Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

These are the cupcakes I made for the humans at Luna's first birthday party.  Not only did we need cupcakes for the wieners, but also for the humans.  I decided on cookies and cream because it was something I hadn't tried before.  I was pleased with how they turned out.  My only mistake was I didn't crush the Oreos small enough for the frosting so I kept getting larger pieces of Oreo clogging my piping tip. Here's the recipes I used.  Enjoy!

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes
(Adapted from: Cupcakes From The Cake Mix Doctor)
1 package plain white cake mix
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 t. vanilla
18 Oreos
Preheat oven to 350.  Line 24 cupcake cups with liners and set aside.
Place the Oreos in a large Ziploc bag and crush them by rolling over them with a rolling pin.  Set crumbs aside.
Place the cake mix, sour cream, oil, eggs and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer until well incorporated.  Add crushed Oreos just until incorporated. 
Fill cupcake cups with liners 2/3 of the way full. 
Bake until they are lightly golden, about 18-20 mins. 

Cookies and Cream Frosting
(Source: Big Book of Cupcakes)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 16 oz package powdered sugar
1/3 cup whipping cream
1/8 t. salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
15 Oreo cookies, finely crushed

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.

Gradually add powdered sugar, alternately with cream, beating at low speed until blended.  Add salt and vanilla, beating until blended.  Stir in crushed cookies until combined.  Beat at high speed for 2 minutes or until creamy.  Makes 4 cups. 

Luna's First Birthday Party

Several months ago, I saw a recipe for a dog cake (as in a cake for dogs)  and I've been wanting to make it ever since so I decided a dog birthday party was in order for our Luna's first birthday. Have you seen our Luna? Here she was as a puppy:

Here she is now:

The first thing we needed for a wiener dog party was wiener food for the dogs:

Next, we needed wiener food for the humans. We enjoyed hot dogs, little smokies, and smoked sausage.

A party isn't complete without cake! We had dog cupcakes for the wieners and cookies and cream cupcakes for the humans.

The dog cupcakes turned out awesome and were a lot of fun to make. I gave one to Luna to try the day before the party. She devoured it in 30 seconds and them spent 5 minutes licking her bowl. I would definitely recommend them.

Carrot Peanut Butter Dog Cake
http://andeverythingsweet.blogspot.com/2010/12/charlies-1st-birthday.html

1 cup white flour
1 top baking soda
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup shredded carrots
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup honey
1 egg
Mix flour and baking soda together and then add all other ingredients.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.
Frost with wiped non-fat cream cheese.
I doubled the recipe and made cupcakes out of the batter which made about 13 cupcakes. I baked them for about 20-25 mins. I only had enough whipped cream cheese for 9 of them with one package of cream cheese.
Here are the wieners eating their cupcakes:

Luna

Noodles

Axle

Luna helped Axle eat his cupcake

And of course, we had party treats for the wieners:

Next up, cookies and cream cupcakes!

Green Velvet Cupcakes

What better way to celebrate St Patrick's Day than with green cake?!!  How do you make green cake, you ask?  Easy. Make red velvet cake, but add green food coloring instead of red food coloring. Or if you are not a red velvet fan, you might be able to make white cake and add green frosting, but I've never tried it. 
Hope you all have a great St. Patty's Day tomorrow.  And don't forget to wear green!

Carrot Cupcakes

I have so many recipes for cupcakes I've been wanting to try and this was one of them.  I love carrot cake but you just don't see too many carrot cupcakes so I thought I should find a recipe and make some.  I found this recipe on Martha Stewart's website which meant it had to be good!

Carrot Cupcakes
Source: Martha Stewart
Print Recipe Here

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, spoon and leveled
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons plain low-fat yogurt
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups grated carrots

Frosting:
1 package (8 Ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated orange zest

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line muffin tin with paper liners.
In large bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg; set aside.
In another bowl, whisk together melted butter, brown sugar, egg, yogurt, and vanilla.  Stir in carrots.  Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture until well combined.  Divide among muffin tin.  Bake 25-30 minutes.
Remove from pan to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
To make frosting, use an electric mixer, beat cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar until smooth, beat in vanilla and orange zest. 

Amy's Notes:
Note that this recipe is for 12 cupcakes.  I ended up doubling it, but wasn't quite thinking and didn't have enough ingredients to double the frosting.  So I improvised, but my frosting wasn't as good as it could have been if I would have followed the recipe.  The cake of these cupcakes is very good.  I love carrot cake but don't like all the chunks that some people put in it, so this recipe is great for me.  Next time, I am going to spend the extra money and buy the bag of pre-grated carrots because, ugh, I hated grating them!

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

I've been having fun with Valentine's Day goodies! 

These babies are chocolate cupcakes with raspberry cream cheese buttercream frosting--a perfect combination for Valentine's Day!

