Cupcake-O-Saur

Creamsicle Cupcakes: Sweet Delicious Nostalgia

2012-04-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about what flavors the spring and summer will bring. When I was little, I used to love those little creamsicle cups (you know, the ones with the crappy wooden spoon). It got me thinking that it would be awesome as a cupcake for the warmer seasons - especially if it had a cream filling.

I loved how the creamsicle cups were half white and half orange, so I wanted to replicate that with my cupcakes. I did this with the frosting in the same way as I frosted my cabernet red velvet cupcakes. I filled one side of the bag with orange frosting, and the other side with vanilla. I even tinted the orange flavored one more orange. In case your wondering, filling the bag with two different colored frostings is not a particularly easy feat...

For the cupcakes, I added some orange extract, orange zest, and orange juice to a vanilla cupcake recipe. You might think this would make it taste way too orangey, but surprisingly it was just right. Here are the modifications I made:

Makes 12 Cupcakes

Follow the golden vanilla cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World with the following adjustments.

Instead of 1 cup of soy milk, use 2/3 cup soy milk (or other nut milk, like almond).
Instead of 1 teaspoon of vinegar, use 1/3 cup orange juice (fresh squeezed is best).
Instead of 1/4 teaspoon almond extract, use 1 teaspoon orange extract.
Add about 2 tablespoons orange zest.

I added a vanilla cream filling in the center which was amazing (there's a couple great recipes in the cupcake bible). For the frosting, I made a regular batch of vanilla buttercream and set half aside. Then I added orange extract and natural red and yellow food coloring so that it looked and tasted like delicious orange creamsicle goodness. Topped them off with some orange zest and I must say, these were perfect for summer and spring! With a very refreshing flavor, these are easily one of my new favorite cupcakes!

Irish Cream Cupcakes: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2012-03-17T09:50:00.003-07:00

I bet you thought I was going to make chocolate Guinness cupcakes, didn't you? Yeah, no. I've made them too many times. This was a time for something different. Something new. Something that I hadn't done before...

I didn't want to use alcohol again. I figured it was too cliche - you think Irish, you think alcoholics. I can get away with saying that because I'm some percentage Irish...so take that. In any case, I thought back to my barista days when I worked at Starbucks. We never had Irish Cream flavor, but people always wanted it, so we would mix vanilla and hazelnut, and apparently that makes an Irish cream flavor. This was the approach I decided to take in St. Patrick's Day cupcakes. Afterall, I had to make up for the fact that I pissed off a leprechaun.

I made a test batch using just extracts for getting that Irish cream flavor. I used hazelnut, vanilla, chocolate, and coffee extracts. The chocolate I threw in for fun because I think it makes everything taste great. However, this didn't quite punch you in the face with that Irish cream flavor like I was hoping.

Back to the drawing board. I decided I could try using hazelnut butter to get more of that hazelnut flavor. BAM! That worked like a charm! The only problem, as is typical because it wouldn't be my kitchen if something didn't go wrong while I was baking, was that the hazelnut butter was completely separated. As in, all the oil was sitting on top and all the mushy hazelnut goodness was stuck to the bottom, so I had to stir it. In doing so, I managed to somehow splash the oil all over the place. I was being gentle dammit, I don't know what happened. I think a ninja somehow managed to take the spoon from my hand and splash me with hazelnut oil without me noticing (hence the ninja part).

Here's the kicker: you know nutella? That stuff is nasty. It's way too freaking sweet. It has as much sugar as frosting! Awful. Want to know what's great? Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut Butter. It's like nutella, only you don't feel like you're eating frosting. You feel like you're eating something that might actually be good for you. Oh, so what does this have to do with my Irish Cream Cupcakes? Oh, I filled them with it. Yeah, I went there.

