Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting

Quick baby update: I think I'm starting Clomid next week *bites nails* I would also appreciate it if people would stop telling me that I'll get pregnant when I stop stressing about it. I'm pretty sure I'm not stressing, much like I'm not ovulating as well. Kthanks. Now onto the stars of the blog...
I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!! My original idea for a Christmas flavor was peppermint mocha... mmmmmmm... however, I was going to take them to my parents' house for Christmas Eve and realized that my dad wouldn't go near the "mocha" part. And I wasn't sure if he'd be fond of the peppermint part, nor would my squishy little nieces. So that meant I would have to make some regular chocolate cupcakes and mocha cupcakes, AND two kinds of frosting. Not too big of a deal, except Christmas Eve came really fast and I still hadn't wrapped any of the gifts for the family members. So I forced myself out of bed in the morning and got baking immediately, and wrapped during the downtimes. I was baking/wrapping for about 6 hours straight... I'm very glad I didn't decide to do two flavors of cupcakes :)
Here they are:

Aren't they cute?! The frosting looks quite pink (that's another story, below) but it darkened after a while; exactly as the little jar of icing color said. Prophetic, Wilton. Anywho, here's the recipe (kind of) for the cakes:

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cocoa powder*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt chocolate in a double boiler and allow to cool. Combine dry ingredients, including cocoa powder, in a bowl and set aside. Beat butter until fluffy and add in sugar. Beat butter and sugar extra long to encourage fluffier texture since this recipe calls for sour cream. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until just combined in between adding each egg. Add vanilla and incorporate. Add in melted chocolate chips and beat until well combined. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients and combine. Add 1/3 of wet ingredients (milk and sour cream) and combine. Add another 1/3 of dry ingredients, combine. Add the rest of the milk/sour cream, then the rest of the dry ingredients, beating in between to mix. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake 22 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cupcake comes out clean (or with tiny crumbs).

*The actual recipe I used didn't call for cocoa powder, and it was very lacking in chocolate flavor. I'm not even going to link to the original recipe because it was actually a recipe for Mexican chocolate cupcakes and I tweaked it a bit. The cupcakes were good, just with a very subtle chocolate flavor (not a problem for me! But I don't like false advertising) and my husband referred to them as "really good vanilla cupcakes." I know he was exaggerating because I could definitely taste the chocolate, just not the strong flavor I was looking for. It really bothered me because this was going to be the first time my family has tasted my cupcakes and I didn't want to give them underwhelming ones! They were well received despite the lack of wow factor in the cakes.

On to the frosting: this is the first time I've made two flavors at once and it was just as easy as I thought. I just started off with a basic buttercream recipe and divided it in half:

4 1/2 to 5 cups confectioner's sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter
milk*
1 tsp vanilla extract

I've gotten to the point with my frostings that I don't measure the amount of milk I use. I figure about 4-5 cups of confectioner's sugar with 3/4 cup of butter is enough to pipe about 24 cupcakes. Some recipes tell you to add the confectioner's sugar last, but there's no reason to. I just beat the butter until fluffy, add the sugar, then the extract, then the milk until  it reaches the consistency I want. But either way- sugar first or milk first- it comes out the same.

Peppermint Buttercream Frosting:
I then took half of the frosting out of the bowl and added 3/4 tsp of peppermint extract. I then took half of that and added some red icing color. I put some of the red (ok, not really red... more like pink) frosting on one side of my piping bag, and the white on the other side and began piping. It was a disaster. The "red" was way too light and it ended up looking more easter-ish than Christmas-y. Grrrr.... so much for my visions of candy cane striped frosting. So I just combined it all into a bowl and added more red icing color. Actually, a lot more red icing color, until I threw up my hands in defeat and accepted that I was just going to have pink Christmas cupcakes. I figured that adding more red color was going to cause everyone's teeth to be stained and I just didn't want to keep adding color all day. Luckily, it darkened up after a little while. I topped them with some crushed candy canes and a mini candy cane in the top:

See how they darkened up? Now onto the chocolate half...

