st patricks day cupcakes

I know they’re quite a bit late, but here are a few photos of the vanilla lemon cupcakes and irish car bomb cupcakes I made for st patricks day. I was finally able to get them off of my camera and convert them.

PBR can cake

So I had a lot of fun making the PBR cake.

I ended up baking a couple sheet cakes and just sculpting the can instead of buying a handful of small cake pans that I would never use again. it was a lot of work and there were a lot of scraps but i made extra frosting so the scraps were happily eaten by my family and some co-workers. 😉

I didn’t end up getting and good pictures of the cake since I was in such a hurry to finish and the lighting at the bar was terrible but I did get one good photo of the birthday boy, Neil, demonstrating how he’d drink it if it were actually full of PBR. 🙂

Neil showing off the cake

Sadly the frosting ended up getting a bit melty and the cake acquired a few smudges due to everybody passing it around and gawking at it. By the time Neil got the cake home it had sank quite a bit as well and you could see the straws I used for supports starting to peek through the top. Oh well. it was fun to make and people seemed pretty impressed and amused so I’d do it again!

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Busy weekend ahead

So this weekend I have one PBR can cake to make for my boyfriends birthday and two berry lemon  cheesecakes to make for easter brunch and the grandparents’.

…and it’s already friday

…and I work until 9pm.

YUCK!

So the game plan is to bake and assemble the cake, dirty frost it, then give it a quick freeze to seal the crumb coat and drive that baby over to Rockabilly Mikes house where he will help me finish up and then, thankfully, store the cake until Saturday night. Saturday morning and evening will be filled with cheesecakes and putting any finishing touches on the PBR cake.

I’m going to be exhausted!

Hopefully I can get some good photos out of it all though as it should be pretty entertaining. Speaking of photos, I have some really great ones of my St. Patricks day cupcakes, however my boyfriend was the last person to use my camera before I took the cupcake photos and he had set it to shoot in raw and I didn’t notice which means I can’t get the photos off the camera and have to wait for him to do it.  sad! so hopefully soon. until then, here’s a blurry, poorly lit one from my cell phone. hah

The cupcakes on top are my Irish car bomb cupcakes. Chocolate stout cake with Irish cream frosting.  This batch is frosted with Bailey’s cream cheese frosting, but I’ve also done (and the original recipe calls for) Bailey’s buttercream.

The cupcakes on the bottom are a vanilla cake that I dyed green and are topped with a lemon buttercream that was deliciously tart and refreshing. I’ll post the recipes for those when I get the photos.

I also plan on posting my berry lemon cheesecake recipe since I know it will be really easy but will end up looking and tasting completely decadent!

Honey Lavender Cupcakes

I tried a new recipe the other day when I had a request for honey lavender cupcakes.  It was a pretty simple recipe and though I was worried that the lavender would end up tasting too perfumey, it didn’t at all. The flavor was light and sweet but not too sweet.

Cupcakes:

• 1/4 cup softened butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup honey
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• handful of lavender

Frosting:

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1 package cream cheese
• 1/4 cup honey
• powder sugar to taste
• lavender to taste
• milk to get the right consistency

I found that the honey made the frosting a bit thicker than my usual cream cheese frosting and I ended up thinning it out with some milk. I also crushed some of the lavender and left some whole for the frosting. These cupcakes will need to be refrigerated due to the dairy in the frosting, but if you don’t like cold cake, you could always just keep the frosting in the  fridge and frost the cupcakes individually. I didn’t pipe the frosting since I was worried that the lavender might clog the tip so I just spooned the frosting on a few and left the rest bare to frost individually when I wanted to have one.    🙂

Photos to come soon!

I’m sorry but…

I have a confession….

I hate “american buttercream”

It’s true, I simply cannot be patriotic with my buttercream. One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that this gritty sugary mess is called buttercream. It’s not buttery, and rich, and delicious. It’s sickeningly sweet and coats your mouth with a regretful crust of gross. And half the time it’s not even made with butter, but with vegetable shortening. “Vegetable shortening cream” doesn’t quite have the same delicious ring to it does it?

Or at least, that’s how I feel.

My second pet peeve is when bakeries and cupcakeries say they use “buttercream” and I’m convinced it’s not that crusty culprit and get excited to try some new delicious baked goods only to have that first moment of bliss ruined by biting into the cavity inducing grit.

It’s so hard to find good frosting. 😦

This rant is brought on by my recent adventure to a new cupcakery that opened a few doors down from my place of employment. Now I make a pretty mean cupcake if I do say so myself, but I rather enjoy going out and trying a “professional” cupcake from time to time. I was so excited about this place because their website stressed that they topped all their cupcakes with fresh homemade buttercream which made it sound so delicious and enticing. I was wrong.

I walked in to their brand new store, which was beyond adorable, was greeted by fantastic looking cupcakes with their “come-hither” names and promptly bought a half dozen that, oddly enough, seemed to have a pie theme (pumpkin, strawberry cheesecake, lemon meringue…). I couldn’t wait to get them home and stuff my face.  I knew as soon as I opened the container and the frosting that had been touching the top didn’t leave a smudge that something was wrong. I gently tapped my finger on one of the dollops and felt the crisp shell of confectioners sugar frosting break beneath my fingertip. *sigh* I had such high hopes for them.

I decided to dig in anyhow as I’d spent $11 on them.

