Peach Cobbler Cupcakes

Ah, the end of summer. There's so much to do, but also lots of fun to be had.

Friends of ours hosted a super fun end-of-summer shindig, and I offered to bring along a dessert option. 

I took my inspiration from what kept me busy in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago - the 20 pounds of peaches that the family picked a couple weekends ago.  While we, of course, enjoyed many of the peaches fresh, I also tried my hand at preserving a whole bunch of them - peach jam, peach butter and canned peaches. Holy smokes, home-made canned peaches are absolutely delicious. 

Summer, delicious canned peaches, dessert for a party... add to that that little miss always wants me to make cupcakes, bingo! Peach cobbler cupcakes!

I started with my standard, go-to cake-base, this simple one-bowl yellow cake recipe.  But then I made just a couple of changes.

For starters, I replaced 1/4 cup of the granulated sugar with cinnamon sugar (we'd made cinnamon buns earlier in the day, so I had a bunch prepared... otherwise, I just would have added cinnamon).

Next, I replaced half of the milk that is called for in the recipe with the peach syrup (light, I promise) that I'd used to pack the canned peaches - drain the jar and use that peach deliciousness!

The resulting batter is thick and delicious. I seriously had to stop myself from just sticking my finger under that ribbon of deliciousness coming off the beater...

I divided the batter among two muffin pans, then pressed a couple of pieces of the canned peaches into each cupcake.

Then, to make it all the more cobbler-y, I mixed up a simple streussel topping and sprinkled that on top.

And then all that was left to do was wait while these little treat did their think in the oven.

And the results?

Well, the streussel topping melted into the cupcake, but they still looked pretty cool!  Which is good, because I hadn't planned on frosting them...

A couple of the cupcake tops happened to break when I removed them from the pan, so we got to taste-test them before packing them up.

Holy smokes, these were delicious. I may try to add more peach next time, but, seriously, these were fantastic. And I think they were a hit at the party, too!



Peach Cobbler Cupcakes
(makes 24 cupcakes)
(adapted from Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice's yellow cake recipe)

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cinnamon sugar
(or 1 1/4 cup sugar and a scant teaspoon of cinnamon - I just happened to have prepared cinnamon sugar leftover from making cinnamon buns earlier in the day!)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
Canned peaches, drained (reserve liquid) (my canning jars were 8 ouncers, yielding 1/2 cup of liquid and enough peach pieces to use in 24 cupcakes...)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup of the peach syrup from the canned peaches
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs

For the streusel topping:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons coconut oil (or softened butter)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and either line a cupcake tin with liners or spray it well with non-stick cooking spray.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugars (or sugar and cinnamon), baking powder and salt. Add the butter, peach syrup, milk and vanilla and beat (either with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer) for two minutes, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between additions, and then beat for two more minutes.
Pour the batter into the muffin tins until just about 2/3 full.
Cut each of the canned peaches into small pieces and press 2-3 pieces into each cupcake.
To prepare streusel, combine powdered sugar, all-purpose flour, and softened coconut oil (or butter), stirring with a fork until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle streussel mixture over cupcakes.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.
Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin (on a wire rack) for about 10 minutes before removing them from the tin.

Enjoy!

Tweet

Frosted Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

This month's Secret Recipe Club was a doozie. In a good way.

I knew I was in trouble the minute I saw my assignment.

You see, I was assigned Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks, run by the awesome Heather. And if you've ever been over to her blog, you'll know why this meant trouble.

Everything looks delicious. And I wanted to try everything.  Which left me quite overwhelmed.

So I did what any mom would do... I had little miss pick for me.  I'm not sure if this makes me a genius or a meanie... It was actually a really funny experience. I brought up the blog's recipe index, sat her down at the computer and told her to go through all of the recipes and pick her favorite.  She clicked through SO many of the recipes, ooh-ing and aah-ing the whole entire time. She kept at it for a very, very long time, too!

Her first choice were Peanut Butter Blossom cookies, but, aside from the fact that I've made those before (and always like to use this opportunity to try something new), I didn't want to make something that little man couldn't enjoy, also, and you can't make peanut butter cookies... without... peanut butter.  So I had her pick again.

This time she chose Frosted Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. Now we're talking! Delicious, rich cupcakes with a fudgy chocolate glaze style icing on top? Yum!

I started with the cupcakes (obviously...).  The batter was very thick, so I was curious as to how they would come out, but they rose very nicely and had a nice spring to them when done, so I was pretty pleased.

