Victim Of Cupcakes

Clean Eating for the New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 21:00:00 +0000

A brand-spankin’-bright-n-shiny New Year has begun. Despite having just survived a 2016 that sometimes seemed to be more a series of battles than a normal, peaceful life, I’m looking forward to having a 2017 that is a bit more sane!

Over the past two years, the Hubster and I have had a couple of fairly serious health problems crop up that have culminated in tons of research into – What The Heck Happened To Us??!!

First, I started having severe attacks of diverticulitis. Then my husband contracted severe and sudden onset of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The end of 2016 now finds me missing 14” of my colon and my husband is in the process of recovering from a full knee replacement.

When your entire world turns upside down, naturally you ask a lot of questions. I needed to know how to deal with our ailments, what caused our health problems, how to prevent more, and on and on. I learned that Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune problem and no one seems to know what the actual cause is. With the diverticulitis, I learned that most people over the age of 50 have diverticula (pockets) in their colon, but for some reason a few people go on to have those pockets become infected (diverticulitis). Most of those people never have the diverticulitis come back, but a few people keep having the problem and no one really seems to know why that is.

So, while I don’t have any real answers to the how or why we suddenly had these serious health problems appear, the result of looking for those answers did lead me to believe that it is possible that our food and environment may well be a major contributing factor to our illnesses … and many of the health problems that are mushrooming throughout our entire population.

For starters, I’ve been working on “clean” eating. Organic and Non-GMO. I’ve always been a gardener, so that was already part of our eating habits. Sourcing other parts of our diet and getting chemicals out of our food – that’s the harder part but I’ve noticed it gets easier every day and that’s great! It means more people are waking up to the sad fact that our world is poisonous.

Oh, I haven’t stopped making cupcakes. Nope. That’s just not gonna happen! J Even though we’re trying to eat clean now, that doesn’t mean giving up goodies. It just means I’m making my cupcakes and all the other assorted goodies with “better” ingredients now. Organic and Non-GMO whenever possible, because .. you know .. well, cupcakes, cookies, cakes, pies, and the like are TREATS, not food required for physical sustenance. Just mental sustenance.

I’d like to add a few ideas about making the change to clean eating to my blog now because I’ve become a real believer and, if nothing else, I hope to help spread the word and encourage others to start making changes that might just help prevent future health problems.

Leave me a comment to let me know if you’ve been thinking about eating clean, wondering about it, or have already made changes!

Surprise! It Looks Like a Garfield Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 17:26:00 +0000

It makes me sad that I’m not taking the time to bake much anymore. It drives me crazy because I LOVE baking! Hubster and I started a diet – you know – the annual New Year’s diet and we’ve done reasonably well. Except we’re not losing weight despite watching the calories and exercising … apparently old age is making that fat really determined. So anyway, I apologize for the lack of posts here. But we’re getting into birthday season around here, so I’ll have a few days of baking. Yay!

Youngest son’s birthday was last week. He’s my lemon-loving baby, so I stuck with my usual lemon cake and frosting recipe – the one I used for his wedding cupcakes. Duelling Lemon Cupcakes He’s also the world’s biggest Garfield fan, so when we were out garage “sailing” last summer and came across a cake pan with 4 small Garfield faces for A BUCK (!!!) we grabbed it right up and kept it a secret.

The first victory of the day is that I was able to find the cake pan months later. I credit that to having started the Great Purge of 2014. I’ve committed to removing excess STUFF around here this year and am going room by room, clearing out unused things. Almost through the kitchen now, where I started. I have a lot of things going on at the shop right now so The Purge is in a holding pattern for a couple more weeks.

The second victory was being able to get the Garfield faces out of the pan. I was in a hurry and you know that’s when everything goes wrong, so I figured that would be my first problem. I used Baker’s Joy spray and then floured that just to be sure. To tell you how long it’s been since I last baked, when I started to spray the pan the spray went everywhere BUT the pan – the nozzle clogged – but my kitchen cupboards got a nice washing. Timing for that could have been better, but what are you going to do? LOL Once the cakes came out of the pan safely, I used the remaining batter and made 10 additional cupcakes.

As I said, I was in a hurry and I regret not having taken a picture of the cakes when they came out of the pan. I was a bit intimidated because, an artist – I’m NOT. My stick people are unrecognizable. There were no instructions or a picture to go by to do the decorating, so I hunted around online for instructions, a picture … anything … and finally found a tiny picture of what the cakes were supposed to look like. Garfield Cake Pan

I mixed up the orange icing and yellow icing and I keep a tube of pre-made black frosting around then took a deep breath. Standing there, looking at those cakes, I wondered why I thought this was a good idea. I had to draw on the memory of making recognizable birthday cakes from dinosaur and Big Bird cake pans (and I even know where the pans are after all these years!). I started with the eyes. Two blobs of the white frosting, smoothed onto the raised ovals on the cake. It looked pretty good and I relaxed enough to continue.

Starting with the orange icing and star tip # I went around the side of the first one. It didn’t take long for the icing to get too soft to hold the star shape, but I decided Garfield is hairy so … just kept sticking the icing in the freezer every few minutes. When it was time to tackle the face, I really wasn’t sure where to start. It looked like if I could follow where the yellow part was supposed to go, everything else would fall into place, and it did. I started piping the black accents with a round tip #8 because I’ve had trouble with #2 and #3 tips. #8 was TOO BIG. I reduced to #6 on the next cake and it was better, but I wasn’t happy. The #3 tip finally turned out to be the right one and I didn’t have trouble – maybe because I was using pre-made icing or maybe my hands have gotten stronger since it’s been almost a year since the carpal tunnel surgery.

So here are the results and I’m pretty pleased with the final version, considering I'm still a learner. It actually is recognizable as representing Garfield and it only took 4 tries!

What I learned

· Remember that cream cheese frosting is too soft to work with using decorating tips.

· I really can use the #3 tip successfully

· Put the individual cakes on upside down saucers to lift them from a flat surface to make it easier to decorate the sides. The saucers are easy to turn. A large, round spatula easily slides under the cake to move it to your preferred serving plate.

When all was said and done, Youngest Son was surprised and thrilled. Then he couldn’t bear to eat one and mess it up. <head desk> I had to promise to make a fake cake so he can hang one on the wall. I’m sure I’ll be able to do that in my spare time. LOL

Orange Cupcakes - The Grand Finale

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 12:59:00 +0000

This recipe is adapted from the Food Network Magazine May 2014.

FROSTING:

3/4 C Fresh Orange Juice (it takes about 2 oranges)

1 8 oz. Pkg Cream Cheese, softened to room temp

10 Tbls Butter, softened and cut into pieces

1 C Powdered Sugar (more, if necessary)

1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract (again, I used the clear so as to not effect the color)

2 tsp Finely Grated Orange Zest

Orange Food Coloring Gel (or 3 drops yellow and 1 drop red liquid food coloring)

The juice of 2 oranges came out to be just a little more than 3/4 C of juice

I found that juicing 2 oranges gave me just slightly over 3/4 C of juice. Measure the juice, put it in a saucepan and bring it to a boil, then reduce it to medium and simmer until it is reduced down to 1 1/2 Tbls. This took me about 20 minutes, but I was taking it slow because I didn't want to mess it up. I do not recommend taste testing this - I did and WOW! It is TART! Set the syrup aside to cool.

Reduce the orange juice to a syrup - about 1 1/4 Tbls

Beat the cream cheese in a large bowl on medium high until it's fluffy. Add the pieces of butter, one at a time until the mixture is smooth. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the powdered sugar (Food Magazine's instructions say to sift the sugar in, but it was taking forever so I sifted a little bit and then just added the rest a little at a time). I added an extra 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar because I felt that the frosting wasn't going to hold a piped shape. Add the vanilla and the orange syrup, and finally the food coloring and beat it until it is well combined. I also added about 1/4 tsp of orange flavoring because when I tasted the frosting, it didn't taste distinctly orange.

Assemble the frosting ingredients - the reduced orange juice on the right

Refrigerate the frosting about 15 minutes to firm it up, then frost and decorate your cupcakes by your preferred method. (The original recipe suggested topping with a piece of candied orange peel.) I piped it on and then topped them with some colorful autumn leaf sprinkles.

Aaaand .... TA DA!!

Orange Cupcakes decorated for fall

Everyone LOVED the cupcakes and said it reminded them of orange dreamscicles. It was generally agreed, though, that the frosting gave it the dreamy flavor. Personally, I wasn't happy with the texture of the cake. For me it was dense and dry. No one mentioned it (probably just being nice!) but Hubby agreed with me.

The next time I make these, I will use my lemon cupcake recipe and substitute oranges for the lemons. Even if the frosting gives the majority of the flavor, at least the cupcakes will be soft and fluffy.

