"Healthy" Carrot-Coconut-Pecan Cupcakes, 01/19

Ok I lied a little bit, and made these cupcakes for the 18th, but the 19th is a finals day and we don't have lunch. So these are for the WEEK of the 19th, ok??? So I tried a new recipe with new flavors, and one I had seen demonstrated on Paula Deen's show on the Food Network. These are carrot cupcakes with coconut and pecan, but because it's Paula Deen, let's face it, these are not the healthiest cupcakes in the world. And I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that--but at times I need something a little healthier. :) Since it is post-holiday, and people are all on the healthy kick for the moment, I "healthified" these cupcakes. So I used her recipe, but made a few key changes. First of all, I switched 1/2 of the flour to whole wheat. The eggs were replaced with Egg Beaters, and the oil replace with applesauce. I also only used half the sugar, and you really cannot tell. The rest remained the same, except I also toasted the pecans first (yummmmmmy). Maybe because of the substitutions, I only baked these for 20 minutes. Who knows. The frosting is my own cream cheese frosting, made with non fat cream cheese too keep it healthy-ish. The "carrot" on top is composed of a dried apricot, cut into a triangle, and although Paula Deen calls for a mint leaf to represent the stems on the carrots (which I think is SO CUTE), I was lazy and dyed some frosting green. Oh well. Then, with my leftover pecans, I rolled the edges and ta-da!!! Cute!!
These cupcakes came out very moist, rose to perfection, and were excellent with the chopped pecans! I would like to try to add crushed pineapple some time, or maybe golden raisins, but the basis of this cupcake was very good, a definite keeper (it earned a few "favorite" comments from the cupcake group), and one that could have many many additions and variations!

Cupcake NEW YEAR!!

Happy New Year! No, New Year's Eve did not fall on Wednesday, but no one is going to paint me into a corner as to when I can make cupcakes (didn't you hear--"no one puts baby in a corner"). The design is super simple--I made mini chocolate and vanilla cupcakes and frosted them with chocolate fudge frosting (because sometimes a girl just wants chocolate cake :)). I piped on the numbers for the clock and arranged them to look like a clock. The middle cupcakes are frosted white for some alternating color in the arrangement and then the clock hands are just chocolate frosting piped on. And while the clock says midnight, we did actually celebrate ALL the new years for the United States (ok, continental US)...but hey, it's midnight SOMEWHERE :)

Cupcake Christmas! Snowmen and Reindeer, Assorted Flavors and Frostings

For the festive holiday spirit of Christmas, I found two designs of iconic holiday characters (snowmen and reindeer--duh) from the Hello, Cupcake! series, and did my best to replicate them. The snowmen are a white cupcake with peppermint frosting and then rolled in coconut to give them a "flaky" appearance. Make sure you roll them in the coconut RIGHT AFTER you frost them or nothing is sticking. The noses are cut up Starburst, the eyes are mini chocolate chips, and the rest of the decorations are assorted candies (Runts, Airheads). I'm not going to lie, these were not the easiest cupcakes I have ever decorated--the scarves are sticky and pulled apart and they toppled over during transportation.
The reindeer are gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting dyed brown. Now, you are supposed to roll them in brown colored decorating sugar (NOT brown sugar, DAD), but Michaels refuses to carry that color, so I was stuck with darkening the frosting as best I could. The eyes are chocolate chips, and the nose is a red hot (because they are all Rudolph, of course). The antlers are made of melting chocolate piped into a design--I let them dry in the refrigerator and then stuck them into the sides of the the mini cupcake, which is turned on its side for the face. These were much easier, both to design and transport, but they are both equally cute!!

