Adventures in . . . Bleeding Heart Cupcakes

I just can't believe how fantastically disgusting these look, and how they manage to look even grosser on camera than in person. This is a particularly bloody looking one because as the frosting melted in the course of painstakingly frosting tiny nerves on two dozen cupcakes, the dye started to separate from the frosting. My vein-frosting skills were improving by such unexpected margins that I decided to appreciate the increasingly bloody veins rather than pause and refrigerate the frosting.

This recipe comes from Clare Crespo's book Hey There, Cupcake! , which I don't own, but I found this particular recipe on Epicurious. It was a fun recipe to make, and I might make veiny cupcakes once again, but probably not with this recipe. It is just a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting, and then you drop a little bit of strawberry jam into the cupcake to make "blood." So actually making the cakes was pretty easy, but the assembly was a bitch: removing little plugs from each cupcake, dropping in a little 1/2 t of strawberry jam, plugging them back up, frosting with pink frosting, then doing the blue and red veins. It was labor-intensive, to say the least. Plus I think that I should have found a strawberry frosting recipe to go with the strawberry jam, but I didn't think of that till it was too late.

Bleeding Heart Cupcakes
from Clare Crespo

Preheat oven to 350. Line tins. Remove butter and whole milk from fridge.

In a medium bowl, sift:
3 C flour
2 ½ t b.p.
½ t salt

In a separate, larger bowl, cream 2/3 C butter (1 + 1/3 sticks?).
Gradually add 1 ¾ C sugar, creaming until light and fluffy.
Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a small bowl, combine:
1 ¼ C whole milk
1 t vanilla

To the butter mixture, add ¼ of the flour mixture and mix well. Add about one quarter of the milk mixture and mix well. Continue alternating the flour mixture and milk mixture, beating after each addition until smooth.

Pour into tins. Bake 15-20 min.


Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
In a large bowl, cream ½ C butter until smooth.
Add:
4 C powdered sugar
½ t salt
1/3 C whole milk
1 t vanilla

Mix until smooth and creamy.
Keep 2/3 of the frosting in that bowl. Divide 1/3 of it into two additional bowls. Color the big bowl pink. Color the remaining bowls blue and red.


Assembly
With a small paring knife, cut out a circle about the size of a dime in the center of each cupcake, going about 2/3 of the way in. Pull the little plug of cake out. Cut off the top of this piece (About ½ in. thick), and eat or discard the bottom. Use a teaspoon or a squeeze bottle to fill the hole partway with strawberry jelly "blood." Put the little cake plug back in.

Frost the cupcakes with the pink frosting. Make it super smooth by dipping the knife into a bowl of hot water and smoothing it over the top. With a pastry bag, use the red and blue frosting to make veins on the hearts.

Adventures in . . . Orange Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes

This is my first time converting a cake recipe into cupcakes. I was a little bit nervous about it, but I think it was pretty much a success. I took Ina Garten's delicious Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake, made it pretty much exactly as the recipe says, but then scooped it into lined muffin tins. The only thing that was a little bit messy was spreading the orange-sugar syrup over the cupcakes; next time, I think I will do this with a pastry brush, because you can't just pour it over the cupcakes as you would a cake (it gets the liners all sticky!). I wanted to make candied orange peel, but to be totally honest, this recipe is sort of a "potchke" already (what with all the zesting and juicing and orange-sugar glazing), so I scrapped that ambition. I should also note that the consistency of this cupcake is more like a muffin or a breakfast cake--it doesn't have that light, delicate crumb that usually characterizes a cupcake. Anyway, I don't see this as a problem.

(Ina's) Orange Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes with Coffee-Chocolate Ganache
Makes 24 regular size cupcakes + 24 minis.

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tins. Take butter, buttermilk, and eggs out of fridge.

Zest 4 oranges to get ¼ C grated orange zest. Squeeze oranges to get 1/2 C o.j.

Sift in a bowl:
3 C flour
½ t b.p.
½ t b.s.
1 t salt

In another bowl, combine:
¼ C orange juice (half of the o.j.)
¾ C buttermilk
1 t vanilla extract

In a whole nother bowl, cream until light and fluffy (5 min):
½ lb unsalted butter at room temp
2 C sugar

Add 4 extra-large eggs, one at a time, and then orange zest.

Add flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately in thirds to the creamed butter, beginning and ending with the flour.

Toss 2 C semisweet chocolate chunks with 2 T flour, and add to the batter.

Scoop into tins, and bake for 24 minutes. (Minis bake for about 12-14 minutes.)

Syrup
In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, cook ¼ C sugar with ¼ C o.j. until sugar dissolves. Spoon over cakes after removing them from pans.

Ganache (I altered this recipe to make more ganache)
Melt in a double boiler, stirring occasionally:
12 oz semisweet choco chips
3/4 C heavy cream
1 t instant coffee granules

Spread ganache over cupcakes once they're cool. If you're a better person than I am, top with candied orange peel. Otherwise, I stuck a slice of orange on top of each cupcake, which I don't really recommend (it was a little bit juicy, and it's just sort of weird.)

