Cupcakes-The Reason for the Lack of Posts

Here's the reason for my absence! 300+cupcakes. 

I'm pretty sure I will need to do double workouts this week to make up for all the taste testing I "had" to do. 

Here's the flavor break down. 

The white and turquoise frosted cakes are white cake with organic strawberry filling and a white chocolate buttercream.

The coral colored cakes are peach with actual white flesh peach pieces inside the cake and then a brown sugar cream cheese frosting.

The chocolate is well . . . chocolate. I'm pretty sure the name should be death by chocolate or at the very least have a warning label stating that these could produce a chocolate induced coma. They are chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache filling and then an incredibly rich chocolate frosting. 

As for what went the fastest . . . the mini cupcakes in all flavors. I think everyone wanted to try all the flavors, so they would just take one of each of the mini cupcakes. Personally, I LOVED the chocolate, because I have a slight addiction to chocolate, but the peach was pretty good . . . in my humble opinion, of course!

April Showers Bring May Flowers

So this weekend I had the awesome privilege of making some cupcakes and cookies for a bridal shower. The theme was April Showers Bring May Flowers. The lovely brides colors are turquoise and coral so we decided to incorporate those colors as well. I decided for the cookies to make sugar cookies and I REALLY wanted to make them umbrella shaped and then have the flowers be on the cupcakes but I couldn't find an umbrella shaped cookie cutter anywhere. So I just did flowers all around. Here is how they turned out.

Isn't this table super cute! My sister and her friend decorated it! Amazing!

 And here are the cookies and cupcakes on display. The cookies were a lemon sugar cookie and are by far my favorite sugar cookie recipe I've ever made. They were still nice and soft, but still held there shape really well when baked. 

 The cupcakes were all peach. Peach cake and peach frosting. I even put little pieces of peach in them. Mmm.... I think next time I will try and add a little more peach flavor though to really send them over the top.

The cupcake recipe was adapted from tasteandtellblog.com

Cupcakes
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup peach jam
• 2 medium peaches, peeled and chopped
• 1 tablespooon flour
Frosting
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 5 tablespoons peach jam
• peach slices, for garnish

Instructions

• Heat oven to 350F. Line 16 cupcake tins with liners.
• In the bowl of a mixer, mix together the vegetable oil and sugar. Beat in the egg.
• In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. To the sugar mixture, add 1/3 of the flour mixture. Then add half of the milk. Add another 1/3 of the flour, the rest of the milk, then the remaining flour. Mix just until combined. Fold in the jam.
• In a small bowl, combine the chopped peaches and flour. Fold into the batter. Fill the cupcake tins 2/3 full with the mixture and bake until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean, 17- 20 minutes. Cool completely.
• To make the frosting: In the bowl of a mixer, cream together all of the ingredients. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes

The sugar cookie recipe was adapted from allrecipes.com. To the cookie batter I added the zest of one lemon and the juice of the lemon.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

2 cups white sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Directions

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. 

Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

For the Icing I used Martha Stewarts recipe and went with the meringue powder. I also added 

a few drops of lemon oil.

Ingredients

• 1 box confectioners' sugar (1 pound)
• 5 tablespoons meringue powder or 2 large egg whites

Directions

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine sugar and meringue powder. 
2. Mixing on low speed, add a scant 1/2 cup water. 
3. For a thinner consistency, usually used for flooding, add more water. 
4. A thicker consistency is generally used for outlining and adding details. 
5. Mix until icing holds a ribbonlike trail on the surface of the mixture for 5 seconds when you raise the paddle.

Cupcake Bouquet

Today I gave my hand at a cupcake bouquet.  It was my sisters birthday today so I had the perfect excuse to bake a bunch of cupcakes!  Thanks sis for having a birthday!  Anyways . . . I LOVE how it turned out!

The cupcakes are Ultimate Vanilla cupcakes infused with vanilla bean.  Recipe to follow.  I made a few adjustments.  The recipe calls for whole milk and I only had 1%.

The same goes for the sour cream.  The recipe calls for full fat and I only had light on hand.

And here's a handy tip.  I didn't have cake flour so heres what I did.  I put 2 tablespoons corn starch into a measuring cup and then filled the remainder of the 1 cup measuring cup with regular all purpose flour and then leveled it off. Then I put 1 tablespoon in a half cup and filled the remainder with AP flour and then 1/2 tablespoon cornstarch in 1/4 measuring cup and then filled the remainder of it with AP flour as well.  That got me the 1 3/4 cake flour substitute that I needed!

 Make sure if you are using a stand mixer to occasionally scrape the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  See all that stuff that wasn't getting mixed in.  

 And these are the cupcakes ready to be decorated. If you look real close you can see the yummy flecks of vanilla bean. Mmmm.... so tasty!  These really taste super yummy even without frosting!  Highly recommend this recipe.

The Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake Recipe
from thecupcakeproject.com
Yield: 16 cupcakes

• 1 cup (225 grams) granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 3/4 cups (175 grams) cake flour, not self-rising
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup (75 grams) full-fat sour cream
• 1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil (60 ml)
• 1 tablespoon pure (not imitation) vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup (160 ml) whole milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).
2. In a small bowl, combine sugar and seeds from the vanilla bean.
3. Using the back of a spoon, move around the bowl and apply pressure to break up any clumps of seeds and to better infuse the vanilla flavor into the sugar. Set aside.
4. In a medium-sized mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
5. Add the vanilla bean sugar and mix until well combined.
6. Add butter and mix on medium-low speed for three minutes.  Because there is so little butter, you'll end up with a very fine crumb texture.
7. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth.
8. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
9. Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined.  The batter will be liquid.  (Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong.  It's supposed to be that way.)
10. Fill cupcake liners just over 1/2 full.
11. Bake for 14 minutes and then test to see if they are done. They are done when a toothpick comes out without wet batter stuck to it.  The cupcakes should appear white with specks of vanilla bean. They should not turn a golden brown.  If they are not done, test again in two minutes.  If they are still not done, test again in another two minutes.
12. When the cupcakes are done, remove them immediately from the tins and leave them on a cooling rack (or just on your counter if you don't own a cooling rack) to cool.

Vanilla Buttercream

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/2 cup shortening
5-6 cups powdered sugar (varies depending on the constancy you're going for
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tsp pure vanilla extract

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and shortening until smooth and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add 6 cups sugar, whipping cream, and vanilla; mix until light and fluffy. If necessary, gradually add more powdered sugar to reach desired consistency.