My Take on Bakerella's Christmas Cake Pops

So when I saw these things on her site, I thought "Golly gee, those are adorable." I immediately wanted to make them. Sadly, the process was not as easily as I would have liked and, well, my results are lacking.

Let's do a comparison:

Here are her versions:

Cute, right? Look at those Rudolph's! LOOK AT THEM!

And here are my sad little versions:

Okay, my trees aren't so bad. They don't have stars because I couldn't find any, and they don't have the great texture because I couldn't do it without mangling the whole thing.

But that reindeer. That is one entirely deranged animal. Where did I go wrong? Well, the eyes are candy coated sunflower seeds which are all different shapes and sizes and lent perfectly to the crazy eyes. I honestly couldn't find anything better to use for the eyes. Aside from that, I was sawing down a bunch of mini pretzels trying to get antler shapes because I couldn't find those nifty alphabet pretzels. And finally, I'm just plain terrible at working with candy melts, or any sort of melted object and what has resulted from this is a herd of reindeer with apparent skin conditions. Ah well.

To see how to make these and all sorts of other ridiculous cute edibles, go here.

Merry almost-Christmas to you all!

Roll Out Sugar Cookies, Christmas Style

When my mother and I make cookies for Christmas, they always look more or less like this. This is our signature look, you know. Most of our Christmas cookie cutters have disappeared or become generally misshapen in the years that we've had them, so we always have round ones now. Also, it seems that we attempt to make up for our lack of decorating skills by seeing how much frosting we can get on each cookie.

 

Okay, so I tried Fannie Farmer's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookie recipe for this. They aren't bad, but take more flour than the recipe calls for if you actually want to roll them out.

The frosting is from somewhere, I'm sure, but I got the recipe off of a little paper that's been taped inside the cupboard for as long as I remember. It needed a little bit more milk than it called for, but then again, our frosting was a little on the running side, so exercise judgment.

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Roll Out Sugar Cookies

1 c butter
1 1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk
3 c flour (plus some amount)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream butter until light and fluffy. Beat in sugar. Add egg and vanilla and beat thoroughly. Add milk. Sift together flour, salt and baking powder, then stir in. Chill overnight (or until you think it's ready I guess). Roll out 1/4 inch thick, cut out, and bake on buttered cookie sheet for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. I used tinfoil rather than butter because I thought it would make more and was planning to do it assembly line style. Makes 36 cookies (2.75 inch diameter)


Decorator's Frosting

2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 tbsp milk (plus maybe a tsp more or so)

Cream butter until soft. Blend in sugar, milk and vanilla.

I made four batches of this. Making two will give you enough to frost 36 cookies, making four gives you enough to do that and pipe on a bunch more. So what we did was make two batches, frost all the cookies, make two more and separate them in half, colored one half green and the other half red (and added 1/4 tsp strawberry extract to make a nice hint of flavor). Then we piped ourselves silly. Voila! Christmas cookies.

Chocolate Lime Cupcakes with Almond Extract Buttercream Frosting

I felt like making something today. I didn't know what, but I knew I was kind of low on sugar and butter and had some extra limes. So! I made these cupcakes.

As a jumping off point, I took a look at  Fannie Farmer's Quick Mix Fudge Cake. With a snip here and a cut there, this is what I ended up with:

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Chocolate Lime Cupcakes

1 c 1 tbsp cocoa powder (F.F. called for 3 oz chocolate and no butter)
3 tbsp butter, melted (I only had unsalted.)
1 3/4 c cake flour
1 c sugar (originally 1 1/2 c sugar, but like I said, I was low)
1/8 c Splenda (yeah, I used the little packets. It came to maybe 20 or so. Ludicrous.
1 tsp salt (originally 3/4 tsp)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp baking soda
1/2 c oil
2 medium limes worth of juice (a little less than 1/3 c or so) and zest
1 tsp almond extract (originally vanilla)
2 eggs
2/3 milk (originally didn't call for milk)

Mix together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa. Add butter oil and milk and beat on low until mixed. Add lime juice, zest, almond extract and eggs and beat until smooth. Fill 3/4 full (for nice doming action) and bake at 350 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes. Makes 13.

