Posts from the ‘Cupcakes’ Category

Jun 19

Green Tea Cupcakes

One week after I placed my order for green tea powder (also called matcha) it arrived in my mailbox, and one day later, today, I baked my green tea cupcakes. With my two wild children running around under my feet, I had some unfortunate mishaps – I spilled flour on the floor, I spilled about a whole tablespoon full of my precious matcha on the floor, and when making coffee while the cupcakes were baking I spilled a bunch of coffee grounds on the floor! Normally I’m not quite as messy, but it was one of those days I guess.

Now anyway, I followed the same recipe I found here – Magnolia Bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe, which I halved. I somehow ended up with 13 cupcakes though. I added 1.5 tablespoons of matcha to the batter.

I absolutely love this green color, it was perfect. The color darkened slightly once they had cooled. I used Chockylit’s green tea cream cheese frosting, which I also halved, but still ended up with plenty of leftover frosting. I figure this is because I accidentally used 8 ounces of cream cheese instead of 6 ounces. The only other thing I did differently was to use the full amount of matcha (1 tablespoon) instead of halving it. Hey, I wanted to be sure I’d taste the green tea!

Aren’t they beautiful! The frosting was a little too soft to pipe, so I let it sit in the refrigerator for a little while. I love how creamy the frosting is, and I can really taste the matcha.

The cupcake itself is moist and fluffy, and I was a bit worried I had over-mixed the batter, but it turned out perfectly. I am refrigerating the leftovers because of the cream cheese in the frosting. Refrigeration will change the texture of the cupcake, but it will definitely still taste as nice.

A big thank you to Cupcakes Take The Cake for posting my green tea cupcakes on their blog!

Jun 13

Nutella Cupcakes

I love Nutella. I can’t stand to be without it. And I am always on the search for new Nutella recipes. I decided to try, as my first Nutella recipe, the popular self-frosting Nutella cupcake from Donna Hay.

They turned out nicely, but here are some things I didn’t like about the cupcake. First, the batter was very sticky – I’m not sure if this is normal, but I am positive that I did everything as per instructions. I’ve never seen such sticky cupcake batter. Second, the Nutella was difficult to swirl around the top of the batter. Third, the cupcake is too dense for my liking; I much prefer light, fluffy, airy, moist cupcakes. This cupcake, in my opinion, is more similar in texture to a muffin.

Nutella Cupcakes
makes 12

Ingredients
10 tbsp(140 grams) butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups (200 grams) sifted ap flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Method
Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.

Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t look smooth. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.

Using an ice cream scoop, fill each muffin liner with batter. They should be 3/4 full, if you’re not using a scoop. Top each cake with 1 1/2 tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.
Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

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I am in search of a chocolate cupcake recipe with Nutella in the batter, but haven’t yet found one. Please let me know if you know where I can find one. In the meantime, I will be looking at all the gorgeous Nutella cupcakes on Flickr!

Jun 12

Mocha Cupcakes

In my search for a coffee and banana cupcake, I decided to try the following combination.

Mocha cupcakes from Genius of a Cook: Obviously I did not use the Kahlua frosting, but I can say that these are the best mocha cupcakes. They were so soft, delicate and moist and had just a hint of coffee. I would have liked a stronger coffee flavor, but maybe my brewed coffee should have been stronger.

A personal note on these cupcakes – the recipe, I believe, should yield 12 cupcakes if you fill the liners 3/4 full. I did fill my liners to that recommended level, but had overflow while baking. If I make these again, I may try filling the liners a bit less than recommended and end up with a couple extra cupcakes.

Banana frosting from Chef Lilian: I was a bit disappointed with this frosting. While it did taste nice, it ended up looking nothing like the photo on the recipe page. It was very runny, too runny. After researching a bit more, I am wondering if that recipe could be missing an ingredient – perhaps, butter.

Overall, a great tasting cupcake. In future, I might try baking these cupcakes again with Nutella frosting. Also I will eventually try the reverse of this recipe – a banana cupcake with mocha or plain coffee frosting.

May 31

Chocolate Cupcakes For A Bake-Off

My neighborhood group held a cookout today at our playground/park, where they were also having a bake-off and bake sale. I decided to enter in my favorite cupcakes – exactly the same as these, except with dark chocolate shavings instead of sprinkles, and thicker, more stiff frosting. This is how they turned out.

They came in third place, behind handmade chocolate truffles and brownies. I won a Pampered Chef 15-inch round baking stone though, so it’s all good! And there were some cupcakes leftover to take home – they tasted so divine!

