Coconut

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This is the coconut cupcake. It's a coconut flavored cupcake with a vanilla cream cheese frosting rolled in sweetened coconut. This one is really tasty. I didn't want to do a coconut frosting because i thought it would be to much, and all that coconut flavor would be over powering. I think the way i did it was perfect and everyone really liked it!

Peanut Butter Fudge

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 This is the peanut butter fudge cupcake. My husband loves loves loves peanut butter, he would eat it on everything if he could. It's a chocolate cupcake with a fudge core topped with a whipped peanut butter frosting, and drizzled with fudge. This were really good and went perfect with a big glass of milk.

Caramel Dream

This is the chocolate caramel cupcake. It's a chocolate cupcake with a caramel core, vanilla cream cheese frosting with a caramel drizzle. These were really good. When you bit into them the caramel would ooze out it tasted so so good.

Cupcake Saturday 8/28

So cupcake day happened a day early this weekend and i have to say "Cupcake Saturday" doesn't have as nice a ring as "Cupcake Sunday!" The reason for this change in my cupcake routine is Monday i started my last semester of school, and Sunday i needed to make sure i have everything ready. Although Saturday i planned on making a coconut cupcake, peanut butter fudge, and a strawberry cupcake, a terrible headache deterred me from that accomplishment. I did manage to make the coconut, and the peanut butter fudge and i must say they came out awesome. I also decided i would make a chocolate caramel cupcake with some of the chocolate cupcakes from the peanut butter fudge. They were really good as well. So this weekend is going to be all about cupcakes both Saturday and Sunday!

The Most Loved Flavor: Red Velvet

So when researching online i found that the most popular flavors sold at cupcakery around the world is red velvet. Now i have never really had this flavor before, but my sister loves it soo much and has been begging me to make it. So with an amazing cream cheese frosting under my belt i decided to tackle it.  Looking at about 50 different red velvet recipes it seemed very weird to me to use vinegar, but whatever that's how it is. So i started my red velvet journey. I decided on red gel food coloring instead of the grocery store kind. I would need to use almost 2 full bottles to get the color i wanted and that seemed like to much. I didn't want the batter to be too watery. I also learned a valuable lesson when using cocoa powder, always sift it. There can be tiny lumps in the powder that you won't see until your adding your dry ingredients into the mixer. So anyway i continued along the red velvet road, and ended up at the baking soda, vinegar crossroad. I hate the smell of vinegar and working with it grosses me out (lets just say dying eggs at Easter not easy when you are using one hand to dunk and one to hold your nose, LOL). So i decided that i would go with a sweeter version of vinegar, apple cider vinegar. I figured the sweetness would make the cupcake taste good and the caramel color would help the red of the cupcake really stand out. Well, lets just say it worked and they came out so good. But i had to get the approval of my sister, after eating four cupcakes, i took it as a sign that she loved them!

S'Mores delight

So when deciding what kind of cupcakes i wanted to make a s'mores cupcake was a definite. All summer long i beg my husband to light the bonfire in the pool area so we can make s'mores. So i had to come up with a really good recipe so we could have s'mores all year long! I decided that the cupcake itself was going to be the chocolate. Now i just had to come up with how to incorporate the graham cracker and the marshmallow. I decided i would make a graham cracker crust on the bottom and sprinkle graham cracker on the top before baking. I then made a marshmallow icing made from scratch using gelatin,sugar, and water. It came out AMAZING! To top it all off i had my husband use a torch (he would never let me near an open flame, LOL) to toast the tops. When my husband tried it, his exact words were "this is my favorite cupcake EVER!" See, isn't he the best husband ever!!So now i have an awesome s'mores cupcake recipe, I'm so excited that we will be able to eat s'mores during the next huge snowstorm!!

