Archive for the ‘Culinary Delights’ Category

Double your pleasure, double your fun.

Besides swirling, sniffing and sipping wine there is another, more adorable way to utilize wine for a wedding: custom-designed wine infused cupcakes! Amber Vandervliet, pastry chef and owner of Enjoy Cupcakes located in the heart of Santa Barbara’s Wine Country was inspired by local produce, flavors and wines and has found a creative way to combine a couple’s favorite wine with their favorite dessert and make their wedding just that more extraordinary.

Amber suggests using the cupcakes as a non-traditional tiered wedding cake, a conversational treat on the dessert table or as a delectable wedding favor for guests. She says it’s a marriage of sorts developing compatible flavors for a cupcake around a specific wine. Wine cupcakes are a necessary detail for a Wine Country wedding, and add another special detail to personalize a wedding. Amber not only creates a customized cupcake for a couple on their big day but she also sells them at Saarloos & Sons Tasting Room in the picturesque town of Los Olivos. Most days they sell out before the afternoon crowds show up to taste wine.

If you have a special wine that commemorates your first date, first kiss or the perfect proposal this is an original way to embrace the purple grape. The result will be a mouth-watering experience.

Below are some of Amber’s best selling wine-infused cupcakes:

Chocolate Blackberry Syrah – Chocolate, syrah infused cake, filled with dark chocolate Belgium fudge, topped with blackberry frosting and a wine soaked blackberry that’s rolled in sugar crystals.

Citrus Sauvignon Blanc – Sauvignon Blanc soaked cake, with fresh grapefruit, lemon curd center and frosted with a wine, cream cheese frosting that’s speckled with citrus zest and topped with wine soaked sugar crystals.

Cherry Vanilla Merlot – Merlot vanilla cake, soaked with cherry puree, vanilla cream filling, topped with vanilla frosting and a merlot soaked cherry.

Pomegranate Chardonnay – Chardonnay cake with a meyer lemon pudding filling, cream cheese frosting, topped with pomegranate seeds, lemon zest & candy pink pearls.

Caramel Pinot – Pinot cocoa cake with a gooey caramel filling, topped with a swirled caramel cream cheese frosting.

Olallie Berry Rosé – Rosé infused cake, with a creamy olallie berry core, topped with fresh olallie berry frosting.

Bubbly Strawberry Champagne – Champagne cake, filled with strawberry curd & topped with fresh strawberry frosting and secret surprise.

About Autumn

For more on Autumn Millhouse and her book Romantic Napa Valley, An Insider’s Guide for Couples, click here.

Autumn Millhouse is an award-winning travel writer who specializes in wine, food and romantic getaways. She is also an international trekker who has wined and dined across the globe from Barcelona to Beijing . A self-proclaimed “hopeless-romantic” and author of Romantic Napa Valley: An Insider’s Guide for Couples, Autumn also has a bi-monthly column called Love Vines published in Napa Valley Life Magazine. She resides in Napa Valley where she cultivates her wine and food relationships with top chefs, winemakers and a slew of other foodies. Besides, sniffing, swirling and sipping wine daily, Autumn is currently working on her next travel book Romantic Sonoma Valley: An Insider’s Guide for Couples.