So here's the recipe, for those of you wanting to give this a shot:

Makes 12 Cupcakes

2/3 C Almond Milk
1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1/3 C Hazelnut Butter
1/3 C Canola Oil
1 tsp Hazelnut Extract
3 tsp Vanilla Extract
3 tsp Coffee Extract
1 tsp Chocolate Extract
1/3 C Granulated Sugar
1/3 C Stevia in the Raw
1 C All Purpose Flour
1/4 C Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
2 tbsp Cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line muffin tin with cupcake liners (I chose shamrock decorated ones, hehe). Whisk almond milk and apple cider vinegar so it curdles, set aside for a minute or so. Add the remaining wet ingredients and sugar and stevia. Sift in your dry ingredients and mix. Fill liners about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way. Use two teaspoons for the chocolate hazelnut butter - one to scoop it out, the other to push it into the cupcake. You can bury it a little if you want, but it's not necessary. I kind of liked it with it sitting on top a bit once they were all done.

In St. Patty's Day fashion, I decorated each cupcake with edible green glitter and a giant green marzipan shamrock. I hope I made that leprechaun happy now...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Lemon Cupcakes with Coconut Custard Filling: Shark Attack!!!

2012-03-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

Here's another biology inspired cupcake. These came in the day after we did our shark dissection, which I'll spare you the details of. But, sharks are freaking cool! So, why the hell not make some shark cupcakes!?

It was such a dilemma for me. You think sharks, you think tropical waters and beaches and scary shark attack movies. So, of course I needed to do some kind of tropical flavor...but what? It's still winter! What kind of tropical flavor can you enjoy in winter???

I opted for lemon. Not a purely tropical flavor, but light, and enjoyable. To add the touch of tropicalness I decided a filling of some sort would be necessary. I made a coconut custard one myself, based on a recipe from the cupcake bible of course. They didn't have a coconut filling, so I had to improvise. It was fun. Makes me feel like an evil mad scientist baker.

One problem here: I hadn't done filling in this way before. I'd done filling where you fill it and then bake it, but these required baking and then injecting the cupcakes with the filling. I had no idea what I was doing, which I'm pretty sure was apparent in some cupcakes. Particularly for my friend, Ashley. Luckily for her, since she hates coconut, she had barely any filling in her cupcake. Lesson learned: load those suckers till they explode.

And here's where more marzipan came in. YAY! I wanted to make full sharks, but after the ants took me so long, I opted to do shark fins coming out of blue frosting. I shaped the fins and painted them with edible silver glittter and blue powder. See? They look so shiny. It's like an ADHD sufferer's dream cupcake.

Probably my favoritest part about these cupcakes is that my friend, Chris, who is obsessed with sharks, loved them. Not just because they were shark cupcakes, but the flavor and filling too. Yay!

Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes: Fire Ants!

2012-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Currently, I am taking the second class in a three part biology sequence: Biology 212. Luckily, my professor is an Entymologist. This means that I am learning more about bugs than I ever hoped to know. So, as is only appropriate, the best way to kiss ass and help get yourself an A in a class is to make cupcakes for your teacher.

We had specifically been studying the Phylum Arthropoda, which includes bugs! My professor had mentioned that he had quite a bit of information about ants - which are in Phylum: Arthropoda, Subphylum: Hexapoda, Class: Insecta, and Order: Hymenoptera. This is where I get to put my nerd glasses back on.

I had just made my Valentine's day cupcakes (see Cabernet Red Velvet Cupcakes) and was still in a cupcake mood. Seeing as how we were having an exam two days after, I decided the best way to study would be to make a test batch of Fire Ant Cupcakes.

As you may have noticed, I'm not one for making your average, ordinary chocolate or vanilla cupcake. But I had a problem here - I wanted the cupcakes to look like a mound of dirt with an ant on it. So, what would look like a mound of dirt? Chocolate. But, that's BORING!

To the cupcake bible I went and I found the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes. How perfect! I quickly put it together. I'll make a spicy chocolate cupcake and call them Fire Ant Cupcakes! Brilliant, right? I didn't even get this one from Pinterest!

Not only was I ecstatic about my Fire Ant Cupcake idea, I was completely elated by the fact that I would have another wonderful opportunity to play with marzipan. I mixed the marzipan with some cocoa powder and beet powder and got that perfect red ant color and went right to work at making my little ants.

It was so fun! Probably more fun than making my tiramisu cupcakes...but definitely much more time consuming. This stuff is sticky as hell and it's kind of like working with clay.You'll need to use powdered sugar as you would flour when rolling out dough. I made 24 of these guys, so it took me about 2 and a half hours. Mirko would be able to put together a lot of furniture from Ikea while I make these.