How do they taste? I'll go with...different. It's like chocolate with a lime kicker if I'm being kind, tainted chocolate if I'm being less so. They're not bad! They're just different.

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The frosting on these guys is, once again, this recipe. The only thing I did differently was add 1 1/2 tbsp almond extract in place of the vanilla. Then I dipped the frosted cupcakes in colored sugar.

Lime Cupcakes with Rose Water Buttercream Frosting

Before I took ill, I was planning on trying this mixture of flavors. I'm thinking it was due more to my being partial to the combination of pink and green than to my thinking these flavors would go well together.

For these cupcakes, I went with Vanilla Garlic's recipe. The only changes I made were adding more zest and juice, using one lime's worth of both and adding 10 drops of green food coloring to the milk and lime mixture. The taste of lime is undeniable. The frosting is this recipe cut in half and with the rose water added instead of vanilla. The taste isn't very rosy, but the smell is dead on. Oh well.

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Lime Cupcakes (originally from Vanilla Garlic)

1 c unsalted butter
2 c sugar
4 eggs
2 3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 c milk
the juice and zest of 1 medium lime

Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl and set aside.  In large bowl, beat butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between each. Measure out milk, lime juice and zest. Add milk mixture and flour mixture to butter mixture alternately and ending with the flour mixture. Fill liners about 2/3 to 3/4 full and bake for 22-25 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes about 22 cupcakes.

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Rose Water Buttercream Frosting

1 1/4 c unsalted butter
2 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 tbsp rose water
1 tbsp milk
pink food coloring gel

In large bowl, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar gradually. Add rose water, milk and coloring and beat until fluffy. Makes enough to lightly frost 20-22 cupcakes.

Checking In

I'm not done with this. I've just been ill. I'll be back when everything clears up. Boy howdy I've had a craving for fresh baked goods.

Peach Yogurt and Honey Cupcakes

I had some of those fruit on the bottom yogurts around that, frankly, I'm not that fond of and decided to bake them up. What I discovered is that the amount of fruit in those things is a lot smaller than I previously thought. I made up the difference with some canned peaches that we're floating around the pantry.

As a starting point, I went with Cupcake Project's Sour Cream Cupcakes. I doubled it, replaced the sour cream with yogurt, added some peaches and used regular butter instead of unsalted. So the recipe became:


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Peach Yogurt Cupcakes

2 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
2 c sugar
1 c butter
3 tsp vanilla
2 fruit on the bottom yogurt cups
1/2 c mashed peaches

Mix dry ingredients together in medium bowl. In large bowl, beat eggs and sugar together until light and creamy. Add butter and vanilla and beat on low for a minute or so until blended. Beat in the dry ingredients on low until blended. Add yogurt and peaches and beat until all mixed. Fill liners about 1/2 full and bake at 325 degrees for 22-25 minutes. Makes 32.

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I made Martha Stewart's Honey Glaze to cover these. I actually doubled what she made, but that made far too much. I tried to pour it on top of each cupcake and then squirt in on using a turkey baster and it all got very messy very fast. Only then did I try just brushing it on in layers, which worked fine. After glazing each cake I put some peach mush on top of them to try and create a more balanced taste. It partially worked, but honey is still the primary flavor here.

Chocolate Cupcakes with White Chocolate Ganache

So I would hear this word "ganache" every now and again, and I had no idea what it meant. Once I *did* learn what it meant, I decided to give it a try.

I decided to try the chocolate cake recipe out of my Fannie Farmer cookbook. It's a fair chocolate cake. It's not too dry and it domes well. I wish is had a stronger chocolate flavor, but in this particular instance, it's not what I was looking for anyway.

