Cherry Cheesecake Brownie Cupcakes Recipe

The double dulce de leche cupcakes disappeared in about two minutes, and I got yet another cupcake idea last night, so I ended up making more this afternoon. At any given time I have a list in my head of at least four or five recipes I want to try, so maybe I bake too many cupcakes, but it's either that or fall behind! Although I got a lead on a good chocolate chip cookie recipe today, so I suspect that I'm no further ahead.

These cupcakes were inspired by a recipe for cherry cheesecake brownies that my Dad used to make when I was little. Don't let their humble appearance fool you. These cupcakes are dense, moist and packed with flavour. They're topped with a fudge frosting so rich that you only need a thin layer on top rather than a big swirl. Really, they don't need frosting at all.Here's the recipe. You should definitely try them!

One quick note about the recipe: I was running out of butter and cocoa towards the end of this, so I just threw together the frosting out of what I had. Feel free to use a different recipe, I just included this one for completeness.

Recipe: Cherry Cheesecake Brownie Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Makes approximately two dozen cupcakes

Ingredients:

Brownie Batter:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cherry Filling:

• 1 8oz package of cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup maraschino cherries (chopped)
  

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate
• 1 lb icing sugar
• 2 Tbsp cocoa
  
• 4 Tbsp milk

To make the brownie batter, first melt the butter. Add ingredients in the order listed, mixing until combined after each addition. Mix flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl before adding to the liquid mixture.

In another bowl, beat cream cheese and 1 egg with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (about three minutes). Add sugar and flour and stir until combined. Mix in cherries.

To assemble cupcakes, first put a small spoonful of brownie batter into each cup. The batter will raise while baking, so you only need enough to cover the bottom of the cups. Use a small spatula to spread the batter out to the edges of the bottom of the cup.

Spoon a generous tablespoon of cherry filling into each cup. If you have any left over filling, you can fill any empty spots in your muffin tin with it. Its not exactly a cupcake, but it tastes good.

Top with another spoonful of brownie batter. Using a spatula, gently spread brownie batter out to the edges of the cupcake cup so that the cherry filling is completely covered (add more batter if required). The cups should be about 3/4 full.

Bake for 23 to 25 minutes. Cupcakes are done when the top center of each cupcake is cooked.

To make frosting, melt butter and chocolate in a small bowl in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until melted and smooth.

Place icing sugar, cocoa and 2 Tbsp of milk in a large bowl. Add melted butter and chocolate and mix until smooth and uniform. Add remaining milk until the frosting reaches the desired consistency. Lightly frost the cupcakes using a smooth spatula or butter knife.

Here is a picture of what the cupcakes look like inside. As you can see, the batter rises up in the middle, while the cheesecake filling stays the same size, so it makes a stripe across the inside of the cupcake.

Double Dulce de Leche Cupcakes

Fall is almost here.

I've been in a bit of denial about it. I've been wearing tank tops despite the slight chill in the air. I've seen leaves on the ground twice while walking down the street in the past few days and both times I convinced myself that they must have been there since last Fall.

Foolish right? Well today I decided to give in. I'm still wearing a tank top, but the cupcakes I baked today are a tribute to the chilly season. I put aside the fresh fruit and light ingredients and traded them for dark chocolate and creamy dulce de leche. These are the richest, most decadent cupcakes I've ever made.
I call them Double Dulce de Leche. The cupcake itself is chocolate, made using the "Rich Chocolate Cupcakes" recipe from the book Crazy About Cupcakes. They are filled with premade dulce de leche (President's Choice brand, for all you Canadians out there) and filled using the method I used last time, removing a 'plug' of cake from the middle, piping in the filling and replacing the plug.

For those who aren't familiar, dulce de leche is a luxurious type of creamy caramel made from whole milk. It's delicious on everything from cake, to ice cream, to apple slices.

The frosting is a fluffy vanilla buttercream with more dulce de leche drizzled on top.

I cut one in half to show you the filling inside. As you can see, the seams from where the cake plug was removed are barely visible (I've never had anyone even mention that they noticed it while eating a cupcake filled this way), the filling is nicely centered and the amount of filling is controlled. Yummy!

Chocolate & Banana Cream Cupcakes

I made cupcakes last night. I listed off some choices for BF "Okay, so choice number one is matcha cupcakes with pomegranate frosting. Choice number 2 is vanilla cupcakes with banana cream filling and chocolate frosting,.."

He interrupted me "I don't need to hear anymore."

"But there are more choices"

"Nothing could be better than chocolate and banana."

Here they are:

I used the recipe for white cupcakes from Crazy About Cupcakes. This is the third time I've used it. I love the recipe, but these came out a little dry. I think I baked them about four minutes too long.

