Chocolate Peppermint cupcakes

The ten day forecast is looking good, knock on wood! We're probably going to get showers a couple days before, but come Monday it should just be partly cloudy or mostly sunny. We're not nervous, no....

om nom nom nom

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These are not on the menu- I put a little peppermint schnapps into the frosting. These were for the bachelorette party. Not too bad...

Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes

Well, these were an experiment. The cupcakes were vegan but the recipe for the frosting was not, and I wanted to make them vegan. I don't think I would again. The frosting has strawberry puree in it, and is delicious. The lemony cupcake isn't too lemony or overwhelming. It has coconut milk in it, but you can't really taste that.

This frosting didn't get stiff at all, didn't keep any sort of shape, and would not work with a piping bag. Bummer. Some other sort of frosting will have to be used. I think a lemon curd center would have been delicious, but there wasn't any lemon curd to be had in the park's grocery stores.

I definitely gravitate towards the citrus and fruit in these. I think they'd be a good counterpart to the double coconut cupcakes.

Tried the smores again

One of my awesome sisters got me this for my B-day!

I did these the day before- so they're not as pretty as they were yesterday.

So I winged this recipe. I did graham crackers and butter on the bottom- I think it needs to be a little sweeter, and a bit moister. The chocolate cake was a triple chocolate chunk cake- I think it needs more chocolate chunks (I really don't think it'd be overkill, yes it was chocolate, but could use more chocolate!), and I did use the recipe for marshmallow frosting from the Betty Crocker book- it made a lot of frosting.
When I started torching the frosting it did a lot of oozing over the edge, which is awesome, but I think less might be more in this case. The Hersheys bars melted like crazy on top of the cupcake, but the Chocolove (because the store ran out of Hershey's bars, as well as eggs and bread!) chocolates held up fairly well. And were dang tasty.
I think if graham cracker crumbs were sprinkled on the top and then toasted, those would burn, but if the frosting wasn't torched, then it would be quite pretty.
What do y'all think?

Cherry Almond Vanilla= yummy!

Kinda hard to see, but there's a marachino cherry in the middle

These were super delicious. They are from scratch, so they're a little denser than from the box cakes, but that's fine with me. The recipe is from BHG- I think the frosting was just barely enough to cover my 24 cupcakes. And I had to stretch my maraschino cherry juice toward the end. But I really liked the flavor combo. My coworkers thought they were wedding worthy.


I loved the little cherry in the middle- it was only a half a cherry, I think it would probably be good to have two halves of a cherry in the cupcake.


And I would definitely put a whole cherry on top of the cupcake next time. yum. That's all.

strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

frosting that was refrigerated before piping onto the cuppity cake

experimenting with sprinkles

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mmmm, cactus

I got quite a few cupcakes out of the batch- actually had to throw some out.

look! baby cupcakes!

I had better luck once I refrigerated the frosting and then piped it onto the cupcake. I used some strawberry extract in the cupcake and I also used about 3/4c of pureed strawberries into the batter, someone may have recommended it and I thought it was a good idea, but it's still a very faint strawberry flavor. More cowbell?
Still quite tasty though, I never found any strawberry soda though, so maybe that was the trick. I think the frosting was my favorite part.
People like them, but they don't seem to be anyone's favorites. I think the frosting would hold up to being out of refrigeration for a few hours or so at the reception, don't you?

Toasted Almond with carmely maple-y frosting

Flash!

No Flash!

I found that these cupcakes were very light and fluffy. I toasted the almonds a little too long, didn't read the instructions that said to fold them into the batter, and couldn't tell that they were actually in the cake. So I think I wouldn't chop them as fine next time.
I tried the Salted Caramel frosting that the Californian Sister linked to on her blog. Complete and utter fail. I tried three times to get the sugar and cream to mix after carmelizing in the pan. All I got was hard somewhat burnt sugar in a puddle of vanilla and cream. So then I tried the carmel frosting that was from Allrecipes.com that was suggested after I couldn't get the first one to work. The one I ended up getting to work has butter, brown sugar, vanilla, cream, and powdered sugar. I beat the crap out of the frosting while it was still warm when I was adding the powdered sugar so that I wouldn't get that gritty texture I heard about. So far, the three people I heard from really liked them. (btw, who doesn't like cupcakes?) But the frosting was more maple-y I guess.

These weren't on the list

This recipe came from Martha Stewart's cupcake book- so scratch baking. Not as big of a pain in the butt as I thought it would be. I don't usually like the frosting, but this stuff is crazy awesome. It's butter, evaporated milk, vanilla, brown sugar, pecans, and coconut, lots of coconut.

One of my co-workers, Erin, recently had a birthday and requested this one. I have to say, I really really liked these.

My fabulous future mother in law sent me the Better Homes and Gardens Cupcakes magazine- it is filled with some super mouth watering looking recipes.