Cupcake Sunday 8/22

So my husband has made it a rule that i am only allowed to bake cupcakes on Sundays. This rule, he says is because he doesn't want me baking cupcakes everyday (which i would). I know this rule is so he isn't eating cupcakes everyday (which he would). So i created cupcake Sundays, where i baked and frost as many different kinds of cupcakes i can, until my husband wakes up that is. He works midnights so he doesn't get home till around 7:30am, so he usually sleeps till 3pm. I have the whole day to myself to just bake, bake, bake! Well yesterday was fun, i was up at 8am, i was to excited to sleep. Yes, that's right i was excited over baking cupcakes! I still needed a couple of things from the store so i took my butter, milk, and eggs out of the fridge that way they would be room temperature by the time i got back. By 8:15 i was back from Wal-mart, and ready to start the baking! I made four different kinds of cupcakes Red Velvet, S'mores, Lava Fudge(everyone loves it so much i had to make it twice!), and Vanilla.

Pictured above is my beautiful stand mixer my husband got me for our anniversary last year!

Let's talk butter

So i have always been into baking, but when it came to cupcakes it usually consisted of the funfetti cupcake mix you buy in the store. Well since i have started making my own from scratch everything matters. Sifted flour versus not sifted, unbleached versus cake flour. Do i add baking soda or baking powder. Then the most important question of all European butter versus normal butter. The salted versus unsalted butter was always a dilemma for me, that was until i made the saltest cupcakes ever when i used salted instaed of unsalted and still added salt to the mixture...YUCK. Well i am over that butter hurtle and onto the next one, what kind of butter to use. I started with just using normal unsalted butter and my cupcakes came out really good, then i saw this recipe that called for European butter. Now i had no idea there was different kinds of butter, i thought butter was butter. Well when i used European butter for the first time WOW the cupcakes tasted amazing, so so so good. Now my cupcakes were really good before but now they are so so so yummy. So why such a change? Whats so special and different about European butter that my cupcakes were so good. I have decided to do a little research and this is what i came up with.

European butter contains less water than average table butter. They also have a higher percentage of butterfat. So what does this mean for my cupcakes, well less water means the cupcakes are going to rise better. American butter contains about 80% butterfat, European style has about 85% butterfat which makes for a yummier cupcake. It is often made with cultured cream as opposed to plain, unfermented cream, which has a less complex flavor.

So when baking use European butter its a little more expensive but so much better.

So tell me what you think. When baking do you prefer american butter or european style?

Banana Pecan Cupcake

My husband isn't really a fan of cupcakes, but he really loves muffins so i came up with this cupcake that kinda tastes like a muffin (but so much better! I'm not a fan at all of muffins). Banana cupcake with toasted pecan pieces topped with a vanilla cream cheese frosting. So yummy!!

Lava Fudge Cupcake

This will be my signature cupcake. Chocolate cupcake with a hot fudge core and vanilla cream cheese frosting. Thirty cupcakes didn't even stand a chance in my busy household. They didn't even make it to the next day!

The Start of a Dream

So my husband thinks i'm crazy and maybe i am a little crazy, but a dreams a dream, and were we not always taught to follow our dreams as a child.
When i first got to college i couldn't decide what i wanted to be when i grew up. So like any good school my counselor gave me a test, the results would show me what i "should" be. Well the first thing it said was i should be a gardener, (well  i'm already doing that i have tomatoes the size of softballs) and the second thing it said i should do is be a bakery, followed by a small business owner. Well i laughed that off and decided i want to be a elementary school teacher, oh boy was i wrong! So i decided i would major in biology, i like all that stuff, another bad idea. Then i decided on veterinary technology, i got a job in a small animal hospital, and i started to work towards getting my license. I loved it, it felt so rewarding. But my the time i was through my third year of school i was already burnt out. Three and a half years working at the hospital and i could not longer take it i was ready to jump off a bridge. So my husband and i decided that maybe it was time for a break. Financially we were set and my sixteen hours a week weren't really helping pay the bills. So with only one semester left and starting in a couple months i decided to become dun...dun...dun... a housewife.After about a week of that i was so bored and lonely i was ready to jump off a bridge ( a bridge is my go to because its right down the street from me LOL). So it was time to really look deep inside of me and decide what i really want to do with my life. Then it hit me...CUPCAKES! I make awesome cupcakes, and i love making them, so why not make money from them. Cupcakeries are all the rage now, every major and minor city has them. So thats my plan, open up a cupcakery, and this is my journey to cupcake success!