Sweet Potato Cupcakes

My roommate hosted an awesome pre-Thanksgiving dinner at our house the weekend before real Thanksgiving.  Sweet potatoes with butter and brown sugar are my favorite part of Thanksgiving, so I decided to make some sweet potato cupcakes:


These were actually a simple twist on the pumpkin spice cupcakes:  How to Eat a Cupcake's pumpkin cupcake recipe with mashed sweet potato substituted for the pumpkin, topped with Chockylit's cream cheese frosting. 

My First Paid Cupcake Gig!

While I was vacationing in San Francisco in mid-November I got a text message from my roommate asking me to call her ASAP.  Thinking something horrible had happened I called her immediately.  As soon as she picked up the phone she asked "Do you think you could make 120 cupcakes?  By Tuesday?"  It turned out that my roommate had been talking up my cupcakes to her coworkers, and her boss asked her if I could make cupcakes for a special treat for the crew of the movie she was working on.  Seeing as how I was getting back into town on Monday afternoon, I thought it unlikely I could have 120 cupcakes finished by Tuesday.  After a brief conversation with her boss, she asked "What about Wednesday?"  And so I found myself with my first paid cupcake gig.

At first I planned on doing three or four different flavors, but worried that I wouldn't finish in time I decided to keep it simple(r).  Since people really enjoyed the pumpkin spice cupcakes I made a few weeks earlier, I decided to make them again.  I also decided to decorate each cupcake with a fondant Θ and Π, the name of the sorority in the movie.

I was so stressed about finishing in time that I totally forgot to take step-by-step pictures, or pictures of the final 159 cupcakes laid out on my dining room table.  Here are a few pics that I did remember to snap:

I spent a total of ~20 hours on the cupcakes, though I had an additional 10 hours of help on the fondant cutting and assembly.  A lot of the time came from having to do multiple batches of things - my mixer could only hold one batch of batter at a time (I made 5 total) and my oven could only cook 2 dozen cupcakes at a time.  I probably could've reduced my total time by 75% if I had a commercial mixer and oven.

All in all it was a great experience, though exhausting and not super profitable.  (It worked out to ~$7/hr.)  I think I'll leave the professional baking to the real professionals from now on.

Super Scary Spider Cake

Halloween this year was extremely hectic.  I'd spent the previous two weeks volunteering 15+ hours a day for a presidential nominee's campaign, but I'd promised to make a cake for a friend's Halloween party and so I carved out some time to do so.  An extremely cute boy who was going to be in attendance at this party requested "a giant spider cake eating a bunch of smaller cakes with its hands".  I'd like to think I achieved his vision:

I was totally exhausted and I felt a bit guilty spending a lot of time making a cake from scratch when my candidate needed me, so I cheated.  The red velvet cake was made from box mix and the chocolate fudge frosting was from a tub.  I made the eyes and pincers out of fondant, and the legs were chocolate fudge Pirouette wafers held together with toothpicks, fondant, and frosting.  All told it took me about five hours to make the cake - four hours to bake the cakes and make the legs, eyes, and pincers, and another hour to frost and assemble.

Here's a pic of me in my Halloween costume with my roommate:

Only one person at the party was able to come close to identifying it.  I was a cross between myself and The Son of Man.  Many thanks to my awesome artist roommate for making the foamboard cupcake!

P.S.  I think the cute boy liked the cake.  We started dating a few days later =)

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

A couple of months ago my roommate had some leftover pumpkin guts from some pies she made.  One lazy Sunday afternoon I converted them into pumpkin spice cupcakes with ginger cream cheese frosting:

I used this pumpkin cupcake recipe from How to Eat a Cupcake, though I substituted dark brown sugar and granulated sugar for the light brown sugar.  For the frosting I turned to Chockylit's trusted cream cheese recipe, but with ~1/8 cup of diced candied ginger thrown in.  I garnished the cupcakes with graham crackers as an homage to my roommate's pumpkin pies.

Gametime!

After the Steelers' loss two weeks ago, I wasn't planning on continuing with my Steelers cupcakes baking streak.  My roommates, however, surprised me with the Wilton Giant Cupcake Pan, and I thought I'd inaugurate it last weekend by baking a Steelers themed cake.
I used my new favorite chocolate cake recipe from Chockylit, as well as her chocolate ganache recipe and a butterscotch frosting recipe.

The chocolate cake and ganache came out fabulous as usual, but the butterscotch frosting came out super thick, almost like peanut butter cookie dough.  I tried to fluff it up by beating some butter into it, but that didn't really work.  If I were to make a butterscotch frosting again, I'd make a plain swiss meringue buttercream and beat some butterscotch sauce into it, rather than beating powered sugar into butterscotch.