I didn't care, they were worth it! I LOVE how they turned out and was super excited to bring them to my class. I had my study buddy test them out first; he said they were great.

I had to modify the recipe so much that I'll post yet another recipe! Hooray!

Makes 12 cupcakes

1 C Almond Milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp ground flax seed
1/3 C Canola Oil
1/3 C granulated Sugar
1/3 C Stevia in the Raw
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp coconut extract
1 tsp chocolate extract
3/4 C All purpose flour
1/4 C Whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 C Almond flour
1/2 C Cocoa Powder
2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1 tsp Cinnamon Powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 350 and line your muffin tin with cupcake liners. Whisk the almond milk and vinegar and let it sit for a minute or two before adding in the oil, extracts, ground flax seed, sugar and stevia. Sift in the dry ingredients. The batter may be a little thick, so add a little extra almond milk if needed. Fill the liners and bake for 10 minutes and then decrease your oven temperature to 325 and bake for another 18 minutes.

It was fun! Oh, and everybody loved these - surprised the hell out of me since they were spicy!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes: Beer + Chocolate = Fantastic!

2012-02-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'll just stick with this alcohol theme. I promise I really don't drink. Mirko's co-workers on the other hand...

One of Mirko's co-workers came by his office wondering where the cupcakes were. Mirko asked him where the money was. Said co-worker ran off and came back with a cup with a $5 bill in it. This lead to "the Cupcake Fund." A little more was contributed and of course I just had to make some more cupcakes!

What with Mirko's co-workers all seeming to enjoy the cupcakes I make with alcohol (and also a request for more chocolate Guinness cupcakes) I determined that the Chocolate Stout cupcakes were much needed. This time I wasn't going to make them with Guinness though.

As mentioned in the Bourbon Cupcakes post, I had previously made Chocolate Guinness cupcakes, which are exactly the same as these, I just used Guinness for the stout. This time, in true Seattleite fashion, I used Elysian's Dragonstooth Stout. I also used more beer than last time. Turns out my idea of half almond milk half alcohol is the way to go if you want to actually taste the alcohol being used.

These cupcakes have a crumb topping, and then I still put frosting on top as well. Last time, this was problematic because the frosting would just stick to the crumbs and not stay on the cupcake. This was frustrating like you wouldn't believe.

It wouldn't be me to make cupcakes perfectly, so I put the crumbs on after I put the cupcakes in the oven. I had a brief heart attack when I realized that I put them in without the crumbs. This time, I put a little less crumbs on top and made the frosting thinner. This time I got pretty cupcakes!

Of course I added more stout to the frosting. They're beer cupcakes!

Cabernet Red Velvet Cupcakes: Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-19T14:49:00.002-08:00

Ahh, Valentine's Day. So many love and loathe this holiday. I particularly love it because, let's face it, it has turned into Cupcake Celebration Day! All the pretty red velvet cupcakes come out along with vanilla ones with pink frosting. It's a cupcake-making-queen's dream.

I wasn't going to make just any cupcake this time around. I have spent too much energy investing in my new found ability to make my own cupcake concoctions. A cupcake-making friend of mine had mentioned making a wine inspired cupcake for a friend of hers. This gave me a wonderfully terrible idea.

There's this sparkling red dessert wine that I love. It's called Rose Regale. It's awesome. It has a red wine blend, raspberry, chocolate, and rose in it. It's so freaking good. I hadn't had it in a while, but for some reason when my friend mentioned wine in cupcakes, I just knew I had to make cupcakes with wine and rose. Sounds great right? It is how you make magic afterall.

At first I was thinking of doing chocolate and wine, but I quickly vetoed that with the idea of doing some red velvet. I just have one little problem with red velvet: red food dye. Yes, I am one of those people who can't stand the thought of chemicals and use only natural ingredients. I'd heard of using beet powder before, and I was ready to give it a try. Bring on the beet powder! Just...be careful, it likes to explode in your face.

I had to modify the recipe so much, that I will post it!!! Yay!!! It did start out from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, but I had to switch a lot. I guess I'm going to reveal a couple of my secrets by doing this (like the fact that I substitute some flour with whole wheat pastry flour and don't use a lot of sugar). Oh well.

