Every Saturday morning I walk to Little Italy Mercato here in downtown San Diego to buy most of my produce and cheeses for the week. We live about 1.5 miles from Little Italy so I also get a great three mile walk in! This is precisely why on this lovely September morning, I decided to eat breakfast at the market. Why not indulge a little?

I’ve been eyeing the pastries from Loic Patisserie’s booth for the past couple months. Tasting a little here and there. I want to try EVERYTHING. These are the kinds of pastries I want when I crave a pastry! Flaky, buttery, beautiful pastries!

First I ate half of my ham and cheese quiche from Loic Patisserie’s booth. It had been on dry ice, so it was chilled, but still quite tasty. The crust was so lovely, and although chilled, the inside was still creamy in texture. I love me some quiche! I saved the other half for later.

Then, I ate one of three Parisian Macaroons I purchased. I chose vanilla, cinnamon and chocolate. I ate the vanilla for dessert. It was quite lovely. I’m trying very hard not to finish off the other two!

I also had a free Key Lime Pie popsicle from Viva Pops, but I’ll share more on that later in the week as to why it was free. Very exciting!

Then, I ate the rest of my quiche when I got home! Three miles, people! I was hungry! Also, I much preferred it warmed to cold. Next week, I’m getting a chocolate croissant. It’s settled.

Yesterday, while exploring downtown San Diego, we stumbled up Heavenly Cupcake. Mind you this was right after we just finished Pinkberry. Now, I approached the cupcakes with caution, knowing that it would take all my will power to resist their charms and advances. I believe I could have resisted had I been alone, but Dustin was while me. As soon as he saw the Vanilla Caramel, he was in cupcake lust. Naturally, if he gets one, I have to try one too, right?

Let me just say, I am a HUGE fan of chocolate and orange together, and this Orange Chip Cupcake did not disappoint. The cupcake itself (sans icing) was so moist and tasty all on it’s own. The icing only enhanced the flavors adding a richness. I haven’t been eating sugar much lately so I took it easy on the icing. Even so, I was in a major sugar coma by the last bite! YUM!

We even got a Pupcake for Bonsai!

Heavenly Cupcake (Get it? Topped with little halos.) is located at 518 6th Avenue between Island Avenue & Market Street.

Many other flavors look and sound so good. Can’t wait to try them all. Good thing we live here now. I would hate to have to eat all of them at once!

A friend of mine had a Birthday yesterday, so I made some cupcakes. I must say, I had these grand pictures in my head of what they were going to look like. They were quite beautiful. However, don’t let these lovely little cupcake shops fool you, icing them to be so pretty and cute is harder than it looks! After testing about 6 different tips and failing miserably, I ended up snipping the end of the ziploc bag and just squirting that icing out! It was fun even though I did not turn out to posses secret Pastry Chef powers. 

Finished product. Only decent picture, sorry.
Only had the zoom lens at the time, and it was not cooperating in our small kitchen. 
  

Cupcakes cooling. I didn’t fill them up quite enough this time around.
 

See the ones I messed up on? No tip, just the Ziploc bag! 
It worked out much better for me.

This was a lot of fun. I will definitely do it again. However, I’d like to make the cake part of the cupcakes a bit denser to hold up to flavor and sweetness of the icing. Anyone have any recipes to share?