Orange Dreamsicle Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 12:14:00 +0000

Wow. I had really big plans for summer. One of my favorite things to make is cupcakes for our family 4th of July party … and I never got to do that! Why, you ask? Because I got to take 2 trips to the hospital and pretty much MISSED SUMMER! Summer is my absolute favorite time and I missed it!! SIGH. But the good news is that I'm pretty much put back together and with the cool fall weather I'm having baking attacks.

My darling hubby has been wishing for orange cupcakes. I planned on making them for the 4th of July but … see above. Hubby can't eat anything with citrus juice in it because the acid blisters his mouth. It broke my heart a few months ago when he bought some orange Tic Tacs because he said he just misses the orange flavor. We've found that when the acid is tamed with dairy ingredients and/or cooked, he can safely eat citrus.

Originally, I was going to take my tried and true lemon cupcake recipe and just switch out the lemon for orange. But I really wanted to be sure of the recipe because - you know, how sad would it be if I made these cupcakes for him and they turned out to be a flop? My concern with adapting my lemon cupcake recipe is that I don't know if the flavor from oranges is as strong as from lemons.

During my vacay at the hospital this summer, I saw a recipe for orange cupcakes in the Food Network Magazine and decided to try that, so my recipe is adapted from the May 2014 issue "Orange Cream Cupcakes".

Line cupcake tins with paper cups

To start, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line your cupcake/ muffin pan with 12 liners. Then assemble your ingredients and whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. (I always line more than called for because it's easier to have the liners ready if I happen to have more batter.)

Assemble your ingredients

Don't you love my fancy-schmancy pressed glass bowl holding my eggs? Lately, I've started using a lot of my grandmothers' glassware, and the Pyrex and Fire King pieces I've collected over the years. We've had the Pyrex Friendship Cinderella bowls for ages, but I've never used them because I thought they looked a bit cumbersome with those handles … WRONG. I might be the last person on earth to "get it" but those aren't handles! They're for POURING! (Yes, I feel dumb.)

I discovered an easy, low-stress way to melt butter. I put my butter into one of my Pyrex bowls (that's what's in the cute little bowl with the birds on it) and microwaved it on DEFROST. The defrost setting on my microwave asks for the weight and I just set it for .5 lbs and it slowly melted the butter without lots of spattering. Of course, all microwaves heat differently so you need to watch the butter in your own oven so it doesn't burn or spatter.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl (aka my Kitchen Aid bowl) with a mixer at a medium high speed until it's light and fluffy then reduce the speed and S-L-O-W-L-Y beat in the melted butter - you don't want to end up with scrambled eggs! My mixer has a shield to help keep me from making an excessive mess and the pouring handle on the Pyrex bowl works perfectly with it!

SLOWLY pour melted butter into egg and sugar mixture

Then add the orange zest and vanilla. While I'm not a fan of "fake" ingredients, I used clear vanilla because I didn't want to darken the color of the cake with real vanilla. As it turned out, the cake was the color of a yellow cake. I also found that the zest of one orange came out to be about 1 tsp. *I was careful to use organic oranges because I believe they are sprayed with chemicals and I doubt all the washing in the world would get it all off.

I found that the zest of one orange was about 1 tsp

Finally, beat in the flour mixture in 2 additions - pour about half in then add the milk - then pour the rest of the flour in. Beat this until it is just combined - don't over mix.

Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full

Fill the cupcake cups about 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean - about 18 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool for 5 minutes and then remove them to your wire rack to finish cooling. (As it turned out, the recipe made exactly 12 cupcakes.)

Bake about 18 minutes at 350 degrees, cool in pan for 5 minutes, then finish cooling on wire rack

Next …. The orange frosting and the grand finale!

Here's the recipe - adapted from Food Network Magazine May 2014

CUPCAKES:

1 1/2 C Flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs at room temperature

2/3 C sugar

12 Tbls butter, melted

2 tsp finely grated orange zest (I prefer organic)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 C milk

Chocolate Cake and White Cake EQUALS a Friend's Birthday Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 02:42:00 +0000

Wow! I can't believe it's been almost a year since my last post. Honestly, I don't know where my time goes. But with summer upon us, I'm hoping to catch up and get back to some serious baking.

I volunteered to bake a cake for a dear friend's birthday. And she doesn't know it. The last cake I decorated was WAY back in the beginning and it was pretty … wobbly. Ok - it was bad. So, I'm feeling a bit intimidated.

First, everyone agrees she likes chocolate. So I planned a chocolate cake. Then, luckily, we were all talking about desserts and she mentioned that she doesn't like chocolate cake unless it's really moist. Hm. Great. Sounds like "everyone" likes chocolate instead of Judy! LOL

So me thinks, thinks me … I'll use my go-to chocolate cupcake recipe because it is super moist. Then paranoia took over. I need to do half chocolate and half white. No idea how to do THAT. Look it up on Cake Central. Ok, I think I can swing that. I did the tilt and pour method. I poured the chocolate into the tilted pan first, because it is the heaviest batter. When I added the white cake batter, it was amazing. They pretty much stayed 2 separate cakes! Good on one hand, maybe not so good on the other because the cake wanted to crack into 2 pieces where the 2 flavors met. The frosting helped keep it all together.

I tried a different frosting because I wasn't happy with the consistency of my usual buttercream. Again, I struggled getting the right texture to pipe but I finally got it and once I did, it worked great. Unfortunately, I was running out of time and my flowers and writing were pretty shaky.

I'm so mad at myself because I was so flustered that I forgot to take pictures. But at least here is the final result.

Now, as to the "age" … we thought it would be nice to not be real obvious so another friend had her hubby get this equation for us. We wanted it really complicated. If anyone would like to verify what that age is, please let us all know. We know what it's SUPPOSED to be, but … well, it's been a few years since math class. LOL

Bon Jovi Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:05:00 +0000

Yup. That's right. BonJovi cupcakes. HubbyDear's co-workers requested chocolate cupcakes decorated with a BonJovi theme for one of them. Seriously. My mind went . Just like that.

I've known about this for a few months, so I've had time to obsess … to no avail. Sadly, I resorted to rather "boring" decorations. I really like to make my own decorations, but this one just didn't happen for me. We raided Country Kitchen for basic Rock & Roll themed decorations.

To make up for it, I'm making Nutella cupcakes instead of plain chocolate cupcakes. I've been anxious to do a filled cupcake since my class. I have the filling tip! I want to use it! :)

LATER …

TWO containers of Nutella later … mmmm!

I used Jamie's Nutella cupcake directions that included my go-to chocolate cake for the cupcake and Nutella Buttercream. OH. MY. <insert multitudes of heavenly angels singing>

Epic Fail Using the Filling Tip

As for the filling tip, I don't know if I'm just a wimp and couldn't squeeze the Nutella through it, but I could NOT fill those cupcakes! I ended up using a regular frosting tip #8 instead and treated it the same as if I were using the filling tip - pushing it into the cupcake center and filling until the top swelled a bit. It was kind

of amazing that I jar of Nutella was EXACTLY the right amount for 24 cupcakes!

Now, as for the Nutella buttercream frosting … let me repeat: OH. MY. <there go the angels again!>

And the Nutella cupcakes have been proclaimed by hubby's office as the best cupcakes yet!

Rock and Roll is here to stay ... these cupcakes won't last long!

Chili Cheese Corn Muffins & Ham and Beans OH MY!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 19:35:00 +0000

Believe it or not, I've never made "ham and beans". Frankly, until recently I wouldn't eat any beans other than Van Camps or green beans. I love chili, but HATE kidney beans. There's always a little pile of beans left in my bowl.

A dinner we had on vacation last summer opened my eyes to pinto beans and I've been experimenting with different beans ever since. What I discovered is that some beans aren't so icky. The little ones that don't have a tough "skin". I still can't accept kidney or lima beans into my life. Baby steps ...

After making chili this winter using pinto beans instead of kidney beans and actually eating the beans (it was actually hard to not automatically pick the beans out!) I decided it was time to go out on a limb and make/try ham and beans - one of the two meals at home when I was a kid that I would literally try to hide from . (The other is … liver and onions. AWwwKK! I don't care how old and mature I get, I will NOT eat them anywhere! Take THAT Sam I Am!)

I had to look up a recipe for Ham & Beans. They all looked pretty much alike, but almost all called for using one lb. of navy beans, soaked overnight. I cheated and used beans in a jar. DH says that is what he remembers his mom using and we had frozen some leftover ham chunks. Little else is required!

