CakeMail CakeTest: Perfectly Balanced Dulce de Leche Cupcake

By Isabel Lapointe, on April 26, 2012 - 1 Comment
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A pleasant nightshift for CakeMail: baking cupcakes at 10pm on a Wednesday so they’re ready for Thursday’s morning coffee. Tried a new recipe for the cake itself, as I had never used cornstarch in cake batter before. As it turns out, it’s quite a good discovery!

This recipe comes from the Joy the Baker blog. Visit her site to check out the recipe itself  (I won’t reproduce it here so she can have all the credit). :-)

Makes approximately 24 cupcakes

Cupcakes should always be served at room temperature. This icing is quite runny so I left it in the fridge and piped it onto the cupcakes just before serving them.

Joy has beautifully decorated her version with dulce de leche drizzle and fleur de sel. I made things easier by simply adding a piece of caramel à la fleur de sel on the top.

Team comments:
- Icing plus-que-parfait
- The caramel twist on the top was a triple D winner: delectable, delightful, delicious!
- Icing is great: not too sweet and creamy & tasty

My verdict:
One of the most ‘balanced’ cupcakes I’ve made. The cupcake itself is very good, even though it’s only vanilla! Icing is a perfectly balanced flavour somewhere between cream cheese & caramel. The cake itself has a beautiful golden color.

Score: 4.75/5 cherries

Triple Booze Cupcakes for the Dev Team CakeTest

By Isabel Lapointe, on March 8, 2012 - Leave a comment
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A new product release means many hours of work for the dev team. We usually celebrate a release with a few beers, or occasionally, something more macho like Whiskey. If you put them both in chocolate cupcakes, you can turn these “New Release Thank You’s” into a truly CakeMail kind of treat. Thanks for 3.3 guys! Nice work!

I came across this recipe on a blog celebrating the Irish. St-Patrick’s Day isn’t until March 17 but there was no need to wait to make these for the dev team. [Retracted]

These cupcakes are not for kids but you won’t get too tipsy from the alcohol in them – though you’ll definitely notice the booze in the Bailey’s icing. The beer in the cake batter, and the whiskey sour cream definitely make the texture fantastic.

Check out the recipe over here: Irish Beer & Whiskey cupcake

I made this recipe as is with just two small additions – the Bailey’s icing that is a long-standing favorite at my parties and a bit of maple syrup in the ganache to mix with the smokey flavour of the whiskey. The 2 cups of butter the icing calls for isn’t completely necessary –  cut half a cup or more, add more Bailey’s and check the texture with the sugar. You’ll want it to be smooth and easy to pipe.

Team comments:

- Holy delicious. Eat under strict supervision.
- Can I take a second one? Kevin is not here, can I take his?

My verdict:
Beer and sour cream are definitely a discovery for the cake texture.
Bailey’s Icing is always a winner. Ganache is a bit to firm to be the perfect texture.
And yes, actually you can feel the buzz after you drink oups, eat these!

Score:
4/5 cherries

Isabel Lapointe is CakeMail’s Cherry In Chief (and our resident baking expert!). Follow her on Twitter at @CherryInChief.

NOTE: “This part was retracted due to the offending nature of a drink name to the Irish people. We didn’t mean to offend. We’re sorry.”

Have a wonderful 2012!

By Isabel Lapointe, on January 4, 2012 - Leave a comment
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Too much food, too many drinks and, fortunately, a lot of sleep later, the CakeMail team is now back to work! We’re already working on upcoming versions with great new features, along with new documentation, training materials and other goodies to make your CakeMail experience even more pleasant.

Don’t forget to bookmark http://releases.cakemail.com to be updated on all our new features (and bugfixes…) as they’re released!

Wishing you all a great and successful year in 2012, and of course, a huge THANK YOU for being part of our success!

The CakeMail Team

The Icing News: Future-proof email marketing, Best email variables to test

By Isabel Lapointe, on December 7, 2011 - 2 Comments
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Six approaches for future-proof email marketing
Once again, Mark Brownlow makes a good interesting piece on the best things to focus on while creating email marketing. Read the whole article to get all the useful links!