Chocolate Buttercream Icing:
(Alright, I don't have much of a recipe for this) start off with the basic buttercream above, but add an unspecified amount of cocoa powder. I didn't measure, I just added and tasted until it seemed and looked right. To decorate these, I made some little chocolate swirls and Christmas trees and sprinkled them with some green and red nonpareils for added Christmas effect. Here's a photo of my mess:

And here are the chocolate babies, post decorations:

Pomegranate Green Tea Cupcakes

These were quite sophisticated ;o)

Yes, this picture has been "shopped." And very novice-ly at that... I took the pictures of these cupcakes in the flourescent lighting of my kitchen and the colors were just very off. So I flexed my amateur photoshop muscles and present to you my shopped photos. Please don't make fun- I'm really a horrible photographer and even worse photoshopper... kthanks.

I read a lot about matcha powder in cupcakes and immediately put it on my "must have" list of ingredients. I really had to try my best not to use all of the matcha powder for tea and save some for baking- this tea is beyond words. Especially right before a hefty 90 minute yoga routine... sends me into a state of bliss similar to cupcake baking :) Anyways, I sunk $20 into this little tin of wonder at the local Teavana after much searching. I went into a few "tea stores" and people looked at me like I had three heads, and one with three eyes, when I asked for Matcha or green tea powder. So when I finally found it, $20 didn't seem unreasonable for what seemed to be this powder made of dreams. So worth it. I actually had this sitting around for some time before I finally made cupcakes with it because I kept having actual reasons to bake (or people to bake for) and I figured these wouldn't be the kind of cupcakes that everyone would like. Overall, I really liked them. The texture of the cakes was light and fluffy and I loved the balance of the sweet cake and the earthy but tangy frosting. My coworkers graciously stated that they liked them even after I warned them that the matcha wasn't a flavor for everyone.

So I hunkered down and searched for recipes. Most of what I found was matcha cupcakes with pomegranate frosting, but I really wanted to do it the other way around. So I used this recipe from Pandas and Cupcakes with one minor change:

Pomegranate Cupcakes
2 cups All Purpose Flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter (3/4 cup)
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract*
1/4 cup milk
1 cup POM Wonderful pomegranate juice
Seeds from one pomegranate
(something I thought would be good to add after I made them: a tablespoon of lemon zest..something I shall try next time!)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl, set aside.
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add vanilla extract and milk, plus half the flour mixture. Mix together until combined. Add the pomegranate juice and other half of the flour mixture, mix together until combined.
Pour batter into prepared cupcake pan (or whatever you prefer using). Add 5-8 pomegranate seeds to top of batter. Bake in oven for 22 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.

*In the original blog, it was mentioned that some lemon zest would be a good addition, so I added about a teaspoon of lemon extract since I didn't have a lemon on hand. I took a ton of photos of the process because the colors were so vibrant. And I also chugged the remaining pomegranate juice. I could suck down straight Pom Wonderful all day and never get sick of it...

This is the Matcha I used... according to the guy at Teavana, it's the highest quality stuff you can get in the US. Kinda of made it seem like an illegal transaction when he put it that way.

These are the cupcakes post-oven and before they started shrinking (remember, higher sugar content, which in this case came from the pomegranate juice, causes shrinkage).

I also made some minis since I had these awesome liners in such a vibrant color. They actually ended up looking great with the green frosting.

You can see in the background that some of them got a little brown on me (although they weren't as brown in real life- they just look worse in this pic due to some of my photoshopping. I failed to realize for the first batch that I should have reduced the temperature to 325 and baked longer since there was a higher sugar content in them, but I fixed the issue for the subsequent batches.

On to the frosting... I used a recipe that I found Here

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1/4 cup or 1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted (more if needed)

2 tbsn. matcha powder

combine the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until smooth. Turn the mixer on low and add the powdered sugar, vanilla and matcha. Add more powdered sugar if needed until you get the right consistency. Beat on high until light and fluffy and everything is well incorporated. Frost the cupcakes when cooled completely.

*I was really hesitant to use 2 tbsp of matcha, and not just because that was the equivalent of like $8 worth of powder. I was worried that it would be a little overpowering and not everyone would enjoy matcha as much as I do. So I started off with 1 tbsp and ended up using around 2, because 1 barely had any matcha flavor to it at all.

I happened to be wearing a matcha-esque shirt, and my frosting came out to be almost exactly the same color :)

My frosted full-size ones. The frosting was a little on the thin side, possibly because of the extra beating to incorporate the few additions of matcha until I was happy with the flavor. So I decided to get creative and play with the piping. They didn't turn out as cute as I had hoped, but not terrible nonetheless.

