Butterscotch Chocolate Coconut, White Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting, and Ginger galore!

 

Butterscotch Chocolate Coconut with Toasted Coconut Flakes on top

White Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Toasted Cocnut Flakes

Ginger Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cheesecake, Pina Colada, Maple Raisin, Peanut Butter & Jelly, and Orange-Scented Angel Food...

This weekend I had actually made five recipes: Cheesecake, Pina Colada, Maple Raisin, Peanut Butter and Jelly and Orange-scented Angel Food. I made the first two recipes at my friend's place, where we had gathered with some girlfriends and baked. It was fun. Having people around while you bake is actually quite fun. I like the open kitchen layout :) 

I didn't get a chance to take pictures of the first two recipes, but I have plenty for the other three. 

Maple Raisin: I really do enjoy the smell of maple syrup :) This cupcake came with Maple Buttercream.

Peanut Butter and Jelly: this recipe calls for the jam to be spread inside the cupcake after it is done baking. I didn't want to take it out of the lining so I just dug a hole in the middle of the cupcake and then pipe the jam inside using a zip-loc bag. The Peanut Butter Icing hides the hole quite well :) 

Orange-scented Angel Food: I love this recipe! I did not whip the butter by hand, I used a hand mixer for that. Although I wonder if a stand mixer would be better (must save up for one). The texture is so light and fluffy! The orange and chocolate chips give it a bit more oomph. It's super cute! 

My brother decided to take these pictures of the cupcakes for me. I like how it looks.

Back: Maple Raisin with Maple Buttercream
Front: Peanut Butter and Jelly (peanut butter icing)

Cheesecake cupcakes - perfect little bite size! 

Back: Pina Colada with Cream Cheese Icing
Front: Orange-scented Angel Food cupcake

Apple Crisp, Pink and Banana Nutmeg :)

I have decided to try my hand at making some apple pies this weekend (pictures below) so I thought it was also appropriate to incorporate apple into my cupcake recipes for the week. There's a bit of a fruit theme today: Apple Crisp, Pretty in Pink (Strawberry & Buttermilk) and Banana Nutmeg :)

Apple Crisp: diced apples. the crisp (streusal) is basically brown sugar, cinnamon and butter.

Banana Nutmeg: sliced bananas. it was very prettily placed on top of the cupcake but I forgot to take a picture :(

Pretty in Pink: puree strawberries. (forgot to take a picture of that)  

This week was a not a good picture-taking week. I almost forgot to take a picture of the final product but was able to sneak one in before it all disappeared. 

The Apple Crisp was a huge hit! I like that one very much, the streusal was very nice. I think I prefer the other banana recipe, but this one was cute with the bananas on top. I think if the strawberries were sweeter it would taste a bit better, although it is still pretty good. I didn't like how the strawberry cream cheese icing came up. I don't know if it's because of the cream cheese I used or what, but the icing was really thick and hard to pipe. There's strawberry jam in the icing. 

And finally here is a picture of the apple pies. The recipe was great, but I think it could've cooked a little longer for the apples to be softer. However; if I had sliced it instead of dicing the apples, it might cook better. And I am putting more crust on the pie, I love the crust! And of course need to be prepared with vanilla ice cream :) 

 

Frech Toast, Coconut and Lemon!

This week I decided to make French Toast, Coconut and Lemon cupcake recipes. For these recipes I had to pick up a bunch of stuff including maple syrup - yummy! I might have to make pancakes one day and have maple syrup on it.

The french toast smelled so great as I am making it. So much maple :D

For the coconut recipe, I had to toast the coconut flakes in a pan before adding it to the mixture. It certainly gave the cupcake a bit of crunch and was all around delicious! 

The lemon recipe required a bit longer process. In fact before I made the first two recipes, I had to make lemon curd (needed to make the lemon cream on top). From the book, I couldn't get a visual of what to expect so I decided to youtube instructions to know what the final product should be. It was great! You can find so many cooking instructions online. 

This is process of the lemon recipe:

I love how you can keep whipping the cream and it becomes all light and fluffy. I love the texture. However at that texture, you can't pipe it on top of the cupcake; hence it became a dollop.