Valentine's Party and Cherry Chocolate Cake!

1. Valentine's Party

Two weekends ago, my roommates and I decided to throw a party for Valentine's day. We had Valentine's drinks and Valentine's decorations, so I decided to make Valentine's cupcakes. I wanted something that would embrace the pink and red of the holiday, so I whipped up some strawberry cupcakes. These cupcakes are a basic white cake filled with strawberry compote and topped with the best strawberry frosting.

Here's a close-up of the filling:
I did two designs for the frosting: Candy hearts...

...And Heart Tattoos

2. Cherry Chocolate Cake

Last weekend I was home relaxing and realized that I haven't made an actual cake in a while, so I decided to make one! I have been trying to find a really good chocolate cake recipe for a long time, and I've heard that beets make chocolate cake really moist and rich, so I tried out a chocolate beet cake recipe. I wanted to mimic a black forest cake, so I did a dark chocolate beet cake with cherry filling and whipped cream cheese frosting. While the cake did turn out to be really yummy, I am most impressed with how pretty it looked! Here are the layers:

Cake and Cherry Filling:

Second Layer of Cake:

Frosting and Maraschino Cherries:

Enjoy!

Better late than never

Over Thanksgiving, I was excited to actually get some time to bake. I have had almost no time to bake throughout this quarter, so I took full advantage of the few days off of school to make some tasty treats. However, I have been so busy with my finals that I have not had time to blog about them until now (and that's just because I'm avoiding my homework). This post is a little late, but I hope you will still enjoy it!

The first dessert that I baked was sweet potato cupcakes with burnt marshmallows on top. This recipe was really easy (surprising, since it was Martha Stewart's recipe) and came out really well.
The sweet potatoes caused the cupcakes to be really moist and the burnt marshmallows provided a really yummy substitute for frosting!

Apparently, the cupcakes were so good that Tucker couldn't resist stealing one for himself!

The second dessert that I made for Thanksgiving actually came from the Cooking Light magazine! It was a cranberry tart with meringue topping. It turned out so rich that it's hard to believe that it could qualify as "light."
The directions had me use shortening in the crust, which I don't usually do. It created a really delicious, flaky crust! The cranberry curd had a very strong taste, so I added a lot of meringue to balance it out. Overall, it was very delicious and [relatively] healthy!
Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

I know this is late, but I am finally getting to blogging about my Halloween goodies! As most of you know, I get really into Halloween, so I was pretty excited to make some Halloween desserts. However, I made pumpkin cupcakes a few weeks ago, so I wanted to do something different. I ended up making two desserts: witch finger cookies and apple cider cupcakes with salted caramel frosting.

1. Witch finger cookies

I finally got to try out my new witch finger cookie pan! I made a basic sugar cookie, but added some frozen strawberries into the batter. I got to use some of my new food coloring to make them green and purple. While the molds produced cookies that were actually shaped like witch fingers, I had quite a bit of trouble cooking them. Something about the shape of the molds caused them to cook unevenly, so I had to be really careful with the timing!

2. Apple cider cupcakes with salted caramel frosting

I really wanted to make cupcakes with a candy corn design, but I didn't want to do a regular white cake flavor, so I decided to go with an apple cider cupcake. For a fun twist on a caramel apple, I did a salted-caramel frosting. The cupcakes turned out well--the salty-sweet frosting was a nice combination with the sweet, dense cupcake--but did not taste as strongly of apple as I had hoped.

**Also, I found a pumpkin ale at World Market, which I was really excited about! It pretty much tasted like regular beer, but it was exciting anyway!

Enjoy!

It's About Time

FINALLY!

I have baked something. I realize that it has been about a month since the last time I baked. I blame it on taking 20 credit hours and having to shop for my own groceries.

Well, I have two lovely fall-ish items for you to enjoy.

1) Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bites Dipped in Chocolate

For the first, I had to bring a dessert for my Nourish International Party (a group dedicated to sustainable development projects) so I decided to go with peanut butter cheesecake bites dipped in chocolate.

Well, I realized about half way through that the cheesecake bites were pretty similar to buckeyes, but I decided to go through with them anyway. They actually weren't that hard to make, but they required a lot of fridge time. I'm glad I started the recipe the night before!

They turned out delicious, but VERY rich. They are different from buckeyes because, even though they are pretty peanut buttery, they still taste like cheesecake. I did run out of regular chocolate half way through, so I made some of them with (blue) white chocolate.