Ham Chunks

1 - 48 oz jar Randall's Great Northern Beans

1/2 tsp Onion Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Black Pepper

1/4 tsp Cayenne

1/2 C Brown Sugar

1 Tbls Dry Parsley

Just throw it all in a nice, heavy pot and simmer it all on the stove for anywhere from a half hour to an hour and that's it! I had to add about 3/4 C water because it got too think and pasty, and of course, the seasoning can be adjusted - but this is just my starting point.

What goes with Ham'n'Beans?? Cornbread! Cornbread muffins are akin to cupcakes! My hubby loves these corn muffins and they're especially good with Mexican style food. We really liked them with the ham 'n' beans, too.

1 box Jiffy Cornbread Mix

1 box Jiffy Golden Yellow Cake Mix

2 Eggs

1/2 C Milk

1/3 C Water

2 Tbls Vegetable Oil - I use Canola

1-4 oz Can of Chopped Green Chilis, drained

1 C shredded Cheddar Cheese

Mix the DRY cornbread mix and the DRY cake mix in a bowl. I use my tried and true Tupperware Mix and Pour (I think that's what it's called) because I like being able to … get this … mix and pour the batter into the cupcake cups! Theoretically, you're supposed to mix the eggs, milk, water, and vegetable oil in another bowl. I'm lazy and don't like having an extra bowl to wash, so I do it all in one. Mix the ingredients together just enough to make sure all the ingredients are mixed and stop. Add the green chilis and the cheddar cheese and mix just enough to make sure everything is fairly evenly distributed.

Fill your muffin cups (greased) or cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees for 20 - 22 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

You can sprinkle the tops with more shredded cheese immediately after removing them from the oven and it will melt on top. Never too much cheese!! I got carried away trying to remember to take pictures that I forgot to top them with more cheese shreds. Oops! We managed to eat them anyway.

This makes about 16 muffins.

Adapted from Taste of Home's Quick Cooking 2000

Autumn Wedding Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:12:00 +0000

Wow … Christmas sure got in the way of my cupcake making! And writing. And a lot of other things, too.

The cupcakes for wedding #2 came out really well. The candies were a hit, too.

We finally settled upon Carrot Cake cupcakes, Snickers cupcakes, and white wedding cake cupcakes. Although we were using previously tried flavors, the decoration needed personalizing. The wedding colors were the colors of fall leaves, with orange being the dominant.

I made the white cupcakes with the same recipe as I used for the sunflower cupcakes earlier. Our bride-to-be really hadn't requested anything particular as decoration and I really wanted them to be pretty and special for her. Up until now, I really hadn't done much with flowers. All I could come up with was a deep yellow rose, leaves … it was just very abstract in my mind. Not having made roses since my class a year earlier, I wasn't entirely sure I could do it, but … I did!

Unfortunately, I didn't have the brains to take photos of the process. It really was kind of a struggle, though. The edges of my rose petals were incredibly jagged. I know a little bit makes it look more "natural" but this was AWFUL. It was hot in the kitchen so I thought the frosting consistency was wrong. I tried making it really soft. Didn't work. Tried really tight. Didn't work. FINALLY thought to go get a new rose tip. Mine was a tiny bit bent. Amazingly, that was the problem!

So … I made a bunch of yellow roses.

And then … I put them onto the newly frosted cupcakes and added tan leaves, burgundy flowers and green vining leaves. Um .. I may have gone a little crazy. But they sure were pretty!

I was disappointed in my Snickers cupcakes. They tasted perfect, but I topped them with chocolate trees trimmed with fall colored leaf sprinkles. I couldn't think of any way to frost the cupcakes with seriously gooey caramel, so I simply pushed the tree into the top of the cupcake and sprinkled a few leaves on top. Also … I didn't take the height into consideration. When we started putting them in my smaller cupcake stands, they were too tall and we ended up having to almost place them flat on top. Thank goodness the cupcake was universally loved!

Here are the steps for the trees:

Autumn Leaf Candies

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:16:00 +0000

Well! I had to take a little cupcake hiatus. Gained too much weight the last go 'round despite the fact that I never even licked the bowls or spoons. AND I only ate one of each cupcake just to make sure they were as good as I wanted them to be.

That, and my online vintage clothing and jewelry shop was suffering a bit from lack of attention. I'm not good at multi-tasking. Now my housekeeping is suffering from lack of attention. Seriously, I need a maid. There are so many more interesting things to do than dusting!

So ... the next bride-to-be elected not to fight the reception hall and their policy of not allowing homemade cake. Instead I'm doing the cupcakes for the rehearsal dinner. The flavors are decided - chocolate Snickers, carrot, and white wedding cake.

Our Bethie-Pie loves fall colors and her wedding colors are autumn leaves. A happy coincidence - her mother-in-law to be (that would be ME) loves those colors, too. You'd think this would make it easy for me to decorate these cupcakes, but the problem is that I'm only making 3 flavors, not 5 and only 50 cupcakes and not 125. I have too many wannado-s.

I want do trees with leaf sprinkles. I wanna do viney leaves. I wanna do beautiful magenta, orange, and golden yellow roses. I wanna do multicolored fondant leaves. I wanna do … well, I guess an Angry Bird. I know, I know … doesn't quite go with the theme but my son is a rabid St. Louis Cardinal baseball fan. His younger brother got dinosaurs on one set of his wedding cupcakes. I need to do something for him.

I'm going to make flavored candies in favor cups in leaf shapes. And I'm dreaming of making flavored sugar leaves -- for what reason, I have no idea. I seem to have this need to overdo it.

Awww … I've turned into Martha Stewart.

I'm starting with the candies because they have a much longer "shelf life" and frankly, this time around I do have a clue about what I'm doing. I've been making filled chocolate candy at Christmas since the boys were quite little, so this SHOULD be a no-brainer. (Famous last words.) I never took a class on the "proper" way to make candy so if you are a stickler for "proper", run away NOW.

I use an old electric food warming tray that I got as a wedding gift, um, awhile ago. It seems to keep the candy at a nice, even temperature. I tried melting the chocolate in the microwave and it works sometimes, other times I get busy and burn it . Unpleasant.

These candies will be orange, yellow, green, and brown and will be flavored cinnamon, maple, and English toffee. Chocolate will take care of itself! I'm using oils because I've always added mint oil to my Christmas chocolates and it works very well.

It's fairly easy and other than the candy mold, you can probably use kitchen items you already have. For instance - if you can't find a warmer (try ebay - they can be found for about $10) you can always melt in a double boiler. If you don't have the paint brushes, just spoon it into the mold. Some people use plastic bottles that look a lot like condiment bottles.

You need

Electric warming tray

Small heat proof dishes - one for each color and/or flavor

Candy confectionary coating disks - color(s) of your choice

Chocolate disks - I use "Cocoa Lite"*

Oils - flavors of your choice

Something to stir the melted candy with

Paint brushes, food grade, one for each color and/or flavor

Candy molds

*I have used milk chocolate disks in the past and this slow melting worked well enough, but milk chocolate is very fussy about temperature.

Put a small handful of each color candy disk into a separate little heat proof dishes. Personally, I LOVE my vintage Pyrex custard cups, also a wedding gift. Plug in your tray and set the dishes on it. The disks will slowly melt - I think this took about 20-30 minutes to get the first ones to start melting.

Keep an eye on them. The bottom ones will start to look a bit shiny and may completely melt. I try to not have them completely melt because when you stir them, they will actually be melted more than you think. Stir them fairly well - there will probably still be lumps, which is fine. Now add another small handful of the candy coating pieces on top. Wait another 15 minutes or so and stir them around again. They will still probably be lumpy. Depending on the size of the dish you are using to melt in you may wish to add a few more pieces of candy and let that melt in. Stir frequently now. When using flavoring, I try to have as much candy melted as the dish will hold and still be easy/not messy to stir so that I get as many as possible candies that have the exact same flavoring. Obviously, your next batch will be slightly different no matter how much you try. Make sure to keep your stirrers separate so the colors don't mix AND especially once you've added the flavoring, you REALLY don't want to mix flavors!

Just so you don't panic and think something is going wrong, my chocolate didn't melt much after 45 minutes and I started melting the pieces all at the same time. The chocolate will have a completely different texture as it melts, too. Once it begins melting to the point that all the pieces are mooshy, give it a good stir. It is usually pretty thick, but the more you stir, the more it will soften and smooth. Add more chocolate disks and melt in, as above.

Flavoring can be a bit tricky, particularly if you're making more than one flavor. You might want to have a taste helper around because after a couple of tastes YOUR taster won't work as well. As with wine tasting, try to "cleanse your palate" between tastes - even of the same flavor. I start with one drop of oil, stir it in well, then taste. Add one drop at a time - these oils are POTENT. If you get some on your skin, it's a good idea to wash it off. It's never harmed me, but then I'm also rarely sensitive to things. (Note: I got a little cinnamon oil on my lip and it did "burn", but washed off quickly with soap and water.)