I still need to do the toasted almond cupcakes, I think I'm going to try that salted caramel frosting Lorili posted on her blog as a link. Based on Kim's and Lorili's notes, it sounds like the recipe in the book needs tweaking. Happy Baking!

cupcakes with a cheese cakey center



The strawberries photographed very well



I decided not to pipe the frosting on, just used an offset spatula. I think if we did these piping would look nicer. But the recipe book said they should be refrigerated- so maybe not?
So instead of doing just plain cream cheese chunks and strawberry jam, I took cream cheese, mixed it with sour cream, some sugar, some strawberry jam and then baked that into the cupcake- definitely more cheesecakey.
These were gone the next day. The maintenance guys, interp staff, and entrance station folk ate them really quickly. Everyone liked them a lot. Tim and I think the cupcake didn't have a lot of strawberry flavor.

Key Lime Cupcake-age

out of focus.

Still working on my piping skills... One looks really good, the others not so much.

Key Lime cream filled center

First of all, I love Key Lime. I wasn't sure if this cupcake was going to do my favorite pie justice. Surprisingly it was quite lovely. I did miss graham cracker goodness. Tim thought the frosting could have been tweaked, he was thinking the coconut frosting would be good with it. I personally like to mix toasted coconut into my graham cracker crusts for my key lime pies, so I can totally picture that combo. I think I like Key Lime more than the average bear, so I was good with Key Lime frosting and Key Lime filling.

So instead of just putting the key lime cream on top of the cupcake I had Tim pipe it into the center of the cupcake, I'm totally down with that.

My coworkers liked them but not as much as they liked the Double Coconut Cupcakes. I guess the whole refrigeration aspect of this cupcake is a problem. August is a fairly warm month. So, delicious, I will probably try to make these again, but not for the reception I guess.

Double Coconut yumminess!

so pretty!

nom nom nom nom

These are super moist! and quite delicious. Yep. Everyone who likes coconut loved these. Tim thinks they should be featured at the August 29th get together we're having. Coconut goes from warm to burnt in an instant, but I think it was nicely toasted, and gave them a cute little crunch.

I'm still having some issues burning my cupcakes, I think I need to wait 2-3 minutes before putting one pan in, because the other isn't having any issues. The ones that don't burn are the silicone ones. weird. I figured since I'm using cupcake liners there aren't any weird contaminations coming from the silicone.

Did anyone else think they tasted like macaroons? mmmmm, so yummy!

I took half to work with me, and Tim took half to the entrance station. Haven't heard from the entrance station yet.

s'mores cupcakes

Obviously I used an offset spatula and didn't pipe this frosting onto the cupcakes, I think it looks fine, I like the little teddy grahams, they are cute, there are only two people in my office today... The teddy bears get a little gooey if they're in there for a couple of hours. I didn't notice too much of a flavor change with the introduction of the graham cracker crumbs, but I did like the chunks of chocolate in the cake.
I tried hitting the chocolate bars with a rolling pin while still in the wrappers, but that didn't produce much results. Instead I crumbled them while they were still inside the wrappers by hand. (I would probably enlist my nephews to do that for me)
I think the frosting was delicious even if it was crazy sticky. I would like to try carmelized marshmallow frosting- like "skinning the grandma" when you roast your marshmallows.
I ran out of time last night to make more graham cracker crumbs to do a coating or crumbly topping. Sorry Tim!
I had enough batter for 24 cupcakes, I was scraping the bowl for enough frosting for them though. If I wasn't careful I wouldn't have had enough chocolate bits at the end for the top decoration.
Have you seen Bakerella's take on the s'more cupcake? I like the idea of using a chocolate cake, and a chocolate ganache, but a raw marshmallow is a little unappealing to me.

Updates: there were comments from a couple of the entrance station folks that got to try them.
"I tried one which seemed to have a lemony touch which I liked, I also thought maybe a tad bit dry, so how could one moisten more... I didn't pay much attention to the aesthetics as if anything was curious about the brown little pieces on top. Of course I gravitate towards cupcakes in general as they are my favorite. Good work overall." G

Next input: "Cupcake sample #1- presentation is everything. Make bears obvious as boy girl, maybe one holding a sugary flower like you might be holding, maybe leaning toward one another? or together? 2- taste great, but maybe adjoining sugar rings, or maybe the date or your initials placed sentimentally" P

Then these comments make more sense- "the cupcakes are delicious (of course!) and very cute. though as I was looking at the design, I had a brief, morbid flash of two little bears drowning in a whitecap sea, unable to help each other as their little chocolate life raft capsized and sank before their eyes. Sure I have an active imagination, but this batch was slightly over done (on the bottom) barely noticeable, but good to know if you're perfecting the recipe. In summary: yum! more please!" J

So mostly visual tweaks, I really liked Kim's smore's. They were real pretty!

Cream filled cupcakes

So I went with the concept of the cream filled cupcake, but since I lacked pre-made frosting, and I was talked into making substitutions, this is the product.

As you can see, I did use a chocolate cake- but I got milk chocolate, not devil's food. And instead of a vanilla frosting this is peanut butter frosting.

My verdict: there should be a contrasting flavor in the middle vs on the top. I do love me some chocolate and peanut butter though. So really not that bad, but maybe a creamier center? or a raspberry cream center? Tim came to a similar conclusion.

I think when we go back to flag next week, I will pick up some devil's food cake and try again.