FUN da middles!

As I was on my weekly shopping trip last week, I saw a product that caught my attention and I knew I just had to get. FUN da middles! It's a new cupcake product by Betty Crocker. They looked super cute and fun. Don't you agree?


They had a couple of different flavors to choose from (I remember seeing yellow cake with chocolate filling, chocolate cake with vanilla filling, and then vanilla cake with vanilla filling, which is what I ended up choosing, due to my family's inability to be obsessed with chocolate like me).

I finally got around to making them today and I LOVED them.

I opened up the box and in it contained one bag of cake mix and one packet of cupcake filling.


You make the cake, just like a regular cake mix. Combine the mix, oil, eggs, and water in a mixture until well blended.

Then, line your cupcake tin with liners. I have to tell you about this new product I found out about from my friend, Adrian. They are these super cool baking cups by Reynolds. They have a cute outside, but the inside is foil and grease resistant so that the liners keep their fun pattern even after the cupcake is baked. I can't tell you how much I LOVE these liners.



Once your liners are in place, it's time to add the batter to them! Put two tablespoons in each liner. I have found that a small cookie scoop equals one tablespoon, so I used that. It makes evenly distributing the batter super easy.


Now, open up the packet of cupcake filling and add a generous amount into each liner that is already partially filled with batter.


Then, add two more tablespoons of batter on top and they are ready to go into the oven!


After about 24 minutes pull them out of the oven and marvel at the perfectly round tops!


Here's the hard part, you need to let them cool for about 20 minutes so the filling is not scorching hot. So sit and watch them cool for 20 minutes.


Then, after the torture of waiting is over, it's time to rip into them. Look how yummy these look!


These were such a fun and easy, not to mention YUMMY cupcake to make. I guess you could ice them if you wanted to. But on the back of the box, it suggested not frosting them because the middle is kind of like icing and then you could easily put them in your kiddo's lunchbox etc. Guess what little boy is going to get one in his lunchbox tomorrow!?

xoxo,
Katie

JUMBO Cupcakes!

My husband has this thing with cupcakes. Everytime we go into one of the bakeries around town and get a cupcake that costs at least $3, my hubby gripes that they aren't real cupcakes. He says real cupcakes would be at least twice the size. I mean he's really obsessed with this. So, I finally decided to try and make him happy. I went and got this JUMBO cupcake pan.


I baked up my favorite, super secret, chocolate cake recipe. Here's where I kinda messed up. My husband doesn't like chocolate. So, jumbo cupcakes make him happy, but chocolate, notsomuch. Oh well, guess that means more for me! Anyway :), moving on. As far as baking the jumbo ones, I would have thought they would have taken double the time to bake, but not the case! I only increased the baking time by maybe 7 minutes. They did require me watching them much more closely this first go-round. I wanted to make sure they were fully baked on this inside, but didn't want the edges to crisp up. Once they were just right, I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool.


Then I colored some frosting, made some little fondant flowers and voila, here they are. Yummy JUMBO chocolate cupcakes, with buttercream icing.


I also have been wanting to try out a new way to ice the top of the cupcakes and since these cupcakes were so big, I thought I'd give it a try. Using a 1M tip, you start in the center of the cupcake, and swirl the icing around the cupcake, while always leaving the tip close to the cupcake. It ends up looking like a little rose!


I also have to confess, that while my hubby has been wanting these jumbo cupcakes, I haven't really had a reason to make them. But this weekend I did!! My family is getting our family pictures done and I wanted to bring some to my super awesome photographer. She rocks and I just wanted to give her a little something to say THANK YOU. If you need your family pictures done, you should look her up at Jenny Miller Photography. Tomorrow will be our 4th session with her and I can't wait!

xoxo,
Katie

Confetti Cupcakes!

At one of our favorite local bakeries, my son LOVES the confetti cupcakes. So, while I was making the yummy Vanilla Bean Cupcakes, I had the idea to turn some of them into Confetti cupcakes!

Now I know you can buy super yummy Funfetti cake mix, but I wanted to give this a try, homemade style. So basically just make the vanilla bean cupcakes I previously posted about, or really any white or vanilla cupcake recipe or box mix.

Then, this is where it gets really technical and complicated. Are you ready? You might want to write this down. Ok, here goes.