These were the minis. I took them to the State Attorneys office since I had a trial and needed to find a home for these. Never heard back if they liked them or not, but they didn't die so I guess that's a good sign?

In conclusion: I need a nice camera. I mean, the one we have is new, and nice. But I need like a really nice one that takes good shots instead of this silly point-and-shoot. Or I need someone to show me how to make this point-and-shoot into something that takes better looking pictures. I also need to brush up on some photoshop techniques... but I liked these cupcakes. They were very... cleansing. Which is fitting since the pomegranate and matcha components contained super antioxidants. I made them at a time when I was strongly considering purging some toxic "friends" from my life and moving on. I ended up doing just that, and I feel great now. Much like I did after enjoying one of these lil treats :)

Brownie Cupcakes- Mummy Style

My husband's best friend had a Halloween party so I decided to make some Halloween cupcakes. My intentions were to get some cute Halloween wrappers and sprinkles or something generic like that, but then I figured I'd go all out and try my hand at some special decorating. I toyed with the idea of making a Reese's style cuppie, but decided on making some brownie cupcakes frosted to look like mummies:

Ugh, so cute! I was pleased with how they turned out- I got the idea off the interwebs and was worried that I wouldn't be able to replicate them, but it was much easier than I anticipated to make them turn out right. I also like the hazy effect in this photo created by the immense amount of fog in my friend's house for festive effect.
I used Martha's brownie cupcakes recipe, but I think I doubled it because there were supposed to be a lot of people. Here's the original recipe though, that should make about 18:

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 11 ounces best-quality semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, (optional)
• Nonstick cooking spray

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-count muffin tin with cupcake liners, and spray generously with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
2. In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and 8 ounces of chocolate. Stir until smooth. Remove from heat, and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Add flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Stir in the melted chocolate until combined. Stir in remaining 3 ounces of chocolate and nuts if desired.
4. Using a 2-ounce ice cream scoop, fill cupcake liners 3/4 full with batter. Bake until a firm crust forms on the cupcakes, about 20 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool, about 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan, and continue to cool on a wire rack.

Read more at Marthastewart.com: Brownie Cupcakes - Martha Stewart Recipes

*I did as the recipe said and sprayed the crap out of the liners with non-stick spray and I'm glad I did, although they felt a little greasy on the bottoms. I knew they were going to crack on the tops but I figured it would be a good effect for the mummy-look I was going for. I topped them with some basic buttercream frosting. Must I post the recipe? *sigh* ok... I think I made about the amount of half of a box of confectioner's sugar because I knew I wasn't going to need a whole lot. I actually just added unmeasured ingredients until it reached the consistency I wanted, because it's really hard to screw up a basic buttercream. But here's a recipe for those that want it:

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 1/2- 2 cups confectioner's sugar

1/2 teaspoon milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch salt

Beat butter with milk, and extract until blended. Add sugar in batches until it reaches desired consistency.

To decorate, I used my circular piping tip and un-colored frosting in a criss-cross fashion to make the little bandages. Once I finished all of those, I tinted the frosting yellow and used the same tip to pipe on the eyeballs, then topped each eyeball with a black sixlet. This kind of decoration worked perfectly because I wasn't too fond of the idea of a heavily-frosted brownie. I felt it needed to be a decorated brownie, not a frosted one.

The results? They tasted like brownies and people liked them. I think they were winners, and some people went back for seconds. I add this in the "win" column :)

These cupcakes inspired me to make some homemade brownies a few weeks later. But I didn't like the way they turned out as much as I liked the cupcake version (used a different recipe). They ended up being more cakey than my liking, and I prefer my brownies to be fudgey. Yes, I like brownies. It's on my list of the few chocolate things I actually enjoy.