Couple things first: This batter is too thick. If you try making these, you will need to add a small amount of wine and almond milk until you get the correct batter consistency. If you're not sure what that should look like, try doing two tablespoons of wine and three tablespoons of almond milk. So here's the recipe:

Makes 12 Cupcakes

2/3 C Vanilla Almond Milk
1/3 C Cabernet
1 C All Purpose Flour
1/4 C whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/3 C Stevia in the Raw
2 tbsp Cocoa powder
1/3 C Beet Powder
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 tsp chocolate extract

If you're looking at this and thinking "where's the baking soda?" Good! The baking soda has to be eliminated because it reacts with the beet powder while it's baking and will give you brown cupcakes. This would make you sad. It made me sad the first time it happened to me.

Now that I've explained that, you'll want to bake them at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. If you want them to be nice and poofy, here's a trick: Start your oven at 350 and bake them for 10 minutes. Then, decrease the temperature to 325 for the remainder of the baking (you will have to add another 15-18 minutes if you do this). (That's another Pinterest tip. Seriously that site is amazing, follow me if you like).

Oh! So where do the roses come in?

Glad you asked. I made a rosewater buttercream. Take your regular buttercream frosting recipe (1 stick of Earth Balance, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp almond milk, "3 C powdered sugar," or in my case 1 lb of powdered sugar, and 1 tsp of rosewater). Add almond milk as necessary to get the right consistency. When I made mine, I added 2 tsp of rosewater, I didn't feel like 1 was rosy enough. But some people said it was little too rosy for them.

You may also be wondering about the glittery pink hearts on them. I started playing with marzipan!!! I was so excited to give this a try. I found a tiny little heart cutter and cut out some marzipan. Then, I painted them with edible pink pearlescent glitter (same stuff I used on my Earl Grey Cupcakes). This part was super fun...and also super sticky.

They ended up being great. Everyone said they tasted great and were amazed with how moist they were. One cupcake recipient said they were the best they'd ever tasted!

So there you have it! Cabernet Red Velvet Cupcakes with Rosewater Buttercream!

Bourbon Cupcakes: Bad Mother F***er Cocktails

2012-02-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

There have been several flavors of cupcake that I haven't shared with you. That's mostly because at the time I didn't realize that I would have a blog. A couple of those flavors were Cranberry Pear Champagne Cupcakes and Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes. For as much as I make cupcakes with alcohol, it's surprising how little I actually drink.

Every now and then, I get a request for a cupcake flavor. Not all of these requested flavors are in the cupcake bible, so it allows me to get creative. One of these requests came from one of Mirko's co-workers who'd had one of my Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes. He suggested I try making some with bourbon, so I figured that could be great! I also figured that if I was going to make whiskey cupcakes, they were going to be boozey-freaking-cupcakes!

So to the internets I went in search of a bourbon cocktail that would make for a delicious cupcake adaptation. Well I found this list. As you might imagine from the title of this post, the one that caught my eye was the Bad Mother F#$%er.

So, to the liquor store I went to get some Jack Daniels and Vermouth. Then I got an orange at the grocery store. I also got a lemon for fun. I decided the raspberry syrup I had was close enough for the grenadine since I was only going to use a little tiny itty bit anyway. I felt like it was a strange shopping list. Maybe not. Whatever.

For the cake component of said cupcakes, I took a regular vanilla cupcake recipe and made them quite boozey. Normally, I use 1 cup of almond milk with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar (to kind of substitute the fact that I don't use eggs I guess?) but in every other recipe that uses alcohol, they usually replace some (like 1/4 C) of that milk with alcohol. Well, I replaced half of the milk with alcohol (I said boozey). I may have done slightly more Jack than vermouth, I was going to be adding Stevia to the cupcakes later anyway...or was I?

So I got everything together, or so I thought, and excitedly went to taste the batter before filling the liners. It tasted terrible! I was expecting this sweet delicious burning whiskey sensation and all I got was this terrible, sour flat bland burning sensation. I forgot the sugar and stevia.

