Baking Roundup

As I've mentioned before, this blog is not intended to be a baking blog as I'm not a professional baker and there are many other (better) cupcake baking blogs out there.  That said, I do like to bake and enjoy experimenting with cupcake recipes from time to time.  You can see pictures of my various efforts in the baking section of the gallery.  Here are some cupcakes I've whipped up over the past couple of months:

"The Darcy" (Dark Chocolate Cake Filled with Caramel Topped with Whipped Spicy Chocolate Ganche)
I made these cupcakes for a Ladies Tea Party about six months ago.  We were planning on watching the A&E Pride and Prejudice Miniseries and I wanted to make themed cupcakes that went along with the story.  For Darcy I chose a dark chocolate cake filled with caramel, as Darcy initially appears to be arrogant and bitter but he's got a soft and gooey center.  I topped the cake with a whipped spicy chocolate ganache to represent Darcy's biting tongue.Most of my recipes are adaptations of ones I find on Chockylit's Blog.  You can find the cake recipe here, the caramel recipe here (omit ginger; recipe makes about 4 times too much), and the whipped ganache recipe here (I added Indian chili powder to make it spicy).  You can see more pictures of the baking process here.

"The Bingley" (Lemon Cake Filled with Lemon Curd Topped with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting)
I had a hard time coming up with something as equally clever for Bingley, so I decided to go with Lemon since he's a blond in the movie.You can find the cake recipe here (bake in normal cupcake liners instead of cones), the lemon curd recipe here (recipe makes about 4 times too much and came out very runny), and the lemon cream cheese frosting recipe here (I used only lemon zest and omitted the food coloring).  You can see more pictures of the baking process here.

Pomegranate Cupcakes with Pama Frosting
Red Velvet and I made these cupcakes the day after Christmas.  The original recipe included grapefruit juice and involved cream cheese frosting, but Red was wary of the flavor combination so we stuck with pomegranate as the primary flavor.  As the cupcakes baked, we mixed ourselves some Pama Margaritas. Yum!You can find the cake recipe here (I used 100% pomegranate juice instead of grapefruit juice and orange zest instead of grapefruit zest) and the recipe I based the Pama frosting on here (I omitted the peppermint extract and used Pama instead of milk).  You can see more pictures of the baking process here.