ICM:TAILGATE - Root for the Home Team!

No one can resist a great Tailgate and this weeks IronCupcake:Milwaukee challenge was no different. A great crowd gathered to enjoy cupcakes inspired by everything from the Kentucky Derby to bicycle racing to vintage Lombardi era football to a multitude of college salutes.


Sooo many special guests tonight. We were lucky enough to have self-professed tailgate expert, 99.1 WMYX's Kidd O'Shea on hand to MC our evening. As if here were not enough, we had a surprise visit from Roscoe, the mascot from our very own hockey team, Milwaukee Admirals - no, none of us have quite figured out WHAT he is. Perhaps that is part of the charm. As a gesture of thanks to the Admirals for allowing Roscoe to come and pay us a visit, we will be donating to the Admiral's Powerplay Foundation to support local youth sports charities. Plus, we were collecting t-shirts for teecycle.org. Whew!


And a special koo for IronCupcake, the host of allrecipes.tv's What's Cooking, Michael Ketchum was in attendance along with his camera man, David. They filmed our event, interviewed the bakers and we can expect to see their final product at allrecipes.tv in the near future. How cool is that? Oh, and we got Michael addicted to the world of Twitter, so be sure to follow him at @ARWhatsCooking.


For the PARTNER'S PICK, our partner for the Tailgate challenge, milwaukeesportsgeeks.com, could not pass up the delicious creations submitted by #12 - Haley. Her Never Melting Cones were a chocolate mint ganache cake topped with a fluffy peppermint icing. The kicker, the adorable little icecream cones she used instead of cupcake liners.


First time competitors and sister to one of our regulars, Jeremy; #17 - Emily and her team mate Chelcey brought their Root for the Brew Crew cupcake, a rootbeer cupcake with peanut butter frosting and a white chocolate baseball or mit garnish. In addition to their delicious cupcake, they made an AWESOME Brewers scoreboard that garnered them the QUEEN'S CHOICE award for the evening.


It was another extremely close race and it was just a matter of singular votes that kept this team from winning both display and taste; but it was the TASTE prize that they ultimately took home. The team from #18 - Peter Sciortino's Bakery (Melissa and Erin) brought their Brew Crew BBQ cupcakes. A smokey barbequed chocolate cupcake, filled with a mocha beer caramel. It was topped with an italian buttercream and spicy candied pecans.


And the winner for the best DISPLAY was the outrageous homage to, of course, the Green Bay Packers. Her cupcakes were Dark Chocolate cupcake with a Dark Chocolate Frosting, but it was the green and gold pulsing through her veins that brought home the win for #25 - Erica.


As if all these winners were not enough, we also debut the IronCupcake video. Produced by Media Sandwich, we hope to send this bad-boy off to media outlets and production companies to get the word out about how awesome the IronCupcake:Milwaukee world really is! Food Network, here we come!

As always, many thanks to Fred for text voting, at toomuchmetal.com; and to our dear friend Jim at JamesConwayPhotography.com for the gorgeous photography. See the slide show below:



Our next challenge is Monday, September 20th, where we will be cooking up PINK cuppies to save the "C" cuppies with 99.1 WMYX and Susan G. Komen for a Cure.