Do This: Win $10,000 in a Cupcake Contest

By Caitlin Klein in Food on Dec 30, 2010 4:30PM

Hey, Chicago bakers, get off your duffs and win us $10,000, will ya? We just found out that there are only a few more days to enter the Scharffen Berger and TuttieFoodie.com Chocolate Cupcake Adventure Contest. The contest is nationwide, but Chicago is home to the absolute best home bakers in the country, obv. Let’s bring that prize money home! Contestants 18 years or older submit an original cupcake recipe in order to win $10,000, a trip to New York to distribute their cupcake from a truck, and a feature in the Food Network Magazine. Second and third prizes aren’t too shabby either, coming in at $7,000 and $3,000.

Here’s the lowdown: Each recipe entered must call for Scharffen Berger Chocolate—either dark chocolate bars or chunks (with cacao content specified, anywhere from 62 to 99 percent) or milk chocolate or cocoa. The recipe also must call for at least one "adventure ingredient” from the contest list. “Adventure ingredients” include stout beer (oatmeal, chocolate, imperial or any other stout); ricotta; buttermilk; coconut butter, coconut milk or coconut cream; saffron; molasses (light, dark or blackstrap); adzuki bean; fresh beet; sweetened condensed milk; fresh or whole dried chili pepper; bee pollen; meyer lemon; almond flour; and Sumatra coffee bean. You can read the rest of the rules here.

Entering a picture of your cupcake is optional, but we recommend it. The deadline to enter is January 2nd at midnight. It looks like the place to buy Scharffen Berger chocolate in the Chicagoland area is at the Jewel or Sunset Foods on the North Shore. Come on home bakers, we want a CCCC (Chicago chocolate cupcake champion)!

We plan to enter, so if anyone has some good cupcake-makin’ tips, let us know… We could use them.

Image via Bleeding Heart Bakery's flickr pool.