Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

20 May

I’m absurdly late on this post, but better late than never!

Opportunities for writing have been few and far between, thanks to tourney season, the NBA playoffs (go OKC!), and work bleeding into my free time.

Dutch-Process Cocoa Powder, Guinness, Milk

I wanted to make a little treat for St. Patty’s Day that was different and fun, without turning anyone’s mouth green.  I decided to do another cupcake, this time themed to everyone’s favorite St. Patrick’s Day libation – the Irish Car Bomb – using three different types of liquor.

Cutting Away the Middles

It was a Guinness chocolate cupcake with an Irish whiskey ganache filling, topped with a Bailey’s Irish Cream frosting.

Guess I Could’ve Used a Larger Frosting Tip…

I had a lot of fun baking with alcohol in my last post, and had heard of people using Guinness in chocolate cake recipes so I had to give it a chance.  It was heaven… just HEAVEN!  I finally found my new go-to chocolate cupcake recipe!

Forgot to Buy a Coupler – Ghetto Piping Bag

I got the recipe from Brown Eyed Baker’s blog and didn’t make any modifications.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcake with a Whiskey Ganache and Bailey’s Irish Cream Frosting

Huge thanks to my wonderful and conveniently alcoholic friends for sponsoring the Guinness (Jay), Bailey’s Irish Cream (Katie), and Jameson (Walt).

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Blue Moon Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

22 Apr

I’m severely backlogged on posts due to some fun and not-so-fun distractions stemming from the last few weeks, but I’m trying to make some headway here!

Jared’s New Year’s resolution for 2012 was to only eat desserts that were homemade, so Bernie and I wanted to bake for his birthday last month.  Bernie churned out some fantabulous Cherry Garcia cookies, and I took a little culinary leap of faith on  these Blue Moon cupcakes.  Jared is a big beer guy and loves Blue Moon, so I thought a combination of something delectable with beer could be fun. I found the recipe on Erica’s Sweet Tooth.

Ingredients!

After baking the cupcakes, I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough of a Blue Moon taste to them considering the alcohol probably burned off in the baking process.  I went ahead brushed the tops of the cupcakes with the left over beer, despite the fact that my entire kitchen smelled like Blue Moon by the time they came out of the oven.

Ready for Blue Moon Basting!

Ever since I made those Mummy Cupcakes last Halloween, I’d also been wanting to learn how to make my cupcakes look prettier. I bought a couple of frosting tips from Michael’s but neglected to get a coupler.  So, I made another makeshift pastry bag and rigorously scotch-taped the tip to the parchment paper. #ghettofabulous

Makeshift Frosting Bag - First Time Using a Piping Tip!

The frosting was sweet and lighter than your typical cream cheese frosting.  I probably added about twice as much orange zest than the recipe called for to help with the orange flavoring.  If you like the taste of Blue Moon, you will like these cupcakes. If you don’t like the taste of beer in general, you probably won’t like these. Plain and simple!

Blue Moon Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

Hoping to get caught up on the rest of the backlog soon! Lights out for now!

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Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes with Coconut Whipped Cream

8 Apr

Where does the time go?

As promised in my last post, here are the Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes I made for Crystal and Dave‘s surprise luau-themed Sho-Yu baby shower.

Cupcake Batter Ingredients

Being the meticulous direction-reader that I am, I purchased double the ingredients knowing I’d need enough for the shower as well as Leslie’s birthday.

Can You Spot the Lorax Mustache Cupcake?

However, I failed to notice that the recipe called for muffin tins, which are much larger than cupcake tins.  So in actuality, I ended up having enough batter to bake 5 dozen upside down cupcakes. #fail

I found the cupcake recipe by doing a google search that led me to Family Fun’s recipe, and found a really simple recipe for dairy-free coconut whipped cream on The Kitchn.

Coconut Milk, Cinnamon, Vanilla, and Powdered Sugar

The cupcakes had a great crumbly top thanks to the brown sugar and butter, and the cake was deliciously moist.  The coconut whipped cream was mild enough to compliment the flavors in the cupcake – not too coconut-y nor to sweet.

