Hooray for the Red, White, & Blue Cupcakes!

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?

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??

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

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

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

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?

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.