Just to give you an idea of how much to use, I used 5 drops each of these oils and felt that the flavor wasn't intense, but could definitely be recognized as maple (green), cinnamon (orange), and English toffee (yellow).

Left - small mold /// Right - large mold

Small mold, filled

As you can see, I've chosen 2 different candy molds. One is quite a bit larger and I'm going to start with this one since it is easier to show. Using a paintbrush, pick up a blob of the melted candy and place it in the center of the mold. Then, use the paintbrush to gently push it out toward the edges and up the sides. Try not to get the candy outside of the mold. It will take 3 or 4 "scoops" painted this way to fill an individual mold, depending on the size of the mold. When the individual mold is full, "paint" the back smooth. Mine usually ends up with a little loop - I tried making it flat and it didn't work for me. So now I just go with it and enjoy my little curly cues. After all the individual molds are filled, put your mold in the freezer for about 5 minutes or more if you're not in a big hurry. Here is where it's handy to have a couple of molds - fill the next mold and trade them in the fridge.

Filling (painting) the large mold with candy coating.

Unmolded large candies

After taking the candy in the mold out of the freezer, simply turn the mold over and the candy will fall out. If not, just give it a shake. If you have a few that look a little sloppy at the edge - while the candy is still cold/frozen you can use a knife to scrape away the overflow and clean up edges.

Small candies (wheat sheaves & turkeys). The two wheat sheaves on the far left have been "trimmed" .

Victim of Zucchini

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:34:00 +0000

I took a longer break from cupcakes than anticipated. I was still going strong the weekend after July 4th, but then remembered that if I didn't get back to working at my vintage clothing business, there wouldn't be any excess cash to feed this cupcake affliction.

Enjoying zucchini muffin with fresh Amish butter and a good cuppa!

My boys have loved my zucchini bread since they were very little. I don't remember where I got the recipe, unless it was from my Grandma Lucy. The first year after Hubster made me my new raised bed garden, my zucchini was prolific and I made probably 6 or 8 batches of zucchini bread. After the first couple of loaves, we realized that the waistline was becoming the wasteline. I found 3 little loaf pans stashed away in my cupboard and started making mini breads, but quite time consuming with only 3 little pans, so I graduated to muffin/cupcake pans. A perfect snack for one! I froze the muffins, I gave the boys muffins to take with them wherever they went, and finally ended up freezing them. I even froze the shredded zucchini so I could make it later, but it was so long before anyone could stand more that it got freezer burned.

The past 3 summers, I've tried to grow various squash including zucchini. We were actually missing the bread again. :) I only got a few "proper" sized zucchini at the beginning of the year and used/froze those. By the time I was ready to let them grow to a larger size, they were attacked by squash bugs. This year, I hadn't planned on even attempting any squash until I learned the secret to getting rid of them (other than soap that didn't work for me or chemicals that I really don't want to use and didn't work either).

I'm PROUD of my zucchini plant! The radish flowers are actually kind of pretty.

To try it out, I planted 2 hills of zucchini seeds - no use planting a bunch and feeding the entire county's squash bug population. Then I added the secret: Radishes. I planted radish seeds around each hill and then scattered some randomly. They have to be left to go to seed. I think it's safe to say that it's a success, now that I've got 2 HUGE plants that have produced the nicest zucchini I've ever grown. Now they're doing the turning-from-a-little-bitty-zuke-one-day-to-a-caveman-club-the-next thing that they're so famous for, so it's time to crank up the oven, get out the pans, and shred that zucchini! I'll notify the grocers that I'll be needing every available egg again!

Power tools make life worth living

After I cut out the seeds, I thought of my small ice cream scoop. Easy peasy!

SERIOUSLY YUMMY ZUCCHINI BREAD

3		Eggs
2	C	Sugar
1	C	Vegetable Oil
2	C	Zucchini, grated
3	tsp	Vanilla
1	tsp	Salt
1	tsp	Baking Soda
1/4	tsp	Baking Powder
3	tsp	Cinnamon
1	C	Walnuts, coarsely chopped (optional)

Beat the eggs until light and foamy. Add the sugar, oil, zucchini, and vanilla and mix lightly but well. Combine the flour, salt, baking soda ,baking powder, and cinnamon . Add to the egg and zucchini mixture. Stir until well blended. Add nuts, if desired, and pour into greased pans. (I tried using the candied walnuts used in salads. They added a nice little crunch.) Bake in preheated 350o oven. Bread is done when toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool in pan 5 minutes, then turn out and finish cooling on wire racks.

9 x 5 x 3 loaf pans, bake for 1 hour (there should be enough batter for 2 loaf pans of this size)

Muffin tins, bake for 20 minutes (approximately 20 muffins)

Mini loaf pans, bake for 27 - 30 minutes

Hungry?

These freeze really well.

Hooray for the Red, White, & Blue Cupcakes!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:27:00 +0000

Woot! I had a good excuse to make more cupcakes! We're had some family over for an Independence Day party and of course, I MUST bake cupcakes!

The Problem: I was entranced by red, white, & blue star shaped sprinkles when I was at Country Kitchen shopping for the wedding cupcake supplies. They forced me to put them in my basket. And so did the matching cupcake liners.

Don't you hate when inanimate objects mess with you? Bait you? Call out to you??? (oh my)

Anyway, ever since these two objects jumped into my shopping basket, I've been dreaming of swirls of fluffy, white frosting with red, white, & blue stars scattered strategically on top. But what kind of cupcake? Vanilla? Mayybee … Confetti? Naw, too much going on with all those sprinkles. Chocolate? Hmmm …

On the other hand, for a 4th of July picnic-party-hoopla, berries are practically a requirement AND as a plus, berries do cooperate with the theme by being red and blue. I could make the berry cupcakes again. But the frosting is pink and talk about CLASH! I suppose I could make the frosting become red, but then the star sprinkles wouldn't look good.

The Solution:

Make the Carrot Cupcakes with the white cream cheese frosting in the patriotic cupcake liners with the star sprinkles … AND … something summery … like root beer float cupcakes!

Who says I don't have a cupcake problem???

Sadly, I was really disappointed in the root beer float cupcakes. They were ok, but considering that the last cupcakes I made were proclaimed pretty much worldwide as being PERFECT (aka HEAVENLY) they probably didn't stand much of a chance.

I used the recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens magazine, "Cupcakes 150 Sweet Recipes". It needs some serious tweaking. The cake did have a root beer flavor, but the texture was dense and dry. The frosting was supposed to have a vanilla ice cream flavor - it did not. But they were edible and cute and everyone liked them.

So now I have two challenges: First, I used my last box of Carrot Cake mix so I've got to come up with a knock out carrot cake recipe. Second, I love the idea of the root beer float cupcakes so I'm going to FIX IT!

From Victim to Addict?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 19:58:00 +0000

NOW I've gone and done it! I've crossed from recreational cupcakes to the hard stuff and I'm not sure I'll be able to control this. I'm not sure I even want to!

The "hard stuff" is Snickers Cupcakes. This recipe rates a full scale O M G.

Just looking at the picture makes me want a cupcake NOW!

The recipe can be found at My Baking Addiction http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/snickers-cupcakes/ It's one of the recipes I'd marked to try out . If I ever thought I could stop making cupcakes, this just put an end to that thought. I should just start applying to be on The Biggest Loser now, because just one cupcake must be 4000 calories. And I DON'T CARE!

I was a bit concerned about the measurements in the recipe since my trusty Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix is now short 2 ounces AND I didn't have the large package of chocolate pudding mix. I kept to the recipe except for using less cake mix and pudding and they came out unbelievably amazingly totally yummy GREAT!

This recipe was originally posted in 2010 and is still getting comments on the My Baking Addiction blog and I noticed one from just a couple of days ago asking what to do if the only cake mix you can find already has pudding in it. She responded to just use the smaller 3.9 oz box of pudding. I'm anxious to try this recipe again with a) a large box of chocolate pudding and b) with the smaller box of pudding in the cake mix with the pudding already in it. I'm curious what the difference might be. Probably not much - I swoon too much when eating these to take note of anything but a huge difference! LOL

If you like Snickers at all, you MUST make these cupcakes. They're very easy. Just watch out that you don't taste test the frosting too much (spoken as someone who did). It is VERY sweet and it is VERY delicious and VERY addicting. Also, I had exactly the amount needed to pipe the frosting on top.

You know ... the baker gets to eat the messy looking ones!

NOW What Am I Supposed To Do??