Here’s the final product!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes with Coconut Whipped Cream

Congratulations to Crystal and Dave!  Can’t wait to meet baby Preston and welcome him into the Sho-Yu family!  Puahahaha…xoxo

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Browned Butter Sea-Salted Rice Crispy Treats

6 Mar

I went on a baking marathon last week  in preparation for two events – a surprise Sho-Yu baby shower for Crystal and Dave, and a potluck dinner for my best friend Leslie’s birthday.  I’ll delve deeper into the former in my next post, but treats for this post were made with the latter in mind. If my vice is sugar, Leslie’s is salt. I decided on a dessert that incorporated the savory and remembered the rice crispy treats that one of Shirley’s friend’s made for her Super Bowl Party a few weeks ago. When I asked her where she got the recipe from, and she said Smitten Kitchen. I should have known!

Browned Butter and Marshmallow

I ended up burning the butter the first go-around while trying to get a photo of the browned butter.  Everything had to be done really quickly before the ingredients burned or cooled too quickly, so alas there are not many pictures for this post.

Rice Crispy Treats for the Sophisticated Palette

Happy Birthday to my dearest friend of over 20 years! ♥

Six of us got together at Leslie and Tri’s new house for dinner, but we each brought enough food to feed twelve.  Tony made 16+ ounce steaks, and everyone else brought sides.  Leslie had never tried my Apple Pie Cookies, so I whipped up a batch of those to go with the rice crispy treats, as well as what I had made for the shower. And Jason made a huge vat of his famous Sangria to make sure the birthday girl had a lot of fun.  I also came to the conclusion that aside from Corgis which I’ve always loved, not ALL dogs are evil. Leslie and Tri’s very sweet dog has instilled hope!  I still think 90% of them are blood-thirsty biting bastards.

As an aside, I had a bit of a revelation this past week. With the obsessive frequency with which I work out, I wondered aloud at work as to how it could be possible that I was gaining weight. After a few minutes of thinking about what I had been doing differently the last couple of weeks, it hit me:  I need to stop finishing all of my food… and then finishing everyone else’s.

True story.  Time to start exercising some control!

As for the rice crispy treats, they’re pretty easy to make as long as you’re patient with browning the butter.  They have the perfect balance of sweet and savory, making them really addicting!  Yum!

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Valentine’s Day Cookies (Heart-Glazed Cornmeal Sugar Cookies)

20 Feb

In the spirit of said corporate faux holiday, I decided to bake in celebration of the pink and the hearts and all that other crap that Valentine’s Day is all about. I like things with cornmeal (i.e., cornbread, …can’t think of anything else) so I thought a sugar cookie using cornmeal would be a fun and different spin on your everyday sugar cookie. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, of course.

Pre-Oven

After shaping the cookie dough into 1″ balls and rolling them in sugar, I used the bottom of a small dish to flatten them into 1.5″ discs.  Jamie (being the goddess of a good bargain) bought me a set of heart-shaped cookie cutters from a garage sale a few months ago, and I used the smallest one to cut partway through the cookie discs.

Post-Oven - Hearts Have Separated!

As the cookies baked in the oven, the shape took a more defined form as the dough rose.  I then glazed the hearts using the back of a spoon and a glaze made of powdered sugar, a wee bit of water and vanilla, and couple drops of food coloring.

Just Glaze

So what did I do with all of these cookies?  I ended up sending them to some Valentines that I declared my own, and some as thank you gifts to Leslie, Tri, and Annie for being their ridiculously awesome selves. The rest went to work with me on the actual day right before I left for Indianapolis and Grand Rapids on a whirlwind of a trip.  I spent my V-Day evening aboard two planes to Indy, closing the night with this charming fellow at my hotel in Indianapolis.  I probably would have gone on a date with Spalding had I been in LA.

Valentine's Day Cookies (Heart-Glazed Cornmeal Sugar Cookies)

2.5 days and six planes later (there were NO direct flights), I’m happy to say I survived the snow and icy roads of the Midwest.  I had asked work to reserve a car with 4-wheel drive, since both states were forecasted to receive snow during my stay. My flights to both destinations got in pretty late at night, so all of the economy SUVs were taken by the time I arrived at the Enterprise counter.  They graciously upgraded me to a Lincoln Navigator in Indy.  While I always insist that I’m of near-average height, I concede that I was way too short for this car.  I had to sit on one of my legs to see over the steering wheel because there were no booster seats included with the car.

Oh! I also made some Peanut Butter Thumbprint Cookies using dark chocolate Dove hearts (instead of the typical Hershey’s Kisses) because everyone is supposed to have chocolates or something classy on V-Day, right?

