"Dirty Snow" Cupcakes

I should have made these cupcakes back in February during Round 1 or Round 2 of the Oklahoma blizzard.  But I didn't...  First I didn't have the right ingredients.  Then I had the ingredients, but I didn't have the drive.  Now I have both - AND a day off from work.  So, without further ado, I give you "Dirty Snow" Cupcakes.  (Okay, it's really an Earl Grey Tea Cupcake with Earl Grey Tea Buttercream, but I'm taking a bit of creative license here.)  I found the recipe at a website, which will go unnamed because I didn't really like their recipe for the cupcakes or the frosting.  Since I modified their recipes so much, I am not posting those, either.

 First, brew your tea.  Drink some to make sure it's not too strong. 

Prepare your muffin tin.  I used a really cute flower-shaped one that my sister gave me for my last birthday. 

I used snowflake cupcake liners.  I forgot to take photos of the filled tins, so we will skip right to the frosting.

 Whip the frosting to a light consistency and add the contents of two Earl Gray tea bags.  The tea looks like pepper or vanilla bean seeds when it is mixed into the icing.  The frosting will change to cream-colored.

 

The frosting was a bit runny, but set up well after a few minutes in the refrigerator.

 

Sprinkle with some snowflake candies and they're done! (Someone said they should have been called "Biscuits & Gravy" cupcakes.  I might have to try that next time.  Sausage cupcakes, anyone?  Haha!)

The cakes were light and airy.  The cupcake and buttercream had a slight tea flavor, but it was more pronounced in the frosting.  The overall effect was a cupcake that was both sweet and a bit savory.  All in all, pretty darn good.

 

Bananas Foster Redux

I used the same Bananas Foster cupcake recipe to make these star cupcakes for the graduation party of my niece and two nephews.  (Congratulations to Jordan on her Bachelor of Arts from Oklahoma Baptist University, Drew on his diploma from Choctaw High School, and Garrett on his Masters Degree from Texas State University!)  The star shape fit in nicely with the star theme of the party.

I used the Wilton silicone star cupcake pan for these and was not at all pleased with it.  I found that I had to experiment with the baking time and ultimately had to increase the cooking time by about half (34 minutes, instead of 24), plus I could only cook six cupcakes at a time.  To make 45 cupcakes, it took me almost half the night.  They were cute, but just not worth the effort for me.  I will be giving this pan to my niece, who loves stars of all kinds. 

Going Bananas

I had been wanting to make some banana cupcakes for some time.  I bought bananas, let them ripen, and then lost the urge to make anything.  I went through this cycle a couple of times, so the last time I bought bananas, I also bought the other things I knew I would need to create a recipe, banana baby food, yogurt, etc. 

I toyed around with different banana cupcake ideas.  I considered banana-apricot, banana nut, banana-caramel, etc.  I finally decided on Bananas Foster, which is basically caramelized banana, but with a few other subtle flavors.  True Bananas Foster has rum flavoring, but I left this out.  I might use a little extract next time, but I didn't want to use it this time.

The cupcakes were topped with a buttercream-based frosting, which had been blended with butterscotch and caramel.  Turbinado sugar (raw sugar) and caramel dessert topping were drizzled over the icing.

The taste of the cupcake was similar to banana bread, but was not as heavy or dense as most banana bread recipes.  The crumb was soft and light.  The frosting was very sticky, but had the complexities of the different flavors.  The turbinado sugar provided a nice textural contrast to the icing.


I will definitely make these again, probably with a couple of slight variations.  I should do it soon, too, as I have tons of leftover frosting!

Think Spring!

I named these "Think Spring!" cupcakes.  I wanted to make a green velvet cupcake for St. Patrick's Day, but didn't get around to doing it.  Since I had the ingredients, I decided to make them in honor of Spring.  (We actually had a snow storm on the first day of Spring and I still have patches of snow in my yard!)

