It's Chocolate Day!

Did you know it's Chocolate Day today? What a great excuse to make a batch of cupcakes that's been on my "must make" list for quite a while. I have been wanting to make Grasshopper cupcakes. So when my hubby's aunt informed me via a Facebook post that it was Chocolate Day, I knew today was my day to make those Grasshopper cupcakes. I didn't have an exact recipe for this, I just kinda made it up by using a favorite chocolate cake recipe I found a while ago, and then adapted my favorite buttercream icing.

Whip up your favorite chocolate cake recipe.



Then some yummy mint buttercream icing.



Pull out your cutest cupcake liners...I chose these, from Michael's...and line your cupcake pan.



And bake 'em up!



After they were done I chose to pipe them with Wilton Tip 1A and sprinkle some sanding sugar for decoration.




If you want to make the mint buttercream icing, I just adapted the Wilton buttercream icing to come up with this recipe:
1/2c butter
1/2 c shortening
4c powdered sugar
1t mint extract
2T milk

I hope you all celebrate Chocolate Day to the fullest and enjoy this day just as much as I know I am!

xoxo,
Katie

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes!

Strawberries are mighty plentiful right now....and I have about three huge cartons in my fridge. I've made some super yummy sweetened cream cheese stuffed strawberries from the Our Best Bites cookbook, have some reserved to make this yummy strawberry sauce, but still needed to get rid of some of them. So I decided to make one of my most beloved desserts, Strawberry Shortcake, cupcake style. Like the banana cream pie cupcakes, there are many variations you could make. But I chose to go with homemade strawberry cupcakes, with a strawberry buttercream icing. For the cupcakes, I used this Martha Stewart recipe. I did not use the buttercream icing in the recipe, although it does look like it would be mighty yummy! I chose my standard Wilton buttercream icing because it's great to pipe with, stands up well, and doesn't require me to put the cupcakes in the fridge (as long as they are eaten within a reasonable time, which at my house that doesn't seem to be a problem!) I omitted the milk in the Wilton recipe and added strawberry preserves. If any of this didn't matter in regards to the icing, what I think would be absolutely perfect would be just plain sweetened fresh whipped cream. I didn't take step by step how to pictures for this post, because I was kinda in a rush. They got rave reviews from my sweet, sweet neighbors, who I often pawn my baked goods off on. Here's the end result. And apologies for the absolutely terrible quality of this picture- it was taken in bad light and with my cell phone.

The Perfect Summer Treat....Cupcake Style!

When I think of summertime, and more specifically summertime desserts, things like Banana Pudding, or Banana Cream Pie pop into my head. Well, I've already made Banana Pudding several times this summer. It's one of my favorite desserts. So when a couple of local bakeries starting advertising Banana Cream Pie cupcakes, I wanted to run and go get myself some. Well, life gets busy and that never happened. So finally, I thought, I'm just gonna get the ingredients to make them on my next grocery run. And then finally today, I got to make them!! Each bakery seems to make them a little different, so I think how exactly you want to make them is up to you. I finally decided on the following combination: banana cupcake, vanilla filling, and banana buttercream icing. I crumbled vanilla wafers on top and then garnished the top with half of a vanilla wafer as well.

You can totally make these your own by making your own vanilla or banana cupcakes, a vanilla or banana filling (you can just use pudding to keep it super simple), and then banana or regular buttercream icing. If you aren't crazy about banana I would pick only one part of the cupcake to be banana, so the banana flavor is not too overpowering.




Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July celebrating with family and friends and being ever so thankful we live in freedom!!

xoxo,
Katie

Cub-Cakes, I Guess You Could Call Them ;)

I had so much fun with the Red, White and Blue-tiful cupcakes, I decided that coloring the batter wasn't enough. I wanted to try my hand at colored icing for some more patriotic cupcakes! I had seen multi-colored frosting at my local bakery and thought the idea was super cute. I briefly went online to look up how to do it, then forgot about. Then, my friend over at AJ's cupcakes tried it out, and her's turned out super cute and she provides nice instructions as well. Then, once again, I kinda forgot about it. Well, like I mentioned earlier, I wanted another idea for patriotic cupcakes, and I remembered I really wanted to try this technique so I set out to figure this out. When I went online, I could not easily find visual instructions on how to do the mutli-colored frosting; all I could find was written intructions. Now, I'm not saying they aren't out there, I just couldn't find them! Did I look hard, no, but that's neither here nor there ;) I'm very visual, so this project seemed a bit intimidating, but I was determined to figure it out AND document it in pictures.

