Team USA Inspired Cupcakes

This week I was at a complete loss at what to bake for work. I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to make anything (especially since half of my kitchen is packed up for our impending move). After talking with a coworker, she suggest I do simple plain cupcakes with plain icing and use red, white, and blue.

Now. Plain cupcakes with plain icing aren't quite my style, even if I marble the cupcake to make it red and blue swirls. So I took the red, white, and blue as inspiration and put my own twist on it.

I made red velvet (from scratch) cupcakes. I filled them with homemade marshmallow fluff (it's absolutely fantastic, probably the best thing I've ever tried) and topped them with blue and white buttercream frosting.

The cake was awesome, as was the filling. My buttercream icing was practically melting in my hands (my kitchen was a little warm), so it wasn't piping out as stiff as I liked (a couple cupcakes had the icing melt right off...so we ate those), but once they were refrigerated, it stiffened up and worked out well.

So Patriotic!

The missing section is where the melted icing ones were.
Then the boy and I ate them.

Note: I have this silly tendency to overfill my cupcake tins so my cupcakes end up a little taller/wider than I'd like...oops

First Foray into Cookies (the pretty decorated kind)

This week, I got an itch in my brain that was just begging to be scratched by baking and decorating sugar cookies. Decorating them properly. Different thicknesses of icing properly. And sparkles. Can't forget adding the sparkles to the cookies. The recipes I used were from Callye at Sweet Sugar Belle - she is fantastic; one of the best blogs I've ever read. It even prompted me to buy the type of food coloring that she uses (after my Wilton Red only turned the icing pink...and I used a lot).

I was going with a summer-esque theme and was aiming for colors that I could use in a couple weeks for the 4th. Unfortunately, my red only came out pink, so that was a bust, and I ran out of yellow flood icing (but not until I finished all my yellow cookies). And I so should have made those sun cookies into sunflowers, they would have looked much nicer that way. Oh well, you live you learn.

I love how sparkly the tulips came out

The entire platter that I brought into work

I even piped leaves onto the tulips!

Failed Key Lime Cupcakes with Whipped Mascarpone Frosting

I followed a terrible recipe for these cupcakes, there was absolutely no leavener in the ingredients...something I realized after everything had been baked and frosted.

I will redo these again, probably using a regular plain/vanilla recipe and substituting in lime juice for the vanilla extract.

The mascarpone frosting came out fantastic - such a great way to make a stabilized whipped cream frosting.

Peet's Coffee Inspired Cupcakes

For a while, Peet's Coffee (and they might still have it) had a Mayan Mocha Hot Chocolate - a hot chocolate with some cinnamon and some spice. And I thought that would be best turned into a cupcakes.

Enter the Chocolate Cayenne cupcakes with Cinnamon Chocolate buttercream frosting. They were sweet and they were spicy. And the texture of the frosting was to die for (not to mention my piping job came out awesome). They were gone pretty quickly when I brought them into work. (I was hoping that they would elicit a thank you note the way the last spicy cupcakes that I brought in did, but alas no love).

I would totally make (and eat) them again. I love this frosting, it's probably one of the best buttercreams I've ever made!

Pecan Braids

I was at Panera recently (ok, honestly it was a month and a half ago) and had a free dessert courtesy of my birthday month. I strolled up and down the dessert case for a solid 3 minutes before I found something that didn't look super dry (or super greasy) and wasn't a cookie (which looked dry or greasy). I settled on the pecan braid, even though I'm not a huge fan of nuts in my food. However, when I ate it, I was hooked. The only thing I could think about was baking (and eating) more pecan braids. After a lot of research on the best puff pastry dough recipe (I didn't want it to end up like the chocolate croissant debacle), a pecan filling, and a way to braid the dough; I was on my way to yummy baked goods.

 Unfortunately the only picture I remembered to take is a terrible one, but there they are - the ones that didn't burn at least. They were gone pretty quickly, and I consider them a success. I still have more puff pastry dough in the freezer to play with for next time.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

For Cinco de Mayo I made margarita cupcakes with salted lime frosting. Rather than using milk in my recipe, I switched it out for Mr & Mrs T margarita mix (I also threw a splash of tequila in there for the proper margarita taste). The frosting was buttercream which I made with lime juice and ground some Himalayan sea salt on top. My test batch was better (in my opinion) but regardless the cupcakes were delicious and were gone within an hour.

Final batch of cupcakes brought into work!

Friday night test batch

Test batch!

Decadent...fruity...cupcakes

Blueberry cupcakes with white chocolate frosting drizzled with chocolate ganache. I replaced some of the milk in my recipe with the juice from pureed blueberries - which totally made the cupcakes a grey color. The frosting was warm when I piped it onto the cupcakes so it melted all over the cupcakes, but it worked really well.

They were all eaten within an hour and a half when I brought them into work - so I'd call that a massive success!

