Challenge #5: Baby, I Don't Love You Cupcakes

I was in my hometown of Lindsay last weekend for, not only our annual family weekend, but also for my Mom's 60th birthday. I brought The Icing On The Cupcake with me figuring I could let my Mon choose what cupcakes she would like me to bake, but also continue on with the challenge at hand.

Despite the name, my Mom chose Baby, I don't Love you Cupcakes, which turned out to be the taste of Fall that we were looking for.

1 egg, room tempurature

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup molasses

2 tsp freshly grated ginger

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp finely ground sea salt

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 cup water

2 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp potato (corn) starch

Preheat the oven to 325'. Place 12 paper liners into cupcake trays.

Whisk together oil sugar and molasses. 

Add eggs and mix until smooth. Stir in ginger

In a separate bowl combine flour, cinnamon, salt, potato starch and cloves

Add to the wet mixture and stir until just combined.

Bring water to a boil in small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in baking soda (I swear there's baking soda in this picture, you just can't see it!)

Whisk the hot water into the batter until combined.

Pour into paper liners. Fill 3/4 of the way to the top. Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes and then place on baking rack.

These smelled so good coming out of the oven! Just like freshly baked gingerbread! YUM!

Now, on to the Orange Flower Cream

1 pint whipping cream

1 tsp orange flower water

1 tbsp powdered sugar

pinch of cream of tarter

In a chilled bowl mix whipping cream with the orange flower water. Now I couldn't find orange flower water, so I opted to use orange oil. (I also added in some orange food colouring to give it a bit of a tint.

Add the sugar and cream of tarter gradually. Beat with an electric mixer until stiff. Frost cooled cupcakes.

The cream turned out to be orange whip cream which was delicious, but hard to frost, which is why they don't look like much.  But they were damn good! So good in fact, that the cupcakes for our trip didn't even last that long! I had to make more the next day!

If you are going to try out this recipe, I would suggest making at least a double batch! I know I will next time.

Challenge #4: Margaita, Hold The Salt

At the end of the summer I was invited over to a new friend's house for 'girly drinks'.

Since I wanted to make a good impression, I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to try a new cupcake challenge, and what better to make than Margarita, Hold The Salt cupcakes?

1/4 cup lime juice

1 1/2 tsp lime zest (1 lime)

1 cup soy milk (plain or vanilla)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp tequila

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sugar

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp potato (corn) starch

1/2 tsp finely ground salt

1 pint fresh raspberries

Preheat the oven to 350'. Place 12 paper liners into cupcake trays.

In large bowl, mix together lime juice, lime zest, soy milk, oil, tequila, vanilla, potato starch and sugar.

 In a bowl, measure flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Whisk or sift together to make sure they are thoroughly combined. Add dry ingredients to lime mixture and stir until just combined.

 Gently fold fresh raspberries into the batter with a rubber spatula *

 Pour into paper liners. Fill 3/4 of the way to the top. Bake for 20 to 24 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes and then place on baking rack.

* I found that the raspberries were so large and juicy that the made the surrounding cake a bit mushy. In the future I would mash the raspberries up before putting them in.

Now, on to the good stuff; Tequila Lime Frosting

1/4 cup salted butter

1 tbsp soy milk

3 tbsp lime juice

1 tbsp tequila

2 cups, plus more if needed, powdered sugar

Beat together butter, milk, lime juice, tequila and 2 cups powdered sugar until smooth and creamy. If the frosting is too thin, wait 5 minutes. It will thicken. If it's still too thin, add more sugar very slowly. The frosting should be stiff, but spreadable. If the frosting becomes too thick, add more lime juice or soy milk. As you can see, I also added green food colouring to mine to give it that margarita feel.

I also saved a few raspberries for garnish. Make sure to rinse them though or you'll get raspberry juice running down the sides of the icing.

Yes, they really were as tasty as they looked!

Challenge # 3: Blue Blood Special Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Custard

Have you forgotten about me? I promise I haven't forgotten about you. Things have been crazy here in Braeby-land, but don't worry, cupcakes are still being made whenever I get the chance. 

The challenge has not been forgotten.

Back in the summer, I went to my boyfriend's family gathering and thought it would be nice to take some cupcakes with me. Of course, out came my favorite cupcake book, The Icing On The Cupcake, and into it's pages I dove looking for the perfect recipe for a family BBQ.