  1. Understand the true meaning of value: avoid one-way value, don’t overestimate value, don’t misunderstand value : the value that count is the value for the recipient, not yours.
  2. Be willing to tweak and change:Each new email is an opportunity to test a tweak, and each tweak can have a surprisingly positive impact.
    * Subject line tests that double open rates over time
    * Changes in link wording that produce over 50% more clicks
    * From line tests that pull in over 20% more clicks
    * Link format tests (button vs text) that increase clicks 67%
  3. Respect the basics
  4. Be unique: Valuable content and offers, permission, creative design, relevancy, timing, personalization, customization etc. are important factors that can take your email marketing amplifier all the way up to 10. What takes it up to 11?
  5. Use common sense
  6. Dig deeper in the numbers


Email Research: The 5 best email variables to test
Marketing Sherpa has done research with marketers asking them what are the best things for email marketers to test (and do they test them?)

  1. Target audience: 42% of email marketers believe testing the target audience is very effective (but only 30% are doing it…)
  2. Landing page: 41% declare testing it is very effective
  3. Subject line: by far the most tested variable (72%) but declared very effective by 35%
  4. Call-to-action: very near with 34%
  5. Personalization: also near with 32% of marketers believe testing it is very effective

CakeMo: $1375 and 6 bare faces later

By Isabel Lapointe, on December 6, 2011 - Leave a comment
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Movember is over and we are proud to announce that CakeMo team members have raised 1375$ in order to support the movement. A big thank you to Arthur Gouveia and Kevin Huxham who have led the event at CakeMail and to all other members: Jesse McCormack, Ion Ghinda, Marc-André Jutras and Vincent Surette who have kindly offered their face to the cause (with a side-effect of a few good laughs for us!).

movember final group photo

Movember Final Group Photo

As announced, CakeMail drew a name from all the donors who had given more then $10 and we’re happy to announce that Hugo Picard will soon receive a package full of CakeMail surprises. Congratulations Hugo!

A big thank you to everyone!

CakeTest: Christmas Season Gingerbread & Lemon Cupcakes

By Isabel Lapointe, on November 30, 2011 - Leave a comment
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I have to admit I hesitated a lot before baking these. I love gingerbread and since I eat it only at Christmas time, it conveys a lot of pleasure. But I was not sure about the combination with lemon.

Finally, I stopped being a Grinch and jumped into those Christmas smells and flavours.

The original recipe comes from Epicurious but was adapted after reading the comments.

Makes 12 cupcakes

Cupcakes
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses
1 large egg, beaten lightly
1 teaspoon baking soda

Frosting
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
250 grams (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cup icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

To make cupcakes
• Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line cupcake pan with paper liners.
• Sift together the flour, the ground ginger, the cinnamon, the cloves, the allspice, and the salt
• In another bowl, beat the oil and sugar
• Beat in the molasses and the egg until the mixture is smooth
• Combine baking soda with 1/2 cup boiling water and stir to dissolve the baking soda
• Stir the mixture into the molasses mixture
• Stir the molasses mixture into the flour mixture
• Put in the pan.
• Bake 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
• Cool the cupcakes for 5 minutes before removing them from the pan and moving to a rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting
• Beat the butter with the cream cheese, add lemon juice and zest
• Frost the cooled cupcakes, and garnish with whatever will make you feel like Christmas.

Team comments:

- A mouthful of Christmas
- Tastes like Christmas
- Some advice: Crunch the candy cane in your mouth and then eat the cupcake.

My verdict:
With all the smells of spice and molasses cooking, these are almost more pleasant to bake then to eat – especially since I crushed the spices myself and added cardamom into the mix!

Score: 4/5 cherries

Isabel Lapointe is CakeMail’s Cherry In Chief (and our resident baking expert!). Follow her on Twitter at @CherryInChief.

Movember update: the final stretch, a few more millimetres

By Isabel Lapointe, on November 24, 2011 - Leave a comment
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Next Thursday, all those moustaches will be part of history. Will we regret them? Now I think: maybe!

Our CakeMo team is now growing its last millimetres and needs all your support to give meaning to these intense hairy looks. We’ve already raised over $1100, but there’s still time to help us raise even more!

This week’s pick is, without any doubt, Marc-André who, with his fabulous Tom Selleck’s “balai-brosse” (broom), makes every guy jealous!

We also want to congratulate all the wives, girlfriends and kids who have endured those hairy kisses during this almost over month.