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Chocolate Cupcakes

1/2 c vegetable oil
1 1/2 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 oz unsweetened baker's chocolate, melted
2 eggs, beaten
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c milk

Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. In large bowl beat together oil, sugar, vanilla, chocolate, and eggs. Add flour mixture alternately with milk. Fill liners about 3/4 full and bake for 18 minutes at 350 degrees.

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For the ganache, I looked to Cupcake Project. The only problem with that was that I didn't have heavy cream anymore. Used it up, what, yesterday? So I made some substitutions.

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White Chocolate Ganache

1/4 c white chocolate morsels
1/4 c milk
1 3/4 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp flour

Place chocolate in small bowl. Add milk, butter and flour to saucepan and heat until boiling, stirring to mix. Pour over chocolate and stir together until melted and combined. Spread over cupcakes (I actually dipped mine, but tomato tomahto.)

Sadly, there is not enough white chocolate to stand up against the regular chocolate cupcake, and it's completely overshadowed. Next time, less cupcake, more ganache.

White Chocolate Sour Cream Mini-Cupcakes with Raspberry Whipped Cream Frosting

I had some sour and heavy cream I needed to use up, and some white chocolate I wanted to eat, so I searched for a white chocolate sour cream cupcake. That lead me to Cake on the Brain's recipe. I made minis instead of full sizers and got 24 slightly too full cupcakes that I almost burned because I got distracted.

This wasn't the white chocolate taste I was looking for. Most likely I would have gotten what I wanted if I made her frosting as well, but I opted for a raspberry whipped cream (recipe more or less from Cupcake Project) that is an unusual blend of sweet and tart. I can't even say that I like or dislike it. It's like a tart raspberry with an afterthought of sweetness.

White Chocolate and Strawberry Cupcakes (500 Cupcakes)

I went back to my 500 Cupcakes for this recipe. I've had a craving for white chocolate lately, and I thought this might be just the thing to make. That wasn't really the case.

I don't know what went wrong with these things, but all of the white chocolate chips sank to the bottom and detached from the rest of the cake! It ruined the whole experience for me. The strawberry cream cheese frosting was very good (I think I might just be a new found fan of cream cheese frostings) , but not quite enough to make up for how let down I was with the cupcake itself. So! I'm not sharing that recipe. I'll share the frosting.

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Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

1 c cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp butter, softened
3 tbsp chopped fresh strawberries (okay, I didn't use fresh, but it's okay)

Beat first four ingredients together until creamy. Stir in strawberries.

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I also learned today that I'm a terrible froster. That's not a word. Er...terrible frosting-putter-on-er? Anyway, I can't do it. If I'm piping it on, I can make it look so-so, but otherwise it's just a big sloppy mess. Especially in this case, because with the lack of any real chopper mechanism, I had big chunks of strawberry floating around when I'm trying to spread the frosting out. But it's all good, I'm not entering these in a baked beauty contest any time soon.

Italian Wedding Soup

Okay, so soup doesn't fall into the baking category per se, but I made it none the less and I can put what I want here, right? Right. So. Italian wedding soup. This recipe came from a former boss of mine. There are some changes I would make next time, but all in all it's a good soup.

Before today, I had never made a meatball. I'm not much for handling meat, it's not my thing. I figured if I *am* going to get into that game, I should start with the basics: ground beef and chicken breast. Simple.

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Meatballs:

2 lbs lean ground beef (80/20 or leaner)
About 7 oz bread crumbs
About 1/2 container grated Parmesan cheese
Milk (just enough to keep things moist)

Mix all the ingredients together and form into quarter sized meatballs. Place in a shallow greased pan (I used a tinfoil covered pan) and bake at 325 degrees for about 8 minutes. Set those aside.

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Chicken:

4 good sized boneless chicken breasts
Olive oil (to coat pan)

Cut chicken into nickel sized pieces. Coat pan in olive oil and heat for a minute or so before putting chicken in. Cook until just done.

