Mocha, Madeleine and Chai Cupcakes!

Halloween is coming up so I wanted to make some Halloween decorations for my cupcakes :) I found this awesome website that gave me step by step instructions to make fondant pumpkins: click here. It seemed simple enough. I also wanted to make something else other than pumpkin but also along the lines of simple. So my friend volunteered to help me make some spiders. There are no instructions so we used our imagination. The first batch was a bit like cockroaches lol. So we re-did it to make it scarier; after all it is Halloween. 

I made the decorations before baking the cupcakes. It took almost eight hours. I started around 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon and didn't end until at least 10:00pm. It was really fun and very interesting but I'm not sure I can do that every single day. Although I do very much enjoy working with my hands. 

This is the end results of the decorations: 

Today's recipe include Mocha, Madeleine and Chai flavours. To to cut down a little bit on time, I made cream cheese icing for two cupcakes but for the Mocha it had to be coffee buttercream. 

Below illustrates the process 

 

The finished results :) 

Happy Halloween!! 

Chocolate Gingerbread Cupcake!

This past weekend I was away so had to postpone my cupcake making adventure. However; I did manage to squeeze in one recipe before the weekend. I made this on Thursday night - just in time to bring a little Friday treat into work. The flavour today is Chocolate Gingerbread. I had most of the ingredients at home, except for cocoa powder (need more) and raisins.

What was initially a trip to the grocery store to buy two items, because a trip to buy extra snacks :) I can't help it when a sale is on. I bought some crispy mini's and chocolates. Just enough to give me a little boost in the afternoon. I started making the cupcake really late (around 10pm) which is why I only had enough time to make one.

There were a lot of spices involved: cinnamon, all spice, ground ginger, salt, baking soda, tons....it smelled good though! This is the mixture pre-chocolate:

This is the batter after the cocoa powder. Notice how dark it is! And I still have to put raisins and chocolate chips. From previous recipes, I'm still hesitant about putting the full amount of chocolate chips in my cupcakes, they always seem too much. I prefer less. It's already chocolatey enough, why do you need more chocolate chips?

I made a simple buttercream icing today. But to kick it up a notch, I decided to add some food colouring and sprinkes. Turquoise goes perfect with brown so here it is. (p.s. I love my new mixing bowls, it doesn't stain! and doesn't stick!)

The finished product and the finished product with icing and decorations. This one gets extra points for being pretty ;)

This is an interesting flavour to me. I'd never thought to put Chocolate and gingerbread together. I'm still skeptical.

Peanut Butter, Chocolate Cherry and Kahlua Galore!

For this week, I went with one easy, one chocolate and one grown up: Peanut Butter Cupcakes, Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes and Kahlua Cupcakes. Rather than being lazy with only one type of frosting, I made three: Peanut Butter Frosting, Chocolate Hazelnut Frosting and Coffee Buttercream. yummy.

The chocolate cherry one was interesting, I had to use cherry pie filling. First I bought a pie filling. The batter was so dark!

The Kahlua smelled so incredibly good. And the coffee buttercream smelled even better. I had to use real coffee and instant coffee to make it. I like this frosting the best!

The peanut butter one was easy as I already had all the ingredients so I didn't need to buy more :) I love it when I have everything in cupboard! You can see the cherry chunks in the chocolate and the kahlua one doesn't rise that much at all; quite the flat top.

I went to Ikea today and bought new mixing bowls. I love them! They are non-stick and so easy to clean. I also bought some new tupperware to store my baking stuff (chocolate chips, coconut flakes, etc.) With the green lids, I decided to give my cupcakes an individual photoshoot. Please don't laugh :)

 

Mango, Coconut, Pumpkin and Chocolate Brownie! + Pumpkin pie :)

I'm thinking 2 cupcakes a week will take me a whole year, but if I do three cupcakes a week, it'll take about nine months. So to kick this project into high gear, this week I started making three flavours! The cupcake flavours are: Mango Coconut Cupcakes, Pumpkin Cupcakes and Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes! To make it easier on me, I'm only making one type of frosting, Cream Cheese frosting. This was a big hit last time, so it's a safe bet. As it is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, I had to try my hand at a pumpkin pie (this is an extra to my cupcakes). All of this had to be done before the big Thanksgiving dinner. Challenge accepted!