Cupcake BIRTHDAY!! 1920s style :)

Happy birthday Shavonne!!! In honor of #29, we celebrated 1929 style (before the Crash, of course) with a speakeasy, gambling and martinis--cupcake martinis that is! When asked by the birthday girl to provide the desserts, of COURSE I said yes and couldn't wait to begin my project. After getting approval for a few colors (green, purple and red, in case you couldn't tell), I then began planning the cupcake and frosting flavors. The red ended up being a recipe I concocted--Cherry Almond cupcakes (guest starring Amaretto!) with Cherry-Almond-Vanilla frosting. The green ones are Creme de Menthe, from 125 Favorite Cupcakes, and the purple ones are "Purple" Velvet cupcakes (using Martha Stewart's Red Velvet recipe). Creme de Menthe was topped with mint cream cheese and Purple Velvet just had plain ol' cream cheese.
Now to the assembly. Plastic martini glasses (big and little), red Jelly Bellys and purple and green M&Ms, and a TON of frosting--these are the tools needed. For the mini martini glasses, I began with a few jelly beans, added a mini cupcake, and topped it off with a swirl of frosting. DONE. For the larger glasses, I put a few M&Ms in the stem to prevent the frosting from dripping too far down and then "painted" the inside of the glass with frosting warmed up in the microwave to make it a little runny-er. Then into the fridge for it to harden. The big cupcakes were actually made in the LARGE cupcake tins, but filled halfway, so it was a flatter cupcake. Drop that baby into the glass and either swirl the frosting or pile it on top and smooth it out with a butter knife and garnish with some leftover candy. The "straws" are cocktail forks (with or without, they look great). You can see the mini cupcakes modeled in Hello Cupcake's newsletter, and the larger cupcake "martinis" on Jelly Belly's web site.
I had SO MUCH FUN making these cupcakes, but also lost a lot of sleep stressing about whether or not I could pull it off. But, since 1929 WAS in the midst of Prohibition, we couldn't break the law and have REAL martinis, now could we :)


Side note: Special thanks to Brian (college football writer for AOL Fanhouse, FYI) for the AWESOME cupcake plate in the background.

Persimmon Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting, 12/01

What is a persimmon? Well, it's a funny looking fruit. But I was challenged (ok not really challenged but asked) to make a persimmon cupcake from Art's donation of the ingredient, so I set out to find a recipe. I found one here (and A LOT of other cool recipes, which I will be trying out in the near future!!) that seemed to be pretty reputable. There was orange juice and pumpkin pie spice involved, and while I do have to admit this was not my favorite cupcake, those who KNEW persimmons and what they should taste like were satisfied with the flavor. One review was that it "tasted like winter" which I guess is good because persimmons seem to only be ripe at this time of year for a few weeks (?)--kind of like the Macinaw Peach (if you know Seinfeld, you get it)!!! So if you like persimmons, I suggest this recipe. It was fun, however, to try a new recipe with a new flavor since I feel like I am running out of new ideas and flavors (I know it's not true, but I'm in a cupcake rut, I guess!!). Next up--festive and FUN Christmas cupcakes:)

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Nutter Butter Turkeys, 11/17

Gobble Gobble! Happy (early) Thanksgiving. Since SOMEONE gets a whole week off at Thanksgiving (no complaints here, even if it means a little pay cut), this is Cupcake Wednesday's Thanksgiving. And for the festivities, I have pumpkin cupcakes from a tried and true recipe (into which I added pumpkin pie spice! Oh yes, I am THAT daring) and my cream cheese frosting. Topping these babies off are little "turkeys" made with 1 1/2 Nutter Butters, a few pieces of candy corn, mini chocolate chips, and a little extra frosting. I got the idea from another web site (just Google "Nutter Butter Turkey Cupcakes") and, while they have wings as well, I could NOT for the life of me fit the wings on the turkey. So guess what, my turkey can't fly (wait, can turkeys fly anyway? I know they can run really fast). The turkey cupcakes got rave reviews for their design, and would be great for little kids, but as it is, we turn in to little kids whenever we get around cupcakes, so they worked perfectly for us!

Fun Cupcake-Themed Items

So this is a new topic for my blog, but since I have received so many FUN cupcake themed items in the last year or so, I thought they (and the gift givers) deserved a shout out. I will add posts periodically. The first blog of this sort is dedicated to Lisa (see her blog), who found, at Bath and Body Works, this awesome hand sanitizer!! It absolutely smells like Red Velvet cupcakes, and it even has GLITTER! It's such a Catch-22--I want to use it but I don't want it to get used up too quickly. And at this time of the school year (think flu season and no one covering their mouths--you would think a 16 year old knew to do that by now but I guess not...), teachers are grateful for any type of germ fighter!!