How the hell did I forget the sugar and stevia? You know, the most crucial aspect of cupcake baking? Well, ok maybe not, the most crucial...no, it is. You can leave out the baking soda, have a flat cupcake and still have it be delicious if it's freaking sweet. Even if it's gooey! People will still eat it! But if it's not sweet? Forget it! This is why I always taste the batter. Because I know I do this kind of crap. Also because batter is usually delicious.

Into the batter went the appropriate amounts of sugar and stevia. I tasted it again and voila! There was that pleasant sweet burning whiskey sensation I had previously been seeking. I was in bourbon cupcake bliss. Well, bourbon cupcake batter bliss anyway.

For the frosting, I made an orange butter cream with a hint of raspberry. This completed my Bad Mother F#$%er cupcake. Mirko assured me that he told everyone they were called Bad Mother F#$%er cupcakes as well. Apparently they went over quite well.

Tiramisu Cupcakes II: No New Furniture

2012-01-16T21:38:00.000-08:00

This one is quick, so there are no comics, sorry! But, I really want to share these because they are prettier than the first ones, then I'll move on to a new flavor. You'll like it too.

I may have lied slightly when I said the next time I made these Mirko would put together furniture from Ikea. Or, maybe I said the next time we get furniture from Ikea, I would make these...that sounds more correct...cool! I'm not a liar! Well...anyway. I made these again, just like I said in my previous post.

Last time I made them because they are impressive for Mirko's work. This time I made them because my mom really enjoys tiramisu. Also it was for Christmas, so she asked me to make them as a second dessert option, which I was super excited about.

There was a little bit of confusion regarding the assembly of the cupcakes, specifically where I should assemble them. Should I put them together the night before at my place where they have the potential to get a little soggy? Or, should I put them together at my parents' house so they aren't as soggy? They're good either way. I could just make them Christmas morning before we go over, that would eliminate the worry of everything being done on time. So, I ended up doing just that, which worked out swimmingly since we were up late on Christmas Eve doing last minute gift wrapping, of course.

I put the cupcakes together and called my mom on the way over and she informed me that my cupcakes would be the only dessert - huzzah! That was until the power went out and dinner was late and we all ended up being too full by the time it would have been appropriate to be eating dessert. Luckily, cupcakes were wrapped and left as needed. It all worked out.

Our Christmas was splendid! We had a great time. Among the gifts I received were some jumbo muffin tins. There will be giant cupcakes in the near future!

Gingerbread Cupcakes: Baking Cupcakes in Jars

2012-01-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, I decided I wanted to send cupcakes to my relatives. There's just one problem with shipping cupcakes - how the hell do you keep them looking pretty? Well, apparently you bake them in mason jars. Genius right? I know! Yeah, wouldn't have figured that out without Pinterest...seriously, that website makes me look so freaking smart!

Since it was Christmas time I determined the perfect cupcakes to make (courtesy of the cupcake bible) would be gingerbread cupcakes. Gingerbread is probably one of my favoritest flavors ever. Remember how I mentioned I love Starbucks? Well, every year I look forward to them bringing out their holiday syrups because that is when I get to indulge in gingerbread lattes every time I come across a Starbucks. Which is every two blocks here...I'm not exaggerating.

Anywho, so gingerbread cupcakes! The batter was awesome. It was sweetened with maple syrup though, which kind of threw me off because I'm going through the recipe and I was like "...where the fuck is the sugar?" Yeah...used to forget ingredients. Took me a good ten minutes before I realized that maple syrup is, well, syrup and therefore sugar. Yes I sat there in my kitchen feeling like an utter dumbass. That genius feeling from earlier was definitely gone.

Then I continued making these awesome cupcakes by putting the batter in the jars. I decided to make 18 of them because that kind of fit nicely on the cookie sheet and that would be more than enough so that I would have plenty to send to everyone. Getting the batter in the jars wasn't the problem, it was getting them in the oven without dropping them all. Let's just say that the jars are slippery.

I highly recommend that if you ever do this, pretend you are a forklift. That's really the best way I can describe just how precise you should be with your movements so that they don't slip around all over the cookie sheet and turn into an amazing juggling act.

They had a lemon buttercream frosting that went just right with them. And I topped them with chopped crystallized ginger. I decorated the top of the jars too.

And also made a couple in regular cupcake wrappers.

Cranberry White Chocolate Cupcakes: I Made it Myself!