For the banana cream I used the recipe from this site, but I cut it in half (I still used two bananas though, effectively doubling the amount of banana in the recipe) and mashed the banana instead of cutting it so that it could be piped into the cupcakes (I use a Wilton's bismark tip #230 to do this). This is an excellent recipe, I highly recommend it.

The frosting is my regular buttercream with some cocoa and an additional tablespoon of milk added.

I decided to use yellow cupcake cups in keeping with the banana theme, and put slices of fresh banana on top (Do this immediately before serving because they turn brown and get soggy if you let them sit for more than a couple of hours).

These are some of the best cupcakes I've made yet!

Recipe: Cake Balls

I felt like doing something a little different this week, so I made cake balls instead of cupcakes. This is the first time I've made them, and they are so delicious but extremely sweet.

You can use whatever cake and frosting flavors you like, so be creative! You could flavor the candy melts as well. I kept it simple, using a plain vanilla cake mix, vanilla buttercream frosting and milk chocolate melts. They didn't last long!!

Recipe: Cake Balls

Ingredients:

• 1 13x9 in cake
• 2 cups frosting
• 1 package of candy melts (14oz)

Once the cake has completely cooled, crumble it into a large bowl. The smaller the crumbs, the more consistent the inside of the cake balls will look.

Mix in half of the frosting. Continue to add frosting until the mixture has a smooth consistency.

Line a cookie sheet with wax paper. Roll the cake mixture into 1 1/4" balls and place on the cookie sheet. Place cookie sheet in the fridge for two hours or in the freezer for 30 - 40 minutes to firm up the cake balls.

In a small bowl, melt some of the candy melts by microwaving for 30 seconds and stirring. Repeat until all of the wafers are melted and the consistency is smooth. Line another cookie sheet with wax paper.

One at a time, dip the cake balls in the melted chocolate. Pass back and forth between two spoons to let any additional coating to run off and place on the new cookie sheet. When the melted chocolate starts to get low, add more melts and microwave an additional 30 seconds. Once all of the cake balls are coated, refrigerate until the coating has completely hardened.

Makes 45 to 50 cake balls.

Decorations: Cake balls can be decorated by adding sprinkles (candy sprinkles, toasted shredded coconut, nonpareils, cookie crumbs, etc.) after coating each one but before they have completely hardened, or by drizzling a contrasting colour of candy melt on the tops of the cake balls.

Enjoy!!

July 11th Cupcakes

I have a lot of cutters.

I have heart cutters, star cutters, triangle cutters, clover cutters, pumpkin cutters, ladybug cutters, about 15 different flower cutters, leaf cutters, moon cutters, bowtie cutters, body part cutters, frog cutters, car cutters, hot pepper cutters, crown cutters, dinosaur cutters, plane cutters, alphabet cutters, and that's just the tip of the iceburg.

So it was with utter disbelief when I realized last night that I don't have a single fish cutter.

BF is taking his advanced diving class this weekend, so he's doing five dives and pretty much only coming home to sleep. He called me from the dive site last night and said it he would love a cupcake when he came home.

And for me, any excuse is a good excuse to make cupcakes.

So I was going to make them aqua blue with little fishes in all different colours in keeping with the whole ocean theme of his weekend.

But it was not to be. I could have molded them by hand of course, but I was working on another set of cupcake decorations earlier in the evening, so I didn't feel like doing that much work for this set. So he got hearts instead :P

Since these were especially for BF, I made beer & chocolate flavoured cupcakes. I used the recipe from Crazy About Cupcakes (have I mentioned how much I love this book?). The batter was so liquidy that I thought for sure that they were not going to turn out, it was like soup. But omg, these are the moistest, softest cupcakes I've ever made. The texture is incredible, and for once I managed to fill the muffin cups so that the cupcakes all rose to the perfect height.

I don't care for beer, so I found the taste of these so-so, but BF really liked them. I'm thinking about making these again but using soda instead. Maybe orange or cream soda. Does anyone know if this will work?

I went to make frosting and realized I was missing some ingredients, so I ended up using cream cheese frosting instead since I had some in the freezer. I used Wilton Teal icing gel colouring to get the blueish shade.

For decorations, I made some fondant hearts for the teal cupcakes, and sprinkled Skor bits on the white ones. They're pictured here all packed up in foil trays for BF to take to his diving class.

Lilypad Cupcakes

Sorry about the lack of bento yesterday. I realized when I was halfway to work yesterday that I forgot to take a picture of it

Another Saturday, another batch of cupcakes...
I made chocolate cupcakes filled with a pomegranate vanilla cream (very tart!). The purple ones have a plain buttercream frosting and the green ones have matcha green tea buttercream frosting (I looooove matcha frosting).

