Key Lime Cupcakes

I'm like a boutique cupcakery without the boutique :) These were made specially for my sister-in-law's birthday and I took them to her at work as a surprise. I was really happy to have given my best cupcakes ever as a gift to someone special. So... I'm usually pretty humble about my cupcaking, but not about these because not only did they taste amazing, but they were really darned cute too. I came up with the decorating idea all on my own and they turned out even cuter than I thought they would which is unheard of for me. I'm not an artsy kind either, so trying to work with fondant for the first time was a little frightening to say the least (if you aren't making the fondant limes, the cupcakes still look super cute without them. Just skip to the bottom for the recipe and how to decorate). Which is why I bought pre-made fondant. I wanted to make sure I could make something that looked alright and if it was worth it to pursue... and yes, it was. So once I use up all of my premade fondant, I'm going to start making some marshmallow fondant. But for these, I used the Wilton pre-colored fondant (I made the fondant decorations the night before I made the cupcakes):

Aaaaaannnnnnndddddd nut cups!! I've been wanting to make cupcakes in nut cups for so long and I finally did it!! More about that later... here are some pics of my fondant work:

This was the fondant I used. Notice how dark it is before kneading...

And this is the fondant after I kneaded the crap out of it. It's slightly lighter than it was straight out of the package. And I have a few sore muscles from kneading it because it was a little tough to knead at first, but it really wasn't that bad at all. I also realized that I really need to get a fondant mat because kneading this on wax paper was really not a good idea. BUT, I didn't want to dye my beige countertops green so I had to improvise and use the wax paper. Hubby and I just ordered a new kitchen island with a granite counterop so I'm going to try to knead some fondant directly on that to see if it works. With the leftover fondant, I experimented with combining colors and dying it with icing color gel so I now feel more comfortable making my own fondant and coloring it.
To make the fondant limes, I rolled out the fondant and used the measuring cup from a bottle of medicine (thoroughly washed, of course) and cut out little circles of the dark green fondant. Since there are so many things in a typical household that can cut out a circle, I don't see the point of buying circle fondant cutters. Anyways, I cut each dark green circle in half and set them off to the side. I then took the bottom of the measuring cup to cut out slightly smaller circles from the light green fondant. I then cut each of those circles into triangles of varying sizes- about four or six triangles per circle.

To assemble the fondant pieces, all you have to do is brush the pieces that you are going to bond together with a little bit of water, gently press them together, and let them dry. However, I realized that I didn't have a brush! While debating about how to go about doing this, I dug into my makeup bag and found a little brush that came in an eyeshadow compact that I never used. After confirming it was completely clean, it officially shed its title of eyeshadow brush and earned the title of "fondant brush." Here it is, in all its glory:

I then assembled the "limes"

I scored the light green wedges with the back (non-sharp) edge of a paring knife (which is what I used to cut the circles into the wedges) in the center of each triangle as an afterthought and I think they made them look a little more realistic. So that, my friends, is how you make fondant wedges Shortcakes style.

Now for the key lime cakes. I used a recipe I found on Cook Eat Share:
Ingredients: (makes about 16 cupcakes)
1 3/4 cup cake flour*
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 tbsp key lime juice*
1 tbsp key lime zest*
green food coloring
3/4 cup buttermilk*
1/2 tsp vanilla extract*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt three times and set aside. Beat butter until smooth and creamy, then add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating in between to combine. Add lime juice, lime zest, food coloring, and vanilla extract and beat until combined(mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture and buttermilk in the following order: 1/3 of the flour mixture, 1/2 of the buttermilk, 1/3 of the flour mixture, rest of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour mixture. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean. I used nut cups instead of cupcake liners, which made them look extra cute, but they were also a little difficult to open. However, these cupcakes, being a little higher in sugar content than the average cupcake, shrunk a little bit. So the nut cups were perfect because they held their own shape. So when the cupcakes shrunk, there was no issue with wrappers peeling away from the cake. So even though they're tough to open, I'll use them again in the future for cupcakes that will probably shrink.