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 Soup:

4 containers of chicken broth (this might be considered cheating, but so what.)
1 package of frozen chopped spinach (the recipe called for 2, but that turned out to be too much.)

Put broth and spinach in large pot. Simmer until spinach is completely thawed. Add the meatballs and chicken and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

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Pasta:

1 lb uncooked Orzo or Acin de Pepe. (I used Orzo)

Cook pasta, staying more on the al dente side of the spectrum. It'll finish cooking in the soup. Drain completely and add to soup. Simmer for about 1 more hour.

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And that's that. If done again, I'd use less spinach and more broth, but it didn't turn out bad at all.

Oh, and...

These ended up coming out pretty okay too.

For the record, this was what I had left of the Buttermilk Pie Filling put in graham cracker crusts (1 1/3 c graham cracker crumbs, 3 tbsp sugar, 1/3 c melted butter, made as the box of crumbs said so and pressed into cupcake tins instead of a pie plate) and baked for 35 minutes or so. I made enough crust for five of these and still had about 1/3 of the batter left.

Raspberry Buttermilk Tassies

I decided to use the remainder of my buttermilk up in a tassie recipe. Being completely new to the term "tassie," I've gathered that it's a tart-cookie sort of deal. Maybe this would just be a tart. Or torte? I don't know. Regardless, I wanted to make a teeny-tiny buttermilk pie more less with some raspberry in it.

These little darlings are fantastic. The crust is so buttery, the raspberry is raspberry-y, the buttermilk is smooth and creamy. It's all good.

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Tassie Crust from Here

1/2 c butter
3 oz cream cheese
1 c flour

Beat butter and cream cheese until well mixed. Stir in flour until it becomes doughy. Chill for 1 hour. Shape into 24 balls and press into the bottoms and up the sides of a mini-cupcake pan. It was a little thin in some spots, enough so that the filling leaked out of the bottom of one.

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Buttermilk Filling from Bill

1/2 c butter
1 1/3 c sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 c buttermilk
1 tbsp flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla (he used a dash of bourbon instead)

Cream butter and sugar together. Combine remaining ingredients. This makes way more than needed to fill 24. I'd make about a third of this amount next time. Today I poured the rest into graham cracker cupcake shells and baked them up. We'll see how that turns out.

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After pressing dough into each cup, place one raspberry into each. Fill just about full with buttermilk mixture. Bake for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees, until crust is slightly golden and filling looks solid-ish.

Gooey Chocolate Butter Mini-Cupcakes

I was running low on ingredients today, so I made another batch of gooey butter cupcakes. What I discovered was that the first time around I used a severely low amount of butter. However I managed to figure it out, it was wrong yet totally delicious.

This time, I wanted to try a chocolate version. I had high hopes for a supposed-to-be-gooey chocolate cake with a crunchy-ish crust, but that's not really what I got.

These aren't bad by any means, but they aren't great. The biggest problem is that they retains none of the taste or texture of the originals. Instead, it just tastes like a so-so chocolate cake with a kind of crust.

I'm not quite through with this recipe yet. Creating the perfect chocolate gooey cupcake is now on my list of things to do.

To make these, follow this recipe, adding 2 tbsp cocoa powder when mixing in the flour and buttermilk. Put about a teaspoon of the flour/sugar mixture in each liner. Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 48 mini-cupcakes.

A Word from the Northeast

Bill's response to the pumpkin ginger muffins:

"I really like a) the fact that there is perceptible pumpkin flavor, and b) the ginger flavor -- it's noticeably different from using dried ginger from a jar."


Yay to getting a response other that "Mm, it's good" or "I don't really like this."  I'm excited about this!

Erm...and happy Halloween you guys.

Attempting a St. Louis Gooey Butter Cupcake

Up until three days ago, I had never heard of a gooey butter cake. It was brought up by Bill, who wondered if one such cake could be turned into cupcakes. After looking it up, I decided that the cakes looked delicious and that there was no reason there couldn't be a cupcake version.

