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.

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.

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.