Pretty cupcakes (despite the fact that they were grey)

Key Lime Perfection

Key lime cupcakes with whipped mascarpone cream frosting. Best idea ever. They were so light in texture and flavor that they complemented the heat wave we're in nicely. 

Time for Salted Caramel

I decided that it finally was time to step on the salted caramel bandwagon. It seems like everywhere you look people are making salted caramel everything - so I thought it was my turn, with a salted caramel frosting on a mocha brownie. For those that like Starbucks drinks - it's a dream come true.

I used a chocolate cupcake recipe and replaced some of the cocoa powder with a Starbucks Via Instant Iced Mocha Coffee packet. The cupcakes tasted like mocha, but there was no overwhelming coffee flavor for those of us who aren't fans (myself included).

The caramel frosting was really fun to make - I made a caramel sauce first and then beat powdered sugar into that. I ground some Pink Himalayan Sea Salt on top once everything was frosted. It dried hard (harder than a normal American buttercream) on the cupcakes though, so it's not necessarily something that I would want to frost an entire cake with (although maybe I would).

These were absolutely delicious and I would definitely make them again, especially the frosting. I actually still have some caramel sauce in my fridge (I had to make 2 batches of frosting and didn't need all of the second batch) - I should eat that soon.

I finally got the proper tip for piping!

Tray 1 of salty caramel-y goodness

Just look how gorgeous they are

So gorgeous :)

Ganache

Orange cupcakes with whipped chocolate ganache frosting. (I over-whipped the ganache so they're not as pretty as I would have wished). I used a vanilla cupcake recipe that I'm not overly in love with - the batter comes out very thick (because of the addition of Greek yogurt) so filling my muffin tin takes forever (not to mention I struggle to do it with the least amount of mess anyways). I added juice and zest from one orange to the cupcake mix and a splash of orange oil. Gave the cupcakes a great orange flavor.

I topped them with whipped chocolate ganache, but I over-whipped it, so I was unable to pipe it onto the cupcakes and ended up just having to frost them with a knife. Regardless, they still tasted delicious, like those chocolate oranges that the stores put out at Christmastime.

Not nearly as pretty as I wished - but delicious nonetheless

Spicy St. Patrick's Day

With family visiting in early March I had a chance to get to my favorite spice and tea shop in the city. When I was there I picked up some habanero sugar - because I can't resist something new that I've never tried before. Seriously - we have more spices than we know what to do with. I could use a whole cabinet for all our spices (and sugars...and teas).

For St. Patrick's Day, work got a treat with a kick. I made chocolate cupcakes and replaced 2 Tbsp of plain sugar with 2 Tbsp of habanero sugar. They were great. There was the chocolate flavor and then a little kick at the end. I paired them with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Personally, I hated the frosting - way too much butter and not enough sugar, but everyone else seemed to like it. I'll take my American buttercream any day.

(I was also super proud about how good looking the frosting came out on these)

Close up - look at that beautiful frosting detail!

My mouth is watering looking at the picture

Springtime/Easter Cupcakes

These were by far the creme de la creme of cupcakes. I was so impressed with myself over them. Nothing fancy about the cake or the frosting flavors - vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting, but the devil was in the details.

I piped the frosting on to look like grass, then made haystack bird's nests and put those on top. I added three chocolate eggs to each bird's nest and voila - epic cupcakes.

Look at all that Springtime goodness

These have already been requested for Easter :)

Close up!

Chocolate and Strawberries, Oh My!

Yes I know it's months later now, but I really started this whole endeavor of bring cupcakes to work on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day cupcakes were Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream frosting. When my boyfriend (aka The Boy) tried them, he told me that they tasted professional, and that the strawberry frosting was really good and really unexpected. From then on I started dreaming of different combinations of cakes and frosting and my journey began.

Note: The way I judge if cupcakes/baked goods are good is how quickly they disappear from the common area at work. So far my fastest time has been 24 cupcakes in 1.5 hours.

Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry Buttercream
Homemade bacon chocolates in the background
Personalized cupcakes in background

Lets Give it a Shot

To start with - I have a both a BS and MS in biology. Since graduation I've worked at an animal facility, in a 3 person startup doing cell culture and bacteria work, and in a research lab at one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Unfortunately, I don't really care about any of this and I would much rather be spending my days doing crafts or baking. Luckily for the people that work in my building, I love baking. At this point, I try to bring in cupcakes every week - usually on Thursdays.

I'm looking to branch out from just cupcakes (although I've make some awesome combinations) and work on my baking techniques in general. Additionally, I'm working on improving my cake and cupcake decorating skills - so much so that for my birthday my one big request was a 177 piece cake decorating set (I could not have been more excited when I opened it).

Join me on my quest to bake my way to happiness, while using the people in my office building as willing guinea pigs.

I can't promise that it will be pretty, but it will be delicious.