Snickers Cupcakes

Breakfast of champions! ...just kidding. This is a cream cheese cupcake filling mix with chunks of Snickers in it. It looks a bit gross when you mix it in (see below), but just because it's ugly doesn't mean it's bad.

Actually, these are really good. The base is chocolate, but then you get the chewy, creamy, nutty filling baked into the top...

And then you make a delicious caramel icing to go on top! Yes, I found another caramelly recipe.

This is another recipe from Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes. She calls them Chocolate Candy Cupcakes (recipe here) but I call them Snickers Cupcakes. Because, you know, I used Snickers. Betty refers to them more generically as "chocolate-covered nougat, caramel and peanut candy bars."

Often when I make something out of a book the photo shown looks nothing like what I end up with. On this occasion I feel like they were more similar than usual.

More importantly, they were delicious. Although very sweet, so be careful not to overdose! In fairness, I took these to a work bake-off and I think I was already over my sugar quota by the time I got to trying one. They probably deserve another chance ;)

Gingerbread Cupcakes

Gingerbread sounds like it should involve cookies, but it turns out it's just fine as a cake flavour too.

My friend Rachael picked these out of my copy of Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes for me to make. So it's rather a pity that she wasn't around to try them... Next time hey, Rach? (We can say this was a practice run.)

Cream cheese icing ingredients, complete with cinnamon, ground ginger and mixed spice...

Most interesting icing ingredient: lemon rind. It works suprisingly well!

You can find the recipe for these cupcakes here, on Betty Crocker's website. But pay no attention to the photo - cream cheese icing does NOT sit that neat and firm in Queensland summer heat! It looked sloppy when I piped it with the open tip so I ended up just spreading it on.

Review from Jess:

Hint of lemon in the icing - brilliant. The base wasn't very gingery, but was still deliciously soft and moist.

Review from Bec:

Jess has said everything I had to say.

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Swirl Cupcakes

Cream cheese and chocolate chips - never a bad way to start anything. This is the beginnings of chocolate chip cheesecake swirl cupcakes, another of Betty Crocker's creations from the Big Book of Cupcakes.

This fizzy mess (reminiscent of rabies froth if you want to think of it like that) is what you get when you add baking soda to the vinegar in your cake mix. Bubbly.


With filling and cake batter prepared, it's time for cupcakes.


The recipe, which incidentally you can find in full here, says to fill one third of the cupcake well with batter, spoon in filling and then top with more batter. Which, I must say, does not promote any kind of cheesecake "swirl" as the recipe name suggests. The cupcakes you end up with following the recipe don't look much like the photo that they display with the recipe! Next time I will attempt some kind of swirling to make my cupcakes look a bit grander.

Monkey seemed to like them anyway. The main con is that they need to be stored in the fridge because of the cream cheese.

But look inside...


To make your cupcake extra awesome, heat it up in the microwave for 10-15 seconds just before you devour it. It gets all gooey and fantastic.

Soda Cupcakes

As I mentioned in my previous post, my recent afternoon tea did not consist just of Strawberry-Cream Cheese cupcakes (as good as they were).

There were also Soda Cupcakes.

Again, these are out of Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes. You can find the recipe for Orange Soda Cupcakes here, as part of a book preview on Google Books. I made half using orange soft drink and the other half using Vanilla Coke. Both tasted fine, but the orange worked better. The coke flavour was not very pronounced.

I think I'll keep trying other flavours. Lemonade might be good. Raspberry drink? Or Ribena even? I have already disgusted a few people by suggesting that I might try making Sarsaparilla cupcakes so I won't be offended if you think any of my other flavour ideas are awful. (Sars is not just for old people!)

Instead of just dusting with icing sugar I decided to up the fizz factor and use sherbet. This seems to work best if you mix it in with a little icing sugar, both to reduce the acidity (I was concerned someone would inhale deeply and choke on sherbet... but I'm probably just paranoid) and also because the sherbet seems to melt away and get oddly frothy if it warms up in the heat of the day.

There you have it. Fizz in a cake.

Strawberry-Cream Cheese Cupcakes

It was so nice to have a week off work over Christmas/New Year. Time to relax and do whatever. I organised an afternoon tea with friends so that I "had" to do some baking.

This is another delight from Betty Crocker's Big Book of Cupcakes - Strawberry-Cream Cheese Cupcakes.

You start with a yellow cake base, add a little square of cream cheese and spoon in a little jam... bake to produce amazingness (<-- anyone who has tasted these cupcakes knows that amazingness is, in fact, a real word).

I was mildly concerned that the jam would bubble and explode and go everywhere. But it didn't. The cupcakes greedily gobbled up the filling as they baked. Less so the mini cupcakes, but that's probably because I gloriously overfilled them.

Now. Cream cheese icing. And swirl.

If you've forgotten the joy of strawberries, you need to remember. Here's something to jog your memory.

A-mazing.

We also devoured other cool stuff, but that will have to wait till next time. Did I mention that I enjoyed my time off work? Happy new year :)

Banana-Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I happily received a number of new baking books for Christmas, one of which was Betty Crocker's The Big Book of Cupcakes - a collection of over 175 cupcake varieties and decorations.

My first conquest from this book was the Banana-Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. You can find the recipe online here, but interestingly only the packet mix version. I guess if you want the "secrets" to Betty Crocker cupcake success you need to get the book! Anyway, I made these from scratch, not from a packet.

Banana and chocolate. Such a good combination.

This was my first use of chocolate buttercream. It didn't come out nearly as dark in colour as it was in the book, but it tasted good :)

I got some Runts for Christmas too (childhood nostalgia) so I could go to town on the fruit-themed decorating. This particular box only had 4 bananas in it so I had to diversify.

Bananas!


Not bananas... but still cute.

I thought the candy decorations might be hard and annoying to crunch through, but it turns out that they soften once they sit on the icing for a while. Even better :)