Is It Possible To Have Too Much Chocolate?

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

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

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:

1. 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!
2. If I'm piping on the frosting, don't put a crumb coat on - it looks weird.
3. 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.)
4. I am still not happy with my sunflowers. 

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

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

7. 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?

 

8. 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.
9. 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

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

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

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

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

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.