I found the basic recipe on the internet, but I used Jones' Green Apple Soda in place of the water called for in the recipe.  You can't really taste the apple, though.  The recipe also called for 1 box of vanilla pudding and 1/2 cup yogurt or sour cream.   I used about 1 cup of yogurt, instead.  Green food coloring was added to get a nice shade of Spring Green.  The result was 24 good-sized, very moist cupcakes.  If I had filled the cups a little less full, I probably could have gotten 30 cupcakes that would still have pleased the average person.

Here is a close-up of the inside:

This design was from What's New, Cupcake?, by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.  The cupcakes were iced with buttercream frosting.  Mini-marshmallows were cut in half (on the diagonal) and rolled in colored sugars before being placed around the cupcakes in rows to form the flower petals.  Candied licorice was used for the stamens.

Spaghetti & Meatballs anyone?

I took this idea from the Hello, Cupcake! book.  These were vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting.  The frosting was squeezed out in strands to look like cooked spaghetti.  Seedless strawberry jam was used to simulate spaghetti sauce.  Ferrero Rocher chocolate halves stood in for meatballs and white chocolate shavings were used in place of parmesan cheese. 

A little closer look. 

Are you a fan of delicious flavor?

These cupcakes are a nod to my favorite television show, Psych.  The title of this post is a recurring line in the show and relates directly to today's flavor choice - pineapple.  There is at least one pineapple hidden in every show (sometimes well-hidden and sometimes obvious) and the network even has "Find the Pineapple" sweepstakes each week. 

http://www.usanetwork.com/series/psych/

These cupcakes are called "Pineapple Princess", after a song by Annette Funicello, released in the summer of 1960, on the album, "Hawaiiannette".  It was also in Disney's "Lilo and Stitch 2".  It's one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head.


Annette Funicello - "Pineapple Princess"

These are golden yellow cupcakes with crushed pineapple folded into the batter.  They are very moist and somewhat dense, but they are still tender.  The frosting is Pineapple Mascarpone Cream Cheese.  Each cupcake is topped with a candied pineapple tidbit.

 

The frosting is very susceptible to heat, so it appears a bit gooey after setting at room temperature for a bit.  The other cupcakes were refrigerated to avoid this.  There is no filling in the cupcakes.  The frosting just sort of oozed downward with the knife during cutting.  All in all, these were pretty tasty. 

Cupcakes for a Stay-at-Home Dad

These cupcakes were made for a friend who was quitting his job to become a stay-at-home dad.  He even took on home-schooling.  (That's courageous in my book, because I would never have dreamed of trying it!)  These were vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting.

These are some of my earliest cupcakes, so try not to judge me too harshly.  They aren't my best work, but there was a lot of time and effort put into them.  From a creative standpoint, I was pleased.

There were remote controls (very primitive ones, with only volume and channel arrow buttons, a red power button, and the name of our local cable provider).  The blue ones represented the family swimming pool.  Tiny green tadpoles swim in the blue water (because they had an infestation of tadpoles the summer before this) among life preservers.

The remotes were made on the back side of miniature Hershey's Chocolate Bars; the tadpoles were made from Starburst Fruit Chews; and the life preservers were actually Peach Rings.

The top two rows you see on the right are "Honey Do" lists, flip flop shoes, sunglasses, "Dad's Taxi" signs, grocery lists, etc.  Fruit Roll-Ups were used for the lists and the sunglasses lenses.  Starburst Fruit Chews were used for the flip flops and sunglasses.

The bottom row was personalized cupcakes for the dad and kids.  The afternoon nap is depicted.  (The mom didn't get a personalized cupcake, because she would not be napping and would be at work.)  The dad is holding a cookbook.  The son is wide-awake because he has been reading a book of ghost stories.  The next two are daughters and they are sleeping soundly with their teddy bears.  The baby has a pacifier.

Marshmallow halves were used for the pillows and bodies.  Vanilla Wafers made the heads; Fruit Roll-Ups were used for blankets and books; miniature Teddy Grahams were used for the teddy bears.  Everything else was frosting and food coloring.

