From Victim to Addict?

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!

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!

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?