Chocolate Orange Cupcake

Hello everyone! I had a recipe to post last week, but never had time to take some pictures through the process--soo I re-made the recipe tonight to share with you all. I made these last week in a jar to send to my husband. One of his favorite things to eat is a chocolate orange. Anything that has the flavors chocolate and orange in it, he's trying it. I searched for weeks for a recipe worth trying and finally settled on one. The batter tastes absolutley amazing. It's hard to believe because there is no butter and are no eggs involved! That was what threw me off of the recipe because it's very rare you see one without those two key ingredients. It turned out though and you can actually taste the orange. I was surprised. The tops of the cupcakes came out a little hard both times but once you put some frosting on them, it really didn't matter. I've never zested anything before, and I don't own a zester. Thanks to youtube, it talked me through the process of zesting with a potato peeler. You just have to use a paring knife to scrape off the extra white pieces of skin off of the orange. After you do that, you just chop the peels up into very small pieces. The pictures I'm posting aren't as much as the whole recipe makes--I halfed it and got seven cupcakes out of it! So for a small family, I recommend doing that. For the frosting, I doubled the recipe. Hope you enjoy :)



Chocolate Orange Cupcake Ingredients:

* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
* 1/2 cup cocoa powder
* 1 cup sugar
* 1 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
*1/4 tsp salt
* 3/4 cup orange juice (you can get 3/4 cup if you squeeze all of the juice out of the 3 oranges used for zesting)
* 1/2 cup vegetable oil
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1 tbsp orange zest (I used three oranges to make sure I had enough zest for the frosting and cupcake)

Orange Zest Buttercream Ingredients:

* 1/4 cup butter, softened

* 2 cups confectioners sugar

* 1 teaspoon orange zest

* 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 2 to 3 tablespoons orange juice (if you don't have enough from the oranges, you can just use your preference of orange juice)

NOTE: for an extra orange kick, add orange extract 1 teaspoon at a time until you have your desired taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Zest and juice oranges.

This is right after peeling the orange. notice the white--use a paring knife to slice it off



 After peeling the white off

All chopped up

This is how much juice I got squeezing out the three oranges. Just enough for the cupcake batter!!

2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, cocoa power, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together orange juice, vegetable oil, vanilla and orange zest.

4. Pour into dry ingredients and stir until just combined and no streaks of flour remain.

5. Distribute batter evenly.

6. Bake for 18-22 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

7. Cool cupcakes on a wire rack before frosting

Orange Zest Buttercream Directions:
1. Cream together zest, vanilla, orange juice, butter, and confectioners sugar. If the confectioners sugar isn't mixing well, add 1/4 cup butter until it is combined. I doubled the recipe and added 1/2 stick butter extra. For the extra orange kick, add orange food coloring!

THIS IS FROM LAST WEEK: CHOCOLATE ORANGE CUPCAKE IN A JAR:



Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Hello everyone!!! I'm so sorry that it's been a couple weeks since I last posted. I'm back though! After baking the Peanut Butter Pie for Mikey, my mind started to wonder what I'd make next. I knew whatever I made next would be the last thing I baked that my husband would get to try for a while. I had a couple of things that I debated between but in the end, I chose to do snickerdoodle cupcakes. Chris tried his first snickerdoodle not too long ago and absolutley loved them! I figured I'd try out a snickerdoodle cupcake for him. We luckily got to celebrate his birthday together, so it turned into his birthday cupcake! He now can't figure out which one he likes better--the salted caramel cupcake or the snickerdoodle cupcake! It actually tasted like a snickerdoodle and at the same time tasted like cinnamon toast crunch. He wanted to put the cupcake in a bowl and pour milk on top of it for breakfast, that's how good he thought it was! The entire process of making this, I thought in my head, "this isn't going to taste good at all...I just can't see this tasting good." I was wrong! If you have a snickerdoodle recipe for the cookie that you already like, I'd go ahead and use that one and just roll the balls smaller. I used the recipe that came with the cupcake recipe and it wasn't my absolute favorite--but it worked. I tweaked some of the recipe from the original and it worked out perfect! If you decide to make this, I hope you enjoy!

Ingredients:

Snickerdoodle Cookies
*1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1/4 cup shortening
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 egg
Cinnamon-Sugar covering for cookies:* 1/4 cup sugar
* 1 Tablespoon cinnamon


Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons cinnamon
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 eggs, room temperature
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 3/4 cup milk, room temperature


Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting:

* 1/2 cup butter, room temperature

* 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted

* 3 -4 tablespoons milk 

* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.


2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.


3. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

4. In a mixer, cream butter, shortening, and sugar on medium for about 2 minutes.

5. Add egg and mix until combined.


6. Add the flour mixture and beat until combined.


7. In a small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon.

8. Form dough into small, round balls and roll into cinnamon sugar.

9. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies begin to crack. Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

Cupcake Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


2. Line regular and miniature cupcake trays with paper liners.


3. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and cinnamon. Set aside.


4. In a mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium for about 2 minutes.


5. Add eggs, one at a time and mix until combined.


6/ Add vanilla and mix until combined.


7. Add flour mixture to creamed butter and sugar in three additions. Alternate with milk in two additions.


8. Fill baking cups about 3/4 full.

9. Bake for about 15-20 minutes.


10. Remove cupcakes from trays and let cool.

Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting Directions:

Directions:

1. Place butter in large bowl.
2. Beat on low 30 seconds.
3. Add sugar about a cup at a time, beating on low between each addition.
4. Add 3 tablespoons milk, vanilla and cinnamon.
5. Beat on medium 1 minute.
6. Blend in up to 1 tablespoons of milk if frosting is too thick.