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 00:03:00 +0000

A week, then two went by and I kept having this feeling I should be doing something … baking something … you know … cupcakes. But I don't HAVE to now! I tried not to, but finally I couldn't stop myself. I made more cupcakes. I'm really enjoying it. Nothing like having an incredibly high calorie, totally bad for you hobby!

There a a LOT of cupcake recipes bookmarked and pages marked that still need to be baked! They've all been put aside until after the wedding … which is now … so ...

Where to start? Well it just so happens that I had some fresh strawberries that I needed to use up. It's summer and it's time to enjoy fresh produce!

I picked up a Better Homes & Gardens Special Interest Publication about cupcakes a few months ago and many of the recipes are from cupcake bloggers. The recipe I chose was apparently adapted from Cupcakes Take The Cake - the Vanilla Very Berry Cupcakes. Now that I've made the recipe, I wish I'd thought to use the recipe directly from the website because it's written just enough differently that I might not have goofed it up … except that apparently my goof turned out good. LOL

When I realized my screw up, I just started improvising. I mean, I was almost done with the cupcake recipe and didn't want to throw it out. Basically, what I did was after setting aside the berries for garnish, I went straight to "thoroughly mash" without stopping at "lightly mash". Don't really know why … maybe I was just feeling a bit aggressive, but I did a pretty good smoosh job on the berries.

The recipe said to place a tablespoon of the batter in the bottom of each of the cupcake liners, which I did. (I used the (Pink) Reynolds StayBrite™ Baking Cups left from my earlier experiment.) And then, 1 teaspoon of the berries on top of that, followed by enough batter to properly fill the cup. Then I baked them. They came out of the oven looking absolutely beautiful!

It is at this point that the recipe says to "thoroughly mash" the berries, add sugar, and cook them to thicken then use as filling for the cupcakes. Since I had already put a spoonful of mangled berries in the cupcakes, I was afraid more squishy berry filling might just end up a mess. So, I decided to get extreme and put them through a fine strainer to remove most of the seeds and blueberry skins and then mixed that into the frosting. Both the original recipe in the blog and the recipe in the BH&G publication said to frost with buttercream frosting. I wasn't thrilled with the BH&G "Classic Buttercream" recipe because it requires eggs and cooking. So, I chose their "Butter Frosting" recipe, added the smooshed and strained berries and added more powdered sugar to make it piping consistency. (As it turned out, I should have added a little more.) They came out so pretty with the berries added to the top, but I thought it needed something and ran out to the garden and snipped some lemon balm leaves to add.

Hubby loved the cupcakes, but for some reason I thought they were dry. I think that is simply because I was so used to the extremely moist, dense cupcakes I've been making for the wedding. Hubby took all but 6 of the cupcakes to work with him and the report was …. Wait for it …

They liked these better than all the others! LOL I hope all my goofed up recipes come out this well!

Butter Berry Frosting

3/4 Cup butter, softened

2 lb. Powdered Sugar

1/3 Cup Milk

2 tsp Vanilla

1/4 Cup "Thoroughly Mashed" and strained berries - (I used strawberries, red raspberries, and blueberries)

Beat the softened butter with an electric mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Beat in 2 cups of the powdered sugar, then the milk and vanilla. Gradually add the remaining powdered sugar. Slowly beat in the berry mixture until frosting is the right consistency to pipe (or spread). If more liquid is needed add a bit of milk or more of the berry mixture.

For the record, these cupcake wrappers did not peel! The cupcake recipe has buttermilk but no egg whites. I'm starting to think the culprit for the peeling problem is recipes with only egg whites.

The Sunflower Wedding Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Our bride and groom wanted to have a somewhat traditional small top tier wedding cake to freeze for their first anniversary. I struggled with the decoration - it couldn't be all fluffy and roses and pearls … all traditional wedding cake-y. It just wouldn't have fit with the feel of the cupcakes.

I knew I needed to have sunflowers as the floral part of the cake, but at the time I was starting to plan the cake decoration I still wasn't happy with the sunflower decorations on the cupcakes. It's great to live close enough to go to Country Kitchen (or maybe it's not!) because just browsing all the wonderful cake and candy supplies helps me come up with ideas.

One of the reasons I wasn't happy with the cupcake sunflowers was that the centers just didn't look right. I didn't want to use Oreos because they were really too big and they just aren't, well … pretty. Wandering down one aisle at CK, I found different sizes of sunflower/daisy fondant cutters and daisy center stamps. I thought I had the answer to my problem and also I thought the multiple sizes of the sunflower cutters would be helpful in decorating the cake. Since I already had the black fondant for the lizards, all I needed was plain fondant that I could color for the sunflowers.

Work in Progress

Once I got home with my new acquisitions, I started hunting around the internet for instructions for making gumpaste sunflowers. You Tube has several really good videos. After a bit of trial and error I learned that using the proper equipment really does make a difference. I tried rolling the fondant with my trusty marble rolling pin and I just couldn't get it thin enough. When I finally broke down and got a fondant rolling pin and mat, it was a breeze. I also had to get the veining tools. It makes a huge difference!

Large Fondant Sunflower

Small Gumpaste Sunflower

It turned out that the daisy center stamps weren't large enough for the biggest size of the sunflower. I ended up using a round cutter on black fondant to get the right size. Then the light bulb came on. I had some teeny round black sprinkles so I made a sugar glue and painted one side of the round then pressed it into a bowl of the sprinkles. Ta da! I was finally happy with my sunflower center! On the cupcakes, I didn't want to use fondant so I just piped some black frosting the right size of the center then dipped the black into the sprinkles then added the yellow petals.

I made a bunch of each size sunflower. I used two large sunflowers "glued" together to make the large flowers for the top of the cake and put one of each size of the smaller sunflowers together for the smaller flowers. The daisy center stamps worked fine for these.

And then … I realized the sunflowers needed leaves. By that time, I had no more time to run to Ft. Wayne to get any kind of leaf cutter or embosser and poking around in my box of cookie cutters didn't produce a leaf cutter. So I just cut them out and used the veining tools. Somehow, they came out looking ok. Not great, but ok.

The cake was the last thing I decorated and I finished it at 4:00 the morning of the wedding. I was having so much fun that I really never got tired. My hands were getting sore and you can see the piped decorations on the cake - the bows and swags aren't very good. Fortunately, the cake was so high on the stand that no one could really inspect it! LOL

We loaded all the cupcakes into the cardboard boxes with the inserts that night as I completed them. I left the cake until "morning" (2 1/2 hours later!) to make sure the icing had hardened a bit.

Cleaned Hatbox

Moving the cake was horrifying but I got it on the bottom of my trusty Tupperware cake taker but when I tried to put the top on I discovered the big sunflowers on top caused the cake to be too tall. Ho-ly c r a p. My husband thought of a hatbox. I'm a mild mannered owner of an online vintage clothing shop, so hatboxes I have but I needed a big one. I thought of one particular box because it is plastic and came apart AND it was already damaged so I only use it for storage. After washing it up thoroughly, it served its new purpose perfectly.

Cake in Hatbox

As I was cleaning up my mess a few hours earlier, I put together a little "kit" with white and pink frostings, pastry bag, the decorating tips I had used, and a few extra little sunflowers and leaves. This was fortunate because I had to re-do the shells on the base of the cake because they all broke off while moving it. One pink bow got a bit squished so I re-did that, too.

Honestly, I still can't believe how smoothly it all went. Guess that 6 months of practicing and planning really paid off!

Ta Da! My Wedding Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 19:26:00 +0000

I'm still having a hard time believing I actually was able to make 130 wonderful cupcakes that my son and his (now) wife would be pleased with. I'm also starting to go through withdrawal - it feels strange to not have a specific goal to bake for. While I was searching for recipes and hints and help, I came across a LOT of yummy sounding cupcake recipes and I'm anxious to try them out now so that helps.

Before going any further with patting myself on the back, I can say with certainty that I would never have been able to pull off the wedding cupcakes without this blog post on Baa Baa Cupcake, Have You Any Frosting:

http://baabaacupcake.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-bake-wedding-cupcakes-at-home.html

So … without further ado, here are my cupcakes

Sunflower Cupcakes - White Wedding Cake

I'll post a full photo of the cake in my next post.

Lizard Cupcakes - Confetti Cake

Dinosaur Cupcakes - Lemon


Carrot Cupcakes

And finally -- The cupcakes set up at the wedding

Cupcakes for Wedded Bliss

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 02:09:00 +0000

It's over! My baby boy is married to a wonderful girl and they are off on their honeymoon. And I didn't embarrass them OR myself - the cupcakes were apparently a hit. :)

There have been many times in past "projects" that I have maybe "bitten off more than I can chew" and afterward swear I will never do that again. This is NOT one of those times.

