Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

Marlena over at The Repressed Pastry Chef is an incredible baker. So when she said she had found the best plain cake recipe of all time, I definitely took notice. When she tried this recipe, she made Napoleon cupcakes. I decided to make peanut butter and jam cupcakes out of mine.

The recipe for the cake is here. All in all, I think it's a good recipe, the cakes turned out really light and fluffy, but I think I prefer the golden cupcakes recipe from the book Crazy About Cupcakes which I used last time. For some reason, whenever I make recipes using cake flour instead of all purpose flour, they come out a little on the dry side. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

The cupcakes as a whole came out awesome though. Definitely some of the best ones I've made and they disappeared in a hurry. Seriously, I barely got a picture of these three. The recipe made three dozen regular cupcakes and a dozen minis, and I only have ten cupcakes left an hour after making them. I took some to my Mom's office, BF took some in to work and the neighbours stopped by for a couple. That's really good though, I'd much rather give them away while they're fresh than have them get stale.

The frosting is a peanut butter buttercream, here is the recipe:

1/2 cup butter (salted, room temperature)
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 large bag of icing sugar (500g)
5 1/2 Tbsp milk

Beat butter and peanut butter on low until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Alternate adding icing sugar about 3/4 cup at a time, and adding milk 1 Tbsp at a time, beating until combined after each addition. You may need more or less milk to get a nice consistency. The frosting is pale in colour, so add a little brown icing colouring to it if you want it to be the colour of peanut butter.

The filling is a half and half mixture of vanilla custard (using BF's secret recipe) and raspberry jam.

I had a really tough time filling these cupcakes. I tried to pipe it in but I couldn't seem to get enough filling in each cupcake, and then when I tried squeezing harder, the icing bag blew up and I had raspberry filling all over the place. Luckily it only got all over four of the cupcakes. I couldn't help but laugh.

After that didn't work, what I ended up doing was to use a 1" round cookie cutter to punch a circle into the top of the cupcake about an inch deep. I slid a knife under the circle and popped it out. I sliced a small layer off the bottom of the section I pulled out, spooned about 1 tsp of the filling into the cupcake, and replaced the section I had cut out. It was actually surprisingly fast to do once I got going, and each cupcake was perfectly filled. The frosting hid the seam of where I had replaced the plug.

I'm really happy with how these ones turned out, and would definitely make them again!

Creamsicle Cupcakes

I decided to make some simple creamsicle cupcakes this weekend. There lots of ways you can make these (last time I made homemade marshmallow topping using this recipe), but I was feeling kind of lazy this time. And to be honest, my main motivation was to work on getting one step closer to finding the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe (If I ever find it, I'll be sure to post it!). I'm definitely getting closer.

These cupcakes turned out really delicious. For me, a good cupcake should have three qualities: Fluffy cake, Frosting that is either light and fluffy or deep and rich, and amazing flavor. I managed to pull off all three with this one.

For these cupcakes, I used the recipe for golden cupcakes from the book Crazy About Cupcakes and added 2 Tbsp orange extract and about 1/2 tsp orange rind to get a light creamsicle flavour. It's definitely one of the best cake recipes I've used yet. It manages to make a dense, cakey cupcake that is still light and fluffy.

The frosting is a vanilla buttercream, also with orange extract added (I think about 2 Tbsp, I just went by taste).
I split the frosting into two parts and coloured half orange using Wilton icing colour. To get the swirl effect, you add the frosting to the icing bag one spoonful at a time, alternating between colours and pressing the spoon to opposite sides of the bag as you go, so that you have an icing bag that is full of orange frosting on one side and white on the other. You get the best results by adding small spoonfuls, especially at the narrow end of the bag. As usual, I just used a Wilton 1M tip to make big swirls.

Luckily the recipe made three dozen because they've been disappearing fast!!

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 3rd Snack Bento + Cupcakes

Someone actually ordered cupcakes from me. I had a few leftover from a potluck last weekend so I ended up bringing them to a party afterwards. One of the guys there said he really liked my cupcakes and asked me to make him a dozen for his Friday morning meeting at work.

He didn't give me any instruction as to what he wanted "Oh, just whatever you're making would be great" so I made them the same as the ones last weekend, just with different decorations.

The cupcakes themselves are the "White Cupcakes" from book Crazy About Cupcakes. I substituted 1 3/4 cups of cake flour for the 1 1/2 cups white flour called for by the recipe and addded 1 1/2 cups of chopped mango. This is the second time I've used this recipe, and it's excellent.

They're filled with a pomegranate cream filling. I used the "Irish Cream Filling" recipe from the same book, and substituted pomegranate molasses (who knew this even existed?) for the Irish cream. I love this filling, it's amazingly creamy and tart.

The frosting is a plain buttercream and the stars are made from fondant. I was really pleased that I was able to match the frosting colours to the fondant so closely. This is the first time I was able to do that. It's actually quite a bit more purple than it looks in the picture.

I was so busy making cupcakes, I didn't really have time to make bento lunches, so it was a quick snack bento this morning.

There are three pork shu mai (I need to make another batch this weekend - almost out!), two little onigiris (buried), fried plantain hearts, asparagus, broccoli and sugar snaps, and the last of the black bean salad. The fruit is just strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and lychees.

June 24th Bento + Last Night's Cupcakes

Wow!! My blog has had 5000 hits!! That didn't take long at all!

I didn't have a plan this morning, but I think the bentos turned out pretty nice regardless and it was particularly tasty. I think I'm getting better at on-the-fly bento lunches.
I wasn't feeling like rice so I decided to boil up some soba noodles (they take two or three minutes). I already had dipping sauce for them in the fridge, so I just filled up a small container of sauce and tucked it in a silicone muffin cup, under the noodles. One of the tiny tomatoes is perched in the center of the noodles (it's smaller than a raspberry!). I really liked the way this sort of looked like a cupcake with a cherry on top (it's a little hard to tell from this angle, but the soba noodles were piled up, resembling frosting), so I put it in the top right of the bento where I usually put the dessert.

For protein there is a bacon wrapped chicken breast that BF baked up last night, cut into eight bite sized pieces, and the onigiri under it has ground chicken and hoisin sauce filling. There are a few cubes of cheddar cheese beneath the noodles as well.

For veggies, there are the standard asparagus, broccoli, sugar snaps and yellow zucchini slices as well as some steamed red swiss chard. This was the first time I tried red swiss chard, and it was yummy. Tastes a lot like beet greens.

For fruit there is half of a fig (I think these are so gorgeous!), raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and some locally grown strawberries (these were much more juicy and tasty than the ones we usually get, but they were more expensive). I also included two of these freaky little fruits called langsats. They look similar to lychees, but they divide naturally into wedges. I don't care a whole lot for the taste, but BF likes them. There is a truffle for dessert.

And here are some cupcakes I made last night by special request from BF. They were made from scratch (!!!) and were vanilla flavoured loaded with raspberries. The frosting was a plain buttercream and the letters and stars were made from fondant. I ran out of fondant decorations so I put candy coated chocolate sprinkles on a few of them.

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.