Next I tackled the icing. Now, the icing recipe is a simple one, but it calls for butter.  Yes, there's butter in the cupcakes, but those get baked. And while the butter in the frosting recipe is melted, it isn't actually cooked.  Why does this matter? Little man's dairy allergy is a finicky one - he can actually consume some dairy products baked into a recipe. So the cupcakes were okay (though I did substitute coconut milk for the milk in that recipe - I never want to push my luck!), the frosting needed a little modification. Easy enough - I used coconut oil!

The only other change I made for the frosting recipe was to use dark chocolate powder rather than regular.  The resulting frosting was crazy dark...

...which worked out perfectly for the theme I was working with for these cupcakes...

Pirates!

I had a very tough time keeping little hands from sneaking early tastes at these...

Some finishing touches and we were ready to bring these to a family dinner!

And boy were they worth waiting for. The cake was very rich, but that thick batter was so worth it, as it held up all of the chocolate chips (rather than them sinking to the bottom, as usually happens). Everyone absolutely loved them and you can bet that I will be making them again.

So Heather, thanks so much for this awesome recipe, along with all of the other awesome recipes on your blog. You can bet I will be back again and again and again!


Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
(slightly adapted from Hezzi-D)

1 stick of butter at room temperature
4 oz. cup of light applesauce (I used a 3.2 ounce packet of natural applesauce)
3/4 c. light brown sugar
4 egg whites (medium eggs)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cupcake pan with paper liners.
In a bowl, mix the butter, applesauce and brown sugar. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy.
Mix in the egg whites, beating well.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir well. With mixer on low speed, add half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Next, add the milk and mix at medium speed. Then stir in the rest of the flour mixture, mixing only until just blended.
Add the vanilla and chocolate chips and stir with a spatula.
Divide the cupcake batter between the 12 cupcake liners, filling the cups about 3/4 of the way full. (I had more batter than needed for this, so I put the remaining batter in a mini-cake pan)
Bake for 20-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (Mine took closer to 24 minutes for the cupcakes and an additional 10 minutes for the mini-cake).
Let cupcakes cool in the pan for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.



Chocolate Frosting
(slightly adapted from Hezzi-D, who adapted it from Hershey's)
(I halved the recipe and had more than enough for all 12 cupcakes and the bonus cake)

4 tablespoons coconut oil
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium pot, melt the coconut oil. Stir in cocoa powder. Stir in powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
Adjust the consistency as needed, adding additional milk (a few drops at a time) to thin it out, more powdered sugar (very slowly) if it is too runny. Stir in vanilla.

Carefully spread icing on cooled cupcakes. Allow them to sit for a little bit to set the icing.

Enjoy!

Tweet

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Another week, another challenge from Willow Bird Baking!

This week, Julie challenged us to innovate cupcakes, using the current season as our inspiration. Being in the North-Eastern U.S., it's Fall. I mean, it's Fall all over the U.S., but here in the Northeast, the temperatures have dropped and the leaves have fallen from the trees, so Fall flavors are calling my name. The only problem (as usual with these challenges...) was narrowing it down to one flavor combination.

The requirements of this challenge were to create a cupcake consisting of a base (the cake), a filling, and a frosting.  I have to tell you - when I watched the announcement, I was excited. I mean, it was like our own at-home version of Cupcake Wars! Only... you know... no crazy time limit or cameras following you around.

My first thought was s'mores - what's better than ghost stories around a campfire on a nice Fall evening? Then I thought pumpkin... pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake - tons of possibilities. But daddy, little miss and I discussed it over dinner and we decided on caramel apple. We only ever have caramel apples in October, usually from one of the farms at which we do our pumpkin picking. It was perfect.

While I had a pretty good idea as to what I wanted to use for both my base and my filling, I did a little bit of googling to see if I could find specific recipes for what was bouncing around in my head. And, as luck would have it, I found a recipe that, aside from the frosting, was almost exactly what I wanted.

The cake batter was delicious and light, with diced apples folded right in.

And the filling was exactly what I had been thinking - a butter/sugar/apple mixture cooked to caramel-y perfection (then thickened a bit with a cornstarch/milk slurry).

 Once both the cupcakes and the filling had cooled, it was time to put everything together. Little miss helped me use my handy dandy cupcake corer.

And then we had a tray of hole-y cupcakes!

