Franken-Cupcakes

Boo! 

It's that spooky time of year and tomorrow we are going over to my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's house to see all of our nieces and nephews dressed up for halloween.  I was asked to bring cupcakes so I tried to think of something kids would like.  What better than OREOS?!  I followed the recipe from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen here but made some tweaks to it. 

I wanted the cupcakes to be very "Halloweeny" so I decided to use the orange holiday Oreos.  Let me tell you, you can't find these things everywhere.  Our grocery store had 12 different types of Oreos but not the orange filled ones...So I had to make a second stop to Target.  Even there they were hiding on an end cap in the back of the store hidden amongst all of the Halloween candy and above the Christmas Oreos!  Really Christmas Oreos already????  Target has already transitioned into the red and green holiday.  I wonder what they do with all of the left over Halloween specific items, like the orange Oreos?  hmmmmm...

So in order to make these Franken-Cupcakes I decided to make them different colors.  Kids like colors right?  I divided the batter into three bowls and dyed each one a different Halloween colors, orange, purple, and green.

I put in a spoon of each color on top of the Oreo at the bottom and swirled it around to make it look tye-dyed.

They baked a little funky and looked like little mountains in the center but that's OK.  I'm assuming this happened because there was an Oreo at the bottom and therefore the batter couldn't expand in the paper and had nowhere to go but up.  No worries, I was going to frost them anyway.

Can you guess what this is???  If you grew up in the '90s you might say it's slime, a la Double Dare or pretty much any Nickelodeon game show.

I always wondered what the slime was made of and if it was edible or not. 

 Well obviously I did not put slime or gak into the cupcakes so it must be the cream filling!  I don't think our nieces and nephews will get the Double Dare or even Nickelodeon reference but I think they'll like it just the same.  This is also why I called them Franken-Cupcakes.  When I put the lid back on the cupcakes the "slime" oozes out :)

 Covered in frosting you can't see the mountain underneath :)

All packaged and ready to go for tomorrow.

Hubby Rating:

Cake:  9

Filling:  9.5

Frosting:  9.5

Overall:  9.4

Wow he's getting technical with these scores.  I'm surprised he hasn't made score cards yet....

He's even taken to asking for an accompanying drink, this time it was chocolate milk.  

Happy Bakingween,

Kristi 

 The only other edit I made to the original recipe was to dye the frosting orange.  Again, think the kids will like it.  I like the way they came out.  The frosting was a nice consistency to pipe and I did not encounter any clogged piping bags this time. :)  Maybe that's because I stressed the importance of smashing the Oreos to a fine ground to my best baking assistant, the hubs.  He probably took about 10 minutes making sure they were pulverized, much to our downstairs neighbor's dismay.

I always wondered what the slime was made of and if it was edible or not. 

Apple Cider Goodness

Since it's cooled off a little in SoCal, my taste tester aka the Hubs decided it was time to have a fall-y cupcake.  I didn't research before going to the grocery store so while we were in the car on the way to the grocery store, I broke out the handy dandy iPhone and found a recipe.  Apples seem like a quintessential fall item so I opted for apple cider cupcakes.  You can find the recipe here:  http://www.sweettoothsweetlife.com/2011/09/29/apple-cider-cupcakes-with-apple-cider-cream-cheese-frosting/

As mentioned last time we recently went to Yucaipa.  On the drive up we saw a sign that said "As Seen On TV" The Best Apple Cider Donuts.  Well if that wouldn't make you stop your car right there what would.  I don't know what the fascination is with "As Seen On TV" but I fall victim to it's ploy like every other American.  I think our mentality is that if it was good enough to be on TV it must be amazing!  Some times this is true, some times it is not.

In the case of the Best Apple Cider Donuts...it was TRUE!!!

 Hot Mini Apple Cider Donuts

 Spicy Cinnamon Sugar Topping :)

 I also found this Christmas Tree...I wish ours could look like this, full of cupcake/sweet oriented ornaments

On to the cupcakes of the week.

I followed the above recipe for the cake portion which was super easy.  I'm thinking that these cakes may qualify as being "low fat" considering they do not contain oil or butter and only two whole eggs.  Let's just discount the globs of cream cheese frosting and go out on a limb and call them "healthy".  haha

They smelled amazing while baking.  If there were such a thing as "smell-o-internet" I would have posted the scent here. 

Instead of making the apple cider cream cheese recipe in the link, I made my own frosting.  I used 1.5 sticks of butter and 1.5 blocks of cream cheese.  Blend the two together, add in the powdered sugar to desired consistency and then added two tablespoons of apple cider and 1/2 T. of vanilla.  I also added brown sugar and cinnamon to the frosting because, well because why not?.  I also added candy corn pumpkins and regular candy corn for decorations.  I think they turned out pretty good. 

Hubby Rating

Cake:  5.5

Frosting:  8

Overall:  7

Husband claims the cake was dry.  For having no fat in it, it was probably OK.  He liked the cake/frosting combo.

Happy Baking,

Kristi

Orange You Glad It's Fall and 80 in California?

It may be Fall but apparently the weather didn't get the memo.  It's currently 80+ in California so instead of making something Fall-esque, I decided to make some orange cupcakes.  These were inspired by a recent trip to Yucaipa to go raspberry picking.  Now you're wondering how I got oranges from picking raspberries but follow me here...

On the way down the hill/mountain after picking raspberries, we stopped at this fruit/everything shack and tasted this amazing orange curd.  I've made lemon curd plenty of times but have never seen orange curd.  It was fantastic!  So I decided that I should buy some and put it into some amazing orange cupcakes. 

What goes better with oranges than RUM?!  It's the quintessential tropical combination (OK maybe pineapple/coconut/rum would qualify that statement better but you get the idea).  Since it feels like summer, why not make a tropical cake?  So today I got some oranges and rum and made the cupcake vehicle for the fabulous orange curd.  I even juiced the oranges by hand to get fresh orange juice to add to these beauties. 
The recipe I used calls these "Rum Zum Cake".

On a side note, apparently we have quick thinking to thank for Bacardi Rum.  See the article from the LA Times referencing how Bacardi made it out of communist Cuba.

Bacardi Story

Also, the hubs bought me orange roses as a surprise when I came on Friday so I think orange cupcakes were fate :)

Here's the finished product.  Instead of glazing the cakes as the recipe called for I decided to make cream cheese frosting.  Who doesn't love some cream cheese frosting.  I made two different flavors, one vanilla rum, the other had extra orange flavor.  I mixed the two together to get the 50/50 look. 

Gotta have sprinkles for that extra crunch!

They look super orange!!!

Hubby Rating

Cake:  9

Filling:  6

Frosting:  8

Overall:  7.9

"Cake and frosting are very good and moist, good hints of rum and orange.  Filling was hard to distinguish from the other flavors."

Happy
Baking,

Kristi