Happy Valentine's Day 2012!

The hell if I know. Until next year, Cupid!

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Samoas Cupcakes (Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream Frosting)

12 Feb

If you work in an office, you knows it’s Girl Scout cookie season because at least five of your coworkers are slanging them on behalf of their daughters.  At my workplace, people were putting post-its donning “so-and-so’s daddy is also selling these” on competitor’s order forms.  It was a cookie warzone!

Cupcake Batter - Ingredients

Being a former Girl Scout myself, I felt the need to pay homage to my roots and decided to stay in last Saturday night (shocker) to bake. I thought about doing a homemade version of Samoa cookies, but opted for a deconstructed Samoa Cupcake since cookie-mania would ensue in a matter of weeks. I found a great recipe on Bakers Royale, but doing these treats meant I would have to (once more) face my arch-nemesis – frosting. However, I’m proud to say that I managed to make it successfully AND without having to disassemble my kitchen sink again.

My First Successful Frosting - Salted Caramel Buttercream

I usually scrape off most of the frosting on cupcakes, as it oftentimes overpowers the flavor and texture of the cake, but this frosting was really light and fluffy. The flavor beheld the perfect balance of salty and sweet! Pew pew – take THAT, frosting!

Usually, the chocolate cupcake recipes I’ve used in the past call for vegetable oil, but this one utilized sour cream and butter for moisture.  My favorite bakery sells a vanilla cupcake using sour cream in the batter and it seriously is the moistest thing ever, so I falsely assumed using sour cream in mine would produce the same level of amazement. Target and my local grocery store also didn’t have Dutch-processed cocoa powder, so I used some unsweetened cocoa powder that I already had and added a little extra baking soda to neutralize the missing alkali.  The cake ended up a bit dry, so it could have been due to a chemical imbalance as a result of my laziness or sour cream failing me. Oh well, too bad.

Cupcake Assembly Station

After frosting each cupcake, I smushed some toasted coconut on top and then drizzled the tops with melted chocolate.  I pretty much made a huge mess of my kitchen with all of the different ingredients and steps but after about 5 hours of labor, I was happy with the end result.

Samoas Cupcake

I brought these to Shirley’s Super Bowl party as well as for Sho-Yu to try at our game. What was left went to work with me.  Everyone seemed to like them, especially Sho-Yu.

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

5 Feb

Before actually meeting him, I knew Alex as the guy whose face my boyfriend (at the time) had pretty much peed on.  But hey, let’s not dig up the past.  I knew I had to at least be nice to the poor soul forever out of sheer principle, and am so glad I gained a solid friend out of a weird introduction.

The Flair - Dark Choc Chips, Salted Peanuts, PB Chips

I have to say he is one of three reasons this blog exists today.  The night I decided to get off my ass and get this thing started was a night I’ll never forget with he and Lingie at Father’s Office over amazing beer, hilarity over some tough situations, and just talking about our dreams – big and small.  I think we (it was probably just me) also had a good cackle or three at the emo pedophile haircuts they both were trying out at the time.  This blog will probably never go anywhere and may even even fizzle out one day, but I’m forever indebted to both of you for being such amazing and inspirational friends throughout these many years.  Although, I’m pretty sure if I had said was thinking about getting a third nipple that night, you both would have tried to encouraged me to do that too.  For better or for worse.

Cookie Dough - Wet and Dry Ingredients Combined

I needed an excuse to bake last weekend and decided Alex was overdue to be celebrated on several fronts.  When I wrote my very first blog post about a year and a half ago, I had mentioned he was an up-and-coming artist.  He’s recently taken the leap to follow his dream and move forward full-time with his music career, leaving the desk job behind as of two Fridays ago.  His birthday was also this past Monday, so really – the guy deserved some friggin’ cookies!

Another MS Cookie Box

Instead of your average peanut butter cookie with chocolate chips in it, I decided to do the reverse – a chocolate cookie with peanut butter chips and salted peanuts!  I found a great recipe on this blog and made a couple adjustments (e.g., using more peanuts and only a half bag of pb chips).  I liked the texture and the postee liked them too!

The Reverse PB Choc Chip Cookie

Happy Birthday, friend.  And congratulations for taking the leap!!  Check out my new favorite band – Monsters Calling Home, and download “Growing Up” here!

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