And then it was time for filling. And we got a bit worried. It tasted delicious, but the caramel, despite the slurry we'd added  while it was cooking, was pretty thin, and we were concerned that it wouldn't work well as, well, a filling - that it would only leak through the cupcake, leaving a soggy cake with a pretty much empty hole. So we whipped some cream, folded the prepared filling into it, and - ta da! Caramel apple mousse as our filling!

The last component was the frosting, and I knew I wanted caramel. We recently borrowed the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion from the library, so that was the first place I looked. And, lo and behold, they had a recipe for caramel frosting! And it was simple! So that's the one I went with. It's not the fluffy-pipe-it-on kind of frosting, which is good, because that's not what I wanted. This was the perfect spread-it-on-to-cover-the-top kind of frosting that I wanted. And it tasted perfectly caramel-y, just like I'd wanted.

These made a perfect dessert for our weekend family dinner.

The cake was delicious and moist, the filling was light, and the frosting was the perfect complement.

These were a delicious taste of Fall!

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

(from java cupcake and King Arthur Flour)

(makes 12 cupcakes)

for the cupcakes:

(from java cupcake)

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup milk (I used coconut milk, you could use apple juice too)

1/2 cup chopped apples

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees. Line your cupcake pan with liners.

Cream together the butter and sugars.

One at a time, mix in the eggs. Add the vanilla then beat on high for 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl.

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together and then slowly add into the batter. Mix by hand about 5-6 strokes.

Add the milk and mix only until all the flour and milk are incorporated.

Gently fold in the apples. Do not over mix!

Bake for 17-19 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Leave in pan for 3-4 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cooled, use a cupcake-plunger or other tool to carefully cut a hole in the middle of each cupcake, being careful not to cut too deeply (the bottom of the cupcake needs to be strong enough for the cupcake to hold up once filled!).

for the filling:

(slightly adapted from java cupcake)

1 large apple, chopped

2 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon milk mixed with 1 heaping tablespoon corn starch

1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped to stiff peaks

In a medium pan, melt the butter over medium-high heat.

Add the apples, sugars and vanilla and stir. Cook until bubbling, about 5 minutes.

Add the milk/cornstarch mixture and bring to a bubble. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until the mixture thickens.

Remove from heat and continue to stir for about 1 minute.

Set aside to cool.

Just before filling cupcakes, whip the cream and fold the caramel apple mixture into the whipped cream.

Using a piping bag (or plastic bag with the corner snipped), fill cupcakes.

for the frosting:

(from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion)

(recipe provided here is halved from what is in the book)

4 tablespoons (1/2 a stick) butter

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) milk (I used coconut milk)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups confectioners' sugar

Melt the butter in a medium sized heavy saucepan. Stir in the salt and brown sugar and heat the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly. Cook over low heat for two minutes, until the sugar is totally dissolved. Stir in the milk and return to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat and cool to lukewarm. Stir in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the powdered sugar. Adjust consistency with a little more milk if necessary.

Spread frosting over the tops of the filled cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Tweet

National S'mores Day (one day late)

National S'mores Day? Who knew there was such a thing?? I most certainly didn't. At least not until last night, when a facebook friend mentioned that she was celebrating it with s'mores cupcakes.

You may or may not have noticed throughout my posts that I love s'mores. So I had to celebrate, too. I asked my friend for her recipe and she was more than happy to oblige. You can check it out on her blog here.

The cupcakes are yellow cake with graham cracker crumbs and chocolate chunks folded in. Rather than using a boxed yellow cake mix, I used my favorite yellow cake recipe, which, honestly, is just as easy as using a mix. I then used the food processor attachment of my awesome immersion blender to turn honey grahams into crumbs.


The crumbs and a bunch of chocolate chips were carefully added to the batter, which was then divided up among the cupcake pans.


Once the cupcakes baked and cooled, it was time for the marshmallow frosting. The frosting is pretty much a basic buttercream with marshmallow fluff mixed in. I actually happened to have just the right amount of marshmallow cream in the house (which was a shock, as I usually don't buy it...), so we were in business.


The frosting spread beautifully, to the point of dripping over the edges of the cupcakes.


After a few minutes on the cupcakes, though, the frosting set and the cupcakes were ready to be shared among my neighbors, since there is nothing better than spreading the s'mores love. Plus, if we had a full batch in the house, I'd eat the full batch.