*I didn't have cake flour on hand and was shocked to find that my local Publix doesn't carry any. BUT, I made my own by mixing all purpose flour and corn starch. Since the recipe called for 1 3/4 cup of cake flour, I did the following: put 2 tbsp corn starch in the bottom of a one cup measuring cup, then filled the rest of the measuring cup with flour. Then, I put one tbsp of corn starch in the bottom of a 1/2 cup measuring cup, and filled the rest with flour. Another 1/2 tbsp of corn starch in a 1/4 cup measuring cup and filled the rest with flour. And voila! Cake flour substitute.
*I also probably used a little more than 2 1/2 tbsp of key lime juice. I added maybe another 1-2 tsp of it but I didn't measure.
*I don't know exactly how much lime zest I used, and it wasn't key lime zest but just persian lime zest. I zested one lime and added that into the batter without measuring to see how much I actually had. When it comes to an ingredient like this that won't affect the chemistry of the cupcake and affect the texture, you don't have to be super exact with the measurements.
*We all know I'm obsessed with using sour cream in a cupcake but for once I resisted temptation. I haven't ever used buttermilk in anything before, but I will definitely use it in a cupcake again. It was almost like milk and sour cream mixed together, which is typically what I use in my cupcakes. However, my local grocery store only sells buttermilk in a quart size bottle and I can't see wasting that much buttermilk each time I bake, so it won't be a common fixture for my recipes. But, I did use some of the buttermilk tonight to make some Irish Soda Bread and it was perfect :)
* The original recipe didn't call for vanilla extract but I thought it would be a good addition to smooth out the flavor. It was probably a really good idea because they tasted wonderful.

It's best with these to not fill them too full. The ones that were filled a little more full didn't rise much and spilled over a bit.
For the key lime cream cheese frosting:
I used a recipe I found on open source cupcakes but tweaked it a tiny bit:

Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
8 oz cream cheese
2 tbsp key lime juice*
1 tsp lime zest*
4-5 cups confectioner's sugar (about a one pound box)
Yellow and Blue icing color gel

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth (but don't overbeat!). Add the lime juice and lime zest and beat until combined. Add the confectioner's sugar about a cup at a time and beat slowly until desired consistency is reached.

*I used probably about 3 tbsp of lime juice because I felt the flavor wasn't as intense as I wanted it to be. Once again, I didn't measure the amount of lime zest but I used about 1/2 a lime's worth of zest. To color the frosting, I first colored it yellow and then added little bits of blue slowly until it was a very pale yellowish green, just like real key lime pie. Even though I wasn't piping the frosting, I still made it a little stiff so it would sit nicely on top of the cupcakes.

To decorate:
Spoon a dollop of frosting on top of each cupcake and spread evenly. Use the flat back of a butter knife to edge the frosting if the frosting extends too close to the edge of the cupcake.

Crush graham crackers in a small shallow bowl, and press edge of frosting into the crushed graham crackers to look like a pie crust.

They're already cute as is! Then put some of the leftover frosting in a piping bag with a small star tip and pipe a small star into the center of each cupcake. If you aren't using the fondant limes, they still end up looking like mini key lime pies at this point... maybe garnish with a small curl of lime skin or leave as is:

If using fondant limes, place one lime at an angle on the star of frosting and enjoy how cute they look before devouring them...

Devil's Food Cupcakes with Salted Dulce de Leche Frosting

So apparently Shortcakes has gone more international than I ever imagined, so welcome to all of my international readers :) It's cool to think that someone across the world may have made one of my recipes...
This installment: Devil's Food Cupcakes with Salted Dulce de Leche Frosting. AND they're really easy to make!! The inspiration for these actually came from a need to use up some sweetened condensed milk that I mistakenly bought for some homemade fudge when what I really needed was evaporated milk. Doh! These were my "progress cupcakes" because I have been buying some tools I didn't have in the past which made my cupcake baking so much easier (I'll post a little blurb at the end of this post with my experiences with my new stuff). I also feel like I've gotten a much better feel for the process and what goes into a good recipe. AND I made them the weekend of my first round of Clomid pills. So not only am I progressing with my cupcake making, but baby making as well ;) Things are much easier with a little help sometimes...
If you're making the dulce de leche "frosting," skip down to the recipe for that and start it before you make the cupcakes. You'll need about 4-8 hours for this part (don't be scared! it's super easy to do!) so start it well in advance of the actual cakes.
So for the cakes, I reverted back to the Devil's Food Cupcakes recipe but I decided to tweak it Shortcakes-style. So here's my version of the recipe...

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda and set aside. Pour milk into a bowl with the sour cream and set aside. Beat butter until soft and smooth, add sugar and beat until fluffy (when using sour cream in a cupcake recipe, the more you beat the butter and sugar together, the fluffier the cupcakes will be. Conversely, the less you beat them, the more dense they will be.). Add eggs, one at a time, beating to combine in between. Add vanilla and beat until incorporated. Add the dry and wet ingredients in the following order, beating until just combined in between each addition: one third of the flour mixture, then one half of the milk/sour cream mixture, then another third of the flour mixture, the rest of the milk/sour cream, then the rest of the flour mixture. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake 15-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of cupcakes comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack before frosting.

