Red Velvet vs Red Velvet Cupcake

Red Velvet Cake is one of those things that is a little odd when you think about it. 

It's chocolate-flavored but not really chocolate. It's colored a vivid red with food coloring (eww). And it doesn't taste quite like chocolate cake, vanilla cake OR cheesecake. Unlikely as it is - it's one of those things that has just developed its own unique charm, and I'm one of the ones that enjoys eating it, AND smelling it. Any time of the year.

As always, cold and hot throw is extremely different. If you're one of those people who've picked up a jar in the store, sniffed it and gone "Gross!" and wondered at how heavy and cloying it would smell in your home, you might be pleasantly surprised when you actually melt one. A lot of the bakery scents from Yankee and Bath and Body Works are actually softer than many of the fruit and floral scents. And these two smell pretty authentic when the scent is released from hot wax.

Yankee's Red Velvet is described as:

A most decadent creation of creamy frosting atop moist cake and a touch of brown sugar. So very sweet!

I don't know if there's cream cheese in there as a note, but it is the more buttery and savory of the two, and heavier on the frosting.

The throw is pretty good for a single wick mottled wax large tumbler, although it's not an extremely strong scent to begin with. I've not had any problems with my jar tunneling and the scent smells true and hasn't gone smoky or odd after about 3-4 burns. If you smell it beside a Frosted Cupcake candle, you will be able to tell the difference, but on its own, the chocolate note isn't really that noticeable.

Large 1-wick mottled wax jar burns 110-150 hours, and this has performed consistently well into the 4th burn, without noticeable sooting or tunneling.

Bath and Body Work's Red Velvet Cupcake is described as:

This Southern classic is perfect for the holidays - rich vanilla frosting and authentic red velvet cake.

If you like lots of buttery rich cream-cheese frosting, you may not like this one quite as much. The BBW Red Velvet Cupcake has a much more prominent cake note, and I personally enjoy the smell of this more than the Yankee version simply because there's a more prominent edge of cocoa that gives some depth to the overall scent. There is zero cream cheese I feel. It's more of a regular vanilla frosting note here, which is more subtle.

That said, the throw is very soft for a 3-wick. If I have anything else melting in the house at the same time, I will not be able to smell this at all. It does burn pretty well, and I get a full wax pool within about 30mins mostly. But most of my BBW 3-wick flames get very low and small after the first couple of melts. Not to the point of drowning.

BBW 3-wicks are fast burners with 25-45 burn time only. They are SUPPOSED to give stronger scent and better throw than the 1-wick Yankees in return for a much shorter burn time, but in cases like this where the scent actually is very weak, I'm not actually sure it's worth the money, even though I do like the scent more. That's the dilemma for me.

Of course, if you're one of those that burns your candles for just an hour or so, and want to blow it out instead of leaving it going for hours, Yankee's mottled wax large jars are just not the best option for you because it frequently takes up to 3 hours for a full wax pool to form, which means you need to let it burn for a longer time before you can blow it out. Otherwise you run the risk of causing your candle to tunnel.

Waxy Treats! Scented Melts for The Week

Woohoo, about to start on my Yankee Candle layered Summer Trio (Summer Scoop, Merry Marshmallow, and Salted Caramel layered),

I just wish these came in the full-sized 22 oz tumblers rather than these 10 oz jars which cost a rather ridiculous SGD$33.90. It also irks me that you can get 4 large jars for US$50 in the US and by the time they make it here, they cost over $40 per jar. And don't even get me started on Bath & Body Works, because the mark-up is even worse.

I still love them and will buy from time to time when there are sales. In fact I've just finished my large jar of Ginger Dusk, and a small jam jar of BBW's Red Velvet Cupcake (which was a waste of money because had almost no throw, sadly).

 

But besides having a few candles on hand because I like the ambience, I sometimes would rather just purchase melts from online wax vendors. (I don't like to ship candles in because you pay a lot of international shipping for the extra weight of the glass tumblers.)

I love bakery scents in general though, and the bakery scent selection in Singapore is woefully puny most of the time because the East Asian market in general does not take well to "heavy", sweet scents. We're more partial to floral, fruity and cologne-y fresh scents.

