Pinterest Project: Sundae Cupcakes

To go along with our hamburger cupcakes and sugar cookie fries, Michelle and I decided to make some ice cream sundae cupcakes. I thought these two would go perfectly together. Check out the original tutorial here.

I just love these. The frosting is what really makes them. It looks like a scoop of ice cream with whipped cream on top, but really it is just two different frostings in different textures.

We made ours a little different. Since we already had a dessert with brownies, we made Dan's chocolate cake (as cupcakes) instead. YUM! The frosting turned out great, just like the original. The only issue we had was with the "whipped cream" frosting. I went ahead and bought a can of white frosting with the tip you can pipe right on. Unfortunately, it was sort of more of a clear/white and mostly just blended in with the other frosting rather than have a completely different look. No worries, they were still awesome. What do you think?

Everyone at the party today loved them.

Pinterest win.

Pinterest Project: Hamburger Cupcakes and Fries

I saw these great cupcakes on pinterest a long time ago and had been looking for an excuse to make them. We're having a big BBQ tomorrow for the fourth of July, and since we will not be having the traditional hamburgers and hot dogs (but rather the most delicious brisket, ribs, and chicken), I thought they would be the perfect addition to our meal.

Michelle came over yesterday to help me put these together. The idea is simple. Bake a yellow cupcake and cut it in half. Bake a pan of brownies, cut circles using a biscuit cutter. Place brownie circle between two pieces of cupcake and pipe frosting on to look like lettuce, ketchup, or mustard. Sprinkle sesame seeds on top to make the cupcake look a little more like the top of a hamburger bun. On the original website, she had a printable for the cute little baskets to put these in so of course I was all over that. And I went ahead and modified the fry package to say Happy 4th of July instead of Happy Father's Day.

The second part of these are the fries. Sugar cookie fries to be exact. The idea for these is also pretty simple. Buy sugar cookie dough, roll out, bake, cut into strips, and sprinkle sugar on top to look like salt.

Here is our finished product:

What do you think? I love them! They were a HUGE hit today at the BBQ! :)

pinterest win.

Pinterest Project: Brownie Batter Cupcakes

It had been awhile since I made any new cupcakes, so one afternoon last week when I got bored I decided to try a new recipe I saw on pinterest.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of these cupcakes after I was finished, but let me tell you, they were amazing. They looked super cute and they were delicious!! I used a yellow cake mix to make the cupcake but modified the recipe by adding some sugar, sour cream, and vanilla. The cake turned out moist and full of flavor (much better than the simple box cake mix by itself). In the middle of these cupcakes is a bite of brownie, yum! I accidentally made more brownie bites than I needed for the cupcakes so we kept some of those in the fridge to eat as a bite size treat. That is the first dessert I have found that I cannot keep Tony away from. Those brownie bites inside are DELICIOUS! You could make that as a treat all on it's own.

I sent a dozen of these to work with Tony (because we don't need to be fatties and eat 18 cupcakes all ourselves) and they were devoured by the end of the day. Definitely a hit. If you like the taste of brownie and are looking for a good cupcake, I suggest you try these.

another pinterest win.

Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes - Two ways! :)

What else is a girl to do with so much time off but bake? (and with my new mixer which I am TOTALLY in LOVE with, I could bake every single day!) I have been wanting to try a basic chocolate cupcake for awhile now, so, today was the day. I used the Hershey recipe for these, and while the flavor is good, the cake was a little spongy for me. A decent chocolate cupcake for sure, but I don't think it will be my "go to" chocolate recipe. I'll have to keep experimenting for that ...

As for the frosting? I went back and forth between wanting a good vanilla frosting to top the chocolate cupcake, or a rich chocolate frosting. So, I decided to try both.

