Sunday, October 9, 2011

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.


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

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