Nuts & Bolts & Cupcakes

Wow guys, I really suck at this. Sorry I haven't posted in basically a year (1 month, 5 days to be exact). So to get you up to speed- I've been in South Dakota for the month doing a rotation with Indian Health Services in Ft. Thompson. I absolutely loved it! But I am 15 hours from home and I've really missed KC. But today is the last day here then I'm heading home! So it'll take me a couple days but still. In honor of finally seeing KC again here are some cupcakes I made for him ages ago.

When I came across the nuts and bolts candy mold on amazon I knew I had to have it. KC works for Fastenal so nuts and bolts are his daily life. When doing these cupcakes, I tried to stick with Fastenal's colors as well as I could and still make them in KC's favorite flavor, mint chocolate.

First for the nuts, bolts, and letters I melted white chocolate melts with a little bit of black chocolate melts to get a light gray color. I painted the inside of the molds with the gray chocolate. It looked best with two coats of chocolate. After letting that set I filled the molds the rest of the way with milk chocolate. Once the chocolates were completely set, I painted them with pearl dust. To do this I mixed a few drops of vodka with the pearl dust to get a paint consistency then painted it onto the chocolate. Don't worry, the vodka evaporates! (I think)

The cupcakes-
Pretty boring this time chocolate cake mix, couple drops of mint flavoring. End of story.

The filling-
1 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup marshmallow cream
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk
creme de menthe flavoring oil to taste

Melt chocolate chips and mix with marshmallow cream and condensed milk. Add creme de menthe oil as desired. After the cupcakes cool completely, core them and spoon in this filling. Save about 1/2 cup for the frosting.

The frosting-
remaining filling
1/2 cup shortening
1-2 tbsp milk
creme de menthe flavoring oil to taste
powdered sugar

Mix it all up to the desired consistency and frost those babies!

-Happy Baking!

Cherry Mash Cupcakes

Guys, I'm obviously the worst blogger ever. It's been a crazy couple weeks..ER visits, shigellosis (love that the wiki page for that says not to be confused with shingles. Trust me, no confusion there). Oh and bugs. Bedbugs to be exact. So yeah...the worst part is this post was all ready to go and I couldn't even click one button to make it live. Forgive me?

Anyway, on to more appropriate topics. My mom and my sister both love the cherry mash candy. I'm talking they put one in the fridge and anybody who values their life won't touch it. I like them too, but I never get to have any :( Nah, I'm joking. Mom buys them for me too. It may be that cherry mash just isn't that popular of a candy (outside of my family) but I've never seen them featured in any recipe. So here we go!

For the cake:
1 box chocolate cake mix, prepared per box directions (sub milk for water)
1 drop of cherry flavoring oil
      Seriously, this stuff is strong and you don't want too much!

For the cherry mash fudge filling:
1 cup cherry chips
1/2 cup marshmallow cream
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk

Melt the cherry chips in the microwave. I found that they didn't melt well until I added the sweetened condensed milk. Stir in the marshmallow cream. This will stay un-set at room temp. I suggest letting your cupcakes cool *completely* before filling them. I did not and most of my filling melted into the cupcake. Core your cupcakes and add the filling. Save about 1/2 cup to start your frosting.

For the frosting:
fudge filling from above
1 cup shortening
1-2 tbsp milk
1 drop cherry flavoring oil
1 cherry mash candy, melted
powdered sugar

Mix the first 4 ingredients then add the melted cherry mash. Add powdered sugar until you reach the desired consistency/flavor.

                             source: Wikipedia

I stupidly forgot my frosting gun but I had tips so I decided to use a ziplock bag for a frosting bag. That worked well for 1.5 cupcakes before the bag split down the side :( So here is my one prettily frosted one.

-Happy Baking!

Graduation Cupcakes

Yesterday was my first day of my last year of school EVER! So it was a pretty exciting day. But it also means that I won't be able to do a lot of cupcake baking, especially over the next two months since I'm living in hotels for the time being. I've got a couple things to post about during that time, but I need you guys to tell me what you want to see. I've got a stovetop and a microwave, so it's going to take some creativity :)

For today's post though, I've got some cupcakes I made for my little brother's graduation a couple weeks ago. Congratulations Eddie!

He wanted sour cupcakes, like the sour patch kids type candy. I went with a white cake and totally cheated and bought pre-made, colored buttercream. I did make my own sour sugar (does that even make sense?) with citric acid and colored sugar. I also colored my own sugar, because I didn't feel like driving to Hobby Lobby. Plus, money. So my process on this- Pour 1/2 cup sugar in a ziplock bag. Add some red food coloring. Shake it up. Add 1-2 tsp citric acid. Shake it up. I just tasted and added until it was sour enough. It doesn't take much!

This was probably the most basic cupcake I've made in a while. I focused more on decoration for this one. I used a white cake mix, prepared per box instructions (sub milk for water). And as I mentioned I bought the frosting.

I found a neat decorating bag set a while back and decided this would be the perfect time to use it. Each bag has a divider in the center so you can do two colors simultaneously. Since our high school's colors are red and white the contrast worked well for the frosting.

I also used some sour candy pieces on top of some of the cupcakes.

I hope you guys will give me some ideas of what you'd like to see while I'm not able to bake.

