Cupcakes without Calories

June 14th is Cupcake Day, not to be confused with National Cupcake Day (December 15) or National Chocolate Cupcake Day (October 18). Of course, all of these fun food holidays can be celebrated with chocolate so that is what we will do here on The Chocolate Cult. This time around we are marking the holiday with a non-edible cupcake related item. This Cup Cake ARFAMO jigsaw puzzle we can see chocolate on and imagine the rest of the cakes as chocolate, too. At 500 pieces this should be a puzzle that an individual or a family can put together in a few hours or a couple of days depending on skill and time. Was it easy or hard? Did the finished puzzle look like the box's lid? Is this a good idea for folks who love cupcakes but are watching calories? This review will give my and my family's experience working with this puzzle. ARFAMO sent me this puzzle to test out and write about through the Amazon Vine program; no other form of compensation was received for sharing my experiences. This article on The Chocolate Cult is an unexpected bonus for both ARFAMO and Amazon where I posted a review two months ago.

Let's look at this jigsaw puzzle. My family and I were able to put this puzzle together in less than three hours. That time includes laying out our puzzle board and getting out the pieces as well as my taking photos a few times during the process. The background you see in the photos is of our puzzle board which holds the pieces great but is a bit soft so we often put sections together and then transfer them to the board. Unlike most of the posts here on The Chocolate Cult, these paragraphs will be shorter and have more photos usually above the paragraphs going forward. In the photo to the left, you can see our finished puzzle.

Usually, as in more than 90% of the time in our experience, the pieces for a puzzle just lay in the box. This one had a sealable bag that the pieces came in. My husband, who is the big jigsaw puzzle person in our family, said this was worth a star in any review because it protected the pieces. However...

as you can see in the above photo one of the pieces was slightly damaged, the backing, which is very nice otherwise because it is so easy to differentiate from the front, had peeled up a bit. Many other pieces weren't fully cut out so they had tiny sections that we had to remove. I only had to remove one because two other family members sorted through pieces while I got right to work.

Our first step into putting any jigsaw puzzle is to always assemble the edges. Is that what your family does? I put together 80% of the sides while my other two family members sorted then helped me finish it up. 

Both a help and a hindrance was the face that the box lid was only a partial image of what the puzzle should look like. Inside was a poster that we set up using the box as a way to sort of hold it. If it wasn't for the fact that we exchange jigsaw puzzles every few years with other groups, I'd keep the poster as art. Doesn't it look yummy?

There were differences between the poster and the finished puzzle that really frustrated me as the above photo should demonstrate. The poster is smaller but that isn't a huge challenge. What was more difficult is the fact that the quality of the image and the amount the puzzle covered was different. Lok along the sides. Do you see how not all the parts of the cupcakes were in the puzzle as shown on the poster. The exact colors were not the same either, the yellow on the pieces were darker than the poster for example. It was like the company made the poster first then expanded it for the puzzle. My entire family felt like that should have been the opposite -- highest resolution for the puzzle itself and then when you make a smaller poster, the quality will still be great.

Every New Year's Eve because of my husband's family traditions, we put together a jigsaw puzzle. I bought him the puzzle board to keep them on because even though he may pick a 500 piece puzzle, to be blunt, the other two of us aren't big into these activities. This time, I set a time limit for us, three hours, to test it out, and I think that got us all focused on it.  The only downside was that one member said the puzzle was making him hungry and I didn't have any cupcakes on hand. He got a fudgy brownie that satisfied him.