but there are at least two things that they are perfect for: garnishing cocktails and topping off desserts. These Cherry Vanilla Cupcakes from Cupcake Bakeshop look perfect with their garnish, which seems much more appropriate for their flavor profile than sprinkles would be because it lets a potential cupcake eater (if, for example, these are out on a dessert table) know what kind of cupcake he or she should expect. They probably still won't expect to find cherry pie-like filling in the center of each vanilla cake, but it will help.

If you're interested in using little treat cups for your baking, as show in the picture above, take a look around a craft store, which is where I found mine. Don' fill them quite as high has you might fill regular cupcakes because they are more likely to overflow, but otherwise they should work our just the same as normal cupcake papers.