-Happy baking!

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

I'd promised some friends strawberry cupcakes a looong time ago. Just plain strawberry cupcakes sounded a bit boring for my taste though so I decided to turn this into a cheesecake deal. Not in that it is actually cheesecake, but the frosting is cheescake-y.

I love, love, love these frozen strawberries in syrup. I use them all the time- waffles, cupcakes, toast, even frosting. I got them at Kroger, but I'm pretty sure you can find them in any grocery store.

So here's the deal. Boxed cake. Strawberries. Done.
Cake:
1 box golden vanilla cake mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
*1 cup strawberry milk
frozen strawberries- let them thaw. Your life will be much easier. I did not.

*For the strawberry milk- I poured up about 1/8 cup of the syrup from the frozen strawberries and added milk to get 1 cup.

I mixed the cake with the liquids. I mixed by hand because I the cake turns out much better because I'm too lazy to clean the beaters twice. Then I stirred in a few spoonfuls of strawberries. I'd tell you how much but mine were still pretty frozen so I just stirred a little in. Feel free to add a lot for more strawberryness.
Threw them in the oven at 350 for... about that long (sorry, somebody buy me a kitchen timer).

Frosting:
1 tub of Strawberry cream cheese
1 stick butter
3 tbsp syrup from the frozen strawberries
Powdered sugar to reach desired consistency
Add strawberry pieces to taste

I did a really thin frosting and spooned it on, but go ahead and add more powdered sugar if you want to pipe on some pretty frosting.

Use a cupcake corer (or a knife) to core the cupcakes. Fill the resulting hole with strawberries, then cover with frosting. Top with a sliced strawberry.

-Happy Baking!

Biscoff Cupcakes

Have you tried this Biscoff spread I've been seeing everywhere? I've seen a lot of recipes on pinterest that call for it so I decided to get some. It's pretty tasty. I also got some of the Biscoff cookies, and they remind me of something but I can't figure out what...

So Biscoff cupcakes. You're probably going to want to buy two jars because you'll use pretty much all of one for these cupcakes and the frosting.

For the cupcakes:
1 box butter yellow cake mix
6 tbsp butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Biscoff spread

Heat the butter and water in a microwave safe bowl until it bubbles. Stir in the Biscoff. Mix until smooth, heat for about 30 more seconds if needed. Now mix in the rest of the cake ingredients. Fill cupcake liners (no more than half full) and bake at 350 until golden brown. This batter was really thick so I got my liners a bit too full. Luckily the cupcakes fell in the center when I pulled them out of the oven, making the perfect cavity for the topping.

For the topping:
1/2 stick butter
2 tbsp milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup Biscoff spread
powdered sugar

Melt the butter, milk, and brown sugar and stir well. Mix in the Biscoff then add powdered sugar until you reach a thick, but pourable consistency. Go slowly, it doesn't take much.

-Happy Baking!

Mashup of Past Projects

So, it's finals time. And it's not exactly my idea of fun. I've decided to just save a little time and put together a post with some of the cupcakes I've made in the past.  I won't go into details about many of them but if you see something you're interested in, let me know and I'll try to work it into a real post.

First up, these mermaid cupcakes that a made for a sweet little girl's birthday. All the decorations are handmade from fondant, and the frosting is blue buttercream. I don't remember if it was bubblegum or cotton candy flavored.

Also these were pretty popular. So much so that I actually made them twice in a few weeks. It's a chocolate chip cookie with a peanut butter cup on top, all covered by a brownie.

This was one of my first cupcake baking experiences. It did not go real well, but they were edible and looked nice enough. I wasn't real big on the flavor. They are decorated with conversation hearts and have a heart baked into them.

Lastly in this mashup is one of my favorite spur of the moment creations. When making the second batch of cookie-peanut-butter-cup-brownies above, I had some of the brownie batter left over. So I made some brownie bottom white almond cupcakes. They were delicious! And I don't even remember what kind of frosting I made for these. Nutella maybe...

As always, let me know if you have anything you'd like to see me bake. 

Happy Baking!

Cupcake Cones

So I know it's been a while since my last post. All I can say is this- Life. Life happens and gets in the way sometimes. I've been busy with school and work, not to mention the little free time I had was spent doing absolutely nothing. I've had a hard time finding my motivation for anything lately. However, this past weekend I got my niece Rosie and brought her to stay with me for a couple days. We had a full two days of fun, part of which included making cupcakes.

I decided to try the cupcakes in ice cream cones that I've seen so often. It seemed fairly simple and I knew Rosie would like them. I went the total cheater route on these! Boxed cake exactly per box instructions and canned chocolate frosting. I did add blue Wilton colorburst batter bits to the cake. And of course we put sprinkles on top! A couple of them turned out well and we were able to add frosting so that it actually looked like ice cream in a cone. The rest of them though, not so much. I forgot to take a picture of them because I was so wrapped up trying to keep frosting off my floor :) The cake baked up well on one side of the cones, but poured out the other side. It was pretty sad. But still, I let Rosie frost them herself and take them home with her.

She managed to get frosting pretty much everywhere! But it was worth it. I enjoyed having her here and she was already talking about what she wanted to do next time she comes. So now I'll try to get back into the routine and start posting regularly again.

Happy Baking!