These were super delicious, but I should have used more chocolate chips. While I definitely got at least one chip in each bite, no picture I took made it look that way...


So I hope you enjoyed National S'mores Day, or that you will, like me, create your own s'mores celebration with these delicious cupcakes.

S'mores Cupcakes

(adapted from Cinnamon Girl Recipe's yellow cake recipe)

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 1/2 cups (okay, a couple of handfuls... I didn't measure...) chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and either line a cupcake tin with liners or spray it well with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter, milk and vanilla and beat (either with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer) for two minutes, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between additions, and then beat for two more minutes. Carefully fold in the graham cracker crumbs and chocolate chips, just barely mixing them into the batter.

Pour the batter into the muffin tins until about 2/3 -3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin (on a wire rack) for about 10 minutes before removing them from the tin. Allow them to cool completely before frosting.

Marshmallow Frosting

(from Adventures in Mommy-Land)

1 jar (7 oz.) marshmallow cream

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 teaspoons milk (as needed)

Soften the marshmallow cream in the microwave for about 15 seconds to make it pour-able. Beat the softened butter, powdered sugar and marshmallow cream until well blended. Slowly add the milk, starting with one teaspoon, until the frosting is the spreadable consistency you want.

Tweet

Rainbow Cupcakes

Last week I volunteered to bring a snack in to little miss's class for their St. Patrick's Day party. I wanted to think of something that would be fun for the kids, but also St. Patty's Day appropriate. I don't like Irish potatoes (you know, those sugar and butter treats rolled in cinnamon), thought that corned beef and cabbage might be a weird thing to send in for a preschool snack, and didn't think that Irish soda bread would satisfy 4 and 5 year old sweet teeth... So I started thinking about what decorations were associated with St. Patrick's Day - leprechauns, rainbows, shamrocks, pots of gold... Hmm... there must be a way to combine these in a fun, preschool-appropriate treat.

Knowing that cupcakes are always a hit, I decided to make St. Patrick's Day cupcakes incorporating as many of these ideas as possible.

I started with the rainbows.

Remember the rainbow cake I made for little miss's birthday last year? I thought that they'd be perfect in cupcake size. So we got to work.

Little miss helped mix up the cake batter. Yes, we used a box. We've been busy. Anyway, once the batter was ready, I measured it out into five bowls. Yes, measured. I am a bit fastidious like that...

A little bit of food coloring, a little bit of stirring, and we were ready to create some rainbows.

I wasn't sure exactly how much of each color I'd need to make sure that each cupcake had all five colors and that each well of the cupcake pan would have somewhere near the right amount (and, hopefully, close to the same amount...) of batter. I was actually a little nervous about that part, but after the first couple, I knew I was somewhat close and even let little miss help. As it turns out, I got it a bit wrong - I only got 17 cupcakes, when the box is supposed to make 24, and only 15 of the 17 were rainbow striped (the other two were random tie-dyed mixes of whatever batter was left, after I ran out of yellow and blue...), but luckily, there are only 11 kids in little miss's class. 11 kids, two teachers, 15 even gave them two extras just in case. Perfect.

The cupcakes came out pretty cool, I think:

So now it was time to make them Irish. Some cream cheese buttercream frosting "clouds" were adorned with gumdrop good luck charms. I don't have pictures of the actual process here, because it was pretty sticky detail work, which wound up being a bit frustrating, but the gist is that I used a rolling pin to flatten out gumdrops between two sheets of waxed paper. My intention was to cut out shamrocks from those flattened gumdrops to top each of the cupcakes. Like this:

Cute, right? But darn hard to cut out that small, even with a paring knife. The knife got super sticky after each cut and it was just tough to make them all come out right. So I decided to alternate patterns. In addition to the shamrocks, I made some gold coins (the easiest to make - just cut the gumdrops into slices horizontally!) and rainbows, too, to adorn the tops of the cupcakes.

When they were all done, I was pretty pleased with them. And according to the teacher, they were enjoyed by the kids. I know it was a lot of work for a room full of four and five year olds. but what's a party without a little bit of fun??

I hope you all enjoyed your St. Patrick's day as much as we did!

Tweet

Product Review: ticings.com Cupcake Appliques

The awesome folks at The Daring Kitchen were asked to review a product for a website, and they asked me if I was interested. Was I ever, and boy was it fun! The great folks at ticings.com wanted to spread the word about their cupcake appliqués, and now I present to you, my first official product review!