Despite getting only 6 hours sleep in the 48 hours prior to the wedding and having my feet and legs swell from standing for so long -- it was a TON of work, but I would SO do it again!

The last couple of weeks were just too busy with wedding preparations, experiments, events, and baking (plus my oldest son had a surprise closing on his first house the Friday before the wedding, so we added some celebrating and moving to all the other things necessary for the week of the wedding!) I never really had a chance to write anything or edit any photos, so I'm getting a little caught up here.

Lizard Confetti Cupcakes: I found a lizard candy mold and pressed black pre-made fondant into it, then used a fine decorating tip (#3, I think) to decorate them. They turned out really cute!

White Chocolate Frosting: I made another batch of the chocolate cupcakes with the white chocolate icing and increased the amount of white chocolate. What I found is that I still have to increase the amount of powdered sugar and it really didn't accomplish much. I also discovered that this frosting does not travel well - particularly if it's hot outside. And because it never really sets up, it's next to impossible to remove the cupcakes from the cardboard holders without squishing the frosting and sometimes the cupcake, too.

FINALLY got the sunflower cupcake decorating perfected! I'm really pleased!
The little black and white sugar decorations I used on the white chocolate cupcakes a) weren't as large as the ones I printed and used when I was experimenting and b) because they were small, the white on white color disappeared into the frosting.

A vintage hatbox - the clear plastic kind with a "quilted" lid and base - will work to transport a cake that is larger/taller than a typical Tupperware type cake taker.

Purchasing cardboard boxes and cupcake inserts is the ONLY way to move 130 cupcakes from one location to another.

Once cream cheese and buttercream frostings are WELL set up, they travel pretty well and are reasonably easy to remove from said boxes. Squishy frosting that never really sets solidly (aka white chocolate) is a big problem.

I learned how to use gum paste to make awesome sunflowers to decorate the 8" cake - all by myself <patting self on back> and they were delightful!

Purchasing an 8" styrofoam dummy cake to practice is an EXCELLENT idea. I was able to play around with colors, sizes, and ideas to see what worked without taking a chance on the real cake. (I'll post a photo of the real cake soon!)

I'm still cleaning the kitchen. There was a lovely, very fine layer of powdered sugar in my baking corner and I swear I used just about every piece of baking equipment in my kitchen. Most of that is already clean, so today's main project is reorganizing and putting things away AND washing the cupcake stands. The kitchen looks rather barren without all the cupcake equipment that has lived there, fairly permanently, for the last 3 months!

I'll post some photos of the finished cupcakes soon.

Is It Possible To Have Too Much Chocolate?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 May 2012 02:59:00 +0000

Well, IS it?! It's hard for me to know - I'm defective. I like chocolate but I don't LLLOOOOOVVVEEE chocolate. Hubby is a chocoholic, but me … I'm into fruity flavors, like the lemon cupcakes.

I'm working on the last batch of trial cupcakes for the wedding. I left chocolate for last because .. hum .. let me see … I'm not sure, but it was probably because I didn't think I would be doing anything other than using a box of cake mix. Not much trial and error involved there.

I don't want to get too far away from the cake mix because I really am concerned about time issues. The lemon cupcakes are, by far, the most complicated and time consuming - and it shows. They are seriously exceptional and well above the others I've made. BUT now, I feel like just using the chocolate cake mix would be such a blah cupcake that I started searching for something to ramp it up a bit.

With my trusty Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix in hand, I started to do some recipe searching. About that time I started wondering what the difference is between devil's food and chocolate cake. What I found isn't really definitive, but it seems that devil's food may be a richer, more dense cake than plain chocolate cake because it uses butter and melted chocolate (when made from scratch).

Some years ago, someone started putting applesauce in cakes, to replace some of the fat. Then someone got the idea to put pudding in the cake mix to make a really moist cake. Originally, we had to add our own pudding, but at least one of the cake mix companies now has some cupcake mixes that already have the pudding. Oddly, I have never tried adding pudding to any cake mix (or applesauce, for that matter). Today, I tried it.

In my recipe search, I came across a website - and I am truly sorry that I can't remember which one because I looked at so many and made a lot of notes and then I couldn't find my way back to it - that said to add a small package of instant chocolate pudding, 1 cup of sour cream, 1/2 cup water, and 1/2 cup oil with 4 eggs to the chocolate cake mix. It is RARE that I have sour cream in the fridge. It's another one of my quirks - WHY do I want to eat SOUR cream? I don't drink SOUR milk? But I did have an 8 oz tub of sour cream because I confused the ingredients of 3 different lemon frosting recipes and ended up with this stupid sour cream that I didn't know what to do with! I shall call it 'Providence' because if I didn't have that in the fridge I would never have tried this "recipe".

Since I'm still fearing the cupcake paper fiasco, I used 1 of each kind that I will be using on the wedding cupcakes, PLUS one of the kind that peeled so terribly. Then I finished up with using the liner I intend to use with the chocolate cupcakes. After they had been out of the oven for an hour none were peeling. But I'm sad. They were all lovely with their puffy domed tops and now they're just plain FLAT. The frosting will hide that, but still ….

Again, soothe my need to make "special" cupcakes I decided I needed chocolate frosting on the chocolate cupcakes. But the color of chocolate won't work with the decorations. So I'm going with white chocolate frosting. I hope. I made the recipe but it is almost runny. VERY high fat with the cocoa butter, butter, and cream. The recipe called for 3 1/2 Cups of powdered sugar but it was still soupy, but by the time I added another cup of the sugar the chocolate flavor started to disappear. I managed to pipe frosting on all 24 of the cupcakes and am sent them to work with hubby.

As it turns out, the devil's food / chocolate cake was fantastic! It certainly deserves a special frosting, but since the chocolate flavor went missing I still don't know if the white chocolate frosting will be too much. The frosting got RAVE reviews - even higher ratings than the lemon! Sometime later this week, I'm going to have to make the cupcakes again and try to adjust the icing recipe and add more white chocolate. Or maybe just leave well enough alone.

As a last comment: NONE of the cupcake liners peeled. Not even the one that peeled on every cupcake. I made sure the batter was spread out to the sides of the liners. There was no buttermilk in the recipe and whole eggs (vs egg whites) were used.

Searching for THE Cream Cheese Frosting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:09:00 +0000

Sunday was the final trial of the carrot cake cupcakes. I had decided to use Duncan Hines' Carrot Cake mix because I just have a feeling that, no matter how well prepared - no matter how much planning, on the day of cupcake baking, I'm going to need help.

The decision to use the cake mix for the carrot cake cupcakes was made when I made my strange carrot cake. I was really happy with the cake, so I've been really comfortable with just doing this last "trial run" so that I could test a homemade cream cheese frosting. BUT … I've just discovered that the mix makes only 18 cupcakes. I will have to make 2 separate batches. I'm not really concerned about that but glad I found out now, though.

I wasn't entirely happy with the colors of the cupcake liners used with each decorating "project". The sunflowers, for example, just don't look all that great on the pink swirl. The carrot cake white frosting with the orange carrot doesn't really look all that great to me in the pink liner either. With that in mind - and also the cupcake liner peeling problem - I made all but 4 of the carrot cupcakes in the pink liners because that it is what I had the most of. I made 1 cupcake in each of the other 4 liners. I thought that would also give me the opportunity to see how the other papers react - are they self-peelers with the carrot cake mix?

I made the "Cream Cheese Frosting II" from the Allrecipes website. Most of the recipes I found were very similar. This one was chosen because of the review that said that this recipe is for those who want real cream cheese flavor, not really sweet, not like the stuff you buy at the grocery. That's what I want. Except …

I read the recipe wrong. It called for 2 CUPS of sifted powdered sugar. I read 2 POUNDS. Oops.

But I'm really glad I goofed. The frosting was GREAT and when hubby took them to work (my unofficial guinea pigs) he said everyone loved the frosting and the cupcakes disappeared quickly - maybe even quicker than the lemon cupcakes everyone loved.

That said, I can't imagine what the frosting would have tasted like with only 2 cups of powdered sugar! The "real cream cheese flavor" and "not really sweet" needs to be taken literally! Using the 2 lbs of powdered sugar, no one felt it was overly sweet and there is still the *tang* of the cream cheese. I'm sticking to the 2 lbs in my recipe.

