Posts tagged ‘Cupcakes’

Jun 3

Meatloaf Cupcakes

For those of you who do not have a sweet tooth but still enjoy the occasional cupcake, here is a perfect solution – meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting.

Photo by Michele Humes @ Fine Furious Life

Michele Humes of Fine Furious Life created a three-meat meatloaf cupcake with plain mashed potato frosting and beet-tinted mashed potato frosting, sprinkled with finely diced green peppers. The recipe is included in her blog post.

Yet another ingenious creation in the world of cupcakes!

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!

May 28

2 Comments

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

I promised my daughter a Valentine’s Day party with cupcakes. I was after a batter that was safe to eat, so that we could lick the bowl and spoons. Luckily I found this eggless, butterless recipe on MarthaStewart.com and the frosting to match.

They were absolutely delicious. The chocolate cupcake recipe has become my standard chocolate cupcake – I won’t make any other chocolate cupcake! It is also so simple, requiring no eggs or butter.

What I also like about these cupcakes are the perfectly domed tops – so cute!

I did use regular skim milk and regular unsalted butter in the frosting (the original recipe, linked above, called for dairy ingredients that were specifically for people who are allergic to diary) and it still turned out perfect. I added a single drop of pink food coloring to the frosting and topped it with pink sugar sprinkles.

Since making this recipe, I have not been able to find cake flour in my local grocery stores. I use plain old all-purpose flour for this recipe and it turns out so moist and delicate.

This cupcake recipe is thought to be dated back to World War II, created as a result of rationing when eggs and butter were scarce. It is traditionally called “wacky cake”.

May 28

Half-Birthday Cupcakes

I baked these cupcakes for my son’s 6-month birthday. Of course he couldn’t eat any of these, but the rest of us took care of that. We thought it was so funny my daughter only ate the iced side of these cupcakes!