Here's the out-of-the-oven look of the Mango Coconut and Chocolate Brownie cupcakes.

I think the mango could have been a little sweeter, it smelled like mango but the taste of coconut was definitely stronger. The chocolate brownie has the density of brownie so it was another scoop job into the pan. They both smelled wonderful!

Today marked the first time at any pumpkin recipe. Okay...I did do pumpkin seeds last year, but it's different. It's not the "meat" part. Anyhow, pumpkin cupcake came out wonderful - reminds me of carrot cake for some reason. And it goes perfectly with cream cheese. Plus, it's festive!

At the grocery store I could only find a giant can of pumpkin puree, which means I have left over to make a pumpkin pie. I used the simple recipe behind the label and it was so easy!

I liked that this pumpkin wasn't too sweet like the ones you buy in the stores. I had to buy some new spices for this recipe: all spice and ground ginger. I contemplated on grinding up the dried ginger I had at home. But remembering how much I loved crushing things, I thought buying the spice was a better choice. I had left over cream cheese frosting so I decorated my pumpkin pie with it. Maybe I should have waited for it to cool first but  I had to make it to dinner so no time to let it cool too much.

And there's my contribution to this year's Thanksgiving dinner!

 

Chocolate Chip Cookie and Banana Cupcakes!

Can't believe I'm on my 7th and 8th recipe today! Today I decided to go with a fruit recipe and the banana cupcake seemed easiest. I had all the ingredients except bananas, which is quite easy to find. Since the book has so many chocolate recipes, I needed to make a chocolate one every week. This week I chose the Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Interesting....

I picked up a couple of extra things even though I already have it but just in case because you never know when you might need it. Also, late night runs for baking ingredients is not my list of favourite things to do. On my last trip to the States, under my friend's advice, I purchase a couple of bricks of unsalted butter and it's already all gone. This time I had to pick up more butter. It can be quite expensive when they're not on sale.

With the help of another friend's advice, I found how to crush things a lot easier. I would just put the ingredients in a zip-loc bag and then use a knife to crush it! The blunt part of course. But this prevents things from flying everywhere. Why didn't I think of this before? So needless to say my bananas were wonderfully mashed this time. Although it is still a bit chunky, but hey can't be perfect all the time!

As I was making the second batter, it didn't occur to me that this really is a cookie dough until the batter became less runny and just very thick. DUH! So that was a bit unexpected on my part, because it simply didn't even occur to me.

They both smelled delicious! I tried the banana cupcake after it had cooled down and it reminds me of a banana muffin! The top was a bit hard and the inside soft. So my cupcakes today was a muffin and a cookie.

Of course being the "jump-first, think-later" person that I am, I didn't realize the Caramel Frosting I had chosen for the banana cupcake would take a LONG time to solidify to the right consitency. I had to wait until the next day before I can put the icing on it. And it did not become as thick as I hoped. It's more icing than frosting.

On the other hand, the Chocolate Hazelnut frosting was extremely thick and was not at all sticky. As in it didn't want to stick to the top of the chocolate chip cookie cupcakes. I had to push it down every time and pull it up gently so it doesn't take the whole frosting with it. I think the buttercream frosting consistency is by far the best to pipe. In the end they both turned out great and my family loved it. In fact I had to stop them from taking any in case I didn't have enough to bring to work and other friends. However; it tasted the best when it was fresh out of the oven. The whole kitchen smelled wonderful. Although exhausted after each time, I really do enjoy the surprises and satisfaction of making these cupcakes. And I love it when someone thinks its good.