My sister helped me make the decorations. There are lilypads, water lilies and hearts made from green and purple fondant, and some gummy frogs on the lilypads.

The water lilies didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, but I'm still pretty new at fondant decorations, so this was one of the most complex things I've tried yet. I think they turned out to be pretty flowers, but they don't exactly look like water lilies. I'll keep trying!!

As always, you can click on the picture to get a closer look.

May 14th Bento

I feel like out of all the bentos I've made, today's was the most outstanding yet in terms of making the most delcious food while keeping it pretty. Oh man, it was so yummy!

I made tamagoyaki nigiri sushi. This was my first try making nigiri sushi and it was way easier than I thought it would be. I had no trouble at all making the rice balls uniform just using my hands. I made the rice last night and heated it in the microwave this morning, and it turned out nice and fluffy.

I made the omelette last night as well. For enough omelette for two bentos I used three eggs mixed with 1/4 cup chicken broth, 1/2 tsp mirin, 1/2 tsp sake, 1 1/2 tsp sugar and a pinch of salt, and rolled it into longer layers than usual to give it the right shape. I refrigerated it overnight and in the morning I just had to cut it into slices and attach it to the rice with strips of nori.

Under the sushi there is some sesame fried gai lon with dried cranberries. I never had gai lon before (or cooked it!) and I think next time I'll just steam it. The sesame oil was a little too sharp.

Beneath that there are three home made pork shumai, fried in a little canola and pressed with the spatula to flatten after every flip. That was the end of the batch, so I will probably make more this weekend.

At the bottom there is some broccoli hiding a soy sauce bottle, and this amazing little daikon salad. The taste of this salad is so incredibly sharp, so it has the same effect as pickled ginger with sushi. It's tiny but it packs a ton of flavor. To make it, the night before I sliced up some daikon and cut it into flowers with a punch. Sprinkle with salt, and then try to press/knead out the liquid in the daikon. Set the flowers on some paper towel and cover with plastic wrap in the fridge overnight. The paper towel will soak up even more of the liquid, so in the morning you'll have some really thirsty daikon. Also, the night before mix about 1 Tbsp white vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp lemon juice and a pinch of julienned orange peel and refrigerate overnight so the flavors mix. In the morning, add the daikon to the vinegar mixture and let it sit for ten minutes to soak it up. Drain the liquid and add to the bento.

There are some sugar snaps, sweet potato butterflies and the first fiddleheads of the season, all steamed. I added some lemon juice to the fiddleheads.

For fruit there is half of a honey tangerine and cherries! This was the first time I've seen cherries at the grocery store all year and they were $12 a pound if you can believe it. So I actually counted out ten cherries at the store (enough for bentos for two days). They were so delicious though, it was totally worth it. Then there are the usually strawberries and blueberrys, and a truffle.

May 8th Bento

Last night I was all set to make exciting sushi. I bought a frozen eel filet and was going to make unagi sushi because it's BF's favorite. It was going to have the unagi wrapped on the outside (because I haven't tried to do that yet) and avocado on the inside and it was going to be really pretty.

I cooked the unagi according to the directions on the package and when it came out of the oven, I brought BF into the kitchen to try a bite (I don't like the taste of fish). According to him it was pretty bad. Unsalvageable even. So we had to toss it.

He assures me that it just tasted like a low grade of meat, and had nothing to do with my cooking skills (this was the first time I've ever tried to cook fish). He's so sweet.

Yeah, so we had plain old avocado sushi for bento today :)
As you can see, my lettuce wall building skills are improving a little. I tried using kale this time because it's firmer (although not as delicious as whatever lettuce I was using before).

There is some avocado sushi, some pork bites underneath that, three home made gyoza (there's a bottle of dipping sauce hiding under them), slices of lotus root cooked in vinegar and water (finally, I made a bento where you can see the pretty holes in it!), and asparagus. Fillers are the standard broccoli and sugar snaps.

For fruit there are a couple of cherry tomatoes, a hidden gooseberry, slices of apricot, strawberries and blueberries. Dessert is some kind of truffle (I bought a mixed box and now I can't remember what any of them are!)

May 1st Bento

I feel like the individual components of today's bento were all excellent, but somehow, it just didn't come together. Well, here it is:

The main components are slices of stuffed turkey roll (premade from the butcher), lotus seed paste filled onigiri, home made spanikopita (under the ducks), and a small container of eggplant braised in a sweet miso sauce.

I had half a sweet potato I wanted to use up, so I shaped some into flowers and made a couple of turtles (with nori). The ducks are fried plantain. There is some edamame hiding in the top left corner, and the regular broccoli, asparagus and snow peas.

Fruit is persimmons, strawberries and blueberries, dessert is a truffle.