Unfortunately, nobody purchased any of the key lime cupcakes that I made for the bake sale. But the entire bake sale was not successful, so a lot of people took home most of what they had made.

I bought two chocolate chip cookies and two chocolate crackle cookies from the bake sale and my daughter and I ate them up!

May 28

Key Lime Cupcakes

I’m not a huge fan of limes, but I could not resist this recipe for key lime cupcakes with white chocolate and coconut frosting.

Unfortunately, there was no buttermilk at the store I bought my ingredients from so I had to fall back on a substitution. Put one tablespoon of white vinegar into a standard 1-cup measuring cup, pour in enough milk to come up to the 1-cup line, and let stand for five minutes – use as much “buttermilk” as your recipe calls for.

The other thing I did differently was toast the coconut. I did this because I felt that the toasted coconut would look nicer on the white frosting.

And, I could not get heavy whipping cream for the frosting at my store, so I went in search of a white chocolate frosting recipe that called for the ingredients that I did have. I found this one, and while it did taste fine, it melted quickly and I had to store the frosted cupcakes in the refrigerator.

I found that the zesting and juicing of the tiny limes took a bit of extra time than the average cupcake, but felt that it was worth it in the end. This is definitely a recipe I will make again (hopefully with normal buttermilk and the original frosting recipe!).

May 28

Chocolate Cupcakes

These are the best cupcakes I have eaten in a while. They are, of course, my standard eggless and butterless chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate frosting recipe I found on the Cupcakes Take The Cake blog.

I added the rainbow non-pareils as a treat for my daughter, who loves sprinkles. I used a plain old Ziploc bag to pipe the frosting on the cupcake.

May 28

Banana Cupcakes

I found this recipe while looking for banana cupcakes, which uses a super sweet honey-cinnamon frosting. Fresh bananas are optional, but helped to alleviate the sweetness of the frosting.

Recipe from MarthaStewart.com. This recipe uses 1 1/2 cups of mashed banana, so there is definitely a strong banana taste which I loved.

I baked these in my Wilton silicone baking cups. Not sure if I like the silicone baking cups – they are hard to wash and while dishwasher safe it is hard to keep them in one place in the dishwasher.

May 28

Short Black Cupcakes

I saved this recipe from a newspaper article in Sydney, Australia dated from my daughter’s birthday in 2006. I finally got around to making them a few weeks ago! They might have looked nicer had I dusted them with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.

Short Black Cupcakes
Originally from Donna Hay Magazine
makes 12-14

Ingredients
125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbs cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
100g dark chocolate, melted

Coffee icing

Ingredients
1 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 tbs instant coffee
3 egg whites

Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs and beat well. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa and beat until combined. Fold through the milk, stir in the chocolate and spoon the mixture into four 12-hole 25ml capacity mini-muffin tins lined with paper pattycases. (I used regular sized cupcake tins and got 14 of them out of this recipe.) Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cooked when tested with a skewer. Cool on wire racks.

To make coffee icing
Place the sugar, water, cream of tartar and coffee in a saucepan over high heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes.

Place the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until soft peaks form. While the motor is still running, gradually add the sugar mixture and beat until thick and glossy.

May 28

Chocolate Cupcakes & Vanilla Frosting

My husband was teaching a class in his office a few weeks ago but fell ill in the middle of the week. A coworker covered for him for a couple of days, which was a big help to my husband. I baked a batch of my favorite cupcakes as a thank you present.

This was my best batch yet; these cupcakes just get better and better each time I bake them. These cupcakes were shared throughout my husband’s office and everyone loved them.

May 28

St Patrick's Day Cupcakes

I baked these for a St Patrick’s Day party that my playgroup was having. They are vanilla, with a small dollop of green-tinted batter in the middle of each cupcake, the frosting is the same that I used here.

I made a makeshift shamrock stencil for the white-frosted cupcakes, but it didn’t turn out as well I’d hoped. The kids didn’t mind at all, though.

The cupcake itself was quite a bit more dense than I like and I probably won’t be making this recipe again. Still on the search for my perfect vanilla cupcake recipe.

May 28

My Birthday Cupcakes

My birthday was quite uneventful; it was playgroup day for my daughter and her friends, so I invited them to our house and served these cupcakes – recipe here. I used one drop of each of fluorescent food coloring to color the icing.

They were a hit and I had to give out the recipe! I wasn’t surprised, however, that the kids only ate the frosting and left the cake. I hated to see it go to waste!