Lemon Cupcakes

She Wore Lemon

I like citrus desserts they are always refreshing and seem to clean you pallet. I've made these cupcakes before for both my brother's wedding shower and his wedding. But as always I changed the recipe to make it my own. The recipe called for self rising flour but instead I used cake flour with a teaspoon of baking powder as the rising agent. I used my new and shiny juicer to squeeze all the juice out of the lemons! It's so much better then me squeezing a lemon with my hands like I did for my brother's wedding. The cake is light and not as lemony as you might expect it to be that's where the frosting comes into play.

I used the liners that my mom bought me from Crate & Barrel they are very spring like. I usually make the lemon cupcakes with a lemon frosting, but this time around I wanted to switch it up and experiment with swirling two flavors together. I ended up with Lemon Raspberry frosting.... half lemon half raspberry. The lemon itself is kind of tart because of the freshly squeezed lemon juice and zest and the raspberry is a nice complementary flavor because they also have a tendency of being a bit tart. They are very tasty and refreshing. I'm really happy the way these turned out. =)

Egg Bread

There is nothing better then homemade bread & I don't mean bread out of a bread maker. Egg bread is one of my favorites to make the cookbook suggests to put it into 2 loaf pans I have a preference to making one loaf and braiding it. It has a tendency of stretching length wise over a baking sheet. But I think it looks pretty.

I experimented this time around with mixing the dough at night and letting it rise once then I put it into the fridge so I could bake it in the morning for Easter. I put it in the fridge and woke up in the morning and saw it did its second rise and I got slightly worried that it wouldn't do a third rise, but thankfully it did.

One more picture =)

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

To celebrate Easter this past weekend I decided to try a new recipe Carrot Cake provided by Abbey at Our Forking Blog (http://ourforkingblog.blogspot.com/). Because I seem to be selective to desserts that don't have to do with chocolate I've never tried carrot cake, but my mom is a big fan of this dessert. I shredded my carrots and away I went. I must say that the batter seemed runny and I was slightly concerned with its outcome but when I rotated the pan everything seemed A-OKAY!



The frosting is a cream cheese frosting another first for me and its delicious! I love cream cheese in general so why not in frosting form. I love how it consists of three ingredients: cream cheese, butter & powdered sugar. YUM.

I will be happy to report that the cake was fluffy and light and the cream cheese frosting had a smooth consistency. Mom was very happy and so was I.

New Moon Night

New Moon Release Party

For those who are not aware of Twilight its about tween vampire who sparkle... I know there is more to it but that's what I take it as. =) I made sugar cookies and mini cupcakes for this years New Moon dvd release party for work. Sugar cookies were made in the shapes of Lions, Lambs, Apples, and Moons. The apples & moons were covered in red & yellow sprinkles. Mini cupcakes were pretty basic vanilla & chocolate chip cupcakes with colored buttercream frosting. I did put out a tent card and business cards hoping people would comment, no luck. Oh well better luck next time. All I do know is that there were no more cookies and or cupcakes left at the end of the night.

Week Six part deux

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

I've been feeling quite ambitious lately with attempting a few new recipes this week. So when you say to some people "oh i made some snickerdoodles" you either get the look of what the heck are those or OoooOo do those have snickers in them? Snickerdoodle cookies are basically a sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon and sugar. These cupcakes seem to be a vanilla cupcake with cinnamon and sugar. I find it amazing that they do taste extremely similar to the cookies.

The frosting was a seven minute frosting from the Martha Stewart cupcakes cookbook. Yeah it took longer than seven minutes to make, but it does have the consistency of a marshmallow on a cupcake minus the chewiness. Good news I got to use my candy thermometer again to heat up sugar to 230 degrees. Molten sugar is a scary thing! So anyway the closed star tip was used to pipe on the frosting sprinkled with cinnamon & sugar. Some googly eyes were placed for comic relief. My friend Connie helped with piping and eye placement. (CiaoBellaRosa.blogspot.com)

Week Six

Shipping Off to Boston

Chocolate Chip and Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

with Baileys Buttercream

It seems when it comes to baking and bakeries that everyone does holiday themed goodies. So I decided to join in this week and make come St. Patty's day cupcakes. I will just say that I am in LOVE with cake flour at the moment. It seems to make the cake lighter. With that thought I've been using the same chocolate cupcake recipe for the chocolate cupcakes but this time around I altered a few things like substituting some cake flour for the all purpose flour and I also added some mini Chocolate chips for an extra punch of chocolate.
Vanilla bean cupcakes instead of regular vanilla extract I used French Vanilla extract. It is quite strong and I'm not sure that I would use as much but it has an amazing aroma to it.
The Buttercream.... oh my i didn't really have a recipe for this so instead of adding milk to the buttercream I added Baileys. I like the combination of flavors with the chocolate, vanilla, and the baileys. Not too Shabby!

Week Five

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana.

Oh man that was cheesy. There aren't many songs that have to do with oranges. I was thinking Orange County Girl by Gwen Stefani but that's just plain obvious when it comes to me and my love of No Doubt. Anyways.... these are Orange cupcakes the recipe / idea came from the website www.mybakingaddiction.com/orange-cupcakes-2/ . Yeah I still not too sure how to post a link on this blog but hopefully I will learn soon. Anywhoo. I love this recipe i love the consistency of the batter not too thick not too thin. The batter itself make exactly 12 regular size cupcakes so that's the only downside. Today I went on a nice shopping trip to find some shiny new cupcake liners and I ended up finding some plain brown ones (which i must say look pretty classy) from Tapps a baking shop and some spring time liners with eggs on them from Target.

On Mybakingaddiction.com she used a cream cheese frosting. I wasn't too sure about it even though I bought all the ingredients for it. After trying the cupcakes it seemed to need more of an orange flavor to it. So instead of the cream cheese frosting i made a butter cream frosting with orange extract instead of vanilla. I think they turned out pretty. I had a few panic moments because I seem to have misplaced my giant star tip. I hope it shows up. I just used a smaller star tip and decorated it with a fruit slice candy.