*I filled them about 3/4 full and they ended up being quite huge. They also spilled over the tops of the liners about halfway through and I thought I had a complete disaster on my hands because, at that point, they were really soupy looking. It gave me terrible flashbacks to my Easy Bake Oven disaster as a child when I (ironically) was making a chocolate cake and accidentally used the tablespoon measure for the water instead of the teaspoon measure. It ended up being a soupy sticky mess, but I learned a valuable lesson about double checking measurements and recipes. So needless to say, when they were spilling over but not firming up, I thought I had ruined a batch of cupcakes for the first time ever. Oh the horror!! But my fears were unwarranted, because they turned out just fine. Big, but fine. And big in this case was no problem because I took most of them to the fire station for hubby and the men/woman of station 22 to feast on. They were firefighter sized :) So here they are pre-"frosting:"

So you can obviously see that they are accidentally jumbo. But it worked out well for the "frosting" in this case because there was more surface area. If they were smaller, I would probably ended up putting on a thicker coating of the dulce de leche, which would have rendered them too dulce-de-leche-ey.

Now for the easiest part: the dulce de leche.

Ingredients:
One to two cans of sweetened condensed milk
Water

There are a few ways to do this. The way I did it was to take the label and the top off the can of milk and cover with tin foil. I then placed the can and tin foil into a crock pot and added water until it reached just below the top of the can. I set the crock pot on high for about four hours (low on eight works is an alternative if you have the time or want to make it overnight), checking occasionally to make sure the water level didn't drop too much. The dangerous part is getting the can out of the crock pot... I used some tongs but didn't have a very good grip, and the can fell into the water, tipped over, and about 1/4 of the dulce de leche was ruined. I thought all of it was ruined, but I was able to salvage 3/4 of it. I made another can after the first one (although you can make two at a time if your crockpot is big enough) because I realized after making the first that I was going to need another to top all of the cupcakes. The second time around, I got a little wiser and removed as much of the water as I could using a measuring glass before lifting the can out with the tongs. I then placed the cans into the refrigerator on top of a towel (because the cans were really hot) to let them cool, although it may be best to let them sit out for a few hours to come to room temperature, I just didn't have that much time.

The other way you can do this is to put the whole can, minus the label but with the lid intact, into the crockpot and fill with water so the can is submerged completely. Cook 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low and remove after the water cools to room temperature. Apparently the can will not explode as long as the water level stays above the can, the can is put into cold or room temperature (not hot) water initially, and you wait to remove the can until the water cools off, but I didn't want to risk having a dulce de leche missile in my kitchen. So I opted for the safer method. It should be noted, however, that the method I used caused the milk to overflow a bit and get into the water, which wasn't very pleasant looking but didn't affect anything.

Once the dulce de leche cooled enough, I spooned it onto the center of the cupcake and spread it. It was still a tiny bit warmer than room temperature so it ended up spreading itself a little bit, but it made for a cute cartooney kind of look. I then topped them with a swirl of chocolate and a dusting of sea salt:

See how they look kind of cartooney? I thought they were cute :) My husband was intent on eating at least two that night, but said they were a little too rich to eat more than one due to the "frosting." However, he doesn't have a big sweet tooth and I think others ate more than one. I had one as well and thought they were darned good. The sea salt was a great touch and I highly recommend it... when I brought the rest into work the next day, I put a sign on them to encourage them to be eaten and I made sure to label them "chocolate cupcakes with dulce de leche and sea salt." I wanted to make sure everyone knew the sea salt was intentional. I was only in the office for a short period of time that day and I didn't see any left the next day, so I guess that means they were all consumed. And hopefully happily at that.

As promised- my new cupcake baking tools/tricks: My stepmother-in-law spoils me, and bought me a new stand mixer for Christmas. Check this baby out:

It really is a fancy piece of machinery and I'm so in love with it. And I finally got myself a sifter. It's such a necessity and I don't know how I lived so long without it. I also invested in a cookie scoop. Or maybe it's an ice cream scoop? I've seen it described both ways... but it's basically one of those scoops that has the handle that you squeeze and this little metal bar scrapes across the scoop to ensure that everything comes out nicely. So I now use that to put the batter into the cupcake liners and it's amazing how much easier and cleaner this process is now. I also purchased another cupcake pan so I can bake more than just twelve at once which saves me a lot of time. So it was a much more pleasant experience this time all the way around...