Who doesn't love cupcakes? They are a fun, festive treat for almost any occasion, and are portion controlled, to boot!

If you are anything like me, though, the hardest part of making cupcakes (or cakes, for that matter), comes when it is time to decorate them. For that reason, most of my cake, cupcake and cookie decorating is limited to the basic “cover it with frosting and/or sprinkles” variety. This was why I was so excited to be asked to test out a new product from ticings.com – cupcake appliqués.

Cupcake appliqués are basically edible stickers cut to the perfect size for decorating cupcakes, and ticings.com offers designs for standard cupcakes, mini cupcakes, and even for full-sized cakes. They offer a variety of designs, perfect for almost any occasion that you have. They even offer an option of creating custom appliqués, created from customer-provided artwork.

I was impressed with the company right from the start. They sent the sample sheets to me very quickly, in an envelope made from recycled paper (I love a company that shows environmental responsibility). In addition to the appliqués, they also included clear directions, a suggested frosting recipe, and a friendly introductory letter with specific contact information, should I have any questions.

My kitchen helper (age 4) and I soon set to work. The directions indicated that the appliqués work best on as flat a surface as you can manage, and that they show up best on white or light frosting. My helper chose chocolate for the cupcakes, and we made a simple buttercream frosting.

The hardest part of the process was making a flat, level surface for the appliqués. I tried under-filling my cupcake tins a little bit, but still ended up with nicely domed cupcake tops. As they cooled, they deflated a little bit, but were still not flat. Rather than cutting the tops to level them, I used my frosting to try to build up a flat surface. Once I had my surface as smooth and flat as I could make it, it was time to decorate.

The appliqués were very easy to remove from their backing and apply – my helper had so much fun, she could hardly wait for each cupcake to be frosted to have the next “cupcake sticker” ready to apply. The appliqués themselves are not sticky, so we had to be careful not to remove more from the backing paper than we were prepared to use (you can't re-apply them to the backing paper), but that is probably mostly an issue when working with an impatient preschool sous-chef...

Applying the appliqués was just as easy. The design is simply centered over the cupcake and placed on top of the frosting. We had to be careful to smooth the edges gently to remove any air bubbles, but there was no trick to them – a simple stick and light press, and we had instant decorations!

It was interesting to see the cupcakes with the appliqués on them – I felt that I could really see the distinct outline of each appliqué on the frosting, but still, they really looked quite fun and festive. The instructions indicate that, if desired, you can embellish the cupcake with a decorative frosting border or sprinkles. I decided to see how they would look with additional buttercream stars piped around the appliqués. This had the double benefit of hiding the seam between the appliqué and the frosting surface and adding an extra decorative flourish to the cupcakes.

Once all of our cupcakes were finished, though, it was time to put these to the real test – how are they to eat? Watching them go on, I had no idea how the eating process would go. I know that sounds a little funny, but think about it – a sticker on a cupcake? Would my teeth cut through it easily? Would the whole appliqué slide off with the first bite? Would the appliqué affect the taste of the cupcake or the frosting?

I was very pleased to discover that the appliqués had absolutely no affect on the taste, texture or bite-ability of the cupcakes. Especially after allowing the decorated cupcakes to sit for just a bit, and thus for the appliqués to have time to fully adhere to the frosting, we couldn't feel any difference between biting into a plain frosted cupcake and one with an appliqué on it.

The directions indicate that the decorated cupcakes can be stored for several days, or frozen for several weeks, but we did not have the opportunity to find that out for ourselves, as we enjoyed the taste testing portion of trying these appliqués as much as the actual process of applying them.

Overall, we really enjoyed this product. These appliqués are a very fun and easy way for those of us without fine-art abilities to add beautiful, fun, festive decorations to fresh baked goods. The variety of designs, themes and sizes available through the ticings.com website mean that you can decorate your baked goods (cakes, cupcakes, even cookies!) for pretty much any season, holiday or event that you want to celebrate.

Tweet

Happy Halloween!

Ah, Halloween. The holiday where we take candy from strangers, stay up past bedtime and sugar up our kids beyond what we would ever reasonably do.

So what better way is there to celebrate Halloween than to make extra sweets?? Little miss and I decided to have a little bit of fun this weekend and make some ghoulish goodies.

