Carmel apple cupcake

Sorry for being late! This is the end for this month's goa. I did 3 cupcakes in a month, skipping last week. I think I did rather well for this being the first time. I kow that I will have to be better at publishing my recipes on time. They have been a day or two late. So for this month I will do only 3 cupcakes. I know there is Halloween and I probably wont bakeor publish. I will also try really hard to publish on Saterday when I bake the cupcakes. Thanks for reading! On to the cupcake that I made.
 I made a yummy apple cupcake with a carmel icing. I started to look for an apple cupcake recipesbut didn't like any of them. If you have any suggections let me know! So I made my own. I started out the a great vanilla recipe from the Cupcake Project called the Ulitmate Vanilla recipe. I of course didn't have any real vanilla beans, so I just added a bit more vanilla extract. She even adds a cool llittle vidoe tutorial about how to scrape a vanilla bean! To add the apple flavoring, I took 1/3cup of the milk  from the recipe and added 2 shakes cinnamin and 3 shakes all spice with one Gala apple diced. I pureed the contents. Added this at the end of the recipe. I think these cupcakes turned out really good and moist. I will end up added another apple next time.

The Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake Recipe
Yield: 16 cupcakes
1 cup (225 grams) granulated sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 3/4 cups (175 grams) cake flour, not self-rising
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (57 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup (75 grams) full-fat sour cream
1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil (60 ml)
1 tablespoon pure (not imitation) vanilla extract
2/3 cup (160 ml) whole milk
Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). In a small bowl, combine sugar and seeds from the vanilla bean. (For those of you who are new to using vanilla beans, check out this video to learn how to get the seeds out of the bean.)
Using the back of a spoon, move around the bowl and apply pressure to break up any clumps of seeds and to better infuse the vanilla flavor into the sugar. Set aside.
         In a medium-sized mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together cake flour,baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
          Add the vanilla bean sugar and mix until well combined.
         Add butter and mix on medium-low speed for three minutes. Because there is so little butter, you'll end up with a very fine crumb texture.
         In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until just combined.
Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined. The batter will be liquid. (Don't worry, you didn't do anything wrong. It's supposed to be that way.)
Fill cupcake liners just over 1/2 full.B
ake for 14 minutes and then test to see if they are done. They are done when a
toothpick comes out without wet batter stuck to it. The cupcakes should appear white with specks of vanilla bean. They should not turn a golden brown. If they are not done, test again in two minutes. If they are still not done, test again in another two minutes.
When the cupcakes are done, remove them immediately from the tins and leave them on a cooling rack (or just on your counter if you don't own a cooling rack) to cool. Tips: Because everyone's oven is just a bit different and your liners may be a slightly different size than mine, I highly recommend that if you have time, you bake a test cupcake before baking your whole batch. Read my FAQ on filling cupcake liners to learn how to do a test cupcake and why it's useful.

Read more: http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2011/09/ultimate-vanilla-cupcake-test-baked-by.html#ixzz1mlqkiRfV

　

I don't know where I got the carmel icing recipe. The icing was easy to make and really good with the cupcake. It does harden and flakes, like on a donut, so be carful where you eat it!! Until next time, happy baking!!

Pink Lemonade

Week:2

Sorry I'm late..got really busy on Friday and made them tonight at like 9. Oh life gets in the way. Anyway, I made pink lemonade cupcakes. It took me the longest time to figure out what I wanted to make and started thinking about what time of year we're in. It's almost  the end of summer and I thought of what I drink most during the summer, pink lemonade. Then I looked through all my baking books..go figure I have not one recipe for this.

Thanks to all my blogging sites that I frequent, I found the lemon cake from Brown Eyed Baker. I adapted only by excluding the lemoncello, only because I didn't have any =) Then I just took a regular buttercream recipe and folded in strawberry preserve witha dash of food coloring. I also tried different tecnecs on frosting. I used a closed star, the traditional way and one with waves. I liked the waves better.

They turned out really good. I wasn't sure if I would need more lemon but it was a nice hint of lemon, not over powering.  Although I might add a bit more lemon zest. I like my lemonade a bit on the tart side.=) With the frosting, this is the best buttercream that I've made so far. Everytime I make buttercream frosting it tastes too much like butter or like sweet butter. I think I've figured it out though, I using the wrong butter brand. So this time I switched and it was much better. It won't be until I make it again that I will be convienced it was the best. Next week I'm going out of town, so I'll see ya in two weeks. Please enjoying!
 Until the next time, Happy baking!!