Now, since I've never actually tried an authentic (or any) version of a gooey butter cake, I have no idea if the taste, texture and so on are going to be correct. Also, I'm pretty sure mine are going to fall apart as soon as I unwrap them. There was trouble.

So there's the finished, wrapped product. How did it hold up after unwrapping?

You can see there's a clear division between layers, but all in all it holds together pretty well. As for taste, I would compare it to a fantastically gooey Christmas cookie. So buttery and good. Like I said, I've never taste the real deal, but these are good regardless. I just have to work out a few structural problems and I'm golden. Oh, and I think these would be great as a mini-cupcake. So good.

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Gooey Butter Cake Recipe (adapted from Cooking with Joey's recipe)

2 c flour, separated
1 1/4 c sugar, plus 3 tbsp
1/3 c butter, plus 3/4 c butter (I used a wee bit extra than 1/3)
1/4 c light corn syrup
1 egg
2/3 c buttermilk (he used evaporated milk, but I found out too late that mine was waaay expired)

Mix 1 c flour and 3 tbsp sugar together in mixing bowl. Cut in 1/3 c butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling. Spoon by the heaping tablespoon and pat down into 16 cupcake liners .

For Filling: Beat 1 1/4 c sugar and 3/4 c butter until combined. Beat in egg and corn syrup until just combined. Add flour and buttermilk, alternating between the two and beating in between. Scoop into liners over flour. Bake at 350 degrees for 16-19 until just about firm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Halloween Frankensteins and Eyeballs

Okay, my intention for Halloween was to try out some different cupcakes before deciding what to make for the actual day. I only ended up trying one kind, but oh well.

I went with the Frankenstein chocolate cupcakes and some mini eyeball vanilla cupcakes made from Cupcake Project's sour cream cupcakes with this frosting. The irises are made from Lifesavers gummies, the veins and the pupils are decorator frosting.

On a more important (kind of) note, daylight savings time is granting us a whole extra hour of cheesy scary movie and candy eating time. I highly recommend Troll 2. It's a fantastic little movie about...goblins. Not trolls.

Pumpkin & Ginger Muffins II

After the first batch of ultimately displeasing pumpkin & ginger muffins, I knew a better batch was eventually going to get made. Something chock full of both pumpkin and ginger that exemplifies fall (okay, and spring in the case of the ginger, but let's be real here, ginger is a fall flavor).

These are definitely better than the first batch, but they still aren't perfect. The pumpkin taste is just not there, even though the ginger is just right in my book. It creates a decent pop in texture and a not-too-harsh tingle in your throat. My goal is to get the opinion of someone who has a more refined palette than I to see what he thinks. I'll let you know how that works out.

The recipe I worked with was from Crumbly Cookie. Aside from slight changes, I doubled it because a batch of eight? Is just not enough.

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Pumpkin & Ginger Muffins

2 c flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ground ginger

1 c candied ginger

2 eggs

1/2 + 1/8 c packed brown sugar

1 1/4 c pureed pumpkin

6 tbsp butter, melted

4 tbsp milk

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ground ginger and cinnamon and candied ginger together in large bowl. In separate bowl, whisk together sugar and egg until combined. Whisk in pumpkin, butter and milk. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture and fold in until just combined. Bake for 20-22 minutes at 350 degrees. Makes 16.

Chai Cupcakes (500 Cupcakes)

There was this little coffee shop near my house that I didn't get to go to very often before they closed, but they served the best chai latte I've ever had. I think of that place whenever I hear about anything chai related, including these cupcakes from 500 Cupcakes.

These cupcakes taste nothing like chai tea. They taste, in my opinion, like buttermilk biscuits. Which isn't bad! It's just not what I was in the market for. I suspect I'm at fault, using maybe the wrong kind of chai powder.