Two of the 6, red velvet and pumpkin pie, were supposed to be frosted with cream cheese frosting. Now I thought I had a pretty good idea about what cream cheese frosting was…but this stuff just barely tasted of cream cheese and had the same consistency and texture of the “buttercream” I’ve never come across that before.

The cake part of the cupcakes were great (except the lemon cake, they used fake lemon flavoring which I can’t stand either. ) but i feel like the “buttercream” they used really ruined the flavor.

So in conclusion, I feel that “american buttercream” ruins a good confection, and bakeries should specify what type of buttercream they use…or at least warn us if it’s the american kind.

I’ll stick to my Italian and Swiss meringue buttercreams thank you.

Cupcake photos…

Just a few photos of a couple cupcake recipes that Stephanie and I were trying out.

There really aren’t any actual recipes for these as we basically just added different flavorings to some box cupcake mixes.

for the match cupcakes we used some green tea powder from our local asian food market.

for the orange dreamsicle cupcakes we used some orange crush dessert topping. (this stuff is dangerous, I would have squirted it right into my mouth if I were alone) and check it out! they have Cherry Dr. Pepper too!

we also did some strawberry and chocolate malt cupcakes where we simply added fresh strawberry puree and malted milk powder to one and some melted chocolate and malted milk powder to the other.

here are some photos. 🙂

Review of a dangerously scrumptious corn casserole

You may remember back a few months ago when I posted a defining example of this blog’s title. That example was a corn casserole whose photo nearly moved me to tears of joy.

(Seriously, I love corn)

Anyhow,  I finally got around to finally trying the recipe.

It was super easy and so delicious. You basically throw everything into the casserole dish and pop it in the oven, there’s really no prep for this. If you have 5 minutes to open a couple cans and containers and measure 2 or 3 things then you’re golden. And once you get it into the oven you can use the hour it needs to bake to go for a jog and burn off a few calories to make room for the massive amounts of this casserole you’re going to want to eat. Or I suppose you could pace around the house turning on the oven light every 5 minutes wondering when it’ll be done like I did.

2 cans of corn, 2 eggs, 1 cup of cream, 1 cup sour cream, a bit of flour and some corn meal, some baking powder and oil and a pinch of sugar, throw it in a dish, top it with butter, bake and wham…heaven. Seriously, I couldn’t even wait for this to cool properly before I shoved a spoonful in my mouth and told my tongue to deal with the heat.

I did have one complaint though, (aside from my singed taste buds…but that’s my own fault really) my casserole didn’t quite set up as well as I’d hoped. I checked it’s jiggly-ness after the allotted baking time and it still seemed a bit too…jiggly, so i gave it another 10 minutes or so until I deemed the top was as brown and crispy as I could handle and while the extra time did help a bit, it was still rather jiggly. This may be an issue with my oven not working as well as it should (it is almost 22 years old), or it could have been my own fault in not measuring carefully enough (I’ve been known to measure with a bit of reckless abandon from time to time…what?! it’s liberating!). Whatever the problem may have been, I think I might tweak the recipe a bit when I make this again (oh and I will make this again) and drain the canned corn even though it says not to (more reckless abandon!!)

Again, Recipe is here

Go! try it!

Pink Fluff Stuff

A sweet and creamy and super easy dessert that’s GREAT for summer picnics. It can be dressed up for an awesome 4th of July party by simply adding blueberries and whipped topping!

Ingredients

• 1 container Cool Whip
• 1 container Large Curd Cottage Cheese (24oz)
• 1 package Raspberry Jello Mix
• 1 package Frozen Raspberries (slightly Thawed)
• 2 cups Fresh Raspberries, Blueberries, Blackberries, Or Other Fruit

Preparation Instructions

Set aside fresh fruit.

Mix everything else in one big bowl. Top liberally with fresh fruit and whipped cream (optional).

Jello flavors and fruit types can be changed to almost anything!

This recipe is so easy and so tasty!

Key Lime Pie Cupcakes

Tart little green cakes with a creamy sweet cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients

• 3 cups Flour
• 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
• 1-½ teaspoon Liquid Vanilla Extract
• 3 whole Eggs
• 1 cup Key Lime Juice
• ¼ cups Water
• ½ cups Powdered Milk
• 5 drops Green Food Coloring, Optional
• 2 packages Cream Cheese (8oz Each)
• 1 cup Butter, Softened
• 2 cups Powdered Sugar
• 2 cups White Sugar

Preparation Instructions

Set aside powdered sugar, cream cheese and 1/2 cup butter for frosting.

For cupcakes:

Mix remaining dry ingredients in one bowl; set aside.

Mix remaining wet ingredients (except food coloring) in a separate bowl, then combine with dry ingredients.

Beat with electric mixer until well combined. Add food coloring until you get the shade of green you want.

Pour into paper-lined cupcake pan, filling 1/2 to 2/3 full. These cupcakes don’t rise very much so you can get away with filling the cups a bit more than usual.

Bake at 350 degrees until toothpick inserted in center comes out dry, approximately 15 minutes.

For frosting:

Beat cream cheese and butter until well combined and creamy. Sift in powdered sugar and mix well.
Adjust powdered sugar to taste.
you can also add some vanilla extract if you’d like.

You can top the frosted cupcakes with a bit of graham cracker

Here are a couple photos of some mini key lime pie cupcakes making an appearance.

naked cupcakes!