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

Cake:1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/4 cup plus 2 T lemon juice
1/2 cup buttermilk
Zest of 1 lemon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 12 cup muffin tin with liners. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

Add sugar and lemon zest to mixing bowl or stand mixer and rub zest into sugar with your fingertips until well distributed and fragrant. Add the butter and cream cheese to the sugar and beat until light and creamy, 2 - 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating about 1 minute after each egg. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture, beating on low speed until just incorporated. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk, once incorporated, add the next 1/3 of the flour mix, followed by remaining buttermilk, and remaining flour, beating each addition until just incorporated. Add lemon juice, beating until just incorporated on low speed.

Transfer batter to muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 of the way full. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center cupcake comes out clean. Cool about 5 minutes in the pan and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

 

 

Frosting:

1/2 cup of unsalted buter, room temp.
2 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tbsp. milk
1/2 cup strawberry preserve
1-2 tops of red coloring, if desired

Place the butter in mixing bowl, beat the butter until very soft and pale, about 2 minutes. Gradually sift the confectioners' sugar, beating well. Then beat in milk for a fluffy frosting. Fold in the strawberry preserve, making sure it get well intergrated into the frosting. Add red coloring if so desire.

Red velvet with choclate neufatel cheese frosting

Week 1:
So first I need to find what cupcake I was going to make which actually took some time. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do something  I already made or something else. After much looking, Red Velvet came up ! I found good Paula Deen's recipe. I haven't made red velvet yet and it seemed simple enough as well. My other trouble, go figure was making only 12 not 24. Thankfully the recipe was easy to cut in half.
While looking around I found that if you don't have buttermilk, you can make"sour" milk as a substiution! For one cup of "sour" milk, it's 1 tablespoon of vinager and fill the rest with milk. I used apple cider vinager since that's what I had. For the frosting, I wanted to make a cream cheese frosting.(my fav.) But of course I didn't actually have cream cheese, had neufatel cheese. It has 1/4 less fat and I dont taste the difference. You will have to try and see if you taste the difference, because my mom didn't like it at all. =)
To frost the cupcakes I used the 1/8 round tip. I still don't like the way it came out. I still think that the tip needs to be bigger or I need to use a fluffier frosting. The taste was there though, which is great!
Overall, they tasted great and were very moist. This time I have also posted pictures. Please enjoy!Well let til next week, happy baking!!

A New Start

So I haven't been on here since March because my life was getting in the way. I know I really haven't given this my real effort yet and I have decided to start now. There's nothing like the present..right?? Well every friday I'm going to be baking a different cupcake and sending most of them to work. I haven't really decided to where I'm going to come up with any of the recipes, like coming all from the same place or not. Now that I'm addicted to pinterest, maybe they will all come from there. Who knows I do have a week to think about it..lol! So what I will be focusing on is decoration and texture. I want to know that they are moist and look great! Any suggestions and comments would be greatly apprietated.

Til then happy baking!!

Still in progress...

The bake sale to raise money for my friends breast cancer was a big success for her! All my cupcakes were sold and I got some good responses. Sad to say no orders as a result though. I did make my own business cards and I really liked them. But my mom and cousin thought I should still get some professional made. So onto my next step of business, getting cards made. I'm really trying to figure out how to really get myself out there. It's harder then I thought. I think if I can get these cards out and some tasting I should get somewhere with it. Well, on to my next flavor. Til next time happy baking!!!

First promotion

I have my first event to promote my cupcakes! I'm doing a bake sell for a fundraiser for a friend's cancer treatment. I love that I can help her and promote my business. I need to make 3 dozen cupcakes. So I decided to make 3 types, peanut butter and jelly, chocolate banana and chocolate strawberry. I'm going to start making the frosting, to make sure that I can decorate them the way I want. I'm also going to use fondant to make pink ribbons, hopefully. I will be posting pictures this time. Til next time, happy baking! =)

First cucpake of the New Years!

Passion tea cupcake with a orange butter Cream frosting

Well I finally figured out the oven in my place! No more burning cupcakes! I've decided that this year I will be writing at least very other week. Whest I made cupcakes or if it's just related to cupcakes. I was also thinking that I need to add pictures with my entries. I'm such a visual person, I'm surprised I haven't thought of it sooner!
So for my first cupcake of the year, I made a passion tea cupcake. I first started out using 2 tea bags in hot milk and letting it simmer for 5 or so minutes. The texture came out right but the flavor was too muted and so it would need probably 5 tea bags. I also made this cupcake for the first time with oil. I didn't really see a difference in the cupcake, maybe a little bit heavier but nothing really noticable. I made orange butter cream with it, I liked the flavor but it needed more flavor again. I used one orange zest, I would say 2 next time and maybe some of the juice too. Some the overall lesson with this cupcake is MORE flavor!
Until next time, happy baking!
=)