OMG White Chocolate Rasberry Cupcakes

I learned my lesson about not saving my recipes/taking notes/taking pictures. I THINK this is the last installment of picture-less cupcakes. It's probably for the best in this case: I made these to take to some of my best friends for a get together at someone's house and ended up rushing at the last minute to finish them. So they weren't my most shining work in the decorating department. I was also a bit apprehensive because one of my friends has baked the hell out of some desserts in the past, including some ridiculously good cupcakes and even a lemon cake with rasberry curd. Delightful. I was worried that these weren't going to be up to par, but I think they were worthy :) Here's the lemon cupcakes again to look at:

My OMG White Chocolate Rasberry cupcakes looked somewhat similar to these, except the frosting on top wasn't quite as... tall I guess... and had some rasberry preserves piped into the center of the frosting. Next time, I'll experiment a bit with a two-tone double flavor frosting. Probably half white chocolate and half rasberry cream cheese. Once again, I am obsessed with cream cheese frostings in any form. If someone starts a cream cheese frosting anonymous group, I won't attend. Because I'm definitely not breaking the habit until I go down in a blaze of cream cheese overdose glory.
SO. Here's the recipe I used for the cakes, courtesy of Baking Bites:

White Chocolate Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
4-oz white chocolate, chopped
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup plus 1 tbsp milk (low fat is fine)

Preheat oven to 325F.* Line muffin pans with 18 cupcake liners.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a small, microwave-safe bowl, melt the chopped white chocolate by heating it in 30 second intervals in the microwave. Stir well with a fork between each interval and cook only until the chocolate is smooth when stirred.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by melted white chocolate and vanilla extract. Working in two or three additions, alternate adding in some of the milk and some of the flour mixture, ending with a final addition of flour. Mix until just incorporated and no streaks of flour remain.
Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups.
Bake at 325F for 20-23 minutes until a tester comes out clean and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a fingertip.
Cool on a wire rack.

*I read through the entire posting about these cakes on the Baking Bites website and learned a valuable tip that I am going to use in the future. White chocolate, according to Baking Bites, contains more sugar so it browns quicker. Thus, these cakes are baked at a lower temperature for a little bit longer. I'm going to use this next time I make the Amy Sedaris Vanilla cupcakes since they browned both times I've baked them.
 Anyways, my little blanco chocolate cakes shrunk like crazy after they cooled. I had one other flavor do this to me (my infamous Drunken Cupcakes) and I wasn't really sure why. Being the smarty-pants that I am, I figured it had something to do with the high sugar content since that was the only link between these and the cosmo cupcakes. And alas! I was right :) Higher sugar content in cupcakes will cause them to shrink upon cooling. As for a remedy- idk.

After baking, I filled them with seedless rasberry preserves- straight from the jar. It made a terrible mess, but it was so worth it. I wanted to try to use my Wilton filling tip that I have, but it didn't work out so well so I used the tried-and-true method of cutting out a cone of cake with a paring knife, filling with preserves, and replacing the removed cone of cake. Now, the cake on this one was very sticky which added to the mess. But the texture was great to eat. Just not fun to get all over your hands in combination with preserves.

I topped them with some white chocolate cream cheese frosting from the same site and the same post:

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
4-oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1-oz white chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp milk or cream
2-3 cups confectioners’ sugar

In a large mixing bowl, cream together cream cheese, butter and melted white chocolate. Beat in vanilla and milk, then add in the confectioners’ sugar gradually until the frosting reaches your desired consistency (make it a bit stiffer if you wish to pipe it onto the cupcakes instead of spreading it with a knife).
Spread frosting onto cupcakes with a knife, or transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a wide tip and pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

I'm pretty sure this is the recipe I used but I'm not positive. If this is the one I used, I doubled it and it was still barely enough frosting so I couldn't pipe it all pretty even if I had enough time. It took a bit for the chocolate to combine well with everything else because of the consistency (I used Ghirardelli baking chocolate) and I was sweating it out for a moment, thinking I completely screwed up the frosting and had no time left to come up with an alternative. But it worked out, whew. I think the cream cheese in this case served to balance out some of the sweetness of the white chocolate. After spooning it on the cakes, I basically injected the center with some of the preserves for an added burst of flavor. These were delicious and one of my favorite flavor combos ever.

My parents have requested some cupcakes for Christmas Eve (my first Christmas since the year hubby and I met that we get to spend Christmas Eve AND Christmas day together!!!! Hooray!!) so I figured I would make some peppermint mocha ones. I'll have to make two separate batches for once because my dad doesn't like coffee and my mom isn't much of a fan. So I'll make one chocolate batch of cakes and one mocha batch (half each). I think I'll tweak the recipe I used for my pomegranate matcha cupcakes (blog entry to follow) because there was a higher liquid content (which I will take into account for the added coffee) and the texture was quite nice. Maybe too airy for these: I feel like they need to be dense and rich. I'm going to top these suckers with some delicious white chocolate peppermint frosting and garnish with some candy canes, crushed starlights, or whatever else I figure out. These will be easy to decorate :) I also saw an idea to stick a York peppermint patty in each cupcake before baking. It sounds like a hell of a mess to eat, though. But I'll be sure to record my recipe AND take photos. Promise!! My mouth is watering now...

