Healthy cupcakes... is this possible?

The answer to that question is... probably not. Not cupcakes that fit my definition of what a cupcake must be. If it's healthy then maybe it's a muffin or... something else.

So I guess these are "something else." For a cupcake-esque healthy-ish snack idea, check out this post from the blog Mom's Deal of the Day - Fruity Frozen Yoghurt Cups! I might just have to give this a try sometime. If you beat me to it please leave your comments below to inform the rest of us :)

This post found via the very cool and very cupcakey Cupcakes Take the Cake.

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 :)

Christmas Snickerdoodle Cupcake Duo

Thankfully it turns out that a baking project won't necessarily fail just because it starts out looking like a batch of play-doh.

Especially not if it's helped along by the wonder of cinnamon sugar. See it sparkle.


Anyway, for the Christmas bake-off at work I decided to create a Christmas version of the already-super Snickerdoodle Cupcake Duo (which I originally posted about here). I wasn't sure I could achieve a genuinely red icing without using a toxic amount of food dye, so I opted instead to colour the snickerdoodle cookies themselves. The coating of cinnamon sugar makes them look kind of dirty and gross before baking, but fear not - they rise and spread enough to fix this.


To aid the survival of Christmas party grazers I made this whole batch into mini cupcakes. Depending on how big you make them, you can get around 40 little cupcakes and little cookies out of Bakerella's recipe. (I ended up with 42 cakes and 44 cookies - pleasantly close to even!)

Here's before decorating...

...and here's after decorating! (mostly :p)


I was relieved to end up with actual Christmas colours rather than the pink and vomit-green shemozzle which I more than half expected. Take THAT pessimism.

Merry Christmas!!!

The Cupcake Party - social decorating

So it begins. I had my inaugural cupcake decorating gathering with a bunch of friends recently. It was a good excuse to make a whole lot of cupcakes.

I ended up with: a dozen gluten and dairy free cupcakes - half chocolate, half spice and apricot...

... a dozen turkish delight...

...a dozen chocolate with Maltesers (Sarah's idea)...


... plus a half dozen plain vanilla, half a dozen plain chocolate, half a dozen chocolate with Oreos and, finally, one and a half dozen snickerdoodle cupcakes (by special request from Jess). That's... a lot of cupcakes!

By that stage my brain must have been a bit fried, because I accidentally quadrupled my butter cream recipe rather than doubling it as intended. Oops. I opted for somewhat buttery icing rather than making it up to the prescribed total volume, but there was still so much!


Herein follows some of the fantastic decorating that the ladies did :)

Some classic snickerdoodle cupcakes. (I see someone stuck a random Smartie under one of the cookies though!)

One of the girlier dozen cupcakes.

Everyone chose a few to take home and the rest were happily polished off at church the following night. Amanda couldn't make it to decorating so we kept her a couple of pretty cakes. I bought a bunch of cupcake boxes off ebay and it makes gifting a bit neater :)

My decorators hard at work. Good fun.

Playing catchup - caramel, banana, peach, choc mint and vanilla

Once you've found some recipes that you like, it's inevitable that they will be repeated! Here are some of my recent baked goods. (This is actually a sneaky mixed-up blog post to make me feel like I've caught up!)

Delicious caramel mudcake. The obvious option for when you're out of white sugar and too lazy to go and get some :p

I tried out my basket weave icing tip for the first time. This icing was too soft so you can't see the ridges, but I can see the potential.

I made banana cupcakes for work to farewell a colleague.

These are peach and cinnamon cupcakes, using the leftover cream cheese icing from the banana cupcakes. Icing keeps pretty well in the fridge so I often use the same icing a couple of times in a row to avoid wasting any.

This batch is chocolate wacky cake with mint Nuttelex icing - made for a friend whose little boy can't have eggs or dairy. The icing doesn't hold its shape as well, but still tastes fine.


Finally, a batch of vanilla with a mish-mash of icing flavours and colours.


My most reliable decoration methods are swirls and solid colour with a little star, so no doubt you'll continue seeing these. Hopefully over the Christmas break I'll get a chance to try some new things too :).