I'm not a huge fan of buttercream frosting in general (never really have been), but vanilla can compliment a good chocolate cupcake well, and I do like it in small quantities. That's why I made the mini cupcakes this time. Aren't they cute? These are perfect because each one only has a touch of the vanilla buttercream. And then of course there is the chocolate. I do really like this chocolate frosting. yum! :)

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

I got a new KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas and couldn't wait to try it out. What better excuse to make cupcakes than using my new mixer?!? I have gotten to the point that I have so many cupcake recipes I want to try that it is difficult to decide on just one to bake at a time. I went back and forth, and finally decided on peanut butter cupcakes this week. These are officially my favorite cupcakes EVER! Seriously, yum!

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Fluffernutter Frosting

Next time I make these (oh, and there will be a next time!), I'll make a little more frosting. I had enough to cover the batch, but just barely. Plus, they would look much prettier if they had a larger dome of frosting on the top.

And let me just say, baking is SO much easier with my new mixer! I am in love! You just put the ingredients in and walk away to let it mix; it's wonderful! Thanks, Mom! :)

So here's the recipe in case you want to try these too. And trust me, if you like peanut butter, you NEED to try these. It's like a delicious peanut butter explosion in your mouth. yuuummm!

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

6 T unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

1 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 t vanilla extract

1/2 cup milk

milk chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 standard muffin cups with paper liners. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl; set aside

In a bowl of a mixer, on medium speed, beat the butter, peanut butter, and brown sugar until smoothly blended and lightened in color, about 1 minute. Scrape down bowl and add egg and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute until batter is smooth. On low speed, alternately add flour mixture in 3 additions and milk in 2 additions, starting and ending with flour. Mix until flour is incorporated and batter is smooth.

Fill each paper liner with a generous 1/4 cup of batter. Bake until tops feel firm and are lightly browned, and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Remove cupcakes fro oven and place several chocolate chips on top of each. Allow chocolate to soften enough to spread. Spread to cover top of cupcakes and allow to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting Ingredients:

1 cup marshmallow fluff

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/4 t vanilla

1/4 t salt

1 1/3 cup powdered sugar

1-2 T milk

Directions:

In mixer bowl, on low speed, combine fluff, peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and salt until blended. Scrape down bowl, and add powdered sugar. Beat until blended. Add just enough milk to make frosting the desired consistency.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Okay so I admit it, I have a secret love affair for all things pumpkin. After I made those pumpkin muffins a few weeks ago I had been DYING to try out a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes but I just hadn't had the time. Plus, have you heard about the pumpkin shortage of 2009?!? Every time I went to the store to buy canned pumpkin it was nowhere to be found! How is that even possible?? So sad!

Anyway, I finally found some canned pumpkin at Target (although they still only had something like 6 cans of it!) and decided to get to baking.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

The batter for these tasted exactly like pumpkin pie, it just had a different texture. yuuuummm. The cupcakes turned out incredibly moist (I think that's due to the pumpkin purée) and the cinnamon cream cheese frosting complemented them perfectly. This is probably my favorite frosting thus far (but I'm also partial to a cream cheese frosting, not a huge fan of buttercream). Will I make these again? You bet! Will I probably make them again very soon? Most definitely! Now if someone could just work on finding an excuse for me to make them again that would be great! Mom, how do you feel about pumpkin cupcakes instead of pie for Thanksgiving? hehe

*recipe available upon request :)

Stay tuned for pumpkin spice cream cheese brownies to come later this week. I'm super excited to try this recipe and have to bring something to school this week so I think it might be perfect!

Coconut Cupcakes

It's Sunday, and you know what that means ...

CUPCAKE TIME!

I know I'll have sort of a limited audience with these, because it's one of those flavors you either love or you hate, but these coconut cupcakes are delicious and SO moist! The batter itself was delicious (trust me, I could have just had that with a spoon and been a happy camper), and the frosting is the same light meringue type frosting I made for the snickerdoodle cupcakes, but it has some coconut extract added in. And of course, as you can see, they are sprinkled with shredded coconut. YUM! If you like coconut, you HAVE to try these! I promise, you won't be disappointed!