The sweet raspberry frosting pairs well with the rich chocolatey cupcake.

For the frosting, I made my normal frosting recipe, but added about 5 tablespoons of raspberry puree plus additional powdered sugar to thicken up the frosting for piping. 

I made 24 mini-cupcakes with this cake plus one large 9 inch round cake for cake pops, which I will post next!

Three Cupcakes for the New Year!

It's a new year!!!  Thank God.  Good riddance 2010, welcome 2011, full of possibilities and hope!  I also just turned 27 at the end of December.  I think about where I thought my life would be when I was 27 and this is not it.  I am unemployed (as is my husband), I am living in my in-laws attic, and besides our cars and the objects in our rented storage unit, I have little to my name.  Despite how depressing these things can be, I have hope for better things and happiness to come in this new year. 

One of the beneficial things of the past year has been my new found baking obsession.  It is a coping mechanism, a creative outlet, and a happy place for me to be when things aren't going my way.  I've found I love making cupcakes!  Cupcakes bring a smile to my face as well as to the faces of those who eat them.  My husband and I were recently visiting my family is Washington state and because we don't live close to them, I wanted to make a few cupcakes for them to enjoy while I was home.  So I made cupcakes to end 2010 and to begin 2011. 

First was a new red velvet cupcake recipe.  It turned out to be a great recipe.  And because of that, I have to keep the recipe to myself.  Sorry friends, a baker has to keep some secrets to herself sometimes!  I made 28 of these cupcakes and my brother at 15 of them himself, all in about 30 hours.  I guess that meant he liked them!

Red velvet cupcakes with cinnamon frosting

Next, for New Years Eve, my good friend and I made chocolate cupcakes, half with peanut butter frosting and half with espresso frosting.  The peanut butter frosting recipe is already posted here: Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes and sadly, the espresso frosting wasn't as good as I had hoped.  So the search is on for a good coffee/espresso frosting recipe!

Chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting

Chocolate cupcake with espresso frosting

So Happy New Year to each one of you!  May your year be filled with joy, love and lots of cupcakes!

Strawberry Cupcakes and Cake Pops

I thought I'd try something a little different for cupcakes this time.  I haven't had a lot of fruit cupcakes and had no idea what to base my choice of recipe on.  I searched around and ended up choosing this recipe from allrecipes.com based on the high reviews that it got.  Thankfully, they turned out very well and the frosting was delicious! 

Strawberry Cupcakes
Adapted from: allrecipes.com
Printable Recipe Here

Ingredients:
1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 ounces pureed strawberries (fresh or frozen)

Frosting: 
8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
5 cups confectioners sugar
3 ounces pureed strawberries

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Place cupcake liners in pans or grease and flour cake pans.
In large bowl, dissolve the gelatin in the cold water; stir in the cake mix, eggs, vegetable oil, flour and 5 ounces pureed strawberry.  Beat for 5 minutes on medium with electric mixer and pour into cupcake/cake pans.
Bake cupcakes for 15 minutes and cake for 25-30 minutes, or until layers spring back when lightly pressed in the center.  Cool caked on wire racks.
To make frosting: With electric mixer, cream together cream cheese and butter until well combined.  Sift in 4 cups confectioners sugar.  Add 3 ounces strawberry puree and mix until well combined.  Add 1 cup (or however much it takes) confectioners sugar in 1/4 cup increments until you reach the desired consistency.  Frosting will be soft; refrigerate cupcakes once frosting is piped on.

Amy's Notes:
I made half of these as mini cupcakes and half as a nine inch round cake for cake pops.  The cake was very good but the frosting is the winner of these cupcakes.  The strawberry puree in the cream cheese buttercream frosting was awesome.  I did add quite a bite more confectioners sugar than I normally do for my frosting to get a good piping consistency, but the extra confectioners sugar did not take away from the taste at all!  It was really good.  I will admit that I was pretty proud of the frosting.  I took the idea of strawberry puree from one recipe and adapted it to the recipe I always use and I will definitely do it again, probably with other fruit too!  The cake pops were good too.  I realized I need to get a few versatile types of sprinkles for cake pops.  I had already used everything that I had on hand except for the orange ones I ended up using that I happened to buy the day before because they were $1.  Overall, cupcake and cake pops success and sprinkles on my grocery list.

Half for cupcakes...

Half for cake pops.

Lookin' good, cupcake!



Tried a new frosting style.  Need to perfect.
(Look at the flecks of strawberry in the cake and icing!)



Look at the color of that cake!

Crumbled and awaiting icing for my cake pops

The orange sugar coating is festive for fall, but not color coordinating with the pink cake!

Tried a few sprinkle options before settling on the orange.  This looked too much like Christmas for me.