Using the giant cupcake pan turned out to be more difficult than I'd expected:

1. The instructions that come with the pan mention that it requires six cups of batter, but I had no way to judge how much batter the recipe would make before making it.  As a result, I only ended up with about half as much batter as I needed, so both my bottom and top halves came out half as big as they were supposed to be.  In the future, I'll double the recipe.  Note to people who use box mix with this pan -- you'll need more than one box.
2. I'd read on various blogs that I shouldn't bake both halves of the cake at the same time, since the lower-volume top would finish baking sooner and start to burn before the bottom was finished.  I heeded their advice and baked the halves separately, but the sides and bottom of each half still ended up burning before the centers were finished baking.
3. The cupcake recipe said to bake the cupcakes at 350° for 25 minutes.  This worked great when I made the cupcakes, but not so well for the cake.  The outer edges of the cake were done after 25 minutes, but the centers were still very liquidy.  In the end, I had to bake each half for approximately 50 minutes until a knife in the center came out clean, and the bottom and sides of the cake were burned.  In the future, I'd probably turn down the oven to 325° and bake for an hour.  This means that it takes about two hours to bake a cake with this pan -- crazy!
4. Each half of the cake "domed" quite a bit during baking, which meant that I had to slice off the fairly sizable domes in order for the top and bottom halves to fit together evenly.  I used some of the frosting to turn the domes into a giant whoopie pie.  The domes were the most "brownie" part of the cake, so I basically ended up with a giant, frosted brownie sandwich.  Yum!

The Steelers ended up winning their game (yay!), but I'm still exhausted from all the baking so I don't think I'm going to make anything tomorrow.  We'll see how that goes for the Steelers.

Gametime!

For yesterday's game I decided to switch things up and try to make a "black" cake with yellow frosting.  I ended up doing dark chocolate cake filled with Andes mints topped with mint buttercream.  Strangely, the Andes mints did not melt during baking, leaving a completely intact mint in the center of each cupcake.  (How is it even possible that they'll melt in my fingers after about 10 nanoseconds, but won't melt in an 350° oven?)

Unsurprisingly, I went to Chockylit for chocolate cake and mint buttercream recipes.  I think this chocolate cake recipe is my favorite so far -- it was like a hybrid between a chocolate cake and a brownie.  Yum!  I was disappointed to discover that Wilton's "black" sugar crystals were actually dark olive green.  Lame!
The Steelers played one of the most terrible games I've ever seen them play, so I think my obligation to continue making Steelers cupcakes is over.  I also spent a good 12 hours this weekend preserving 11 pounds of Asian pears, so you can expect to see some pear-based cupcakes in the coming weeks.  (I started with about 100 pears, which was only about 25% of the fruit on my tree.  What am I going to do with all these pears?!?)

Gametime!

The Steelers-themed cupcakes were just supposed to be a one-time thing, but several people pointed out that if I didn't make cupcakes this week and they lost, it would be all my fault.  Sigh.

This time it was banana bread with chocolate chips topped with cream cheese frosting.  About a quarter of the cupcakes were frosted with cream cheese frostingthat was left over from prior projects and had either orange juice/zestor lime juice/zest in it. The rest had plain cream cheese frosting.

I used the same banana cake recipe from last week, but added half a cup and change of chocolate chips.  I turned to Chockylit's trusty database of recipes for the cream cheese frosting recipe.
I've got a couple of ideas cooking for the next couple of weeks.  I don't want the Steelers to lose, but at the same time, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up!

Gametime!

I made these cupcakes in honor of the first Steelers game of the season.  They're comprised of banana cake filled with caramel topped with mango chocolate ganache and fondant Steelers logos.  I even bought a pack of the Reynolds multi-colored cupcake liners just so I could harvest the yellow ones.  Black and gold, baby!

Total time = 5 hours: 1 hour for the cake, 3 hours to make the fondant logos, and 1 hour to fill, frost and assemble.  (The caramel filling and mango chocolate ganache were leftover from previous cupcake projects.)

This was my first time working with fondant, and I learned some valuable lessons:

1. Place fondant decorations on cupcakes immediately before serving.  I knew that water softens fondant, but it totally slipped my mind when I assembled the cupcakes.  The logos were little hard discs when I started placing them onto the cupcakes.  By the time I finished and grabbed my camera, the first few were starting to soften and droop around the shape of the frosting.  D'oh!  Also, fondant "sweats" if you refrigerate it and then bring it back to room temperature.  (I've been storing the cupcakes in the fridge and then letting them come to room temperature before eating them -- the fondant goes from dry and matte to shiny and wet.  Eww.)
2. Use powdered food coloring to dye fondant.  I used gels made by Wilton and for some reason I couldn't get the fondant red.  The color on the jar was "Christmas Red" but my fondant started out light orange and got brighter and brighter until it was practically neon orange.  It took about 40 minutes, 1/2 tsp of red gel, and a cup of powdered sugar to get a tangerine sized ball of fondant red.  So frustrating.  Luckily the blue and yellow were much easier.