So if you walk into Yankee, you might find a few things like Waffle Cone, Vanilla Frosted Cupcake, and Red Velvet Cake. Even when the seasonal collections come in, you will often find that they leave out the bakery and foody Fall candles which are bestsellers in the West.

So my personal stash is FILLED with bakery treats that I either ship in from - or purchase on trips to - the US.

One of my cheap n cheerful favorites is Better Homes & Gardens wax cubes from Walmart. I came home with a whole tray of these last year. And Candied Caramel Apple is one I was melting earlier today. This one's a Fall 2014 limited edition release, and it's just gorgeous. 

If you're afraid of heavy, sticky, baked fruit smells, don't worry. The fresh apple is actually pretty strong, and the caramel is in the background. After a few hours, when the fresh notes start to weaken, you start getting more of a apple-pie filling smell as the caramel tones come out more and the tart freshness of the apple fades a bit.

These wax cubes are so cheap (around US$2 per pack) and so strong that I only need a single cube under my 25W heated lamp to scent up half my apartment. It's warm in Singapore, and my apartment isn't huge, so I really never throw in too much wax or it can get quite overpowering.

 That's ESPECIALLY true for wax from vendors like Front Porch, who have incredibly strong tarts.

I made the mistake of popping in half a Honey Rolls grubby tart from Front Porch the other night (about 0.5oz weight or less) and it was almost cloying in the humid heat. I had to remove it from under the lamp and throw it out after a couple of hours.

I have to say this is a good scent though. It's a very tart sweet honey; quite realistic. (I can't stand food notes that smell fake.) But the honey is VERY sweet, so it got to be a bit too much after awhile. I had ordered hoping the "rolls" part of the scent would be more present, but it was just overpowered by the sweet tangy honey once heated.

Another online vendor I enjoy is Closet Full of Wax. I was digging around in my stash and realized I had an old unmelted bag of Mango Cream Filled Twinkies. I'd ordered because I've never eaten (much less smelt) Twinkies, although I can more or less imagine how yellow cake and sweet cream filling would smell. So I was curious to see if this would smell good.

As usual, I have to chop up my chunks into smaller pieces to melt in controlled dozes, but this one has quite a soft throw compared to most of my vendor tarts. I have to go quite close (about 2 feet away) to smell it.

It's not a bad smell, but somehow it reminds me more of buttery yellow cake with baked peaches on top, than mango.

I much preferred the mixed fragrance chunk tart in Almond Marzipan - Glazed Cinnamon Donut - Vanilla Bean Noel - Pink Sugar. (Quite a mouthful.) The strongest scent in this is Vanilla Bean Noel, although there's a buttery toasty nuttiness that makes it smell like cookies.

I think I only have the one chunk of this because I wasn't sure if I would like Marzipan. Almond is quite an acquired taste, and I prefer nutty almond notes to the medicinal marzipan/extract scents. So without having smelt this, I didn't dare order more.

Well, good news for me. This is quite a nutty marzipan. Or maybe that's just the combination of all those vanilla-heavy notes with it. I dropped only about 1/6 of the 3-4oz size chunk in, and that was more than enough because this thing throws like mad. My living room smelt like a bakery.

Yum.

Sunday Night Chilling with BBW Pink Petal Tea Cake

Sometimes when I'm home alone on Sunday night, it's the perfect time to dig into my stash of candles and wax melts. I have so much stored away that it's easy to forget what's sitting at the back of the cabinet.

Earlier I discovered a half-burnt tumbler of Pink Petal Tea Cake from Bath & Body Works that I was nuts for when it just launched. This isn't one of those candles that I can leave burning for hours though. It's VERY sweet. Imagine one gigantic, intense, rose-flavored macaron. Beautiful in small dozes but potentially cloying on hot days or in small spaces.

I left it burning just long enough to get an even wax pool and then blew it out. My living room is still smelling of rose macaron right now. Lovely end to a weekend.

P.S. Yes that is my Innisfree Sleep Well candle, alive and well. I decided not to burn it last week. I usually have a bunch of very different scents sitting out and then I'll look at them and decide what I feel like burning most.