My favorite thing about the Baking Bites Holiday Cupcake Contest is seeing how creative everyone is with their cupcakes and their photography. Every single entry is just mouthwatering - and all of the designs and decorations can easily be recreated in your own kitchen, so I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that they really inspire me to start preparing for next year’s contest! Getting down to business, I’d like to announce the two winners (as selected by an anonymous panel of judges).

The grand prize goes to Bittersweet’s cupcakes topped with Mini Gingerbread Houses. There is great attention to detail in these cupcakes, including a teeny tiny snowman made from dragees and some stepping stones made from chopped walnuts. The second prize goes to Tracyecakes Snowglobe Coca-cola Cupcakes. The cupcakes are actually turned upside down to serve as the base of the snowglobe. The fondant polar bears and gummy cola bottles are very cute (and will remind everyone who’s seen them of those cute polar bear holiday commercials that Coke used to put out annually. You can find a detailed how-to recreate the snowglobe effect here.

A big thanks to everyone who participated, and a big thanks to my judges (you know who you are!) for sorting through all those cupcakes. If you haven’t already, don’t forget take a peek at the rest of the entries and see what great work everyone who participated did, and get some ideas for next year’s contest!

There are just a few days left to submit your holiday cupcake photos to the Holiday Cupcake Contest Flickr pool and enter for a chance to win a great baking gift basket! Baking pans, chocolate and other goodies are going into two prize packages for one Grand Prize winner and one Runner-Up!

If you haven’t posted your entry for the contest, you still have time. Simply take a photo of a holiday cupcake - one you made or one that you saw/ate/bought somewhere else - and upload it to the Flickr photo pool. Entries are due by December 23rd at midnight to maximize your chances of encountering a great holiday cupcake. Check out the current entries for some baking inspiration, and try one of these cupcake recipes if you want to bake your own:

• Maple Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream
• Candy Cane Cupcakes
• Gingersnap Cupcakes
• Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Pie Top Cutter Giveaway I held before Thanksgiving! It was great to hear everyone’s favorite pie flavors. It put me in the mood to bake some, both traditional and more unusual! I waited with bated breath while a random number generator spit out a winner for the contest: Chelsey, from the food blog CookTeen! Congrats, Chelsey! The cutter (along with a copy of The Baking Bites Cookbook!) is already on it’s way and, since it makes perfect apple-shaped cutouts, I can only imagine that it will be involved in a fresh apple pie project in the future.

Pies are an integral part of the holiday tradition in fall and winter. Many, like pumpkin, only really require one bottom crust, but as good as they are it is hard to beat a perfectly made double crust fruit pie, like a classic apple. I know that I am not the only one who puts a few pies into the holiday baking schedule, and since that schedule can be a busy one, it’s nice to have a few tools to help things along. This Apples & Leaves Pie Top Cutter from Nordicware is just one of these tools. It is basically a big cookie cutter that lets your make a gorgeous design on your pie crust in seconds. It’s reversible, giving you an apple pattern on one side and a leaf pattern on the other. You’ll still have to crimp the edges of the crust yourself, but it really helps to make a pie get a bakery-quality look to it with virtually no effort (and no heartbreak from trying to hand-cut designs, as I have in the past).

This week, I’m giving away one of these Apples & Leaves Pie Top Cutters along with a copy of my book, The Baking Bites Cookbook! There are a couple of pie recipes in the book, as well as a very good pie crust recipe, so it’s a good place to start your pie baking if you don’t end up starting with one of the recipes already on my site.

To win, just leave a comment on this post telling me what you favorite type of pie is on this post by Friday, November 20th. There are no penalties for picking a pie that doesn’t need a double crust. If you want to increase your odds of winning, Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter and you’ll get an extra entry! Leave a comment to let me know you Tweeted, or make sure to include @bakingbites so I see it! No matter how you enter, the winner will be selected randomly from all the entries. Don’t forget to include your e-mail on the form where you leave a comment (not in the comment itself) so I can contact you if you’re the winner!

The last giveaway I held, for the Mini Pumpkin Cheesecake Pan and another copy of my book, was won by Amy at Baking and Mistaking. I neglected to make the announcement on the site sooner (although I sent off the prizes). Congrats!

Update: This contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone for participating - I’m inspired to bake some more pies! The winner will be announced shortly!

Miniature cheesecakes are a great way introduce both portion control and cuteness into dessert. You can always bake them in a muffin pan, but this Mini Pumpkin Cheesecake Pan gives you a few advantages that regular muffin pan doesn’t. You don’t need any paper liners for these pans because the bottoms are removable. All you need to do is loosen the sides of the cheesecake and push up on the bottom of each cavity, and the mini cheesecake will slide right out. The sides of the pan are nonstick, too, which really makes this easy to use.. Also, the cavities are pumpkin-shaped, making them perfect for fall and winter cheesecakes, even if they’re not pumpkin flavored.

As it so happens, I have one of these lovely Chicago Metallic Mini Pumpkin Cheesecake Pans to give away this week, and since my cookbook will be shipping in just a few days, I’m going to include a FREE copy of the cookbook along with the pan, making this a giveaway extra special. Now, there are no mini pumpkin cheesecake recipes in the book, but the pan comes with a good basic pumpkin cheesecake recipe to get you started with your pan.

To win, just leave a comment telling me what you favorite cheesecake flavor is on this post by Friday, October 23rd . A winner will be selected randomly. Don’t forget to include your e-mail on the form where you leave a comment (not in the comment itself) so I can contact you if you’re the winner!

Update: This Contest is now closed!

The Threadcakes cake-making contest has come to an end, at least for this year. There were a total of 595 entries - meaning that lots of talented bakers put together 595 amazing cakes based on Threadless t-shirt designs! Competition was fierce in both the 2D and 3D cake categories, and while it seems as though creating a two dimensional (a.k.a. flat) cake would be easier, most participants opted to try for the 3D cake designs. The winners were just announced and, needless to say, the cakes that won certainly took the cake.

The grand prize winner in the 3D category, Noah Express, is pictured above. Jennifer Flynn put together a great set of photos showing how she put the cake together. It looks just like the shirt design it was based on. Second place went to Bird Migration, which also looks so much like the design that inspired it it’s hard to believe it’s actually a cake.

The 2D cake winners were just as impressive. Grand Prize in that category (below) went to Imposter in the Bird Hotel, a very detailed cake created by Alex Waite. And when I say detailed, I’m not kidding. Each of the “rooms” of the hotel is an individual cake! Look closely for the cat in the bottom row, third window from the right.

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