Cupcakes!

Sunday morning when I woke up I was really in the mood to bake - but knowing that I would just eat it all made me avoid it. By 6pm Adam was asking if I had decided to bake something up that evening. I asked what he would help me devour and we settled on cupcakes. I tried to take the easy way out and use a box, but he prefers from scratch so into the kitchen I went. About an hour and a half later I came out and had prepared an extensive amount of chocolate cupcakes, large and small, which are now neslted in our freezer for Easter, St Paddys Day and just any ole time!

I used my usual Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake and Magnolia's Vanilla Buttercream Icing - both found in this post. I halved the icing recipe because I made one mini cupcake pan with chopped samoas, thin mints and peanut butter (all separate of course) in the cake and will want to do a chocolate buttercream on top when it comes time to eat those.

This afternoon I'm whipping up another sweet treat that I'm excited about. Sweets all around, please!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago Adam and I received an invite to a going away party for someone at his Hospital. I immediately knew that I wanted to bring a dessert, because it has been so long since I have baked anything! I have been aching to whip something up and was so happy that I got the chance to do so and share it with people. I also knew that I wanted to make cupcakes, and I thought that Ice Cream Cone cupcakes would be a fun treat.

I used the Hersheys 'Perfectly Chocolate' Chocolate Cake (seriously the best chocolate cake you will find) recipe and Magnolia Bakery's Buttercream Icing- recipe below.

I used the sugar cones and found that the best way to bake and transport these is to start off with a deep, oven safe dish.

Take 2 layers of heavy duty aluminum foil and securely fix them onto the top of the dish. Use a pencil/pen/skewer to poke a hole in the foil and place the tip of a cone into the hole. Press down to expand the hole to a size where the cone is halfway in and sturdy. Repeat with remaining cones.

Fill the cone about 3/4 of the way full with batter and bake for about 20 minutes. The cake recipe yielded 24 cones and about 36 mini cupcakes. This is perfect for making and freezing, too.

I used a plain disposable piping bag with the tip cut off for the minis, making just a circular icing top, and then the open star tip for the cones to give it a swirl effect, like soft serve. I think I added 1 cup of milk to the icing instead of 1/2 because my icing would not stiffen, even after a whole bag of sugar. Oops! It still worked out. I used mini m&ms, crushed butterfinger snackers and Hersheys Caramel Topping in a piping bag to decorate. These were a hit and would be cute for a kids party or for adults!

Magnolia's Vanilla Buttercream Icing(taken from Food Network)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
6 to 8 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract


Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and vanilla. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. (Use and store the icing at room temperature because icing will set if chilled.) Icing can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Baileys-Caramel-Chocolate Icing

If you're anything like me, cold weather means lots of warm food and baking! I am a huge chocolate lover, especially when it comes to cake. Pile in as much chocolate as you can, and I could still go for more. The Hersheys Chocolate Cake recipe should become your go-to for chocolate cake. It is soft, extra moist and light. You could really slab any kind of icing on and it would taste good, but I had a craving for chocolate icing, which gave me a chance to try Beantown Bakers Dark Chocolate Icing Recipe. I tweaked it just a touch and it came out perfect. The addition of baileys makes it seem more festive to me also, I'm not sure why but I fel like people have dessert drinks more during the Holidays. My mom made a vanilla icing and I devoured 3 mini cupcakes almost immediately! These should definitely go on your to-bake list for the Holiday season.


HERSHEY's Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water
Heat oven to 350°F. Line cupcake pans with baking cups.

Combine sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water, note that the batter will be very thin. I used a scoop to ladle the batter into a measuring cup, then poured into the cupcake liners, about 2/3 of the way full.

Bake 22 - 25 minutes. Cool and ice!

Baileys-Caramel-Chocolate Icing (from Beantown Baker)
6 Tbsp butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups confectioners sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup + 1 tsp Caramel Baileys
Cream butter and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine sugar and cocoa powder. Add dry ingredients to the creamed butter and vanilla.
Add Baileys in 2 parts, mixing in between additions until smooth.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

Over the weekend my sister had a pretty fancy wine party. She lives in a condo with a huge balcony that just happened to be overlooking a Jazz Festival that night. There was tons of delicious food that you wouldn't eat just any day. Im pretty sure that I had my fill of cheese for quite a while! I decided to bring cupcakes and since I had so much leftover pumpkin puree and pumpkin truffle filling, I decided I needed to incorporate it. It is fall afterall, there needs to be pumpkin at every party! I had actually been asking around to see what the rule was for adding pumpkin puree to a box cake mix, since I had a chocolate box sitting in the pantry, and got help from a blog post by Joelen who adapted it from Hello, Cupcake! So mine is another variation on that. They turned out really moist with just enough pumpkin flavor, but not overpowering. I always use Magnolia's vanilla buttercream recipe, so I just tweaked it a bit this time so that I could incorporate the truffle filling.

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes (adapted from Joelen)
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
4 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place liners into 2 cupcake pans.

Disregard ingredients on the box mix. combine the above ingredients and mix until smooth and everything is incorporated. Fill liners 2/3 way full. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool, then top with icing and serve.


Vanilla-Pumpkin Truffle Butter Cream Icing (adapted slightly from Magnolia)
1 Cup (2 sticks)Unslated Butter, room temp
8-9 Cups Confectioners Sugar
1/2 Cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup pumpkin truffle filling

Cream butter and 4 Cups sugar. Add Milk, Vanilla and remaining Sugar and mix until combined and smooth. Add Pumpkin Truffle filling and mix. Add more sugar if needed, to keep consistency thick enough to pipe on cupcake without having it droop.

Cupcakes!

I just wanted to add my cupcakes....I really need to get to making more now that the holidays are here!

Peanut butter Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes

Cupcakes make me happy. They're sweet and soft and come in so many flavors. Making them is a stress reliever for me, it can take everything off of my mind. I'm so excited to start making some holiday varieties! This will definitely not be helping my workout, but really I prefer baking to eat a lot of them. These are Peanut Butter and Chocolate Ganache cupcakes that I made last saturday. I adapted it from it from Beantown Baker.

You can use whatever chocolate cake recipe that you like, or a box mix.

Peanut Butter Icing

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter

5 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/3 cup heavy cream

Mix confectioner's sugar, peanut butter, butter,vanilla and salt in bowl with electric mixer on medium until creamy. Add cream and beat on high until smooth.

Chocolate Ganache

3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

1/3 cup heavy cream

heat cream in saucepan until boiling. Then pour over chocolate chips and mix until smooth. (I halved the recipe and needed a bit more cream. It was still a lot more than I needed)

Assembly

Bake cupcakes and cool. Cut out cone shape in the center and chop reeses cups. Put them in the cut out spaces. Put a little ganache on top and then put top back on (I cut off the pointy part of the top piece and just ued a flat top). Spread a little more ganache on top and let cool. Then put your icing in a piping bag, snip the corner off and pipe on top.