MailOrder

St. Cupcake Offers Bespoke Mail Order Cupcakes - Yum!

Sometimes things that qualify as a luxury item are big and obvious; they are encrusted with diamonds, have a well known name and an expensive price tag. Other times luxury can be defined as something small that you do for yourself or a friend. A small Portland, Oregon bakery called St. Cupcake falls into this category of small personal luxuries.

This local bakery has started an online delivery service for their incredibly popular cupcakes. The luxury for the consumer lies both in the incredible wide range of flavor choices and in the fact that you can have home baked taste delivered to your door without lifting a finger. The inspiration for the mail order cupcake business came to owner Jami Curl after customers themselves mentioned trying to ship her delicious baked goodies to friends to taste. Jami thought that "we could develop some packaging and a technique that would allow us to ship the cupcakes so they arrive on the recipient's door step fresh and perfect."

Hence the wonderful and unique online cupcake builder was born. Customers can choose their cake flavors, their icings and their sprinkle colors creating a truly bespoke cupcake. Often this allows for even greater freedom as customers have come up with unique combinations never anticipated by the owners and not sold in the bakery. The cupcakes come in three possible package combinations of 3, 6 or 12 cupcakes. Flavors of cupcakes include the basic vanilla and chocolate as well as more esoteric flavors such as pumpkin spice, carrot and vanilla toffee. A true west coast shop there are even vegan selections for those with dietary restrictions. The buttercream frosting selections include unusual flavors such as mint and fudge while the sprinkle choices vary from standard jimmies to rainbow nonpareil and toasted coconut. It seems that the shopping ends up being as much fun as the receiving.

The cupcakes arrive in an adorable kit with an icing wand and decorating tips. A perfect gift idea for a birthday or even to send to your own family when you are too busy to make home made treats for your children. A simple little luxury ranging in price from $10.00 for three cupcakes to $35.00 for a package of twelve.

Gallery: Bespoke Cupcakes

Tags: birthday, chocolate, cup cakes, CupCakes, mail order, MailOrder, online shopping, OnlineShopping, St. Cupcake, St.Cupcake, vanilla

Caviar & Crustacean Blowout in the World's Most Expensive Seafood Hamper

by Deb West (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

For those seafood lovers among us, nothing brings us bigger pleasure than the raw bar. There is something about mounds of crustaceans on a fresh bed of ice accompanied by a huge tin of caviar, that is truly symbolic of decadence of the holiday season. Throw in a glass or two of good champagne and we are in gastronomic heaven.

The Fish Society, one of the United Kingdom's most respected mail order purveyors of all things from the world's seas, has rolled out a huge assortment of crustaceans to satisfy a hungry group who are thumbing their nose at the current economic forecast. At 2,500 Great British pounds their "Caviar and Crustacean Atomic" hamper is laden with 17 different delicacies from the four corners of the globe. Included in this feast are 16 inch long giant Siberian crab legs, extra large crab claws from Chile,
freshly cooked native UK lobster, four kinds of prawns including monster sized half-pounders from Madagascar weighing in at half a pound each. The centerpiece of the spread is 750g of Sevruga caviar, yum!

Fish Society Chairman James Smith feels that the company helps take the stress out of putting together the assortment by providing a great balance of items already preselected for the customer. As for the price "It's not difficult to get to these price points if you are dealing in meaningful amounts of caviar. I can assure you they are good value." The hampers are intended to serve, and satiate, thirty people.

I don't think that I'd like to foot the bill for this extravagance, but I would love to be invited to the holiday party of someone who did! As an aside, as far as I could tell they only deliver within the UK and Europe but there was some note on the shipping page about the hamper being delivered outside the standard postal codes, so maybe they could be convinced to send it stateside too.

Tags: caviar, crustacean, holiday entertaining, HolidayEntertaining, mail order, MailOrder, shellfish, The Fish Society, TheFishSociety