2012-01-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

That really pretty looking cupcake swirl? The Wilton M1 tip. That's how you do that. I learned that on Pinterest. Then I ran to Michael's, walked in the door, and bolted towards the cake decorating section while repeating "M1tipM1tipM1tipM1tipM1tipM1tipM1tipM1tipM1tip" frenziedly. That wasn't in my head. I received stares. I didn't care, I was on a mission. This is serious, people. This is about pretty cupcakes.

What better to make pretty than my own recipe? That's right. My own recipe!

Well, sort of. I made these in November right after Starbucks had decided that's when Christmas should be (you know, before we even get to Thanksgiving) and that's when they had their cranberry bliss bars. It had been a few years since I'd had one and I was remembering how yummy they were...sooooo yummy...and I was like, hey! I'm an accomplished cupcake maker now! I can make my own! In cupcake form!

So! Here's what I did (hooray! I'm posting a bit of a recipe). To a golden vanilla cupcake recipe, I added (this is why I say "sort of" my own recipe):

1/3 C vegan white chocolate chips
1/3 C cranberries
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp orange zest

Then! I made a vegan cream cheese frosting and added some cranberries, until I got bored. Or, until I thought there was enough. Whichever came first. Voila! I had made a cupcake that was strangely reminiscent of those cranberry bliss bars I was craving. Oh my these were tasty. However, I ran into a bit of a problem, as you might imagine (I seem to be in a bit of denial here about still being somewhat crap at baking). All of the white chocolate chips that I had added and mixed in sank to the bottom. So, the wrapper was really hard to peel off and all of the white chocolate chips were stuck to it. I didn't take pictures of that part, but this will give you an idea of what it looked like:

Luckily, these cupcakes were a test as part of a devious plan for the holiday season. So I did make them again and this time, instead of mixing the white chocolate chips in, I sprinkled them on top.Worked much better. You can even see one in these pictures.

Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes: London Fog Tea Lattes

2012-01-01T00:02:00.000-08:00

It's true what everybody says about Seattleites - we all love Starbucks. Some of us try to deny it and say that we're all about the local places. That's true too. I like the local coffee places, but I also love my Starbucks. I've got a gold card and a complicated drink. Everybody here loves coffee. Even if you don't love coffee, you still go to Starbucks and you get tea lattes and other tea...things. I usually go for tea honestly, I love a good London fog. If you don't know what a London fog is, it's delicious. It's an earl grey tea latte, which is made from earl grey tea, milk (in my case, soy milk), and pure magic. Which is what inspired these cupcakes.

I'd been hitting the London fogs pretty hard lately and saw a recipe in the cupcake bible for a chai tea latte cupcake. There was a little variation at the back of the recipe that said you could make them with earl grey tea (there were a couple other variations...I didn't care, just give me the earl grey tea dammit). I knew I had to make them. It was like that special variation was put in there just for me.

My favorite part of making these cupcakes was the tea part. All of the recipes I use call for soy milk, but I always use almond milk, because I like almond milk better than soy milk. So, the almond milk needs to be heated to the point of almost boiling and then 4 tea bags are added (for me, almost boiling means quickly removing it from the heat before it boils over and then lowering the heat because for some reason I can never get it to almost boil...pfft). Then it steeps for 10 minutes while trying not to catch the tags on fire, and then you squeeze every last bit of tea out. I don't know why, but this part is super fun for me. It's probably because of all the yummy earl grey smells. Or maybe it's the potential for fire.

The interesting part about this recipe is that it calls for soy yogurt. I hate yogurt. I hated it before I was vegan, and I super hate it now. The whole idea of yogurt is gross to me. It's milk that's gone bad, and apparently that's good for you. Ew. And for some reason, we've decided that we have to have a vegan version of it. Ugh, whatever (don't get me wrong, I do understand the health benefits and all that...doesn't mean it doesn't gross me out).

So, I didn't realize I needed this right away (part of the curse of my previously horrible baking skills, remember how I used to leave ingredients out), so I started making the cupcakes and then got to the part that said yogurt and was like "well...shit." So, you can imagine Mirko's surprised look when, knowing how much I hate yogurt, I kindly asked him to run to the store real quick and pick up some soy yogurt for me. I think my dog, Zoidberg, was even shocked.

