Halloween Cupcakes!!

So the best season of the year is finally upon us & it's only a few more days until my favorite holiday of the entire year...Halloween!!!  In honor of my favorite day I made skeleton cupcakes.  These cupcakes are my special red velvet recipe with a tasty cream cheese icing.  On top are yogurt covered pretzels forming the ribcage & arms.  The structural support is a lollipop stick topped with a marshmellow with a face painted on with black food gel.  Enjoy!!  Also, made caramel apples tonight & dying to try making some pumpkin cookies.  Stay tuned to see how everything turns out.

Red Velvet

So these are probably my favorite cupcakes to make...no messy butter or other ingredients that are difficult to work with! I started as I always do by lining my cupcake tins.  There's just something about lining cupcake tins that gets me in the mood to start baking!  This time instead of using just the standard cupcake pan I used both the standard and jumbo pans.  Mostly, because I have this cupcake swirly rack that I'm dying to use but standard size cupcakes won't fit let's hope the jumbo ones do so I can show it off!  My least favorite part about these cupcakes was using the red food gel (Wilton, Christmas Red).  It got all over my hands when I was trying to open the top & got on my hands...most of it went away with a couple washings with soap & water but theres still a little red on my fingertips.  So tip: Be careful with the food gel :)  Anyway, despite having red fingers these cupcakes turned out great!  They are moist & sweet.  I've yet to make the icing...they are still on the cooling rack.  But I've made this cream cheese icing before & know it's absolutely delicious.

Pictures to come.

Cherry Limeade Cupcakes

What's better on a hot summer day than Cherry Limeade Cupcakes! The cupcakes were pretty simple to make I started with three separate bowls of ingredients & had to mix with a hand mixer which was a bit much but the final product is well worth the extra work. My favorite part was zesting the limes the smell is amazing & you can really taste a definite lime flavor in the cupcakes. The frosting was incredibly easy to make too & very stable.  Icing: powdered sugar, maraschino cherry juice, 1/2 cup butter and a couple drops red food coloring.  It's a refreshing break from the traditional flavored cupcakes.  Top with cherry & candied lime and you have a great summer dessert.

Here are some pictures:

Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes

Recently, I had a special request for Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes.  Now, I've never made any cupcakes with filling inside them before so I was expecting quite a feat.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that these cupcakes were relatively simple & super fun to make!
I started with a standard banana cupcake recipe & then delicately piped a delicious Jello Instant Banana Pudding mixture into the center of each (which takes some practice so practice on a couple extra cupcakes before hand)  Next, I mixed a packet of Jello Instant Vanilla pudding with cool whip & a few other ingredients and made a delicious frosting I could pipe on top.  Both Jello filling & frosting must set in the fridge 30 mins before used.  I garnished with crushed Vanilla Wafers & a banana slice.  So delicious.

Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes without Banana Garnish.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

The past two entries were from yesterday & the day before I just didn't publish them because they don't have pictures yet.  I have been a little lazy about getting the pictures uploaded to my computer.  But will definitely do so in the next day or two.  These are the mini version.

Anyway, today was another Frisbee day & I decided to bake Snickerdoodle Cupcakes with a sort of meringue frosting.  These were probably my favorite to make so far!  The frosting is the consistency of melted marshmallows :)  As for the cupcakes they were surprisingly simple to make you had your basic ingredients flour, sugar, butter, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla which sounds kind of bland but the end result was amazingly flavorful.  My boyfriend even said these were his favorite so far (and he's hard to impress).  The frosting was the best part it involved egg whites, sugar, and making candy out of corn syrup & water.  The result was a beautiful white fluffy frosting that was pretty sturdy & able to be piped fairly easily.  

Cookies!

I hope you all had a wonderful fourth!  I know I did.  I made delicious peanut butter cookies & mom made her famous chocolate chip and walnut cookies for the festivities :)  So I thought I'd share.  So delicious!

Banana Cupcakes

Yum! I am a HUGE fan of bananas so this recipe was a must!  It's Wednesday so I made them for my boyfriend's Frisbee team & boy are they delicious. I also tried out a honey cinnamon frosting and piped it on top with my new handy dandy icing tips that Melissa got me this past Christmas!  I am trying to build my repertoire of cupcake bases & icings so I can intricately decorate a variety of different flavored cupcakes.  This is a really classic design something you'd expect to see in a bakery case but you could easily step it up and drizzle honey across the top of the garnish bananas for a fancier look.

Tip:  This icing is primarily butter so let the cupcakes cool completely (1 hr. or so)  before applying frosting. This frosting will melt immediately and look like butter on top of each cupcake (this happened to me on a few of mine).