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Chai Cupcakes

2 c self-rising flour (I used 2 c regular flour mixed with 2 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/8 tsp salt)
1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 tbsp chai tea powder
1/4 cup sweet butter, softened
3/4 c packed light brown sugar
2 egg whites
2/3 c buttermilk

Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and chai powder. In large bowl beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add egg whites and beat well. Gradually add in flour mixture and buttermilk. Mix until combined. Fill liners about 2/3 full and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. (I only just realized that it said 350 and not 375, but nothing terrible happened so phew!) Makes 12.

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The frosting was a cream cheese frosting that I added cinnamon to in a last ditch effort to spice up these cupcakes. It didn't really work. It's very cream cheesy. That's all I've got to say about that.

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Cream Cheese Frosting

1 c cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla
(1/2 tsp cinnamon?)

Mix cream cheese and sugar together. Beat in lemon and vanilla until smooth. Add optional cinnamon.

Pumpkin Butterscotch Cupcakes

A few years back I made some pumpkin butterscotch cookies for some friends of mine. You could taste the pumpkin so clearly without it being *too* pumpkiny, while the butterscotch held its own nicely. Tonight I attempted to turn that into a cupcake.

These don't taste anything like those cookies, but are still really good regardless. My biggest problem with them is that they don't have the defining pumpkin taste I wanted. I seem to fail at bringing the pumpkin flavor out of things.

These are good enough that they don't actually need to be frosted, but I would never send a cupcake into the field naked. That's preposterous.  The frosting I made for these works in flavor, but not in consistency. It sort of started liquefying as I was using it. So! I'm putting that in the tasty failure bin.

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Pumpkin Butterscotch Cupcakes

2 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
8 tbsp butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp milk
1 1/2 c pureed pumpkin
1 1/2 c butterscotch chips

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon and salt in medium bowl. In separate bowl, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and brown sugar. Add in eggs and mix until well blended. Mix in half of flour mixture, followed by the milk and vanilla, followed by the rest of the flour mixture. Add pumpkin and mix until well combined. Fold in butterscotch chips. Fill liners about 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes. Makes 16.

Pumpkin & Ginger Muffins (500 Cupcakes)

Oddly enough, the first recipe I chose to try from my 500 Cupcakes book was a muffin, which is not a cupcake. NOT a cupcake. This was the first non-cupcakey muffin I've had...maybe ever. That's partially why I wanted to make these. The other reason was because it's autumn (even though the snow is already here) and using pumpkin in some form is damn near obligatory.

That being said, I didn't particularly like these muffins. There was no discernible pumpkin flavor, there was no punchy ginger taste. Color me disappointed. Here's the recipe regardless:

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Pumpkin & Ginger Muffins:

2 2/3 c flour
1/3 c packed brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground ginger
pinch of salt
1 lightly beaten egg
1/2 c pureed pumpkin, fresh or canned
3/4 c milk (they call for low-fat, which I didn't use)
1/3 c vegetable oil (they call for sunflower, which I didn't have)
3 tbsp candied ginger
4 tbsp pumpkin seeds (which I also didn't use, because frankly, ew)

Mix dry ingredients together in medium bowl. Beat together egg, pumpkin, milk and oil until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix until nearly combined. Fold in candied ginger. Sprinkle seeds on top of batter after you've spooned in into liners. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Makes 12 muffins.

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A Foray into Ginger

Okay, so I needed some candied ginger for the recipe I'm doing tomorrow. I had never worked with ginger, or properly tasted it for that matter, so I thought it would be interesting to candy it myself. I followed the instructions of this guy. How did it go? So-so. From what I can tell, I didn't drain it enough, or it was too hot when I tossed it in sugar or something else entirely. I don't think it came out quite right. What I have is a lot of sticky, syrupy ginger pieces drying on my kitchen table. And also? I don't think I like ginger very much. We'll see if I like it better baked into something.