As for the cupcake liners, I used the lightweight pink liners for all but 4 of the cupcakes. They're just a little bit shiny - reminds me of the old "onion skin" paper used with typewriters or waxed paper - but there's no wax. I had absolutely NO peeling. The black liner is the same as the pink, but 3 were the heavier, decorated liners because I still haven't completely decided which flavor/decorating will go in each. I removed all the cupcakes by picking them out of the pans, cooled them completely, and frosted them all identically. Still no liners peeled. This is just weird. Now I wish I had made one of the cupcakes in the liner that seems to always peel. Didn't think of it. Rats. I'll be making more of the carrot cupcakes than I need when W-day comes, so I'll try to remember to make one in the liners that have been so much trouble.

I think that the carrot cake looks good in the pink swirl liner. The plain pink wrapper almost clashed with the color of the cake.

So now I think the different kinds of cupcakes, frostings, and liners are all set!

Countdown to W Day Begins

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Holy cupcake, Batfriends! That little alarm just went off in my head. The first wedding is less than a month away now!

Yesterday, I decided I'd better try my own version of Funfetti. We're going to use pink and black sprinkles and I put them in Duncan Hines French Vanilla Cake mix. And I added 1 tsp of clear vanilla just to see what happens.

So far, 24 cupcakes have been pretty reliable from the cake mixes I've used. I intended to make 24 and try to squeek out a 25th so I could frost 5 in each design in each different cupcake wrapper to see how it comes out. You know that saying about the best laid plans…

The BTB (Bride To Be) chose the 5 different cupcake papers. 2 are single colors (fuchsia and black) and the other 3 are patterned. When I loaded the papers into the cupcake pans, I noticed that the single color ones seemed lighter weight but didn't think much of it.

Pink &Black Liners are the tiniest bit shorter

When the cupcake batter was scooped into the cups, I only had 22 and managed to get a 23rd by scraping and scraping the bowl and taking a little bit from each of the other cupcakes. What the heck? I set them side by side and found that the plain black and plain pink ones are slightly shorter. Unconsciously, I must have put more batter in the larger cups. ALSO -- so far these papers haven't peeled!

I'm feeling a little more secure after decorating the cupcakes - I know I can do it now. BTB approved all decorations and the amount of the jimmies used to make the custom funfetti cake.

I learned:

I'm blind. I couldn't find the black and white wedding decoration sugar thingies at Country Kitchen, so printed the picture of them, cut them out and stuck the paper on so BTB could see what it would look like. Almost. We stopped by Country Kitchen and asked … the black & white sugar thingies were there all along. I just couldn't see them!
If I'm piping on the frosting, don't put a crumb coat on - it looks weird.
The fancy carrot decorations look a LOT better than the little ones, even if in a cluster. (Although, I wonder how they'd look if I added fuzzy tops by hand.)
I am still not happy with my sunflowers.

Am I the only one who thinks the black jimmies on the pink frosting look like mouse (pardon me) turds?

Speaking of looking like turds…. I need a LOT more practice using the large round tip to frost.

I still don't know why these cupcake papers haven't peeled. The pink and white swirl ones and the zebra stripe ones are made by the same company that makes the ones I had so much trouble with (lemon cupcakes). The only difference I can find is that there is a cupcake logo on the bottom of the troublesome liners. Maybe those are different than the others?

For safety's sake, I need to bake most of the cupcakes in white Betty Crocker papers and then put them into the decorative ones.
The pink frosted cupcakes were supposed to have black lizards with pink features. A squiggled blob of black frosting doth not a lizard make. I could be in trouble here.

Round Two - Me vs Cupcakes - THE RESULTS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:44:00 +0000

Here are the results of my definitely non-scientific test of cupcake liners. The liners I used were based on what is available at our local grocery.

We went and got 4 packages of cupcake papers.

Betty Crocker liners (White)
Reynolds Foil liners (Silver and White)
(Pink) Reynolds StayBrite™ Baking Cups

(Blue) - Cupcake Creations ™ by Siege™ (Identical, except for color, to the green set that peeled

I set them up in my 12 cupcake pan and then in all kinds of configurations in my two 6 cupcake pans.

When they came out of the oven, I let them sit about 5 minutes in the pans and then took out two of each kind. They were still very hot. I left the rest in the pans to cool enough to not hurt myself to remove them from the pans.

Within 5 minutes out of the pans, the cupcakes that I had removed when they were very hot - the ones in the blue wrappers - had already peeled! The rest remain fine.

After 3 hours, the same two that peeled immediately remain the same - no more peeling, no less.

I left them overnight and all blue ones are peeled. The pink ones had peeled partially. Here is the full report:

In the pan with the 12 cupcakes --

Blue - All 4 papers peeled - both the ones I took out of the pan right away, and the ones I left
Pink - 1 peeled, 2 had partially peeled on one side, and 1 was fine

Betty Crocker White - 2 of 2 were perfect

Foil with white liner - the white paper part was perfect and the foil had slightly pulled away
White liner from the foil (didn't use foil) - pulled in one spot, but overall not bad
Foil with no paper liner - perfect

In one of the pans with 6 cupcakes --

Foil with white liner - perfect

Foil with no paper liner - perfect
Pink (2) - one peeled on one side and the other one was good
Betty Crocker White (2) - both perfect

In the other pan with 6 cupcakes -- I used the blue papers as the inner paper (liner) inside various other liners

Blue in Pink - peeled

Blue in white liner from the foil liners - peeled
Blue in foil liner only - peeled

Blue in foil lined with white - peeled

Blue in silicone cupcake liners (2) - both peeled

THE WINNER of this "contest" was the Betty Crocker white liners. I had NO trouble whatsoever with them.

The Reynolds foil in all configurations worked extremely well. Only one white paper only, pulled away in one spot.

The Pink Reynolds StayBrite™ was not very good. Only two of six were good.

The Blue Cupcake Creations ™ was a total failure.

Now, in defense of the liners that did not win I wonder how they would do with a regular, plain old out of the box cake mix. The recipe I used seemed to deflate as they cooled - I imagine this is due to the fluffy egg whites. This may mean that the test was good only for this particular recipe or similar recipes. The recipe also used buttermilk. Some people reported that they had trouble whenever they used buttermilk in the recipe. Therefore, more testing is essential with all types of cupcake recipes. I would like to TRY to use one of each kind of cupcake liner whenever I make cupcakes and keep track of the results.

One last comment about the blue liners - these liners are very nice, heavy weight papers. The packaging states "Bakery Quality / Easy Peel / No Muffin Pans Needed! / Grease Proof. They actually seem to be doing what they are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, for my purposes - the wedding cupcakes - they just don't seem to work. I think I have no choice but to bake in the Betty Crocker white liners and put the baked cupcakes into the pretty, decorative liners before frosting.

But here's the really good news: Hubby took the cupcakes to work and said they got seriously rave reviews! I think we've got a winner!

Tragedy Strikes My Cupcake World

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:57:00 +0000

O M G -- What am I going to do??? The cupcake papers have come off the better texture/tasting lemon cupcakes! This CAN'T happen with wedding cupcakes!

Wonderful lemon cupcakes - horrifying cupcake wrappers!

This is the absolutely FIRST TIME EVER that this has happened. With decades of cupcake baking under my proverbial belt, how could this possibly have happened NOW? The liners were the ones I used with the Easter cupcakes and there was no problem at all! In fact, I remember thinking that the batter on this particular recipe acted similarly to the white wedding cake recipe I used for the Easter cupcakes and I thought it must have something to do with only using egg whites.

There were signs that this was happening, but since I'd never seen it before I didn't recognize it. Not that there would have been anything I could do about it but ...

Now I've searched on the internet for the cause of this TRAGEDY and found no definitive answer! It's comforting that I'm not the only one to have this problem -- but that doesn't help AT ALL.

The best remedy I found was in Sunday Belle http://www.sundaybelle.com/making-the-cupcake-liner-stick-to-the-cupcake/ (Strangely enough, I found a kindred soul in this blog - mixing fashion and baking!)

Now I'm going to make the cupcake recipe that caused the peeling a couple more times and see if her suggestions help. If not, I've got to use a different batter or figure out some way around the peeling paper dilemma.

Oh, and as I'm wailing over this mysterious tragedy, hubby says the Easter cupcakes had started peeling when he took them to work, but he just thought it was because they were in a plastic container.


Obvious which wrappers are a problem - but why?

Duelling Lemon Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 07 May 2012 02:05:00 +0000

My son always requests lemon cake with lemon frosting for his birthday cake, so of course, one of the wedding cupcake flavors will be lemon on lemon.

Now, I know I could take the easy way out and just use cake mix and pre-made frosting but where's the fun in that? More than that, I want newlyweds to have "special" cupcakes. I'm satisfied with the white wedding cake cupcakes. I'm satisfied with the carrot cupcakes, but need to work on a good cream cheese frosting for it. I'm ok with the "funfetti" cupcakes using the wedding colors. But I haven't even started checking out chocolate cupcakes yet. Yikes!