You dump a bunch of sprinkles in the batter. What? You didn't catch that. It's so detailed you need me to repeat it again, slower this time? Ok- Yoooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu duuuuuuuuuuuump spriiiiiiiiinkles iiiiiiiiiin theeeeeeeee baaaaaaaaaaaaaaatter. :) oh yeah, and then mix it all together.


Now you rest, because that was such hard work. After you have your energy back, evenly distribute the batter into the pretty cupcake liners. Now bake 'em up.


And here you have it....a beautiful confetti cupcake with buttercream icing.



These were a big hit at the house. They tasted yummy, and really, who doesn't love sprinkles and cupcakes!?

xoxo,
Katie

Back to Basics with Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

Wow! It's been a while. I've been out of the Blog-o-Sphere for a while. I was unfortunately sick for a while, with absolutely no appetite, so wasn't quite up to baking for a week or two, then I actually got to have a little getaway with the hubby and some friends. But I am back now and happy to share with you the latest recipe I've tried.

I have a tried and true vanilla cupcake recipe I always use. But, I've been very curious about vanilla cupcakes using real vanilla beans. I love love love vanilla, and even more so love seeing the little specs of black in things like vanilla bean ice cream, and real vanilla cupcakes. So I went on over to Annie's Eats and checked out this Vanilla Bean Cupcake recipe.

First, I whisked all the dry ingredients together, and set aside.



Then, I creamed the butter with the vanilla bean. I think you know you are a baking dork when the black specs of vanilla in the butter make you so happy and you think it's REALLY cool. If you click on this picture directly, it'll expand and you can see what I'm talking about ;)



After admiring the butter with little black specs, add the granulated sugar, and then add the dry ingredient mixture and buttermilk, alternating them.

Then, you know the drill, fill the pretty cupcake liners and bake 'em up. I just used the Wilton buttercream icing I typically use to keep things simple, I just colored mine a random blue I happened to have on hand (it was a serious coincidence that the blue happened to be the same exact blue Annie used). And voila, here you have it. I took the pretty cupcake liner off, so that you could kind of get a feel for the texture of the cupcake.


A basic, yet yummy, vanilla cupcake. I do have to note, as excited as I got about these cupcakes, I was surprised I did not achieve a richer vanilla flavor, as I had expected, by using the vanilla beans. But all in all, this was a super yummy cupcake.

xoxo,
Katie

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

So, I've been wanting to make chocolate chip cupcakes for a while. They were right in line after the Grasshopper cupcakes. But, that was until I came across these Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes at Annie's Eats. They immediately trumped all previous plans for me to make any other recipe.

I have to admit- they were REALLY time consuming. In fact, I had to break the project up into two parts, taking two days. There were four parts to this cupcake- a cookie garnish, the actual cupcake, the filling, and the frosting. All the details on the recipe can be found here.

In a nutshell, here's how this project went down:

First, bake up some chocolate chip cookies. You could actually do this first, or last, it doesn't matter. I just chose this to be my first step. Since this recipe was so time consuming in general, I cheated here and strayed from the recipe. I used Nestle Tollhouse Mini Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough- Break and Bake style :) At Annie Eat's, she has what is supposed to be a fantastic chocolate chip cookie you could adorn these cupcakes with.


Next, mix up the cupcake batter, find some cute cupcake liners (mine are yet again from Michael's) and bake the cupcakes.





Then, it's time to work on the filling. And once the cupcakes are fully cooled, and the filling is chilled a bit, fill the cupcakes up. I chose to use a very small biscuit cutter to carve the center of the cupcakes out. If you don't have one, you could also use a small paring knife and just cut the center out. I typically like to use a decorating tip and pastry bag to fill my cupcakes, but since the filling has chocolate chips in it, that would not work this time. Also, you can either put the top you've cut out back on top, or just leave it off. I tried it both ways. Either way will work.



Once the cupcakes are filled, it's time to frost them! After you frost them, sprinkle some mini chocolate chips on top and adorn with the yummy chocolate chip cookies. Then, quickly devour one just to be sure they taste as good as they look!


These cupcakes are seriously yummy and very different than the cupcakes I normally make. In fact, my normally hard to impress husband told me these were his favorite cupcakes to date. I guess any recipe with 6 1/2 sticks of butter can't go wrong!

xoxo,
Katie

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.