Anyway, here's the result:
I used this banana cake recipe from Cassie of How to Eat a Cupcake, the mango chocolate ganache mentioned in this post, and Chockylit's caramel recipe with the ginger omitted.  Thanks to Amai for the awesome fondant cutter set that included the diamond!

More Baking

I made these cupcakes for a barbecue last weekend.  I've had some leftover mango puree in my freezer for awhile, as well as some mango preserves left over from my last baking adventure, and I thought pairing mango with lemon and ginger could make for an interesting flavor combination.  I decided to go with lemon ginger cake topped with mango chocolate ganache.I used this lemon cake recipe from Chockylit, except that I doubled it and added about 3/4 cup of diced candied ginger.  (The most time consuming process of the entire recipe was chopping up the candied ginger -- it took about 45 minutes.)

I also used a doubled version of her mango chocolate ganache recipe.  I was worried that the mango preserves might make the frosting too sweet, so instead of using both semisweet and bittersweet chocolate, I only used bittersweet chocolate.  (72% cacao to be exact.)  I had about half a cup of pureed mango and 7 ounces of mango preserves, and added all of it to the chocolate ganache.  I also beat the ganache with a cup of powdered sugar to stiffen it up.  Ultimately I shouldn't have doubled the recipe -- I only used about half of the frosting.  Oh well, I guess I'll have to come up with another cake that goes well with mango chocolate ganache!

At the end of the day the cake wasn't my cup of tea.  Despite the ridiculous amount of sugar the recipe called for, the cake wasn't sweet at all, and the ginger and lemon pairing was a mite bitter.  My friends, however, claimed to love it, enjoying the fact that it wasn't sweet like traditional cupcakes.  I think they were just flattering me.  The mango ganache, on the other hand, was amazing, despite the fact that I hate dark chocolate.  The preserves and powdered sugar added the perfect amount of sweetness to temper the bite of the bittersweet chocolate.  I couldn't really taste the mango when I ate the cupcake as a whole (there was just a hint of fruitiness), but when I ate the frosting alone the mango was quite noticeable.  If I were to make this cupcake again, I'd fill the cake with the mango to make it a bit sweeter, and use a regular semi/bittersweet chocolate ganache.

Baking Roundup and Cupcake Art

A couple of weeks ago I made some cupcakes for a friend's movie night.  I had some leftover mango puree in my freezer so I decided to go with a mango pineapple cake filled with passionfruit preserves topped with either a lime cream cheese frosting or an orange cream cheese frosting:
I used this hummingbird cake recipe from Chockylit, but I substituted 1/2 cup mango puree for each mashed banana and omitted the nuts.  I used her citrus cream cheese frosting recipe as well, making half a batch of lime and half a batch of orange.

This week I made some chocolate raspberry cupcakes filled with Nutella or mango preserves, topped with chocolate ganache:
I used Chockylit's chocolate goji berry cake recipe, but I substituted fresh raspberries for the dried goji berries.  I also used her chocolate ganache recipe, though I found it to be a bit too sweet and not rich enough for my tastes.  Some combination of the denseness of the cake and the denseness of the Nutella made it really difficult for me to get a lot of filling inside the cakes.  If I were to make these again, I'd definitely use the cone method of filling the cakes rather than my Bismark tip.

Two dozen of these cupcakes went to a 4th of July barbecue I went to, while the other dozen went to Ali Spagnola in exchange for this custom painting:



I totally love my new painting!!  Ali is a fantastic artist with an amazing project; she paints one painting every day and gives it away for free.  She's sent paintings all over the world (and doesn't charge her recipients for shipping!), but luckily she lives in Pittsburgh so we were able to arrange this cupcake-painting swap.  I'm looking forward to buying more paintings from her -- her robots are so cute!

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.

In Which Violet Attempts to Bake: Part Deux!

Last night I baked my second ever entirely-from-scratch batch of cupcakes. This time I tried making chocolate garnishes, with somewhat tragic results. This blog is supposed to be about professional-quality cupcakes and accessories (there are plenty of baking blogs out there that do a much better job than I ever could!), but if you're interested you can find some pictures and a detailed description of the experience in the CupcakeFetish Gallery.

If anyone has any tips on how to make chocolate garnishes that last longer than 30 seconds without melting, I'd love to hear them.