Fancy Pants Tiramisu Cupcakes

Oh yea. These were ultimate. We have a local town that has a strong Greek population and the downtown area, which is lovely and right on the water, has some fantastic restaurants. I got some tiramisu from a bakery and it was absolutely heavenly. I thought, "I MUST make this into a cupcake."
It's definitely been done before, so I'm not a cupcake pioneer on this one. I adapted a Martha Stewart recipe to suit my needs.

For the cakes, I used the Amy Sedaris Vanilla cupcake recipe:

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, two teaspoons vanilla, salt and baking powder. Add flour and milk in batches, starting and ending with flour. Stir until batter is smooth and satiny.
3. Fill paper-lined muffin tins with batter. Bake at 375° for 18- 20 minutes.

*I remembered that the cupcakes came out a little well-done when I used this recipe before, but I thought that was a good thing since I'd be soaking them. Otherwise, I would probably reduce the temp to about 350 if just making the cakes and not soaking them.

I LOVE these wrappers! I snatched them up at Joann Fabrics during a trip with my mom. They ended up being perfect for these cupcakes in a way I hadn't anticipated after I frosted (well, more like topped) them. But you can see how the edges are a little browned and you can tell they are well-done by the color coming through the wrapper...

For the soak:

I used a variation of the coffee-marsala soak that Martha's recipe calls for. I have marsala wine, but the cooking kind, so it has a higher salt content which is less than desireable with cupcakes. So I just brewed the crap out of the boldest coffee I could find in a small amount (no longer a coffee drinker because I'm very sensitive to caffeine). I then added some rum and french vanilla Kahlua and boiled it to reduce it a little. I didn't want it to be too thick because I wanted it to soak instead of glaze, but not too thin so the cakes didn't get really soggy. I wanted the soak to penetrate pretty far into the cupcakes too so I had to get creative with my soaking. I started by poking holes with a toothpick. I also have a filling tip that I used by poking it into parts of the cupcake and spooning the liquid into the tip (no bag necessary) until it soaked all the way in. Worked out pretty well because I didn't want to just spoon endless amounts of liquid on top of the cupcakes and have the whole top be soggy. I just wanted little sections of infused cake. I forgot to take a post-soak picture though :(   But if you look at the top picture, you can see the darker portion of the cake towards the right of it- that's the coffee soak.

For the frosting/topping, I used Martha's recipe:

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces mascarpone cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted

With an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk heavy cream until stiff peaks form (be careful not to overbeat, or cream will be grainy). In another bowl, whisk together mascarpone and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Gently fold whipped cream into mascarpone mixture until completely incorporated. Use immediately.

Read more at Marthastewart.com: Mascarpone Frosting - Martha Stewart Recipes

*This was actually my first attempt at whipping cream and it was scarier than I thought. I wasn't quite sure what "stiff peaks" would look like and I was scared of overbeating, but I may have overbeat it. I think I may just take some heavy cream one day and experiment with whipping it until I get a good feel for the process and what it really looks like when it's overbeaten. Anyways, I don't have a sifter (going on my xmas list for sure) so I just used the sugar from the box. That was probably why it turned out the way it did- not smooth and creamy like the way it looks in Martha's picture. It was a little thinner, and I don't want to say it was chunky or globby because the texture wasn't bad, it just wasn't smooth like in the picture. Didn't matter though, because it was super tasty. I dusted the top with the mandatory cocoa powder. Overall, the flavors meshed really well and tasted just like a cake-heavy tiramisu. I brought them in for a training at work and everyone liked them :)

You can see in this picture that the frosting/topping isn't as smooth as Martha's. No biggie, though. Next time I'll just be sure to sift the powdered sugar. But you can see how the fancy wrappers came in handy because they held the frosting on well since it was a little on the thin side (thinner than a piped buttercream for sure).