2) Low-Cal Pumpkin Cupcakes Topped with Caramel Glaze

This recipe is one that my roommate, Kate (bestfootforward-kate.blogspot.com), recommended (and bought the ingredients for). It is a pumpkin cupcake topped with a caramel glaze. It was really easy to make, and the best part about it--each cupcake has 108 CALORIES!! I had to resist the urge to top it with a cream cheese frosting (which would defeat the point of making this low-cal recipe), but they still turned out yummy!

Here are the cupcakes without the glaze:
And with the glaze...Look out for more fall-related blogs in the near future! Enjoy!!

60th Anniversary Cupcakes!

For my grandparents' 60th Anniversary, I wanted to do some kind of dessert that represented their interests. Unfortunately, I had to work the day before the party, so I didn't get to do as much as I wanted to, but I still think they came out pretty cool!

THE CUPCAKE:

I wanted the cupcake to center around wine and berries, because my grandpa is into gardening and wine making. The recipe I came up with was white cupcakes infused with a sweet wine, filled with a wine berry compote, and topped with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting.

The cake was moist; the filling, which was made of wine, raspberries, and blackberries, was tart; and the frosting was thick and sweet.

THE DECORATING:

I used an idea from "What's New, Cupcake" to make knitting cupcakes for my grandma, who loves to knit. However, I could not find any kind of cupcakes decorated with gardening or wine bottles anywhere online.

First, my mom and I made fondant from scratch. We decided that it would look cool if we shaped twinkies like wine bottles and covered them in purple fondant and white fondant labels. Well, they looked okay... until I put one on top of a cupcake and realized that they were ridiculously large for cupcake toppers.

So we started over and made miniature fondant wine bottles instead. Fondant was not nearly as easy and fun to work with as I had imagined!

The knitting cupcakes were decorated with blue frosting and pocky sticks for the needles.

Here they are! Enjoy!

KNITTING CUPCAKES:

WINE BOTTLE CUPCAKES:

Cotton Candy Cupcakes!

So ever since I heard about the cotton candy vodka, I've been wanting to make some cotton candy cupcakes. Well, I couldn't find the vodka, so I had to make it work without it.

THE INGREDIENTS:

I'm not really sure what I would describe cotton candy as tasting like. It is really sugary and sweet, and doesn't really taste like anything else. So when I couldn't find any cotton candy flavor or extract, I had a hard time coming up with other ingredients to use. Well, I finally settled on using actual cotton candy, cream soda, blueberry pop, raspberry extract, and cotton candy jelly beans.

THE CUPCAKE:

I did a basic white cupcake recipe for the cake and then tried to add the flavor after. I didn't really have a recipe, so I just added some of the cream soda, blueberry pop, and raspberry flavor to the batter and made a cotton candy reduction.

The cotton candy had a really cool colorful fizzy reaction with the pop!
The batter ended up tasting really sweet and somewhat like cotton candy. To add to the cotton candy effect, I decided to layer the batter in three different colors: pink, blue, and yellow.

THE FROSTING:

I wanted to make a cotton candy buttercream frosting, so I used my favorite buttercream recipe and tried to add cotton candy flavor in every capacity that I could think of: the same reduction from before, actual pieces of cotton candy, and a cotton candy syrup that I made. It ended up being a purple color due to the pink and blue color of the cotton candy.

I used my 806 tip for the first time, and this is the piping it created. (I still need more practice with it!)

THE TOPPINGS:

To decorate the top, I used cotton candy and cotton candy jelly beans. Here's the finished product!

Enjoy!

Three Desserts and One Desire

Wow, it's been a long time since I blogged! Here are three "desserts" that I've made recently, as well as one dessert desire that I have!

THREE DESSERTS:

1. Meatloaf Cupcakes:

Well, this first thing isn't really a dessert. After posting about the meatloaf cupcakes, it was requested that I actually try making some. Well, I don't eat meat, so the idea of handling raw beef really grossed me out. However, I managed to power through it and make Bakerella's meatloaf cupcakes.

I don't know how they tasted, but they smelled delicious! They are meatloaf cupcakes with a tomato glaze and a mashed potato piped topping.

