Gingerbread Cupcakes!

Semi-homemade gingerbread cupcakes (Recipe from Hello, Cupcake!) and Cream cheese frosting.

Chocolate "Junkbox" bark!

When our (Emilie & Christina)'s mom makes brownies, sometimes she'll put a bunch of random things, like peanuts, m&ms, and marshmallows in them and call them "junkbox brownies." Today, Christina was making chocolate covered pretzels when Emilie suggested to just mix in a bunch of the pretzels and peanuts Christna had out and spread it into a bark. So, we did just that... and it came out really good tasting! Here's our original recipe:

12 oz of chocolate chips (use dark or semi-sweet)

Mini pretzels

Peanuts

1 tbsp milk

Melt the chocolate in a ban over a double boiler. Add the milk and mix until melted. Crumple about 2-3 handfuls of mini pretzels into the mixture. Add 1-2 handfuls of peanuts. Other nuts would probably taste good, too. If it seems like there's too much more chocolate than there it of anything else, then add more snacks to the chocolate mixture. Mix it all together and spread into a pan; refrigerate until cold and hardened. Break it up using your hands.

Add red & green sprinkles on the top to make it more festive (if you wish)!

Put it in a really pretty cellophane bag with a bow and give it as a Christmas present!!

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Using leftover sweet potatoes (organic I might add), I made sweet potato empanadas. I used the recipe below from allrecipes.com, but with a few variations. I used half whole wheat flour and half cake flour, I only chilled for an hour, and I rolled out 1 and 1/2 inch balls of dough individually instead of using a cookie cutter to make the shape. These are great with any type of filling that is thick enough not to leak through. I love to use pumpkin, guava paste, and apple pie filling, but I usually use powdered sugar for the guava and apple fillings. Delicious and bite-sized!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Empanadas/Detail.aspx

These Cupcakes Are Worth $400

This past weekend, Emilie, Irma, and Christina held their 2nd-annual Thanksgiving Cupcake Bakeoff! It all started last year when Irma was asked by a priest at our church to help her make a dinner (our church does a Dinner Drive where members make Thanksgiving meals, and on Thanksgiving Day they're delivered to needy families). To defray the cost, she asked the sisters to help her make Classy Red Velvet Cupcakes to sell to our family and friends to raise money for it. It was a big success!! This year, even though she wasn't asked, we all thought it would be a good idea to do it again. We baked a lot of cupcakes (some were burnt, so we made even more) and in the end raised $400 to donate to the Food Pantry that runs it all. Everyone loved them and it was for a great cause!!

HALLOWEEN!!!!!

So only Emilie made these... but Christina helped hand them out!! And they were a last minute thing so Irma didn't really know about them...

They were mint chocolate cupcake with orange buttercream frosting & sprinkles. Hooray for Halloween!!!!

P.S.-There will be more posts soon, especially with the holidays...

Irma's... WEDDING!!!!

This past weekend was Irma's wedding to Emilie and Christina's cousin, Gilles. It was in San Antonio and so much fun!! The gorgeous cake was made by hIrma's sister, Anna. It was lemon with raspberry filling. It's tradition to save the top tier of your cake and eat it a year later, but since it was in Texas and we live in New York we told Irma we'd just re-create it next year. So, in a year from today, check back to see how it comes out!! :-)

Oh, and Irma looked gorgeous as well!!

Irma's wedding shower!

This past weekend, our cousin and fellow cupcake master, Irma, had her wedding shower! Emilie and I decided to contribute to the celebration by baking some very yummy and very pink cupcakes. We tried using the famous Candace Nelson's recipe for a batch of strawberry cupcakes, but they did not come out well at all. I don't know if we just didn't cook them long enough, but the cupcakes came out doughy, plain, and greasy.

Our plan for Irma's shower was to bake a pretty batch of strawberry cupcakes with a light pink whipped cream frosting, but because of the strawberry failure, we resorted to another option at the last minute. Emilie and I used a cake-mix altered recipe to create a luscious and refreshing mint chocolate cupcake. We topped it with the whipped cream frosting, and overall the cupcakes were light and a refreshing dessert.

-Christina

We make other things, too...

So we know this blog is all about cupcakes, but we like to bake other things as well. For Cara's shower, we also made some really great cookies- white chocolate macadamia nut- as well as brownies. They were all so good! And we made a diaper cake, too!

The recipe for the cookies can be found in this book. I definitely recommend buying the book; it has every cookie recipe you can think of and more! If you just want this recipe, find one online and add 1 cup of coconut (because most don't have that in them). Emilie doesn't like coconut, but even she thinks it makes them taste great.

Ocean Cupcakes!

This past weekend we did two new things we've never done before with our cupcakes: 1, we made fondant decorations, and 2, we put them in this cool stand Emilie and Chrintina's mom picked up at Marshall's (what CAN'T you buy there??). Our cousin Cara is having a baby boy, and since her husband loves fishing, we decided to made sea-themed cupcakes for her shower. We have a big family and attend many baby showers, so we utilize it as an opportunity to try out new ideas. The cupcakes were a moist chocolate espresso cake with a light blue vanilla buttercream. We also lightly sprayed some of the cupcakes with Wilton's food color spray, which was a similar but slightly darker color than the frosting, to create a cool effect. We ran out of powdered sugar while making it, so it didn't shape as well as we wanted it to, but it still tasted great. The fondant was Duff Goldman (the Ace of Cakes guy)'s buttercream fondant; we bought it at Michael's. It was really easy to shape and color, and we didn't even need to buy special food coloring for the fondant, as we just used the gel food coloring you get at the supermarket. It took a while to shape the fondant and make all the different sea creatures, but in the end everything looked and tasted great!

P.S. we figured out how to embed slide shows, so we can add more pictures without making the post HUGE. Hooray!