We started by making ghost-pretzels, which are basically pretzel rods dipped in melted white chocolate and decorated with Halloween sprinkles. We originally intended to actually decorate them as ghosts, but little miss was having way too much fun with the sprinkles to try to be precise, and we just went with it. The funniest part is that little miss actually claims to not like pretzels... yet somehow managed to eat a few these guys. Maybe it's the chocolate, maybe it's the sprinkles, maybe it's the Halloween spirit, but somehow she managed to enjoy them.

For our other Halloween treat, I decided to try something I have seen all around the food-blog-world recently - ghost cupcakes. I modeled my cupcakes on these cute ghosties, using the cupcake recipe listed there, but not the frosting. I was planning on making a marshmallow frosting, but at the last minute switched to a simple cream cheese frosting. Since the ghosts are basically a huge swirl of frosting, we decided to make only half of our cupcakes into ghosts, and to just frost and decorate the other half of them with our trusty Halloween sprinkles.

Our ghosts didn't really look to ghostly, but overall, the cupcakes were a ton of fun to make and were a super cute way to celebrate the day. We shared them with the family at Halloween brunch, and for whatever they lacked in ghostiness, they made up for in fun.

I hope you all had a fun, festive and sugar-high filled Halloween!

Tweet

Chocolate Frosting

We are fortunate enough to live close to our family. As such, we try to have dinner with the family once a week. Nana and Pop-pop always feed us very well, and we usually bring dessert.

For tonight's dessert, we decided to stay simple and make cupcakes. Little miss chose chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Yum.

Then I realized that I had no confectioner's sugar in the house. Uh oh. Most frosting recipes with which I am familiar rely largely on confectioner's sugar and butter (all variations of buttercream frostings), and you cannot substitute regular (granulated) sugar for confectioner's sugar - you will not get the consistency you want out of your frosting.

After some online searching, I was able to find a recipe that looked interesting in a question and answer thread on Yahoo! Answers, a forum where people can go to ask questions, and any registered Yahoo! users (ie: the general public...) can post responses. I was a little wary, since you never know who the people are who are responding, but figured that it was worth a shot.

The recipe itself is very simple. It begins with one cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 cup of butter (half a stick) and 1/4 cup of milk in a saucepan. These three ingredients are heated (I used medium high heat, the recipe didn't specify) to a boil, and I made sure to stir regularly so that none of the sugar or milk would burn.

Once the ingredients came to a boil, the pan is then removed from the heat, and 3/4 of a cup of chocolate chips are stirred into the hot liquid. The chips are carefully stirred in until they melt completely. Once the chips are melted, stir in 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla extract. That is it.

The resulting "frosting" more closely resembled ganache, and I was a little worried about how I was going to frost my cupcakes with it... I was worried that it would slide right off, or that it would be more of a glaze than a frosting. I decided to try letting the mixture cool, to see if it would thicken up a little bit to a more frosting-like consistency. I stirred the cooling chocolate every ten minutes or so, to make sure that it cooled evenly and to avoid any clumps, and within about half an hour, I decided to go for it and see how it went.

The frosting spread very easily over the first few cupcakes, and I was very encouraged. Every few cupcakes, though, I could tell that it was thickening up unevenly, and had to stir it up again. As I reached the end of the frosting, I had to stir between each cupcake, and the frosting became a little harder to spread, despite the stirring. It probably would have piped really well, though, if I had a piping bag (or if I'd had the inclination to try that method today...).

The real test, though, was in the tasting, so we brought our cupcakes to our family dinner and, when it came time for dessert, brought them out. The frosting had cooled very nicely on all of the cupcakes, and had a smooth, even look to it. Better than that, though, everyone loved it, and agreed that this frosting recipe is a definite keeper.

For convenience's sake, here is the recipe, as I found it in this thread:

Chocolate Frosting
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine sugar, butter and milk in saucepan, and heat to boil. Once mixture is bubbling, remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips until they melt. Stir in vanilla extract.

* The recipe states to spread it on your cake at this point. If you choose to allow it to cool a bit first, make sure to stir it every few minutes to avoid clumping. The recipe indicates that it is enough frosting for a 9" x 13" cake. I was able to nicely cover 12 full-sized cupcakes as well as 20 mini cupcakes.

Tweet

Pumpkin Season Begins

Fall is finally in the air. Yes, I know that the first day of Autumn was technically last week, but that is not what has us feeling the season in this house. What has us in the Fall spirit is the sudden appearance of pumpkins everywhere we go, from the food stores to roadside stands to every produce stand we see.