2. Strawberry Cookies:

I was looking for something sweet and didn't really have any ingredients, so I decided to make one of my favorite desserts: strawberry sugar cookies. I used a basic sugar cookie recipe and butter cream frosting and added a bunch of frozen strawberries. The humidity messed with me again, causing my frosting to be a little more whipped than I wanted, but they still came out delicious!

3. Blue Red Velvet Cake Balls

I had to make something for work, so I decided to do cake balls. I wanted to do red velvet, but I only had blue chocolate melts. This is what I ended up with!

ONE DESIRE:

4. Cotton Candy Vodka Cupcakes:

(Image courtesy of winecommune.com)

My sister recently told me about cotton candy flavored vodka. Well, my first thought was obviously that I needed to make cotton candy cupcakes! I don't have the ingredients right now, but hopefully you will be seeing some cotton candy cupcakes coming soon!

Cupcakes for kids and grown ups too!

This week I decided to make two different types of cupcakes: one for adults and one for kids (or in this case, my sister).

Adult Cupcake:

For these adult cupcakes, I got to try out two different techniques for the first time: booze-infused cupcakes and two-tone frosting. I wanted to make some kind of fruity cupcakes, and when I remembered that we had some fruity alcohol I decided that I had the perfect idea: pomegranate cosmopolitan cupcakes! Well, I couldn't find a recipe that I was happy with, so I created my own. I knew that I wanted to use pomegranate, lime, and orange flavors, so I decided to do pomegranate cupcakes (infused with smirnoff pomegranate martini and POM juice) topped with limeade and an orange triple sec buttercream frosting.

They didn't come out nearly as boozy as they sound, but they did turn out to be deliciously tart and sweet! For the triple sec frosting, I decided to do a pink-orange swirl to represent the two flavors. Here are some pictures!

Kid Cupcakes:

While these are kid cupcakes, they were actually requested by my sister. These are not my creation, but I was very excited to try out the recipe (not to mention my kitchen torch)! These are smores cupcakes: graham flavored cupcakes filled and topped with chocolate ganache and topped with a marshmallow meringue, lightly browned (in some cases, not so lightly). Well, they turned out pretty well, but Martha Stewart led me to believe that the marshmallow topping would pipe out into graceful swirls. About two minutes after piping, I turned around to find the marshmallow melting all over the cupcake! I don't know if it was the humidity, or if it was the recipe, but something tells me that that marshmallow was never going to stay up... so we got a little creative and made a number of marshmallow variations. I have to say, using the kitchen torch was my favorite part of the whole recipe!

Here's a picture of the torch in action:
...the beautiful marshmallow peak:
Strawberry marshmallow variation:
A variety of smores cupcakes:
Enjoy!

Did you say MEAT cupcakes?

So I was messing around on the computer and found these adorable cupcakes on cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com, one of my favorite cupcake blogs.

They were made originally by Mishella (via Epicute) and look just like the traditional cookout foods that we all enjoy! However, these cookout cupcakes come without real meat. Seeing these made me wonder what other kinds of meaty cupcakes are out there. I typed "meat cupcakes" into google images, and came out with a bunch of images that had no visible meat.

...

I found a few of the popular hamburger shaped cupcakes, and a set of brain cupcakes (I worry about the person who classifies human brains as meat). The rest of the cupcakes appeared to be normal cupcakes. That's when I came across these beauties, from wrightcreatively.com..

I did a little research and found that these deceiving cupcakes are actually MEATLOAF cupcakes topped with mashed potatoes! MEAT CUPCAKES?!?

However, the more I look at these cupcakes, the more I start to wonder what other foods I could make into cupcakes... pizza? tacos? Hmm... there's potential there.

What do you think? Meat cupcakes... take them or leave them?

CONGRATULATIONS WHITNEY!!

My older sister just graduated from grad school and got her first real job, so I wanted to surprise her with some baked goods. She had been requesting something for a while, but I didn't bake it because it is such an odd combination. Well, I have finally given in and made her what she requested...

...carrot cake cupcakes with purple sparkly frosting.

I made a rich carrot cake filled with pineapple, carrot, coconut, and raisins.

Here they are coming out of the oven:
I made what turned out be a whipped cream cheese frosting and added the purple food coloring. I had the worst time piping them (my bags kept popping, resulting in purple frosting explosions all over!) but I finished and covered them in a dusting of lilac luster dust and purple edible glitter. I topped them off with edible pearls. Here are some pictures of the finished product!




Congratulations Whitney!!! Enjoy!