I Heart Cupcakes

You may have noticed that cupcakes are kind of my thing, niche, passion, hobby, whatever you want to call it...I heart cupcakes, completely.

I've never been much of a cake person, but cupcakes have always fascinated me. The individual flare and creativity is endless...at least in my eyes there is. You can mix frosting, decorations, flavors, and cute cupcake liners too. Ahh...so excited already. So this weekend I tried another recipe...and I went vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free. Vegan Chocolate Cupcake with Raspberry Buttercream frosting.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes (taken from Crazy About Cupcakes )

Ingredients:

6 tbsp applesauce

2 1/4 cups water

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp white vinegar

2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose-flour (instead I used Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour)

2/3 cup cocoa powder

2 cups unbleached cane sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Put liners into cupcake pan (s).

2. In large mixing bowl, mix together the applesauce, water, vanilla, and vinegar.

3. In another bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients.

4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the liquid mixture. Beat well.

5. Fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full (I would recommend filling completely full because the batter is a thinner batter). Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Raspberry Buttercream Frosting (you can find this on the back of any bag of powdered sugar and then I just added the raspberries as I mixed the other ingredients)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup soy margarine

1/4 soy milk

3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup raspberries

Directions:

1. Mix soy margarine and soy milk together. Blend well.

2. Gradually add the powdered sugar to the blended mixture.

3. Add the vanilla and raspberries gradually.* Blend well.

4. I added the berries whole, instead of mashing them, either way should be fine.

*I found that after adding the raspberries the buttercream frosting became thinner because of their water content. So I would try lessening the vanilla or soy milk ingredients to see if that makes a difference in the thickness of the buttercream.

To add a little playfulness and creativity, I found these raspberry looking candies in the bulk food section at the grocery store.

I hope you came to "heart" cupcakes as much as me.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Goodness

I made these cupcakes a while ago, but I just keep forgetting to write about it. But suddenly today I remember. So I mish-moshed a cupcake recipe with a buttercream frosting recipe from different cooking sites to create pure deliciousness. This is also gluten-free, dairy free recipe.

Peanut Butter Cupcake Recipe
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/chocolate-frosted-peanut-butter-cupcakes-recipe.htm

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter (soy margarine)
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour (rice flour)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup milk (soy milk)

Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven 350 degrees. Put cupcake liner papers into cupcake pan (s).
2. Beat butter and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in sugars until well mixed. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl. Add flour mixture to peanut butter mixture alternating with milk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
4. Spoon in batter into cupcake papers 2/3 full. Bake 23-25 minutes.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1730,150186-234192,00.html

Ingredients:
6 tbsp soy margarine
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 2/3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup soy milk
1 tsp vanilla

Instructions:
1. Cream soy margarine
2. Add cocoa and powdered sugar alternating with soy milk
3. Beat to spreading consistency
4. Blend in vanilla

Peanut butter and chocolate...can you really go wrong?

crazy about cupcakes

So the baker isn't so playful as the cook, throwing in ingredients here and there, and definitely not taking pictures of everything, but I do however love to bake...so that I guess makes me the baker by default.

Anyway, I recently purchased a cupcake cookbook called Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella. This is in my quest, journey, adventure, whatever you want to call it, in discovering a part of myself that I've been missing or putting on the back burner for many years. I've always enjoyed baking. I've made chocolate banana bread, that's pretty scrumptious. And I made my first cheesecake, which Sweet Potato Cheesecake, with flying colors and rave reviews. I've always been fascinated by cupcakes I guess and all that you can do with them. The fillings, the frosting, the decorations. Mini cake masterpieces. But I have never made any part of them from scratch. The credit can be taken by Duncan Hines. So I knew I had a challenge ahead of me, but with the willingness and the roommates willing to taste test, I figured what did I have to lose.

So this past week I narrowed it down to one particular recipe and then purchased the ingredients this weekend. And then I hunkered down in our tiny little kitchen and started this new discovery of mine...cupcakes.

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes--recipe taken from Crazy About Cupcakes

Ingredients:

2/3 unsalted butter, at room temperature

1-1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp almond extract
2 cups (16 0z) sour cream

1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup finely ground almonds, toasted

3/4 cup raspberry preserves

*Side note here, you are probably noticing that this isn't exactly a healthy, gluten-free, dairy-free recipe, so any of those ingredients could be substituted for organic or soy-made product. I wanted to see what the REAL cupcake was suppose to look like, so I used the real ingredients.

Baking instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Insert cupcake liners into cupcake pan.

2. In large bowl, cream the butter and the sugar with electric mixer on medium speed, for about 3-5 minutes, until fluffy. Add the eggs to creamed mixture, mixing 1 minutes after each addition. Add the almond extract and the sour cream.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, cinnamon, baking soda, and slat. Add the ground almonds (I didn't add these, I think of these as optional).

4. With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Mix until completely blended.

5. Fill the liners 1/2 to 3/4 full. Drop a teaspoon of raspberry preserves into each cup. Bake for 20- 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool cupcakes on pan.

So I figured out along time ago that I am my own worst enemy and now cupcake judge. I didn't know what I was expecting because I had nothing to base it on, but they didn't come out looking like the cupcake I had in my head. So really I have no leg to stand on in this debate, so I'm going to stop because guess what...they tasted pretty good. Kirsten couldn't partake because I used real ingredients but from the five or six people that tasted them, which wasn't me having a cupcake five or six cupcakes, said they were really good. I got over what they looked like pretty quick.

Oh I did try a frosting recipe from the book, but homemade frosting is something I have yet to master. Something about boiling and having stuff melt and set, didn't really work. It look more like runny grey-ish clay, than something you'd want to put on your cupcakes. The cupcakes taste pretty good with out, so why ruin a good thing?