After much deliberation, I decided on Blue Blood Special Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Custard. That's a mouthful, isn't it?

1 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs, room tempurature

1 cup milk

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp finely ground salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 cups blueberries

Preheat oven to 375'. Place 12 paper liners into cupcake tray. Cream sugar and vegetable oil with an electric mixer until fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Add eggs one at a time and mix until blended. 

Whisk together flour, salt and baking powder.

Alternating between flour mixture and milk, add them to batter. Start and end with flour mixture.

Mash 1/2 cup of blueberries. Fold them into the batter. Gently fold in the rest of the blueberries.

Pour batter into the paper liners and fill to the top.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cool for 5 minutes and then place on baking rack.

(I know, I know, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I usually do. Sorry about that)

Now, onto the lemon curd.

zest of 2 lemons *

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/4 cup unsalted butter

*I would use less zest next time, it was a bit intense.

Place all your ingredients in a double boiler. If you don't have a double boiler (which I don't), place all ingredients into a temperature safe bowl. Place the bowl in a saucepan with 2 inches of water in the bottom.

Bring the water to a boil.

Stir ingredients until they thicken into a custard.

Place the lemon curd in the fridge to cool for 2 hours.

Frost cupcakes.

They don't look like much, but they sure were tasty! When we got them to the party, they were received so well that people were gone in 5 minutes! I will definitely make this recipe again.

Challenge #2: S'more Cupcakes

You may remember a while ago, I got a great book called The Icing On The Cupcake, which not only was a cute read, but also had cupcake recipes at the end of every chapter. I decided as a challenge to myself, I would make every recipe in the book and then blog here about them. Well, I was all excited when I stared this back in September, but I kind of got sidetracked after the first recipe. It was so good that I just kept making them every time I wanted cupcakes. I even tried many different types of fruit to see which one I liked the best. (Strawberry still wins so far)

I finally got the opportunity to try something new last week when a lovely friend of mine threw a surprise birthday party for her fiance, who is a big supported of my baking. Although I knew he loved the Strawberry cupcakes, I thought it would be fun to try something new. 

I excitedly got my book back out and started pouring through all the recipes once again. That's when I came across S'more Cupcakes. Chocolate chips, marshmallows and graham crackers....yum!!

1 cup butter, room temperature

4 eggs, room temperature

1 cup heavy cream

1 vanilla bean

2 cups sugar

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Place baking stone on the middle oven rack and preheat to 350' and place paper liners into cupcake trays.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy, about 3 to 5 mins.

Add eggs and beat for another 2 mins.

Cut the vanilla bean in two and scrape out the brown innards.

This was a really weird step for me, as I never use vanilla bean. I was totally covered with bean scrapings when I was done. I have to wonder if it would've been easier to just use liquid vanilla, but it was certainly an experience.

In a separate bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips together. It was a little strange mixing the chocolate chips in with the dry ingredients. I guess I'm just use to mixing them in later when I make cookies.

 

Add dry ingredients to the batter. Stop when the batter is completely blended.

 

Whip heavy cream in a cold bowl until soft peaks form, fold into batter.

 

Pour into paper liners and fill 3/4 of the way to the top. Bake 20-30 mins. or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean. (note: This doesn't work if you accidentally stick the toothpick into a melted chocolate chip. I wasted about 4 toothpicks doing that) Cool for 5 mins, then place on a cooling rack.

 

Now, onto the Marshmallow Icing.

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

5 oz Crisco

2 cups marshmallows

2 tsp vanilla

10 graham crackers

Cream butter and Crisco together. Melt marshmallows in the microwave for 30 seconds, then stir. Repeat until thoroughly melted (or if you're microwave impaired like I am, melt in a pot on the stove)

Whip melted marshmallows with an electric mixer until they are fluffy, about 2 mins.

Add vanilla, mix until combined. Add butter mixture and beat until fluffy, about 2 mins.

Now, this is where is got complicated. All I could taste when I tried it was the Crisco, so I added a few tbsp of icing sugar and a few tbsp of chocolate syrup. I found that really made the icing taste good, but to each their own.

The icing was really nice and fluffy and the cupcakes iced so easily. I used my new, huge, #848 icing tip and it worked beautifully.