Decorative Cupcakes

So I figured I'd put pictures up of some other kinds of decorative cupcakes I've made.  These are mini cupcakes  again, standard vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and m&m's turned over so the logo is not showing.  Cute for any kind of get together & fun for kids to make.  

 

This is a present I made out of marshmallow, m&m's and Twizzler's Pull N Peel! So cute you could even tweak the design for baby showers, bridal showers, Christmas themed cupcakes or any other kind of occasion!

My boyfriend loves playing frisbee.  Every Wednesday night he heads out to the field with all his guy friends and plays for a couple hours.  They usually cook out afterwards so I bake them a special themed treat to go along with their meal.  These are frisbee cupcakes.  The frisbee's are creamsavers and the white ones are mentos candies.  Chocolate cupcakes & green grass frosting.  Also I used a yellow gel frosting for the road lines.  Some of the cupcakes even have little toothpicks with stop signs attached to the top :) 

Apple Spice Cupcakes

Hey everyone!
I finished up these cupcakes today and they are delicious! Just a tip though if you're going to make these be prepared for a more muffin like texture to your cupcakes.  I didn't particularly enjoy this cream cheese icing it was too much like eating straight butter and cream cheese mixed together.  I came across another recipe a while back that I use on my carrot cake cupcakes (just regular cream cheese icing) that's delicious.  I'll see if I can't dig it up :)  Hope you all enjoy!

Here's my recipe:

Cupcakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour       1/2 cup (1stick) unsalted butter        
1 tsp. baking soda               1 cup granulated sugar                                  
3/4 tsp. salt                           1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. nutmeg                     4 large eggs
1/8 tsp. ground cloves            1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
1 cup pecans (about 4 oz.)     1 cup apples (peeled & cubed)                      

Mix flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg & cloves in a small bowl.  Cream butter & sugars until fluffy in mixer.  Add eggs, one at a time, add applesauce then flour mixture then pecans. Bake 350 degrees.  For 20 mins.

Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Icing:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup light brown sugar
Just a sprinkle of Cinnamon

Mix together in a mixer until smooth.  Refrigerate if you have any extra.

Campus Cupcakes

Today has been really busy and I didn't get a chance to make my applesauce spice cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese icing.  I will make them & put the recipe up tomorrow.  Until then though I decided I'd put up another picture of one of my creations.

 This is a library and campus green out of cupcakes that I made for a scholarship contest about a week ago.  I used standard chocolate cupcakes in white liners.  The icing is vanilla with a couple of drops of green food coloring added in and green sprinkles (which I hand picked myself out of a can with like 20 other colors).  The walkway is made out of Hershey's chocolate bars cut in half.  The arch and trees are made out of milk chocolate (although I recommend using modeling chocolate b/c milk chocolate melts almost immediately after pulled from the fridge.  The trees were made using a hand drawn template place on baking sheet then put wax paper over top follow the lines making trees or whatever shape desired then add your nonpareils while wet. To make it easier to stick in your cupcakes made a thick pointed triangle at the bottom with the chocolate. Stick trees in the fridge for about 20 minutes or until hardened.  The back is made of jumbo cupcakes covered in vanilla icing which I made gray by mixing all the colors in the box of food coloring.  I stacked the cupcakes on top of each other and placed ice cream cones covered and textured on top of the cupcakes.  Finally, the grad caps are chocolate candies (Dove with mint in the center) with twizzler's pull n peel on top.  Delicious!

Fun American Eagle Themed Cupcakes

A few years ago, I worked for American Eagle & made these for an office party! They are standard Vanilla cupcakes in white paper liners topped with white icing (which I made blue with a couple drops of food coloring)  Marshmallow were used for the bird heads which I covered in white icing, mini blue m&m's for the eyes and a marshmallow cut into pieces covered in yellow icing for the beaks, and yellow mini m&m's cut in half for the talons.  For the other variety I used stencils I made myself of the eagle and sprinkled regular white sugar on top!  A delicious themed treat in about 1-2 hours!

Tip: Do not store these cupcakes in the fridge...they will melt once pulled out.

Welcome!

Hi everyone!

This is my new baking blog. I am an avid baker and have finally set up a showcase of my work so that anyone can learn techniques, recipes, and get tips along with me :)  I just recently discovered my love for baking so expect to see a lot of "firsts" and some disaster stories!  I will be posting my creations and will definitely accept requests for things you, my readers, would like to learn or see. Send in your requests to TheSpiceBakery@gmail.com!