Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

Thin Mints, Andes Mints, Peppermint Bark, Peppermint Oreos, York Peppermint Patties…

As you can see, chocolate and mint have a loving relationship.  During Christmas peppermint is everywhere, Starbucks starts making Peppermint Mochas, Oreos comes out with the Peppermint Holiday Edition, and Kristi makes chocolate peppermint candy cane cupcakes!  These are super easy to make.  I used the “Triple Chocolate to Live For” muffin recipe for the base and then just made a cream cheese peppermint frosting.  MMMMMMMM peppermint cream cheese…..These are delicious J  Oh and I forgot to mention that I purchased some Opal Sanding Sugar that I think is going to be my new decoration of choice.  It’s so sparkly and non-chunky – Love it!  In case you were wondering for what festive occasion I made these, I made them for a wine holiday party and also for Christmas Eve with the Hub’s side of the family.  I was really excited to learn that I had red food coloring in the cupboard so I could make candy cane colored frosting.  More two-toned frosting yeah!!Enjoy and Happy Belated Holidays   

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes -

 I forgot to mention the snowflake sprinkes!!!

Hubby Rating:

Cake - 9.5

Frosting - 10

Appearance - 10 

Overall - 9.9

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

Cake Walk Cupcakes

Quickly here are the cupcakes I made for one of my co-worker's daughter's school's Cake Walk Fundraiser. (that's a lot of apostrophes huh?)  The theme was "under the Big Top".  Big Top meaning circus in case you didn't know.  I really love that it has a theme but I struggled to stick to one idea.  So...I just made super bright fun cupcakes.  I think it fits the theme.  I still have to name them though....

I immediately started thinking stripes and elephants.  Dumbo also came to mind.  Then I thought of the foods you eat at the circus and almost decided on making

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1186760

or

http://hoosierhomemade.com/cupcake-tuesdaysnow-cones-ice-cream-cones/

The Sno Cone ones are my favorite and I may have to make those at a later date but for now I made it simple.  Also, again how fun is a circus!!!

If you grew up in the 80's or remember then you might remember this show

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/1565/

One of my FAVORITES as a kid. 

http://www.thewrap.com/blog-post/disneys-dumbo-broadway-bound-15115

Here they are...

 Frosting Fun!

 Settled in their box ready to go

Pink Sugar Sprinkles

Unwrapped

Ready for Taste Test

Hubby Rating

Cake:  10

Frosting:  8.5

Filling:  N/A

Overall:  8.5

Appearance:  9

For these I used Funfetti Mix and similar recipe to the previous chocolate cakes.  Regular buttercream frosting and teal and electric pink gel coloring!

Happy Baking

Kristi

Top O' the Cupcake To Ya

Ok so this is VERY late but oh well. 

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, my husband signed me up to make cupcakes for his work.  Just kidding.  However he did pick his day to bring treats based on the fact that he wanted to take the Guinness/Bailey's cupcakes.  They are Guinness Chocolate Cake, filled with Bailey's Ganache, topped with Bailey's Irish Cream Buttercream Frosting.

Here they are...

I made a stop to the cake shop and bought new food coloring to make a nice mint and leaf green two-tone frosting.  To be honest it kind of reminds me of an avocado :)  Which are also delicious.

Here is the cupcake corer in action.  It's pretty awesome.  You screw the corer in place until the flower part touches the top of the cupcake. 

Then you remove the "core" and it stays in the corer until you put it back on.  Pretty awesome again.

Then you fill the cupcake with your favorite filling.  In this case it was Bailey's Chocolate Ganache deliciousness.

Then you put the lid back on.

Then you frost them with your favorite frosting.  For the day of the Irish the frosting of choice was Bailey's Buttercream dyed green.

Then you cut it open and see all the moist yuminess inside. 

Then you celebrate!

Here's the link for the cupcake recipe:

http://www.irishcentral.com/food-and-drink/Guinness-and-Baileys-Irish-cupcakes-65781932.html

Husband Rating

Cake:  6 (dry b/c I forgot to cover them overnight)

Filling:  7 (it needed more Bailey's)

Frosting:  9

Overall:  8 Shamrocks

-Kristi

Two-Toned Frosting

So I've been sick and therefore not baking as much.  Boo.  However I did make "purple velvet" cupcakes for my co-worker's birthday.  Since starting my blog I actually have made a version of red velvet at least 3 times.  Mainly because you can't really go wrong with red velvet.

To make it interesting this time I attempted to dye the cupcakes purple.  This was a little difficult because purple doesn't really cover brown too well.  They looked like this...

Looks like an elementary school science project.  Remember making Gak?

  Under the right light they look purple right? :)

I saw this video online on how to make two-tone frosting and decided to give it a try.  I think I used too much purple dye on my first batch.  It was a pretty lilac color but there was no way I could make the other color too much darker.  So they are slightly two-toned.  Basically you use either two different colors or two shades of the same color to pipe your frosting.  When your piping bag is put together you can put one color on one side and the other color on the other.  Simple right...Kinda.  I suggest having two pairs (or a husband) of hands or a really large cup to hold up the bag.  Then pipe away.  The other way to do it was to put the food dye in the pastry bag around the tip and then put your frosting in.  This also works but is not the way I made the "purple velvet" roses :).



Reminds me of Beauty and the Beast for some reason



Also makes me think of Alice in Wonderland and Painting the Roses Red




Source:  http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice2d.html

 
Hmmm that seems like a good idea for a theme cupcake.....Alice in Wonderland....! 

Also considering implementing a cupcake rating system and a vote for cupcake challenge flavor of the week.  I feel like I need a challenge (a la Cupcake Wars). 

-Kristi