Breakfast Cupcakes

After I took my LOA for a few weeks to recover from baking-itis I decided to make a breakfast cupcake.  The following was born of a baking fail... Pancake Cupcakes.  My Quality Control Officer aka The Hubby tasted the Pancake Cake and said, "No this is no good" and I agreed with him so I made....

Coffee Cake Cupcakes with a "Watch out Cinnabon" Cinnamon/Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting (possibly my favorite icing ever...)
I used my favorite Cake Mix Doctor Coffee Cake recipe and, of course, made it into a cupcake.
The essential ingredients are...

• Yellow Cake Mix
• Eggs
• Oil
• Vanilla Pudding Mix
• Water?
• Sourcream? (sorry I don't have the book with me to verify)
• Vanilla
• Cinnamon
• Brown Sugar
• Walnuts (optional)

When I put the batter into the cupcake tins, I put one scoop and then put in the cinnamon/brown sugar mixture then put the second portion of cupcake batter on top.  Let me tell you, if when you make these your whole house will smell AMAZING! 

I had some left over brown sugar/cinnamon so I decided "Why not add this to my frosting?!"  So I did.

When the cakes cooled, I made cream cheese frosting and added the cinnamon/brown sugar plus some more cinnamon.  Since cinnamon has health benefits, why not?

Here is the finished product...

You can see the cinnamon and brown sugar swirl in the cake!

The brown sugar in the frosting adds a grittiness that I love!

Amazing!

Happy Baking!

Kristi

 

*Update*

So it's been awhile since I posted.  Mainly because I made enough cupcakes in one shot to last for an entire month of posts.  I made 120 cupcakes on Easter weekend for a retirement party at work the following Monday.  So I may have not baked as consistently as before.... :)
Here are some photos of the 8 Dozen

Vanilla Cake with Black Raspberry Buttercream

They look better with a little less purple

Devil's Food with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Why is my red dye "Elmo Red"??

Devil's Food with Cream Cheese Frosting

Vanilla Cake with Coconut Buttercream and Toasted Coconut

There were many others however I was more focused on packaging and getting these to work ASAP.

They all turned out well and disappeared quickly!  Awesome enough, there is a cake shop by my house that sells bakery boxes with cupcake inserts :)

Happy Baking!

Kristi

8 Dozen

Preparing to bake 8 Dozen Cupcakes for work!  Kinda excited :)

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

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cakes

Wow I have a lot of catching up to do... Anyways, here are the cupcakes inspired by my dad.  For his birthday I asked him what kind of cupcake would he want.  He told me he likes peanut butter cups (although the eggs are better) and Heath Bars... So I decided to make Peanut Butter Cupcakes with a surprise inside...

Peanut Butter (is this one word or two?) Buttercream Magnificence with Chocolate Glaze!

My Cupcake Taster now requests drink pairings... Milk with this one

Can you see the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup inside????

The recipe for the cupcakes is the same one I used for the Toothpaste Cupcakes.  The book calls it a "muffin" but I like to call it a Cupcake.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Adapted From The Chocolate Cake Mix Doctor

Ingredients:

1 Devil's Food Cake Mix (Super Moist or With Pudding)

1/2 C. Vegetable Oil

1/2 C. Water

1 C. Sour Cream (not the low fat kind, come on now)

1 Small Package Chocolate Instant Pudding (yes, with sugar in it)

4 Large Eggs

2 Sleeves of Crushed Oreos (Found a way to involve the husband, make him figure out how to crush Oreos w/o making a mess.  Pretty entertaining for me and I like to see what kitchen utensil or household item he will try to use)

Anyways, this is super easy!  Put all of the ingredients (minus the Oreos,husband should work on crushing them while you mix) in the bowl and mix for 1 minute, scrape the bowl and then mix for 2 minutes.  Stir in the crushed cookies, eat the extra. 

Divide batter among 24-30 cupcake papers.  This time the recipe made 30.  I put in one scoop of batter and then the peanut butter cup and then another scoop of batter to cover it up.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 17 minutes, depending on your oven.

Remove when done and place on neat wire rack thing to cool.

Honestly for the frosting I put some butter in the mixer, mixed it, added a bunch of peanut butter (I liked the organic roasted PB) and added some vanilla and powdered sugar.  You may need to add heavy cream or milk to smooth out the frosting to make it spread- or pipe- able.  Pipe on cooled cupcakes however you see fit.

Then I made a chocolate glaze and drizzled it over the cupcakes.

These are almost as good as these...

You should definitely try them :)

Hubby Rating

Cake:  9

Frosting:  9

Filling:  6

Overall:  9

Happy Baking

Kristi

TOOTHPASTE CUPCAKES!!!

Made ya look!

Haahahahhahahaha

*No toothpaste was harmed in the making of these cupcakes*

I've seen a ton of posts on Mint and Chip cupcakes so I decided to make my own.  Originally I wanted to make these with Thin Mints however, I decided too late and there was not a Girl Scout in sight to sell me some cookies.  How is it I can avoid them for months and when I want to find one they are done selling.!

So onto the cupcakes.  I'm not sure what to call them but DELICIOUS!  Just kidding but they were (see Hubby Rating below).  I don't have time to add the recipe but essentially I had a recipe for Triple Chocolate Cupcakes, added crushed mint oreos to the batter instead of the chocolate chips called for in the recipe, sandwiched an Andes Mint in the middle of the cake, topped with mint buttercream, drizzled with chocolate glaze and finished with white nonpareil (Definition:  a small pellet of colored sugar for decorating candy, cake, and cookies Thank you Dictionary.com).

Can you see the Andes Mint in there?!

Onto Hubby Rating..

Hubby Rating

Cake Texture:  9 

Cake Taste:  9

Filling:  (Extra Credit Bonus) "I don't consider it a true filling" - Husband 3/27/2011

Frosting:  8.5

Appearance:  10

Topping:  9

Overall:  9.5

"It's a very good all around cupcake.  But, in my opinion you have to be in the mood for mint."  - Hubby

-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