Here was the finished product:

*adapted from Bakerella, Food.com

Mini Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago, my parents came back from visiting Kentucky. They helped my grandma and aunt go through a bunch of storate items from my grandma's old house. My parents surprised me by bringing me a bunch of my great-grandma's baking supplies. Two mini cupcake pans came with it all. I've made mini cupcakes before and didn't have much luck with them. My small scoop wasn't the proper size to make the perfect amount of batter in the paper wrappers and neither was my moms. I've been itching to use the pans though. More and more on Cupcake Wars I've seen some of the people pipe their batter into the cupcakes. In my head I can't figure out why--because I know my scoop for normal sized cupcakes makes them come out perfect everytime. Well, I finally decided to try their technique with the mini cupcakes today. IT WORKED! The cupcakes came out to the perfect size. I did this out of boredom and wanting to use my pans. Since I'm in a wedding this weekend, I figured I'd just send these cupcakes with my husband to work. They turned out much better than expected. Also, I've been wanting to draw with ganache on top of cupcakes for a while, and now seemed like the perfect time to do so. These are a great snack to freeze and put into your child's lunch for school. You can get 72 mini cupcakes out of one boxed cake mix.

Ingredients:

Cupcake:

* 1 boxed yellow cake mix (you can use any type of cake mix, I just happend to have a yellow one and didn't feel like making my own batter!)

* ingredients needed to make cake

Vanilla Frosting:

* 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

* 1/8 teaspoon salt

* 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, sifted

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

* 1/2 teaspoon milk

Chocolate Ganache:

* 1/4 cup heavy cream

* 1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Make the cake according to the box.

2. Pipe the batter into the cupcake wrappers. I piped them a little less than half full.

3. Bale the mini cupcakes for 11 minutes.

4. Once removed from oven, let the cupcakes sit in the pan for about 3-5 minutes. Remove and then put onto a cooling rack.

Frosting:

1. Beat butter and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy. Aprox. two minutes.

2. Reduce speed to low, gradually add confectioners sugar. Beat until incorporated.

3. Add vanilla and milk and beat until smooth and creamy.

*Add additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, if frosting doesn't have spreadable consistency

4. Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. I tried out three different tips and was short frosting for about 10 of the cupcakes. I just put some extra ganache on top of those and it worked out fine!

Ganache:

1. On a double boiler, pour heavy cream into a pan (mine was dirty so I opted for a sauce pan) and bring to a boil. if you notice the cream to start to harden on the top--take it off imediatley.

2. Once the heavy cream is removed from the heat, pour chocolate chips into the cream and let sit for 30 seconds to 1 minute.

3. Stir the chocolate and cream until you get to a smooth consistency. If there are some lumps you can't get out you can just put the pan back onto the double boiler and stir until the lumps come out.

4. Let the chocolate cool for about 10 minutes and then let the fun begin!

5. I added a dot that was apart of a sprinkle set I had..I got tired of messing with them after about ten cupcakes though.

*courtesy of Georgetown Cupcake, Sprinkles



Salted Caramel Cupcakes

Happy Monday everyone! Sorry for not posting much lately. My husband and I were given a months notice that he'll be deploying--so you can only imagine how hectic everything is around here. Due to him deploying, I thought now would be a great time to make one of his favorite cupcakes. I've never messed with caramel before and wasn't very excited about it going into it. Chocolate is my choice of ingredient, but not today! My thoughts were correct though--I hate working with caramel! The cake is delicious and so is the frosting, but it took many attempts to get the caramel for the frosting. I burnt the first three batches of it. Luckily, the fourth one came out. I also tried to make a caramel filling. Well, all was going well until I went to fill the cupcakes. I tasted the filling and it tasted burnt. I ended up just filling the cupcakes with Hershey's Caramel Syrup for ice cream. It gave the cake a nice boost of flavor! The cake recipe would go great with other frostings. I'd make the frosting again...just not anytime soon! This cupcake was the PERFECT mixture of sweet and salty!

Ingredients:

Caramel Cupcake:

* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 stick of unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
* 2 large eggs, at room temperature
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk

Salted Caramel Frosting:

* 1/4 cup granulated sugar
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1/4 cup heavy cream
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 stick salted butter
* 1 stick unsalted butter
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

Cupcake:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Sift  flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

2. Cream butter and brown sugar on medium-high speed until pale fluffy.

3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. 

4. Add vanilla. Mix and scrape down sides of bowl as needed.

5.  Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each.

6. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each about halfway full. Bake for about 25 minutes. When done, transfer tins to cooling racks to cool 10 minutes.

Frosting: (If you want to pipe the icing, make sure you make a batch and a half of frosting. I didn't feel  like using a bunch of ingredients so I just piped some and then frosted the rest with a knife.)

1. In a saucepan, stir together granulated sugar and water. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Cook without stirring until you notice the mixture turning an amber color--then start to stir.. Remove from heat when you notice the amber color turning a darker yellow/brown. I removed it sooner than later because I didn't want my fourth batch to burn.

2. After you remove from heat, slowly add in cream and vanilla, stirring until very smooth. Let caramel cool for about 20 minutes, until it is just barely warm and still pourable.

3. In a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and salt together until lightened and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add powdered sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined.

4. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the caramel. Beat on medium high speed until light and airy, and completely mixed . If you think it is too salty, add 1/2 cup more sifted powder sugar (that's what I had to do).  Mixture should be ready to use without refrigeration. If your caramel was too hot when added, it will cause your icing to be runny. If this happens refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.

5. Top caramel-filled cupcakes with frosting. I added the Hershey's Caramel Sauce due to I was sick of messing with caramel by this point!

*cupcakes adapted from Sprinkle Bakes