A Sweet Vacation

Last week, Kevin and I visited my sister in Phoenix. She bought us tickets to see Love in Las Vegas, so we road tripped it 5 hours northwest the day after arriving. We stayed at the Mirage for two days. It was our first time in Sin City and Kevin and I spent a lot of time wandering the strip. One of my favorite sights was the Conservatory in the Bellagio. The garden in there was one of the most stunning things I had ever seen. Here is one of my favorites:

Vegas is known for many things and one of those things is food. One goal I had while there was to eat a truly decadent pastry chef made dessert, however, this did not happen. Hopefully next time.

We did enjoy some great treats in Phoenix though. My sister, Heather, who is also a baker, took us to Sprinkles. For those that don't know, Sprinkles is one of the first cupcakeries that made it big. Oprah raves about these cupcakes. They started in Beverly Hills, I think, and now have quite a few locations, including a location in Kansas City opening in the near future.

On a side note, people can be quite picky about cupcakes, more specifically, the ratio of cake to frosting. For me, I enjoy a good frosting. I think that is why I am experimenting with lots of unique frosting flavors. But that is another blog post. However, I don't want the frosting to do all of the talking though. With Sprinkles, the amount of frosting is quite small compared to the cake. The cupcakes are average size and the frosting is spread on like a shell, not a rosette like mine. They have many flavors, but only offer certain ones each day. One such flavor was a Chai cupcake. I had never seen such a thing before and had to have one. It was good, but unfortunately, nothing special. Probably my favorite was the Vanilla with Milk Chocolate frosting. Neither one of those things are my go-to choice, but it sounded really good and in our dozen, I wanted to try as many different frostings as I could. It turned out to be fantastic.

Another fantastic sweet treat we found was Nothing Bundt Cakes. Heather told me about it and Kevin and I found it while wandering Scottsdale by ourselves. If you ever get the chance to try one, DO IT. The closest location is in Colorado and a bunch in Texas and California. We tried the White Chocolate Raspberry in the Bundtlet size (about 4-inch diameter). The cake was super dense, but oh so moist and tender. The frosting was piped on in pieces, in order to see the cake underneath. It was probably my favorite thing I ate all trip.