Pecan Crust Retraction

Okay, I was a bit hasty in the judging. After being refrigerated for a few hours, I tried another cupcake. The frosting solidified enough that you can safely eat them upside down. Doing this keeps the pecans from crumbling and making a mess. It's not the most practical, but it works I suppose.

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Pecan Crust Goop:

4 oz butter (melted)
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 c pecan cookie pieces

Mix the sugar and pecans into the melted butter. Spread evenly into the bottoms of 15-16 baking cups (I used tinfoil ones). Pour batter on top.

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That's hardly a recipe, but ah well.

Apple Cider Cupcakes with Apple Butter Frosting

I had an idea when I decided to do this recipe. I wanted to have an apple cider cupcake with a crushed pecan crust of sorts. Technically, that's what I got, but the crust part sucks and brings down the whole cupcake. Luckily, it practically falls right off and you can pretend it never existed. Both the cake and the frosting were obtained from Cupcake Project.
 
The best part of these cupcakes was the smell of autumn and apples and all that goodness that gets spoiled by winter.

Who Loves Orange Soda?

My goal for today was to make Halloween Cupcake #2. It didn't work out like that. What I ended up with was a plain (yet very tasty) cupcake that I covered in a frosting made from strawberry preserves (which was only okay).

What I was planning on doing was replacing the orange concentrate of those previously attempted orange cupcakes with orange soda to see what would happen. And what happened? Not much. The cupcakes came out very moist and rose a bit more (which I attribute to my spanking new baking powder), but they retained neither the taste nor the color of the soda. As far as I can tell, adding water would have gotten the same result.

Anywho, I had these cake flavored cakes staring me in the face, and I could have easily turned them into Halloweenies, but instead I chose to make a frosting out of jelly. As it turned out, I had no jelly, but the preserves worked fine.

I should make a note right about here. I'm not exactly one with baking terminology, especially when it comes to frosting. In this instance, I'm using the term frosting, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that it's an un-peaked meringue. I honestly have no idea. Do I care? Yes, I do, and I'm (sort of) learning, okay? Okay.

So back to jelly. I only did a quick search for a jelly frosting, and found one recipe repeated in several places. It was simple and didn't require anything I didn't have. Here it is:

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Jelly Frosting:

1/2 cup frosting
1 unbeaten egg white
2 tbsp sugar
pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in the top of a double boiler. Cook over boiling water, beating constantly until stiff peaks form. Remove from heat. Beat until it reaches spreading consistency.

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To me, it tastes just like a fluffy, less sticky version of jelly. It's what I expected and it's what I got. I frosted 15 cupcakes and had some leftover, but I don't think I put enough on. The result is an all-around plain cupcake.

500 Cupcakes

A friend and I went to the movies tonight, and as is our custom, we went to the bookstore after. Specifically, I was looking for Bones of the Moon, which wasn't there. I was going to buy A Lion Among Men, but couldn't bring myself to until I bought Son of a Witch, which I haven't had much interest in.

Anywho, as I was perusing, my eye spotted this petite pink book that I absolutely had to have. That is how I came to own my first "cupcake compendium."

So I'll be making things out of this book on and off (mostly on I'm guessing) until I'm more knowledgeable in the wide, wide world of tiny cakes. Example: superfine sugar? What?? Who ever heard of such a thing? Not I!

Halloween Cupcake #1: Feed Me Frankenstein

Halloween's coming up, so I thought I'd try out some festive treats. Tonight I made some chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate whipped cream filling/frosting that are adorned by none other than Mr. Frankenstein ('s monster).

For the actual cupcake, I went with this, minus the chocolate chips. I had some troubles along the way. Not with the recipe, but more so with my ability to overfill liners (half to me is always 2/3 or even 3/4 occasionally). Also, they never quite seemed fully cooked to me. They came out a little too moist and sticky for me not to be suspect. And one more: my baking powder is waaay expired, and I do declare, it's fouling up my tiny cakes.