You can donate to your favourite moustache or to the team on our CakeMo Team page. Any donation over $10 to the CakeMo team will get you a tax receipt and we’ll enter you into a random draw for a surprise pack of CakeMail swag at the end of the month, too!

Please help them help the cause!

Movember Update: Getting Manlier day after day…

By Isabel Lapointe, on November 17, 2011 - Leave a comment
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This week’s look most certainly belongs Kevin, who,whether he likes it or not, is really made-for-the-moustache!

The CakeMo Team is coming along very well – Jesse has expended some extra effort, bring in lots of donations and plenty of compliments on his new look!

Our team’s fundraising so far is almost at the $1000 mark. What’s that? You haven’t donated yet? You’ve got exactly two more weeks to contribute with a few dollars.

Make a donation to the Mo/Look you like best so far or you can donate to the team on our CakeMo Team page.

We’d like to remind you that any donation you make over $10 to the CakeMo team will get you a tax receipt and we’ll enter you into a random draw for a surprise pack of CakeMail swag at the end of the month, too! Make sure you include your full name in the form so we can find you.

The Icing News: Email’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, It’s the Mobile Wonderful Time of the Year

By Isabel Lapointe, on November 14, 2011 - 1 Comment
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Email’s Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

They’re always trying to scare us, but David Daniels from ClickZ, shows off some statistics that defy those predictions:
- 93 percent of online consumers check their email account at least once a day, if not more frequently.
- About 25% of consumers say that they maintain a separate email account just for marketing purposes, females are slightly more likely to do this at 30%, as much as 41% of consumers ages 38 or younger.

It’s the Mobile Wonderful Time of the Year
Return Path reminds us that during the busy season, people are using mobile even more to stay connected. Here are few more tips to help your emails get to them:

  • How does it look? Take a look at your email campaign on a mobile device to experience firsthand how limiting the 3rd screen can be.
  • Are you flexible? Consider using the pre-header space to offer links to view mobile and web versions of your email, as well as a clickable summary statement of the message content.
  • How big is too big? Review the width of your email – downsizing may improve mobile viewership without sacrificing the web experience.
  • Is your message legible? Images usually aren’t visible (with the exception of the iPhone), so if your message isn’t in a text format, it can’t be read. And, if your links are button-format only, subscribers can’t respond either.

Did Monty Python write your unsubscribe page? 9 tips to make it better
A article from the always funny-tones Mark Brownlow on what not to do in you unsusbcribe form. But some real tips too!
A few example of what NOT to do:

Al Capone fear-based option:
bad unsub example 4
The King Eurystheus method, involving a few Herculean unsubscribe tasks:
bad unsub example 2

And how to deal with those three groups of unsubscribers: the unavoidable, the switchers and, the real problem, the dissatisfied.

The Icing News: Become a supreme being of great subject line writing, Mobile Is Less Forgiving than Desktop

By Isabel Lapointe, on November 10, 2011 - Leave a comment
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Mobile Is Less Forgiving than Desktop
Many guidelines are similar for mobile and desktop design, but their mobile interpretation is much more unforgiving. Read this information from the well-known Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox studies to improve your results with your mobile templates.

How To Write Great Email Subject Lines (And How To Fix Those That Are Not)
Follow these guidelines to become a supreme being of great subject line writing (you know you want to): read the complete text on Email Critic blog.

  • Lead – The subject line needs to lead the person to open the email. It needs to spark their curiosity, however, readers will distrust you and reach for the report-spam button if your subject line doesn’t reflect the actual email content.
  • Relevance – Relevance is the most important element of a subject line.
  • Objectives – Since a subject line is the essence of an email, consider writing it first.
  • Value – People buy value, not products. Encourage the recipient to open the email by displaying the benefits of the product or service. Y
  • Emotion – By tying the tone of your brand together with emotion, you will build a genuine connection between your content and your audience.
  • Test – Perform tests on your subject lines on small subscriber groups before sending out to your full list.

Six questions for analyzing a website
Seth Godin invites you to review your website thoroughly and honestly answer some questions. Among them: What’s the revenue per visit? (RPM). What’s the cost of getting a visit? Is there a viral co-efficient? What’s the cost of a visitor? Because sometimes, «It’s tempting to believe that any website can become a perpetual motion machine of profit.»

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