First, make a batch of your favorite buttercream icing. I find the basic Wilton buttercream icing works great. Minimal ingredients and nice texture. Divide the batter into how many icing colors you need. Now I tried for three, but did not have a decorating bag big enough to hold three, so I ended up only being able to use two icing colors at a time.



After your icing is dyed your desired colors, lay out a piece of Saran wrap and plop some icing down on top of it.


Then roll the Saran wrap up and start to flatten the icing until it's long and round, about the length of the decorating bag you are using. Then, secure it at one end. Repeat for the remaining colored icing you have.


Once all of the icing is rolled into Saran wrap, load them into your decorating bag.





From here, you can just start piping onto your cupcakes, but I did a couple of test swirls to ensure the icing was coming out evenly distributed.

Now, here is where I realize these are in no way looking patriotic anymore :-(. I immediately thought they looked like Chicago Cubs colors, hence why I am calling them Cub-Cakes. Now, slight problem. There are no Cubs fans in my house, or anywhere near my house. I have a lot family in Chicago, one side of the family would really like these. The other side, not so much. If you're my family and you're reading this, you know which side you're on and if you're on the Cubs side, I wish I could hand deliver these to you now!!




So, that was my project for the night. They turned out not quite what I was looking for, but I did learn what I set out to do with the multi-colored frosting, so I am a happy baker right now. I think next time I'll try a different decorating tip and maybe different colors ;)

xoxo,
Katie

Red White and Blue-tiful Cupcakes

For Fourth of July, I knew I wanted to make some fun cupcakes. I'd had this idea that I came up with, based on the Colorburst cupcakes I had recently made that were inspired by the Our Best Bites Blog.

I wasn't sure if they would turn out as cute as the image I had in my head, because sometimes working with darker colors, like red, can be tricky. But, I'm actually super happy with the end result. I will actually be making them again soon for a Bake Sale in which I am donating them to. This Bake Sale is for a co-worker who was recently injured. So, this batch was a test run for the bake sale. These are pretty easy to make, so I included all of the steps, in case you want to try them yourself!

To start off, I dumped all the ingredients into the mixer.

**I am going to confess- this is a boxed mix. Yes, I said it, boxed. Normally, I really enjoy baking cakes from scratch, but during the week I only have from after dinner, until bed time to complete my baking projects, so I went for easy!**

After all the ingredients are well blended together, I measured the total amount of matter and then divided the batter into three measuring cups and dyed one red, one blue, and left one white. I chose white cake for this reason- so one of the batters could remain white.


Next, I layered the three batters into cupcake liners. I went to Hobby Lobby and found some cute festive ones for Fourth of July.


Then, watch 'em bake. Now, you could stand right in front of the oven and just watch them like a hawk, as my two year old did. Or you can just set a timer and walk away.


After they are done baking and cooling, it's time to ice and decorate them! Just use your favorite icing. For mine, I used a 1M Wilton tip to make a classic swirl on top. You could stop here, but I thought mine were missing somethiing.


So while I was at Hobby Lobby getting the liners, I also found these cute star sprinkles, so I added those.


And then for the final touch, I made red fondant stars, and brushed edible glitter dust on them.


What the real fun would actually be, was to rip the liner off and see the absolutely adorable red, white, and blue layers.



I wish you all a very happy Fourth of July! And hope we all take time to remember how lucky we are to live in freedom and thank those who have made, and continue to make that possible.

xoxo,
Katie

Colorburst Cupcakes

I saw these cupcakes on the Our Best Bite food blog. Just looking at them made me feel bright and cheerful! I immediately knew I just had to make them. They were a little time consuming, in regards to carefully layering all the colored cake batter, but once i cut into one of them I forgot about that. They were so cute and fun.

Hoppy Easter!

Life has been super hectic around my house with two little ones running around, so I haven't had much time to bake lately. When I came across the instructions to make this adorable Egg Cake, I knew I had to do it. It's a simple, yet fun cake, so right up my alley! The idea came from Our Best Bites-- check them out for more fun and yummy ideas!!