So I've been wandering around online and in my cupcake books and even my regular cookbooks, looking for THE lemon cupcake recipe and I've narrowed it down to 3. Once I decide on which two I want to make both and try them side by side to see which is better. Actually, I have been working on these cupcakes off and on all week. I thought it would be easier if I made the frostings first and bake them another day and finally made them last night.

The first is a lemon cupcake I found online ……… so far, it's winning the race. The frosting is ... O M G … it's amazing! I think you could put this stuff on liver and onions (sorry, liver lovers of the world) and it would be delicious. It's from MyBakingAddiction http://www.mybakingaddiction.com/lemon-cupcakes/

So, I made the frosting from the second recipe - also found online. It's just a tiny bowl full! I'm a bit disappointed . Maybe it's because the recipe instructions used mini cupcake pans - maybe you don't need so much frosting.

First Recipe - Looks pretty good

The oven preheated and I got the first recipe finished. It's pretty easy and straight forward. This is a huge plus because I know that no matter how well I plan and prepare, the 2 days before the wedding will have me suicidal. Since these are just test run cupcakes, I put them in the white papers that were between the foil papers. I even got 30 cupcakes from the recipe. (I'm not even sure if you're supposed to use the foil in direct contact, but I have in the past and no one has died so far.) They baked nicely and I'm pleased with the look. Unfortunately, the texture and taste was just .. meh.

By the time I got to the second recipe - the one from MyBakingAddiction - the kitchen was 80+ degrees and the butter sticks were REALLY soft. I'd taken the two bowls of different frostings out of the fridge so they wouldn't be so hardened that it would be difficult to pipe.

Second Recipe - Not quite a pretty

This recipe reminds me a lot of the white wedding cake batter but not as thick. The recipe uses 4 egg whites, so that makes sense. It also uses cake flour, which I don't mind because I do have plenty of it. It also calls for lemon zest, so I ended up with 2 lemons worth of juice that I didn't use - I put each lemon's juice in a separate keeper cup. That way the next time a recipe calls for "the juice of one lemon" - I've got that (so there!)

These cupcakes came out beautifully, as well. I was only able to squeeze out 23 cupcakes so it made a few of the papers not as full as the should have been. That's ok - I'm EXPERIMENTING!

The kitchen was so hot by this time that my brain may have melted. I removed these cupcakes from the pans right away. Honestly, I don't know why. I usually let them cool about 5 minutes in the pans so I can touch them with my hands when taking them out.

Both recipes together

I'm saying this because ….. Wait for it … tomorrow I'll tell you. Leave a comment if you think you've guessed.

I'm Blue

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:43:00 +0000

I need to catch up here...

Well, THAT was a downer! I searched the internet and my cupcake books for THE BEST blueberry muffin recipe I could find. It kind of amazed me that all the recipes were so similar.

Anyway, finally I chose a recipe that had a ton of reviews where everyone and their proverbial brother LOOOVVVED them. It is from the Taste of Home website and it is the Blueberrry Streusel Muffins

Isn't that a purty blueberry muffin?

Again, my wonderful convection oven proved itself to be simply amazing. Those muffins were done so perfectly! Frankly, I don't know why all ovens don't have convection as the standard. Or maybe my old oven was worse than I realized!

But I'm still disappointed. I was really looking for h e a v e n l y blueberry muffins. They were very good, no doubt, but still just … meh.

I have some ideas to try the next time … and there WILL be a next time!

In the meantime, I'd love to know if anyone would like to share their

h e a v e n l y blueberry muffin recipe!

Lemony Dinosaurs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 May 2012 23:43:00 +0000

The results are in!

My husband took the cupcakes to work with him. It's a small office, consisting of 3 women and 5 men, so I figure there should be enough diverse tastes.

First, the cake. Rave reviews! Yay!!! Everyone loves the taste and the texture, which is leaning toward being almost like angel food cake, but not that thick and dense.

Second, they liked the decoration and one of the girls especially liked the spiky green grass.

I talked with the June fiancée last week and we've sort of decided on the remaining decorations for the cupcakes. And, we added a flavor - lemon.

This son always asks for lemon cake for his birthday and this year, of course, I made cupcakes - with the usual boxed version of lemon cake, but I made buttercream frosting and flavored it with lemon flavoring. My hubby gets awful blisters in his mouth from citrus acid and I've learned to either use flavoring or make sure it's cooked and/or with a lot of milk product to cut the acid down.

This son is such a kid at heart. :) I hope he never changes. This is the one who loved Barney, and dinosaurs - the Stegosaurus, especially. While the other one likes weird things like alligators and sharks in the bathtub (JOKE!!) this one likes goofy things. Like stegosaurus bathtub stickers. You get the idea.

I'm lucky enough to live reasonably close to Country Kitchen Sweetart that a couple weeks ago, hubby took me there to scout for what kinds of things are available and to pick up some cupcake wrappers. We also picked up a catalog that we gave to the June fiancée. She had looked through it and showed me what she liked as decorations. At first, she was concerned that some weren't "wedding" enough but I told her that it's HER wedding. If she wants blue brontosauruses swinging from trees THAT is what she should have! (Thankfully, she doesn't because there ain't NO WAY I could pull that one off!)

Lemon cupcake with dinosaur sprinkles

So, between the two of them it has been decided that there will be lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting and hard sugar dinosaurs as decoration. I was kind of hoping they'd decide on the decoration I did on son's birthday cupcakes - colored sanding sugar and little dinosaur sprinkles because I really thought it was cute and pretty. But they like the dinos, so dinos it will be!

Lemon cupcake with star sprinkles

Next, I have to find a really good lemon cake and frosting. For the fun of baking, I prefer to try not to use cake mixes but time's running out so I might not have a choice.

For today, though, I have some blueberries that never made it into my yogurt so I'm hunting either blueberry cake recipes or blueberry muffins. I have a blueberry muffin recipe and I hate it. I have a blueberry bread recipe and it's really good, but I want to try something different.

Easter Egg "Nests"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Jelly Bean Easter Egg "Nests"

Before I started dinner on Easter Sunday, I wanted to make those cupcakes I'd been wishing so desperately to make for two weeks.

The goal this time was to use a white cake mix to determine if it would be an acceptable "wedding cake". When I took the cake decorating class, I was shocked to learn that they actually use the same old cake mix from the grocery with the addition of a little bit of almond flavoring.

I used Duncan Hines Classic White cake mix and added 1 Tbls of almond flavoring. Apparently, I've never used that particular mix because I've always make white cake with the entire egg, not just the whites. I never know what to do with the yolks left over. The directions didn't give me the option of using the whole egg so I used just the whites. I'll figure out what to do about those yolks, eventually! Note to self: make a list of things to do with just egg whites and just egg yolks.

The consistency of the batter as I scooped it into the cupcake wrappers reminded me of marshmallow cream. It makes sense because marshmallows are mostly egg whites and sugar.

Another thing I noticed is the difference between the cupcake wrappers I'd gotten at Country Kitchen and the ones I'd been getting at the grocery. The "specialty" papers are quite a lot heavier!

The virgin run of the convection oven! I have 4 cupcake pans -- 1 will accommodate 12 cupcakes and is a lightweight aluminum. The other 3 hold 6 cupcakes each and are heavier aluminum and 2 of them have gotten quite dark over time.

White Wedding Cake Cupcakes from the Oven

I loaded the pans into the lower oven - the convection oven - on two shelves, one each side of the oven. The pan holding the 12 cupcakes started to get a bit golden on the top so I checked them and they appeared to be done but the two pans of 6 cupcakes weren't. I took out the first 12 and started letting them cool and kept a close eye on the remaining cupcakes, which took about 5 minutes longer. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it may have something to do with the heavier weight pans and that they were darker. The main thing is, all three pans had really nice looking cupcakes with NO burnt bottoms!

While the cupcakes finished cooling, I mixed up my buttercream frosting and colored it with leaf green paste color. Then, using a #233 decorating tip - it has lots of tiny holes - I covered the cupcakes with "grass". I learned this in the class I took and they were a bit more nest-like. I found it difficult to do in class and couldn't quite recreate it this time, either. I like the look of grass, so that's what I went with. Then added three jelly beans for color and voila! Easter eggs "hidden" in the grass!

This is really quick and easy. I'm going to try to think of more ways to use this tip. One thing I did learn is that, my frosting was a bit dry at first. It took a lot of effort to squeeze it through those tiny holes. After I thinned it with a tiny bit of milk, it was much easier and went a lot faster.

As for the cupcakes, they were wonderful! Very moist and soft - almost like angel food but not so dense. The addition of a tablespoon of almond flavoring seems to give it the "wedding cake" flavor, too!