Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

A gal at my work had a baby boy a few weeks ago.  She is returning to work on Monday, so we are having a little impromptu/casual welcome back/welcome baby get together.  I was asked to make cupcakes for the occasion.  Of course I was thrilled.  My mind started whirling about what flavor I should make and how I could decorate them.  There are a couple people at work who don't like chocolate (is that possible?), so I wanted to do something non-chocolate.  Now, there are lots of recipes out there on Pinterest, but I am always drawn to the chocolate ones, so I had to refocus my usual gravitation towards anything chocolate.

I found this recipe here and decided that the flavors sounded really bright and fresh.

Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes with White Chocolate Icing

• (Adapted from Bon Appetit cake recipe)
• 
  
• Yield: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients

• For the cupcakes:
• 3 1/3 cups cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest, packed
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup plus 4 tablespoons buttermilk
• 2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
For the frosting
• 11 ounces high quality white chocolate (such as Lindt or Baker’s), finely chopped
• 12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Instructions

For the cupcakes:
1. 1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Place 24 cupcake papers in two muffin tins.
2. 2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda into a medium bowl.
3. 3. Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy.
4. 4. Gradually add sugar, beating until blended, scraping down sides of bowl occasionally.
5. 5. Beat in lemon juice and zest, then eggs 1 at a time. Continue to beat until well blended.
6. 6. Beat in dry ingredients in batches alternating with buttermilk.
7. 7. Fold in berries.
8. 8. Fill each cupcake paper with 1/3 cup of batter. An ice cream scoop works well for this part of the process.
9. 9. Bake cupcakes for 20-25 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Carefully monitor after 20 minutes. Cool cupcakes in muffin tins for 5 minutes. Remove muffins from tins and cool completely on cooling rack.
For the icing:
10. 1. Melt white chocolate in double boiler over simmering water. Remove boiler top from water, stir until smooth, and cool until lukewarm.
11. 2. Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until blended.
12. 3. Add lemon juice and cooled white chocolate and beat until well blended
To assemble:
13. When completely cooled, ice the cupcakes with a small cake spatula or piping bag. If you use a piping bag, you will be applying more icing to each cupcake and you should probably consider doubling the recipe.

When I saw that it was adapted from Bon Appetit, I figured I couldn't go wrong.  Boy, can I be wrong.  Not that there is anything wrong with the recipe, it is fantastic, I just apparently wasn't thinking while I was baking and.... well, we'll get to that later.

By the way, am I the only one with powdered sugar, flour, etc on their lap top?  I bake with it on the kitchen counter and I am a messy cook.  Just ask my wonderful husband who does all my dishes.

And that is only one side of my U-shaped kitchen with an island!!!!

But I digress.....

This recipe calls for cake flour.  I had never baked with it before.  Wow, does it make the batter smooth and creamy.  It was just beautiful.  Pretty sure this picture does not do it justice, but trust me, it was fabulous.

Now comes my mistake.  The recipe says that it makes 24 cupcakes, which was exactly what I needed, so I began scooping them into my pan.  (I love cupcake papers!)

I always use a large cookie scoop that I have because I feel like it makes the cupcakes more evenly sized, and most always when I use it, it scoops out pretty much exactly what the recipe says it will.  Well......I scooped and I scooped and I scooped and ended up with something like 24 + 12 + 6.  I kept having to pull out more and more cupcake pans.  Well, this is the point where my brain should have kicked in.  I sort of ignored the part of the recipe where it says to put about 1/3 cup batter into each cup.  Cupcakes are cupcakes are cupcakes - NOT!  These cupcakes are super tender and moist but do not rise a whole lot.  I am assuming it is because of the cake flour?  Anyway, they baked up "short".

You can see how they do not even reach the top of the cupcake wrapper.  At this point, I tried one to make sure that they were actually good and that I didn't do something completely wrong.  Let me just say, they are wonderful.  So moist and soft and tender.  I had definitely made the batter right, I had just scooped the wrong amount into the pan.  Now what do I do???  The people at my office were expecting something fabulous, which they do taste fabulous, but how could a serve a cupcake that is less than an inch tall?