Little miss loves pumpkins, so we couldn't resist picking up a few this past weekend. We grabbed three - two big and one smaller one. Originally, little miss told us that she wanted these pumpkins to be for decoration purposes, to place on our front steps and make the house look ready for the season. But then she changed her mind. And wanted to eat one.

After cutting the pumpkin in half, it was little miss's job to scoop out the seeds. The seeds were set aside in their own bowl, then I helped her scoop out the rest of the stringy pulp. Once the pumpkin halves were ready, they were placed cut-side down on a cookie sheet and baked in a 350 degree oven for, well, I didn't really time it, but it was probably about half an hour our so, until I could easily pierce the skin with a fork and the flesh was nice and soft.

Once the pumpkin cooled enough to handle, it was time to turn the fruit into a nice smooth puree. This is most easily accomplished with a food processor. In the absence of said appliance, I put my mini-blender to work. And it earned its stripes that day, with how many batches I had to do to successfully puree all of the fruit, but after much scooping and blending, we soon had a nice bowl full of fresh, smooth pumpkin puree, ready to be used in all sorts of recipes.

And little miss knew exactly what she wanted: cupcakes. I hopped online to look for a recipe, and soon found one that looked delicious. And familiar. I couldn't figure out why it looked familiar to me, as I know I have never made pumpkin cupcakes before... until I looked at my listing of bookmarked sites, and realized that I had seen this recipe before, and had bookmarked it for future trial. Well, hey - I knew I had the recipe that I wanted to try!

This was a really interesting recipe, in that it is not put together the way most cake/cupcake recipes that I am used to do. Usually, the ingredients are added in a specific order, mixed for specific, and relatively short, periods of time. Nope - not with this one. In this recipe, all of the ingredients are added to the bowl at the same time, and then the mixer is put to work. For 25 minutes. I was super glad to have the KitchenAid for this one - I can't imagine either mixing this by hand or even holding a hand-mixer to this for that long. And with the consistent, strong mixing of the stand mixer, the result was a very smooth batter that looked and smelled fantastic.

One of the first things that we noticed upon taking the cupcakes out of the oven was the interesting way in which they had risen. Most of the cupcakes not only rose in the middle, but also rose up around the edges, creating something of a crown around the cupcake top. Very interesting. But I knew it wouldn't make too much of a difference what the tops looked like, as we were not done - we really wanted to try the cinnamon brown sugar buttercream frosting recipe that was posted with the cupcake recipe.

The frosting recipe, as written, calls for a combination of butter and shortening. Unfortunately, I do not currently have shortening in my pantry, so I made my frosting using all butter, rather than a combination. The end result, though, was absolutely delicious, and was the perfect match for the cupcakes. I think the frosting would also work really well for, say, a banana cake, so I definitely plan on making it again.

But wait - there's more!

We had plenty of pumpkin puree leftover, so I decided to try something special for breakfast the next morning. Little miss and I added some of our pumpkin puree, along with some cinnamon and nutmeg, to our regular pancake recipe. Oh my, what a fantastic breakfast treat. I can't think of a better breakfast for a cool, fall morning than pumpkin spice pancakes with pure maple syrup. We will definitely make these again.

And in case you are curious, we also roasted up the seeds from the pumpkin, so as to enjoy as much of our first pumpkin as possible. I am really looking forward to the rest of pumpkin season!

Pumpkin Pound Cake Cupcakes

(from My Kitchen Addiction)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

4 eggs

1/2 cup milk

3/4 cup pumpkin puree

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two standard muffin pans with cupcake liners (or spray well with non-stick cooking spray)

Combine all ingredients (yup, all of 'em!) in the bowl of your stand mixer. Beat on medium for 20 minutes.

Once the batter is smooth, fill each cupcake well (lined or sprayed) about 2/3 full with batter.

Bake for 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool the cupcakes in the pan for a few minutes, then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely.

Cinnamon Brown Sugar Buttercream Frosting

(only slightly adapted from My Kitchen Addiction)

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3 cups powdered sugar (may need more)

3 tablespoons half and half (more or less)

In the bowl of your stand mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the brown sugar and cinnamon and whisk until well combined.

Gradually add the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup at a time. Alternately add a little bit of the half and half, whipping the icing on medium-high speed after each addition, until the desired consistency is reached.

Frost cupcakes once they are completely cooled.

Enjoy!

Tweet