Sweet Carolina Cupcakes

Happy Mother's Day

If you’ve read this blog before you know that I credit two important women in my life with inspiring me to open Sweet Carolina Cupcakes.  My Mother provided the business inspiration and my Grandmother,  the baking lessons.  While I owe a long and storied post to the guidance that my Mother has given me, this one is about my Grandmother.

In the early days of our little Cupcake Bakery we experimented with a variety of Chocolate Buttercream formulas.  Some were too much “of this” or not enough “of that.”  It seemed like we would never find the perfect mix.  Sitting alone in the bakery after a long frosting test session, buzzing from all the sugar and chocolate sizzling around my bloodstream, it suddenly hit me like a renegade bag of flour falling from the top shelf…My Grandmother’s Fudge recipe!

She used to make the most delicious rich creamy fudge you’d ever tasted.  She even occasionally modified it slightly to make a frosting for a cake that she called “Heavenly Chocolate.”  That was the ticket.   We set out making some test batches to see how it would work.  A tweek here and a tweek there, and finally, we had it.  Sweet Carolina Cupcakes’ Chocolate Buttercream frosting was born!  A rich, creamy concoction owed to the years of baking perfection that my Grandmother had performed.

She loved baking.  It seemed not an event would go by during my childhood that wasn’t blessed with some new and different baked item that she was experimenting with.  Like so many women of the Post-War years, she spent most of her time in the kitchen trying new recipes.  She fastidiously jotted down every one that she ever tried.  All of them. The good ones, the bad ones, and the ugly ones…She and her friends would trade recipes. They would make collective recipe books and give them as gifts for the holidays.  When I inherited this library of foodie-goodness, I had no idea where it would take me.  Today, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Now, I’m not about to give away the recipe.  No sir.  Not for any amount of money or a dream date with George Clooney.  I will tell you this, however; like any good recipe it is based on a few pure, simple ingredients: Grade ‘A’ Butter,  Cream, Cocoa and Sugar.  The rest you’ll have to figure out for yourself.  It’s “heavenly.”

So this post is to say thank you to my Grandmother for not only giving me a gift of delicious Chocolate Buttercream, but for being one of the most wonderful women in the world.

Happy Mother’s Day!