Adventures in . . . Guinness Gingerbread Cranberry Cupcakes

This recipe comes from the blog dessert-lounge.blogspot.com. Cut + paste the url to see the original recipe + photo:
http://dessert-lounge.blogspot.com/2007/11/guiness-ginger-cranberry-cupcakes-with.html

These cupcakes were gorgeous, but I wouldn't make them again. For one thing, they took forever to make, and for another, they didn't have the greatest texture: the tops got sort of hard and chewy (maybe I overbaked them?).

Guinness Gingerbread and Cranberry Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cupcake:
1 C Guinness
1 C molasses
1 1/2 t baking soda
2 C flour
2 T ground ginger
1 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1/8 t ground cardamom
3 large eggs
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar (packed)
3/4 C vegetable oil
3 C fresh cranberries (this is a lot of cranberries! i might have put fewer in)

Candied Cranberries:
1 1/2 C water
1/2 C sugar plus more for rolling
1 C fresh cranberries

Cream Cheese Frosting--I used the recipe from Ina's Coconut Cupcakes w/o the almond extract--see below.

To make candied cranberries: In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, dissolve sugar into 1 1/2 C water. Lower heat to barely a simmer. Add cranberries and simmer for 5 minutes, or until softened. Remove from heat and strain cranberries. Discard liquid. When cranberries are cool enough to handle, roll in granulated sugar. Place on waxed paper.

To make cupcakes: Heat oven to 350. Line muffin tins.
Bring stout and molasses to boil in heavy medium saucepan over high heat. Remove from heat; stir in baking soda. Let stand 45 minutes to 1 hr to cool completely.
Whisk flour and next 6 ingredients in large bowl to blend.
Whisk eggs and both sugars in medium bowl to blend. Whisk in oil, then stout mixture.
Gradually whisk stout-egg mixture into flour mixture. Stir in fresh cranberries.

Fill tins 2/3 full and bake for 20-25 minutes. Frost with cream cheese frosting and garnish with candied cranberries.

Adventures in . . . Vegan Apricot Almond Cupcakes

Today I tried 2 recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. It is an amazing cookbook, and I can't wait to try every recipe in it. These first two did not dissapoint. They were ready in a flash (no eggs and butter to cream), and they came out perfectly. I was skeptical because the batter was much more liquid-y than that of non-vegan cupcakes, but fear not!

Apricot-Glazed Almond Cupcakes (makes 12)

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tin.
In large bowl, combine:
1/3 C canola oil
3/4 C granulated sugar
1/4 C soy yogurt (sort of yicky, but I tried not to look at it!)
2/3 C almond milk
1 t vanilla extract
2 t almond extract

Sift into that same bowl:
1 C + 2 T all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Mix until batter is smooth.

Add:
1/3 C almond meal + mix until combined.

Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full.

Then this is the fun part: "Using a 1/2 t masuring spoon, add apricot preserves to the center of each cupcake. Tap lightly on the preserves to get them mostly level with the cupcake batter." (p. 89)

I baked them for 24 minutes. They will still look very light (they won't get golden), but they were definitely ready.

Apricot Glaze:
Boil 1/3 C apricot preserves and 1 T water in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. (This is slightly less apricot preserves than the cookbook recommends, but I think it was all that the cupcakes needed.) Bring to a boil, stirring often. Boil for a minute. Turn the heat off and stir the glaze for another 30 seconds.

I used a flat wooden spoon to apply a small amount of glaze to the tops of the cupcakes, and then I put a layer of slivered almonds on top.

Adventures In . . . Choco Banana Cupcakes

I made these by combining two recipes: a banana cupcake recipe I found on-line and the recipe for Sprinkles (the LA cupcake chain) Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting. They were delish although I think that the chocolate frosting could have been sweeter. The secret ingredient for both the cupcakes and the frosting is sour cream (ick!); I don't know why.

Banana Cupcakes:
2 bananas, mashed
1 stick butter
1 C sugar
2 eggs
2 C flour, sifted
1 t baking soda
1/2 C sour cream
1 t vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and keep mixing. Add sour cream, flour, and baking soda and mix a little. Add vanilla and bananas and mix just a teeny bit. Bake 20 minutes at 350.

Sprinkles Bittersweet Dark Chocolate Frosting (Warning: Like the Chai frosting, this makes almost twice as much as you'd want to use for the banana cupcake recipe):
5 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 lb. butter
3/4 lb. powdered sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 t vanilla
1/4 C sour cream

Melt and cool chocolate (until just slightly warm). Beat butter until light and fluffy. With mixer on low speed, gradually add powdered sugar. Add salt, vanilla, and sour cream, and mix until very smooth. Add chocolate and mix until just incorporated.