It has come to my attention that some of you may want the recipes to some of these cupcakes, so I'll start posting them. If you wanted the recipe for one I already made, just leave a comment and I can get that recipe to you as well.

Coconut Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup packed sweetened shredded coconut

6 oz (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/3 cups sugar

2 large eggs plus 2 large egg whites

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition.

Reduce speed to low. Mix remaining wet ingredients in a bowl. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with wet ingredients and ending with dry. Scrape sides of bowl. Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full.

Bake cupcakes until testers inserted into centers come out clean, about 16 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks.

Frosting Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2/3 cup water

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

6 large egg whites

1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Frosting Directions:

Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar with the water and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Clip a candy thermometer to side of pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Continue boiling, without stirring, until syrup reaches 230 degrees.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk egg whites on medium-high speed until soft peaks form. With mixer running add remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar, beating to combine.

As soon as the sugar syrup reaches 230 degrees, remove from heat. With mixer on medium-low speed, pour syrup down side of bowl in a slow, steady stream. Raise speed to medium-high; whisk until mixture is completely cool and stiff peaks form, about 7 minutes. Add coconut extract, mixing to combine.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

I woke up this morning to a massive list of things to do for school. It was 8:30, and I told myself I needed to get at least half of it done by lunchtime. So, instead of getting right on the computer and playing around, I started grading papers. 11 sets of papers to be exact. *note to self, do NOT put off grading papers!* After I got all my papers graded I took a break from school work to shower, and once I was showered and dressed I started on lesson plans. Surprisingly enough, the lesson plans did not take nearly as much time as last week! I was expecting that to take up half my day alone, but I totally busted them out in about an hour. yay! :) Probably helped that I had actually done a little thinking about my upcoming week before I left school on Friday.

Since I had already accomplished so much, when Darren called and asked me to meet him for lunch I was able to say yes with a clear conscience. (I would have gone anyway mind you, but now I didn't have to feel bad about it or get really stressed out.) I had a great time catching up with D at lunch, and then headed home to do some more school work. I got all of my Words Their Way pretests graded and grouped my kids according to ability. The only thing I had left to do was choose words for the week, and do some planning on how I am going to incorporate this program into my daily 5 schedule. I decided that meant I could do something fun. So, in typical end of the week fashion, I baked some cupcakes!

Today's treat: Snickerdoodle Cupcakes!

I was actually surprised by how much I liked these in the end. They are very light, so they are quite different than the cupcakes I have made before, but I think that's what I like about them. You can eat one and not feel like you just had a major sugar overload. The cake part tastes just like a snickerdoodle cookie. Sort of a mix of vanilla and cinnamon. The frosting is similar to meringue, but a little different (descriptive, I know). And then they are sprinkled with a cinnamon sugar mixture.

I didn't have the piping tip I wanted to pipe the frosting on these, and the bake shop is closed for the holiday, so I just had to make do with what I had. It turned out okay, but next time I make these I'll make sure to have the piping tip I want. (honestly, only about half of them came out looking like I wanted, the rest look a little strange haha) I'll take the pretty ones to school tomorrow and keep the not so pretty ones for me to eat.

Oh, and I've decided on which "crazy lady" I am going to be when I am old. The crazy cupcake lady! hehe. I don't like animals so I can't be something like the crazy cat lady, but I do like cupcakes so I can be the crazy cupcake lady. :-P

Now I'm off to finish up the last of my school work for the day, and then I'm going to lay around and watch tv until I go to bed. Sounds like a pretty good plan to me :)

Devils Food Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Icing

I am incredibly stressed. Actually, stressed does not even begin to describe how I feel, but I can't think of any other words for it. Today I found myself so overwhelmed that I was literally in a trance staring at the wall because I didn't even know where to begin with the millions of things I have to do. So, to try and keep myself from freaking out (didn't work, just held the total meltdown at bay for a few hours) I decided to do some baking.