Luckily, I have a really amazing husband and we live really close to the store, so he agreed and was only gone for like 10 minutes; I was able to get all my dry ingredients ready in the mean time along with getting the liners ready. I finished making the batter, filled the liners, and in the oven they went. I usually like to taste the batter as a way to test the cupcakes before they're even done. If the batter tastes good, generally the cupcakes will taste good too.

Yeah, I made that batter disappear. This was the best batter of my life. So good. Gotta love eggless batter.

They came out of the oven perfectly. I finished them off with a vanilla buttercream frosting. And edible purple glitter. Why the purple glitter you ask? Oh. Well, I made some cupcakes for Mirko's team the week before that tasted fantastic, but they looked terrible, so I apologized for them looking terrible. One of his coworkers said it was unacceptable. It really was. I didn't take pictures, but this will give you an idea of what they looked like:

Terrible. So, I promised pretty cupcakes the next time I made them. So I gave them pretty cupcakes. Purple glitter and all.

Tiramisu Cupcakes: Some Assembly Required

2011-12-31T19:23:00.000-08:00

I have now mastered baking! ...well, at least I no longer suck at it. I have been able to successfully make several batches of cupcakes without forgetting any vital ingredients (I'm not sure I really illustrated how bad I used to be at baking in my first post). Those apple butter filled cupcakes? Yeah, I also made some filled with pumpkin butter. Those were good...NOT THE POINT. The point is, I decided that I was ready to take on a challenge - The Tiramisu Cupcake. These are fancy. Very fancy. I mean, look at them up there! Yeah, they were super fun to make too.

So, you may be wondering where all of my cupcakes go. Well, I give them mostly to my husband's team at Microsoft. Now, I'm not saying that my cupcakes help him keep his job, but I have been told that they have come up as a very important topic in meetings on more than one occasion. So of course fancy homemade tiramisu cupcakes are a great thing for him to bring to the office to share with his coworkers and multiple bosses.

Making these cupcakes was not unlike putting together furniture from Ikea. First was baking vanilla cupcakes. Next came mixing the liquor and coffee (that's right, more cupcakes with alcohol). Then was "coring" the cupcakes, followed by coating the inside with the liquor/coffee mixture. A vegan cream cheese frosting was then made (I added a little of the coffee liquor mixture to it, just for a little something extra) and the cupcakes were filled with the frosting.

Then the cores were placed back on the cupcakes. Next a dollop of frosting was added to each cupcake, followed by a dusting of cocoa and cinnamon (this time I did actually dust them, I remembered all too well how to properly dust from my apple butter filled cupcakes). Then I put a coffee bean on each cupcake and shaved some chocolate over them...I think next time we get furniture from Ikea, I'm making these while Mirko puts the furniture together. I'm curious to see who finishes first.

I'm probably making them sound like more of a nightmare than they are. They are actually really fun to make and well worth the effort. They are super delicious. So delicious, and so fun, that I made them again.

Apple Butter Filled Vanilla Cupcakes: Pinterest Addiction & Love of Autumn

2011-12-21T17:29:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Diana, and I am a Pinaholic. It has been...4 minutes since I last pinned. If you have no idea what Pinterest is, I'm so sorry that I just told you about it. Please find me on there when you make your account (here I am). In any case, I get so many ideas from pinterest.com and everybody thinks I'm a genius, when really I'm just a copy cat. One of my favorite things about Pinterest is that there are a lot of cupcake ideas on there. One of my favorites during autumn was the apple butter filled vanilla cupcake.

Now I LOVE autumn. A lot of people do. And really, who can resist it? It's so damn pretty! I love the leaves changing colors, the leaves falling off the trees, the leaves blowing around in the wind, the contrast of the leaves against a clear blue sky...I like leaves o_O.

I get into the spirit of autumn September 1. I don't care that it's still summer. I don't care that it's still 80 degrees and not one leaf is red (it's Seattle, 80 is as hot as it gets). Autumn is coming, dammit. It's every where in the stores too, especially if you're a crafty person. You can't step into a Michael's or Jo-Ann's without being bombarded with leaves, pumpkins, and hay.

