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All sorts of baked-in ooey-gooey goodness going on over at Confectionery Conceptions ...



WARNING: Buckets may be required.

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?

Pumpkin and spice...make cupcakes taste nice!

Last Sunday I sat at home all day wondering what to do with myself and I had this realization, well maybe not a realization, but a fact that I have this amazing cupcake book and I have not utilized it enough. It is pretty to look at, but I find it much more useful when I utilize it's recipes.

So I was looking through it wondering which one to bake. Vanilla, chocolate, white chocolate, peppermint, lemon, peanut butter, and this isn't even including the type of frosting I had to pair with the cupcake. What is a girl to do? So I went to the next best option...what do I have in the kitchen now and what's the least amount of additional ingredients I have to purchase. And it came up pumpkin. My roommate Michelle had a bunch of the spices needed, I had confectioner's sugar, regular sugar, flour, eggs, that kind of stuff. But I realized that it wouldn't be fair to use regular flour or butter for there is a certain sister, whom I live with, who couldn't partake in the pumpkin spice goodness if I didn't convert them. So in addition to pumpkin I needed gluten-free, dairy-free substitions.

Crazy About Cupcakes

Pumpkin Cupcakes Recipe

Ingredients:

1 stick (1/4 pound) unsalted butter; at room temperature*

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

1/3 c. granulated sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 cups all-purpose flour*

2 teaspooons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk*

1-1/4 cups pumpkin puree, canned or fresh

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

*I substituted soy margarine sticks for regular butter sticks. Gluten-free all-purpose baking mix for all-purpose flour. And I substituted plain soy milk for regular milk.

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Insert liners into medium cupcake pan.

2. In large bowl cream together the buttter and sugars with an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Add eggs to the creamed mixture one at a time, mixing afer each addition. Beat well.

3. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.

4. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with milk. Mix until completely integrated.

5. Add the pumpkin and vanilla and beat until smooth.
6. Fill the cupcake liners 1/2 to 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

While they were cooling I whipped up a gluten-free, dairy-free, vanilla buttercream frosting. And it was just as good as a it sounds.

Ingredients and directions:

1/2 cup (1 stick) soy margarine

1/4 cup plain soy milk

3 cups confectioner's sugar

1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat until smooth.

The end result....pumpkin-licious.

Don't take my word for it or the word of others that have tried them...bake them yourself.

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?