I didn't end up sprinkling the cupcakes with graham crackers, but only because I ran out of time.

Everyone at the party loved them and I was super happy with all the feedback that I got.

Do It Yourself: Fancy, Geeky Aprons

Even though I usually forget to put one on before I start baking, I love aprons.

I love pink ones and frilly ones, ones with girly patterns or bold prints! But my favorite, of course, are geeky aprons.

I know I've blogged before about Star Wars Aprons that you can buy, but these ones are a little more special and made totally by hand.

I found them when I was perusing one of my favorite baking sites; Bakingdom.

She had started out by just making regular aprons based on an apron that she already owned. 

But as time went on, she decided to make a few new aprons, geeky aprons!

Gryffindor and a Tardis! How cute are they?

and to top it all off, she made caldron cakes and Butterbeer for her Harry Potter theme (including recipes)

and Weeping Angel and Tardis cookies for her Doctor Who theme!

Check out her site for all sorts of other wonderful projects!

Here is another apron that I found years ago that I've always wanted to make for myself

I wish I knew who made this, but it's been so long that I've lost the link. I love the lightsaber/whip holder the best!

Cupcake Vodka - The Perfect Addition To Baking!

Yes, you read that right. 

CUPCAKE VODKA!

That's vodka that tastes like cupcakes!

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s here. Cupcake has produced a vodka that is as rewarding and delicious as the wines that came before it. Handcrafted with the belief that good vodka comes from good ingredients, we used quality American grain, a touch of grape and natural flavors. We don’t add any unnatural sweeteners, because we don’t want our Vodka exaggeratedly sweet; we want it clean, crisp and {you got it} delicious. We are proud to put our Cupcake name on these four super-premium flavors of Cupcake Vodka. So go ahead, Live Deliciously.

This delicious sounding vodka comes in 4 new flavours

Devil's Food

 Frosting

 Chiffon

Original (which I'm going to guess is vanilla)

I so badly want to try these! Not only would it be fun to serve cupcake martinis to guests, but it could be a lot of fun to add into cupcake recipes as well.

I want to try the Frosting flavour first! How about you? What flavour would you try?

Thanks to All Things Cupcakes, who I would love to drink some of this vodka with.

English Muffins and Cupcakes - A Birthday Spectacular

Last Month was the Spectacular Jocey's birthday. She spent it at the cottage with her family, but as soon as she got back, we knew that we had to do something special.

So we had a sleepover. 

And let me tell you, it was awesome! We spent almost the entire time cooking and baking. gossiping and drinking! 

The first thing we did was make english muffins. We had spent quite a bit of time the week before going over recipes and trying to find one that sounded good. This one involved a griddle, and since Jocey has one, we decided to give it a shot.

1 cup milk

2 tbsp white sugar

1 pkg dry active yeast

1 cup warm water

1/4 cups melted shortning

6 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

Warm milk until it bubbles, remove from heat (185'). Mix in sugar until disolves. Let cool until luke warm.

In a small bowl dissolve yeast in warm water. (adding a pinch of sugar and flour really helps this along) Let stand for 10 mins.

In a large bowl combine milk, yeast, shortening and 3 cups of  flour. Beat until smooth.

Add salt and the rest of the flour or enough to make the dough soft. 

Kneed.

Place in a greased bowl and let it rise.

Punch down, then roll to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out biscuits.

Sprinkle wax paper with cornmeal and set rounds on the paper to rise. Dust the tops with cornmeal.

Heat griddle. Cook 10 mins. on each side.

They didn't cook quite as well as we hoped, so we ended up leaving them on for much longer than 10 mins.

The texture inside was not nice and airy as we had hoped. The taste was amazing, but the texture was kind of weird.

While this was going on, we also made spaghetti sauce and really great raspberry martinis (I'll have to grab the recipe off of her and blog about them. They were so good)

The next day we continued on with our cooking and baking. We finished up the sauce and made lasagna (with 6 types of cheese!) made some kick-ass garlic bread, some strawberry frozen yogurt and of course, strawberry cupcakes.

I learned how to make Butter-cream Icing finally!

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

4 1/2 cups icing sugar

1 1/3 cups butter

Beat until smooth, add food colouring, decorate to your liking.

Don't they look delicious? They were!

We had a lovely dinner party that night and it all went off without a hitch!