Everything screams harvest - especially Pinterest. So when those delightful looking apple butter filled vanilla cupcakes kept popping up every time I clicked "see more pins" (just one more page, I swear, then I'll go do something productive with my day) I just had to make them.

Many people had told me that apple butter is quite yummy, but I hadn't tried it myself yet. I trusted their judgement, so I jumped right into this idea. I picked up an organic apple butter and whipped up a batch of golden vanilla cupcakes from the Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook. It was very easy to fill the cupcakes with the apple butter. The picture I'd seen of the cupcakes showed that the apple butter had sunk to the bottom of the cupcake; I assumed because the cupcake liners were filled half way, then the apple butter was added, then more cupcake batter was added. So, to avoid the apple butter sinking all the way to the bottom, I added it after I filled the liners as I normally would and just barely buried it. It worked perfectly. The apple butter ended up sinking to the middle of the cupcakes.

For the frosting, I made a vanilla buttercream and then dusted them with cinnamon. When I say I "dusted" them, I mean I accidentally poured an entire jar of cinnamon all over the first few and then dusted the rest. The pictures were taken from the lesson learned. However the over-cinnamoned ones I found to be tastier than the other ones...but, I also really really like cinnamon. In any case, these ended up being the perfect cupcakes for autumn!

Margarita Cupcakes: The Cupcakes That Started It All

2011-12-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

I used to be really bad at baking. I mean really bad. It was not uncommon for me to call my mother frequently while baking greeting her frantically with "BAKING EMERGENCY!!!" My father would be in the background saying "she really shouldn't bake."

The best part about my atrocious baking is that before I was really horrible at it, I was really good at it. When I was a teenager, I would bake scones, muffins, cakes, cookies - all sorts of things. Nothing too fancy, mind you, but the fact is that I could bake. Something went wrong when I moved out and I had my own kitchen and I cooked all the time. A part of my brain said "Measuring? You have to measure stuff? You have time for that? Oh HELL no!" And there went my baking skills. At least, that's the story I'm going with.

This is probably the part where I should mention that I'm vegan. I wasn't when I was a teenager. I went vegan about a year after I moved out of my parents' house. For a long time I thought I had to use egg replacers in order to accomplish the fantastic fluffy cakes and perfect cookies of non-vegan bakers. Took me a while to learn that there's a lot to be done without those weird ingredients.

Anyhow, so what got me to change my non-baking, non-measuring ways? So here I was, going to a Mexican themed party, and for no good reason whatsoever I determined that I was going to make cupcakes. It just came to me. I found a recipe online (that I later found out came from what I now call my "Cupcake Bible" - Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World) and I decided to just give it a shot. I was extremely excited because it meant going to the liquor store to get one of those adorable little bottles of tequila. That's right, these cupcakes really had alcohol in them.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew one of my biggest downfalls was always forgetting some important ingredient...like baking soda....or baking powder...something that makes them rise. I was very careful, I think I read that recipe like 6 times to make sure I had everything in there before I filled the liners - I was very paranoid. Confident that I hadn't missed anything, I put them in the oven and proceeded to the frosting; this is where the phone call to mom occurred. Well,not quite yet.

The frosting also had the tequila in it as well as lime juice. After the cupcakes were done baking (and they actually turned out perfectly! I was amazed!) and cooled, I started frosting them with what I thought was decent frosting. Remember this - the cupcakes were cooled. The frosting came out of the tip like a melty mess. So, I called my mom and she guided me through thickening up my frosting.

This is where I learned the very important lesson that all frosting recipes LIE when it comes to the quantity of powdered sugar required to make an appropriate frosting. After adding the rest of the bag of powdered sugar (don't worry, I don't get the 2 pound bags...I always forget how much is in the ones I get............it's not two pounds o_O) I finally got the frosting that was needed to achieve that pretty looking cupcake that you see at the bakery.

And that was it! I added some lime wedges to each cupcake and stood back completely amazed that I had actually successfully baked something - and that it looked GREAT! These things actually looked like I bought them! I had to take pictures. I also called my mom. She didn't believe me. I sent her the pictures. Not only did they look pretty, but they also tasted good! When my husband and I went to the party, everybody actually liked the cupcakes!

So there you have it. The cupcakes that started it all.