Today's treat? Devils food cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting, topped with a raspberry filled with chocolate ganache. Um, can I just say YUM! I need to bake more often, because each cupcake I make seems to be far better than the last. These are quite delicious! Chocolate and raspberry were made for each other, I swear!

So, without further ado, here is today's final product:

Now that school has started back up I can do a lot more baking! It's wonderful having a place to take all the extra cupcakes. I want to bake them because I enjoy the actual baking part; I only really want to eat one or two cupcakes. Drop these off in the lounge tomorrow morning though, and I bet they'll be gone by 9am haha.

In completely unrelated news, today during Sunday school I was holding the elevator door open waiting for all the kids to get in, and one little girl looked up at me and asked if I was an Aggie. I said yes, and asked her how she knew (thinking maybe I had said it). She pointed to my ring and told me her dad is an Aggie and so is she. LOVE that a 5 year old can already pick out an aggie ring haha! Those parents sure are raising her right ;-)

Butterfinger Banana Cupcakes

I'm heading to Austin tomorrow to see Mom and Woody, so I decided now was as good a time as any to make some more cupcakes! This time I will actually have people to share them with, so I figured it was perfect. As per my mom's request, I made butterfinger banana cupcakes with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting. Let me just say, YUM!

I definitely could have eaten the entire bowl of batter with a spoon it was so good haha! But, I managed to save enough to make some cupcakes too ;-) The cake itself could sort of be described as banana bread meets cupcakes. It has a banana bread type flavor (with a little bit of butterfinger crunch) but with a cupcake texture. I LOVE banana bread, so I LOVE these cupcakes! Add in the peanut butter frosting, sprinkle some crushed up butterfingers on top, and these are pretty darn good!

The last time I baked cupcakes I learned that my oven cooks faster than I expected. So, this time I watched these very carefully and they turned out wonderfully moist and delicious! yum! yum! yum! :)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

At the beginning of the summer I decided that my new hobby (how many new hobbies does one person need? apparently I need a lot!) was going to be baking. Or, more specifically, baking and decorating. I like baking (and I definitely like eating), but I also wanted to start to bake new things and practice decorating them. The problem with this new hobby is that I can bake all I want, but what do I do with all these bake goods once I'm done. I certainly can't sit around and eat an entire cake by myself, or an entire batch of cupcakes! So, my hobby got put on hold because I didn't have anyone to bake for. I did plenty of research though. I got a lot of recipes to try and decorating books etc., I just never made anything. I kept telling myself that when I go back to school it will be great because I can bake as much as I want, eat a little, then take the rest to school, so I was getting prepared.

But, I digress. I woke up this morning and wanted to bake today, so I did. This turned into quite an expensive ordeal seeing as how I decided I needed a new muffin pan, a cupcake carrier to hold my cupcakes in, piping bags, and piping tips (plus all the ingredients of course haha). So I ended up spending my morning running around collecting the things I needed.

I came home this afternoon and whipped up some chocolate cupcake batter from scratch:

who doesn't like chocolate?!?

Of course I had to taste it to make sure it was good:

it was! yum!! :)

Then I found a great recipe for a peanut butter icing made with cream cheese. I love it because it's really light in texture, but it's super rich in taste! It's not an overpowering peanut butter flavor, it's just enough mixed with the rich cream cheese to give the cupcake a little excitement. Before I iced the cupcakes I got out my piping bag. I had way more icing than necessary so I decided to test out my piping skills and made some stars.

That was easy! I see how this could be very very fun!

Then I got serious and started to pipe the icing on my cupcakes. Of course this would be about the time I had to merge my two new hobbies and take about 50 pictures of the cupcakes. Seriously, I took a TON of pictures!

Aren't they pretty? I think they turned out beautifully!

Now, if I must be honest, the cake is a little dry, but I attribute that to the fact that this was the first time I've baked in my oven (sad, I know!) and it cooks quicker than I was expecting. Now I know for the future that I need to take things out a few minutes before the time is up. However, they are still yummy :)