I understand the kids really enjoyed their personal cupcakes.  I hope that's true, because I had a lot of fun creating these.

"Pretty Please with a Cherry on Top?"

I developed this recipe after being unable to find a recipe for cherry cupcakes that sounded good to me.  I wanted something simple and tasty.  I was very pleased with this result.  I think I will coat the "dropped" cherries with flour next time in an attempt to suspend them in the center of the cupcake instead of having them drop to the bottom.  Even though the cherries dropped, they added a nice touch to the cupcakes.

I used a new recipe for "Special Buttercream Frosting" that I found on www.allrecipes.com, but I modified that, too.  Instead of all shortening, I used half shortening and half butter and increased the amount of whipping cream.

The reviews were pretty spectacular, so I think this cupcake recipe is a keeper! 

(These cupcakes were made for a little girl on my caseload.  She just turned four and was recently reunited with her family, so I took three cupcakes to her house when I did my monthly visit.  They seemed to appreciate it.)

Sunflower Cupcakes

These were sunflower cupcakes made for work.  Chocolate and white cupcakes were the base.  Oreos serve as the centers of the flowers, buttercream frosting makes the grass and flower petals, and Nabisco Honey Graham Bees pollinate each cupcake.  The reason some of the sunflowers are blue (an impossible color for a sunflower) is simply that I ran out of yellow.  

A Life in Cupcakes

(NOTE:  This post has been slightly modified for posting to www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com.)

These Red Velvet cupcakes with Fluffy White frosting were made for my mother's 80th birthday last year.  I just used a boxed cake mix and canned frosting from Duncan Hines.  The true story is in the decorations.  (I also made Pistachio Almond Fudge cupcakes - the cake part from a mix and the frosting from scratch! - for the same party and blogged about them recently.  They can be seen in the first photo here.  The table in the first photo is sprinkled with confetti, not food stains.)

I thought it would be easy to come up with designs describing my mother's life in cupcakes.  I was wrong.  There was just too many things - some lent themselves well to a cupcake tableau, but many did not.  There was also a time issue.  So I settled for cotton bolls, Scrabble tiles, basketballs, marbles, music notes, dominoes, and yes, a few obscure frying pans (black fondant with blue liquid gel inside).  Please allow me to explain...

When my mother, Joan (pronounced JoAnn), was a young girl, her family worked the cotton fields.  Now I hoed peanuts as a teenager, but that was by choice and I only did it one summer.  My mother's entire family planted, hoed, chopped, and picked cotton - even the toddlers - and they did it year after year.  This is something I really have a hard time imagining, but I respect the work ethic that all of the children pitched in with little to no complaints.  The cotton bolls are made from semi-sweet chocolate, which was shaped by ladling melted chocolate into plastic Easter eggs.  When it was hardened, the eggs were bent to remove the "bolls".  The cotton was white cotton candy, which had to be special ordered from New Jersey.  The shipping was actually more than the cost of the cotton candy!  I tried to find white cotton candy locally, but was unsuccessful.  (However, big kudos to The Corn Popper of Tulsa for trying and for giving me what they made for free!) 

The others are mostly self-explanatory:

My mother played marbles as a child and was pretty good at the game;

Dominoes were a staple game in her family and she still loves Moon and regular dominoes.

My mother played basketball in high school - back when girls still played 6-on-6 half-court ball and could only dribble the ball one time before passing it - and she was quite good.

My mother loves music in most forms and has always had a lovely singing voice.  She has played the organ for her church for over 50 years and often sang at church and home.

Now for the obscure frying pan - it's not for the reason you may think.  While my mother is a very good cook, it has nothing to do with cooking, but is a reference to music (sort of).  When my mother was young, her father would entertain his children by making up rhymes about each one and singing them to the kids, along with "Eefin' & Oofin'" or skat.  My mother's rhyme was:

"I know a little girl,

Her name is Joan,

She washed her feet

in the frying pan!"