Make another batch!!!!!  Now that's more like it.....

See the difference?  This is not a cupcake that you only want an inch of!  So glad that I decided to make another batch.

Now on to the frosting.  I made the icing just like the recipe says and I don't know if it was because it was a warm afternoon or what, but I could not get this frosting to hold it's shape.  It was just really loose.  Don't get me wrong, it tasted amazing with that hint of lemon in it, but I really needed something more stable.  I decided to add some powdered sugar.  I thought it was odd that there was not sugar in this icing, but whatever.  It did tighten it up some, but was still very loose.

By the way, you probably already know this, but if you don't have a double boiler (I don't), you an use a pan and a bowl like this.  It works just great.

So for the first, short, batch, I just frosted like this....

For work, like this....

I had seen this idea on Pinterest (is there anything that is NOT on pinterest?) and thought they were really cute and then stumbled upon a youtube video of how to do it.  Did mine turn out as cute as hers?  No, but I was not using crusting buttercream like she did.  My frosting was delicious! :)

I started by making these little faces with a combo of fondant & gum paste so that they would be fairly still.  I am just beginning to work with fondant and gum paste and I have to say it is really fun.  In case you are wondering, you use a food marker like the ones here to draw the faces on, so actually these little faces are edible too.  Here is the youtube video is you want to watch it and see a pro do it. (and what they are really supposed to look like.

Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

It's always hard to decide what cupcake to make next.  My friend at work loves coconut, so I decided to do something with coconut that I hoped she would love.  I scoured pinterest and my favorite food blogs and stumbled upon someone's version of an Ina Garten coconut cake.  Who makes a version of hers?  She is amazing, why would you want to change one of her recipes?  So I went straight to the source, foodnetwork.com and searched for the recipe.  So this is the recipe that I used:

Ingredients
3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing the pans
2 cups sugar
5 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons pure almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pans
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup milk
4 ounces sweetened shredded coconut

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans, then line them parchment paper. Grease them again and dust lightly with flour.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes, until light yellow and fluffy. Crack the eggs into a small bowl. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs 1 at a time, scraping down the bowl once during mixing. Add the vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. The mixture might look curdled; don't be concerned.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk to the batter in 3 parts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in the 4 ounces of coconut with a rubber spatula.
Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/coconut-cake-recipe/index.html?oc=linkback

I am amazed that Ina is not professionally trained.  She taught herself to cook by reading French and New England cookbooks.  Her Food Network show "Barefoot Contessa" is one of my favorites.  And the fact that she has been married to her high school sweetheart for almost 45 years is icing on the cake (pun intended).

This batter is just lovely.  This photo just doesn't do it justice.  It's thick and creamy and the smell of vanilla, almond extract and coconut is divine.  The recipe is intended for a layer cake, and so it actually made 36 cupcakes instead of the usual 24.

This cake is very dense and heavy.  At first I thought I had done something wrong because I was expecting a light, fluffy cake, but, even though it is heavy, it is moist and tender.

I found a recipe for chocolate buttercream on www.Createdby-Diane.com that I thought I would try.  It's quite delicious.

1 cup butter
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tbls milk or cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat butter with mixer until pale and fluffy, add sugar cocoa and milk along with the extract and mix until smooth and creamy.

Knowing that I had 36 cupcakes to frost, I doubled the recipe.

I decided to frost them a little differently than I usually do, I did a frosted gem effect with a large star tip.  It made it kind of pokey, but pretty and made little valleys for the coconut and almond pieces to fall into.

They were a hit!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cupcakes

Got this facebook message:

Of course I said yes.  Wow, my first paying gig!!!  I told her to go on my pinterest cupcake board and see if there was something there that they would like.  I figured I could probably do whatever she picked.  Well, this is what she picked:

And this is what she got:

Not perfect, but they were cute and she liked them.

This is the website where the original recipe is found.  It's called "Bakers Royale".

http://www.bakersroyale.com/cupcakes/peanut-butter-and-chocolate-cupcake/

I followed her directions but used my chocolate cupcake recipe (yes, the same one) for the cake part.  There is a mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cup in the middle of the cake which is added before baking by putting a small amount of batter in the cup, add the reeses, then add the rest of the batter on top.  These baked for about 18 minutes.