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes with Caramel Frosting

There was a small family gathering at our aunts house on Friday, so we made some chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with caramel brown-sugar frosting to bring along. They were quite delicious! The frosting contained brown sugar, which made the frosting a bit granular and crunchy, but it was still smooth and piped out very well. The cupcakes were cake-mix-doctored, so they weren't from scratch but they were more special than straight from the box made cupcakes. And they only took about an hour!

Here is the recipe for the buttermilk cupcakes (adapted from the Hello, Cupcake! Cupcake Book; see link below):

1 box of Chocolate Cupcake Mix (any other flavor works, too- just not angel's food)

1 cup of buttermilk in place of the water called for on the box

4 eggs (it's usually just 3)

The amount of oil it says to use on the box

Follow the directions on the box, and bake the same amount of time! The batter may seem more watery, but it's supposed to be that way.

And for the frosting, this is adapted from the More From Magnolia recipe book. It says caramel frosting, but it tastes more like a brown sugar frosting that true caramel. Oh well, it's still lip-smacking good!

2 sticks of butter

2 cups of confectioner's sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup of milk

1 tablespoon dark corn syrup

1 teaspoon of vanilla

Cream the butter and both sugars on low speed in a bowl for 2 minutes until it's smooth. Add the milk, corn syrup and vanilla and beat until creamy (3-5 minutes). When you first add the milk, vanilla and corn syrup, it seems to make the frosting too watery and weird looking, but keep mixing it and it will turn into fluffy, workable frosting. Enough to frost 2 dozen cupcakes.

Hello, Cupcake!: Click Here

More From Magnolia: Click Here

Two Words: Red Velvet

One of Irma's favorite recipes is Martha Stewart's Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe. With a smooth cream cheese frosting on top, you can't go wrong! Here's an easy but delicious recipe for Red Velvet Cupcakes (thanks, Martha!!):

CAKE:

2 1/2 cups CAKE FLOUR (not self- rising), sifted --> You can find this in the Supermarket where all the other flour is. The one we have comes in a box.
2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon red GEL-paste food color (GEL, not liquid!! you don't want to water-down your batter)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

Directions: (pay attention to step 5, it's important that you do it just the way it says!)
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.
2.Whisk together cake flour, cocoa, and salt in a bowl.
3. IN A DIFFERENT BOWL, With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, whisk together sugar and oil until combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Mix in food color and vanilla.
4. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and whisking well after each. Stir together the baking soda and vinegar in a small bowl (it will foam); add mixture to the batter, and mix on medium speed 10 seconds.
5. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.
****Here is the recipe from Martha's Website:****
http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/red-velvet-cupcakes

FROSTING:

As for the cream cheese frosting, we just know this recipe... it isn't from a site, but you can probably find it somewhere as we didn't invent the recipe for cream cheese frosting. Here is what is always in our bowl:
1 stick of butter (soft, but not melted)
1 8-oz package of Cream Cheese (room temperature, if it isn't then nuke it for a couple seconds. You don't want it hot though)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Put the cream cheese in the bowl and beat it for 1 minute. Add the butter in 1-tbsp size pieces and mix completely. Add the vanilla and mix. Add the sugar, 1 cup at a time and mix until it's smooth. If it's not smooth enough, add more powdered sugar little by little until it is.

These aren't that hard to make but are always delicious! Oh, and if you don't have buttermilk, you can mix 1 tbsp of white vinegar OR lemon juice plus enough milk to make one cup and leave it out for 10 minutes. That will make a fair substitute, though the real thing is always best (but who keeps buttermilk around all the time anyways??) Hope you like them!!

Cupcakes for Delaney

These cupcakes were made in March 2010 for a very special cause. Emilie babysits for a family who lost their baby girl, Delaney, in December of 2009. She was only 7 weeks, but was able to save a life because her parents donated her organs. In her memory, Delaney's family decided they would walk in a March of Dimes walk under the team name "Delaney's Dreamers" to keep her name and story going. The team raised a record-breaking over $50,000, making them the #1 team in the country!! But where do cupcakes fit into this? Emilie, Christina, and Irma were all going to walk, and so they baked and sold cupcakes to friends and family and raised a good amount of money to contribute. We weren't able to get the best pictures of the cupcakes, but they tasted delicious and were for a good cause, too!

The flavors were Chocolate and French Vanilla, and the frosting was a velvety marshmallow fluff frosting. We'll try to post recipes soon!

To learn more about Delaney, check out her facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=410048545579

Cupcake Flashback!

Although this blog is new, our love for cupcakes certainly is not! These are cupcakes we made for a cousin's baby shower back in January. The theme was farm animals, so we made some pig, cow, duck, and lamb themed cupcakes, complete with a fish pond and of course, the baby. The flavors were chocolate and vanilla with buttercream frosting, and we used an assortment of snackfoods and candies to decorate, including m&ms, marshmallows, goldfish, fruit roll-ups, toasted coconut (for the ducks), and, yes, even a piece of spaghetti.

First Post: World Cup(cakes) !!!

In honor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Finale being tomorrow, we decided to bake a special batch of World Cup-themed cupcakes! We decorated some with the flags of Spain and Holland, and on others we covered with green-colored coconut as grass and experimented in making "cake balls" to be the new design of the FIFA soccer ball. The cake balls were a mixture of cake and frosting balled up in a white chocolate shell, with vanilla frosting on top for decoration.

We made one cupcake featuring Paul, the "oracle octopus" that has predicted the outcome of many games in this year's Cup, never having being wrong yet. Last but not least, we made an extra special ¡GOL! cake featuring the green coconut grass, and another cake ball inside a white chocolate soccer goal.

Flavors of cake/ frosting: homemade funfetti cake, vanilla frosting