The whipped cream I also swiped from Cupcake Project (I always head there when an idea comes to me) , except I quadrupled it for my needs. I'll reprint it here for the sake of being efficient.

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Chocolate Whipped Cream:

2 c heavy whipping cream
1 c sugar (if properly quadrupling, you'd get 1/2 cup, but I wanted it a bit sweeter)
1/2 c cocoa powder

Beat whipping cream until soft peaks form. Beat in sugar. Beat in cocoa.

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Oh yeah. I also added some purple coloring gel to this hoping to get a pleasant shade of violet, and ended up with a gruesome shade of bleh. So there's that. 

Now on to my favorite part:

My favorite? The one on the far right in the middle row. He came out so much more terrified than terrifying. An honorable mention goes out to the impostor in the corner.

I didn't come up with these guys. I remember seeing them a few years ago in a magazine and have wanted to make them ever since. These are Fudge Grahams partially dipped in slightly melted butter cream frosting that has been dyed green (which came out so excellently green, not bleh). The eye brows and mouths are done in Wilton's black sparkle gel. The eyes are those little cinnamon candies. You know the ones. They were originally going to be M&M minis, but I had these on hand and since these are a trial run cupcake, I didn't think it'd matter. I actually do like the random burst of cinnamon that you get from these heads though. Go figure.

I was actually a little afraid to try these, thinking they'd be far too sweet for someone who may or may not have eaten a bunch of extra chocolate whipped cream and saw a tummy ache on the horizon. Still, I tried one and was rather surprised that I wasn't instantly heaving. They were just sweet enough.

As a final note, I'd like to mention that I use flash when I take closeups even though it's a no-no. I've tried everything I can to not use flash, but it is dim as the dickens around here, and I don't have the ISO speed or the steady hands to pull off a decently lit photograph. So that's that.

Darling Cherry Darlings

My tinkering with Cupcake Project's wonderfully dense orange cupcakes has yielded some vaguely cherry cupcakes that I've been referring to as Cherry Darlings in my mind since I first decided to make a cherry cupcake. I realize they're damn near identical to the cupcakes in the previous entry, but let me note some differences:

1. They are a sweet shade of magenta.

2. The frosting? A hint of pink, not just white.

3. There's a little heart, see? Totally different cupcakes.

Okay, so when thinking of cherry flavored things, I was presented with some decisions. What I ended up going with was not any sort of fresh cherry flavor, but rather, the more juvenile cherry Kool-Aid flavor. Why? Because I like it more. Sue me. 

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Cherry Darling recipe:

3 c cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter or margarine 

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup Kool-Aid mix (of the sugar variety, not the unsweetened little packs)

4 oz condensed milk
1 oz milk
3 eggs

3/4 cup vanilla yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Mix together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder in medium bowl and set aside. In large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then add sugar and Kool-Aid. Add milk and condensed milk. Beat in one egg at a time. Add flour mixture 1/3 at a time. Mix in yogurt. Fill cups about 3/4 full and bake for 18-20 minutes. Makes about 16 cupcakes.

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For the frosting, I just added some cherry flavoring and a little coloring to the leftover vanilla frosting I made the other day.

I liked how these came out, even though some of the density was lost. They're not too overpowering, which I was afraid of because when it comes to flavoring, I tend to over do it, and these vaguely cherry cakes could have easily become cough syrup cakes. So there it is.

Simple Orange and Vanilla Cupcakes

Orange cupcake recipe from Cupcake Project (with added red and yellow food coloring to make an orange-ier orange color)

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Vanilla Frosting:

     2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

     5 c powdered sugar

     1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

     1 tbsp milk

     Beat butter until creamy. Add sugar one cup at a time, beating until smooth between each cup. Add vanilla and milk. Beat until fluffy.

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I tried adding a filling to these cupcakes that was too heavy to balance out the density of the cake (and was fairly tasteless in its own right). I'm going to tinker with this recipe and make something workable for Sunday. I'm thinking cherries for this next batch.