I also used my standard chocolate buttercream for these.  I didn't think this was the time to try a chocolate swiss buttercream for the first time.  :)   These took a lot of frosting.  And when I say a lot of frosting, I mean a LOT of frosting.  I had to calculate it out.  I made a triple batch, and then made had to make one more batch before I was done.

For the life of me, I could not find my large circle piping tip.  I even went to the store multiple stores to find one, but no one had one, so I had to use my small circle tip.  The larger one would have looked better, but what was I to do.  I will have to order one on Amazon or something. Anyway, I piped in circles to make the mound and then I put them in the freezer as the instructions direct.

While they froze slightly, I made the the chocolate topping.  I used her recipe and I like it quite a lot, but I think I got it a little too thin.  I would have liked it a little less drippy.  I then took the cupcakes out of the freezer (they were there about 20 minutes) and started to top them with the chocolate sauce, add sprinkles and top with another peanut butter cup.  Then used a large star tip to top the peanut butter cup and then added the cherry.  

Tip:  I took the cherries out of the jar, choosing the ones with the "cutest" stems and I put them on some paper towels to kind of try them out.  I wanted to make sure they would stick to the frosting.

And there you have it.  She asked for 30 of them and the ingredients along were about $30.  These are expensive cupcakes to make, but they were really delicious.

Now, off to find a large circle tip on Amazon.

Just Chocolate.... for a good cause

So I got a call from my Bishop on Thursday night at about 7:20 pm.  He was wondering what I was doing and if I felt like making cupcakes.  Do I feel like making cupcakes?  What kind of a question is that?  He was headed up to Girl's Camp the next afternoon and wondered if I would whip up something yummy to take to the girl's and their leaders who have been in the dirt all week.  How could I refuse?

I made chocolate cake (the same recipe as the oreo recipe-it's my new go to), with chocolate ganache filling and topped it with chocolate french silk buttercream frosting and chocolate sprinkles.

It was a hit!

German Chocolate Love

I'm kind of famous in my family for my German Chocolate Cake.  My mom always requests it for birthdays, dinners and parties.  Whenever my sister comes to town she requests it... you get the idea.  So, I decided to make it in cupcake form.

First the cake:

I used a cake mix but used milk instead of water and I always add vanilla and I think I added about a 1/2 cup of sour cream for moisture.

I really need to invest in some grease proof papers because the chocolate cake just makes the liners very dull.  Oh well.  Those liners were really cute.

Next I made the coconut pecan frosting.  I went to my old stand by recipe that came from my old standby cookbook that I have had forever as you can see by the tattered and torn photo.... which apparently includes sample (see bottom left).  Good old Betty Crocker!

Here is the recipe, straight from the book:

I do just exactly as it says and it turns out perfect every single time.  I tried to show what it looks like at the beginning and at the end, but you can't really tell in the pictures.

Start:

Finish:

I'm hoping you can kind of see the difference.  It gets a much darker caramel color.  Then you add the coconut and the pecans.  Yummm

I wanted it to cool down quickly so that I could get them done so I put the hot/warm pan of frosting into a bowl of ice.  It actually worked really well.  Who knew?

I realized when I was getting the recipe for the coconut pecan frosting that the chocolate french silk buttercream frosting that I always use because it always turns out fabulous is also from this same cookbook.

I had forgotten that this is where it came from.  Sorry for the flash spot.

I decided to put a little of the frosting as a filling as well as a garnish on top.  I didn't want there to be too much of it, just a little taste, so I used my handy, dandy homemade poker.

Yes, it's a dowel that I have covered with clear tape so that the flavors don't seep into the wood and it can be washed.  I am sure there is an actual tool for this out there somewhere, but this works and it's free!

After I filled them, I put a small cookie scoop of coconut pecan frosting in the middle and then piped the chocolate frosting around the edges.  I made the frosting a little too loose for my piping liking, but it held up so all is well.

A view from the middle....

And there you have it.... German Chocolate Love!