All of the kids thought this was very funny, as did Granddaddy and Grandmother.  I can still remember hearing him sing it to my sisters and me when we were small. 

So there you have it - my mother's life, on a very small scale, in cupcakes.

: )

Chocolate Sinful Surprise

I named these cupcakes "Chocolate Sinful Surprise", as each chocolate cupcake had a small Rolo (chocolate & caramel) or Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in the middle.  The frosting was chocolate buttercream made with Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Cocoa and they were dusted with the Special Dark Cocoa powder.  You can't tell here, but oddly enough, the cocoa powder looks green up close...

There was no story behind these cupcakes, other than a friend at work gave me the box of Special Dark Cocoa and I wanted to try it.

Pistachio Almond Fudge cupcakes

(NOTE:  This blog has been slightly modified for inclusion at www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com.  Yes, I entered it last week, but it wasn't a contest then and I still think this is my best dessert photo.  Sorry if you are seeing it a second time.)

These were made for my mother's 80th birthday party and were an homage to my favorite Baskin Robbins ice cream flavor, which is now defunct.  I wish they would bring the flavor back, but since it's been over 20 years, they probably won't. 

The cupcakes were triple chocolate fudge with homemade pistachio almond frosting.  The cupcake batter was from a Duncan Hines Specialty mix.  The frosting was homemade and extremely tedious to make.  Magic Shell Chocolate Fudge ice cream topping was drizzled over them and a speckled jewel-tone chocolate almond was pressed into the top of each one.  The Magic Shell didn't harden like it does with cold foods, so I popped the cupcakes into the refrigerator for a few minutes.  This worked initially, but when the cupcakes warmed to room temperature, the Magic Shell liquefied again.  It stayed a bit thick, though, so it turned out fine.

I found the recipe for the pistachio frosting on the "How to Eat a Cupcake" blog about spumoni cupcakes.  I modified it by grinding roasted almonds along with the pistachios.  I used about twice as many pistachios as almonds.  The pistachio almond frosting took over eight hours to make by itself and consisted of shelling, soaking, roasting, and grinding the nuts before making them into a paste.  It was so time consuming, that unless I can find some pistachio paste for sale, I won't make these again.  But I must say they tasted wonderful!






 

"Bite Me" Cupcakes

These cupcakes were for Halloween at the office, although I didn't bring them to the office until the following Monday.  They were basic white cupcakes with fluffy pale white frosting.  Two holes were made in the baked cupcakes by using the end of a wooden spoon, although a straw would probably have worked, as well.  The cupcakes were frosted after the holes were made.  I inserted toothpicks into the holes so that I would remember where they were, then I used the toothpicks to open the holes back up.  Raspberry Dessert Gel (from the refrigerated section at the grocery store) was used to fill the holes, allowing the gel to ooze out the top for a gorey "vampire bite" look to each cupcake.  The raspberry filling was seedless and added a good flavor to the vanilla cupcakes.

Happy "B" cupcakes

These little bee cupcakes were in honor of my office, Tulsa County 72B, affectionately known at "The B" to staff there.   I transferred to this office just a couple of months before baking these and I don't really recall exactly why I made them, other than to share with co-workers.  There were chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and cream cheese icing.  The flower centers were Oreo cookies.  The bees were lemon drops and the wings were made out of white Airheads candy or different types of stick gum.  However, I found that there are not very many white or beige stick gums anymore, so some of the wings were yellow.  The faces and stripes of the bees were black food gel and were drawn on with a toothpick.

Blue Velvet Cupcakes

These cupcakes were made for the birthday of a little boy on my caseload.  He was in the hospital, so I took one to him and shared the rest with my co-workers.  The cupcakes were moist and had a very creamy vanilla flavor, with just a slight hint of bubblegum.  The frosting was basic decorator's frosting tinted with Wilton gel food coloring.  The glitter sprinkles are from Wilton, as well.  They are the size and shape of jimmies, but are really small sugar bars.