Cupcake Tattoo Lust

Firstly, thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussel of Cupcakes Take the Cake for linking me and liking my blog. Hurrah!

I really like tattoos... but I'm too much of a pain-wuss to get one. At some point I may have to just suck it up, but in the meantime, I idly contemplate starting a collection of them. Lately I've been looking for pictures of cupcake tattoos- what else? Last night I found this great tattoo picture from 100 Cigarettes via Google:

Unless I get in an accident before tomorrow, I plan on making more mini-cupcakes. I can't decide whether I want to make chocolate lavender or lemon rosemary cupcakes... so there'll be much waffling and tortured agonizing on my part.

They Aren't Your Little Cupcakes Anymore

Cupcakes are like children. They both must incubate for a set period of time. In the case of cupcakes, 15 minutes is the crucial period in which one must not open the oven door for any reason. Once cupcakes have been received into the world, they are trundled off to await cooling time. This is often accompanied by worried hands periodically checking their little cupcake foreheads for lingering heat. When those seemingly endless 30 minutes are up (less, if they're precocious and refrigerated) the cupcakes are ready to be frosted, thus revealing their true personalities. Newly bedecked and inexperienced, the cupcakes can now be unleashed upon the world. At this stage, the baker may take copious pictures to remember their little cupcakes' faces before they are gone forever. The concerned baker may lay awake at night after they have left, distressed over the unknown mouths that may be ravaging the cupcakes and callously discarding their wrappers on the floor. Tears may be shed over the indiscreet pictures that will undoubtedly surface; they will display in horrific detail the triumphant cupcake snatchers, holding their frosted prizes aloft. Soon, the baker makes new cupcakes as consolation, and the others are now only a set of pictures and fuzzy memories.

Mocha-ancho chile mini cupcakes

I was trying to restrain myself from baking cupcakes until this weekend, but I couldn't stand it any longer. This afternoon I made the mocha mini cupcakes with ancho chile powder and a Kahlua mocha ganache. I sprinkled a little of the chile powder on top of the ganache to be fancy and such- it gave the cupcakes a nice deep smokiness. They turned out quite well, but I think the instant coffee powder we have on hand (Folger's, egh) is getting a bit peakish... the cupcakes didn't have as strong a coffee flavour as I would have liked. Still, they are very tasty.

I just inherited my great-grandmother's antique china, glassware, and kitchy 1960s costume jewelry, so I elected to display some of the brooches and a cake platter with the cupcakes for your delectation.

These are shrink-plastic pieces that I coloured and baked last night; I'm planning to make a necklace with them this weekend. There was an article on shrink-film jewelry in the current Adorn magazine, and I saw a similar necklace on Etsy that I can't afford, so needless to say I reappropriated *coughstolecough* the idea.

Next up: I'm longing to make some chocolate-rosemary cupcakes with lemon puddingish frosting, so hopefully that will be my next baking project. I may spring for lemon cake with the rosemary instead of chocolate, though... we'll see. I'd also really like to try making a cupcake with amchoor powder, which is ground, dried green mangoes. The best way I can describe it is as sort of lemony, but with almost a creamy sort of acidity. Maybe that would be good with rosemary...

Low-fat cupcakes? Is this possible?

Unfortunately, I won't be making any new cupcakes until the weekend. This is in part due to a large Nutrition exam that I need to study for this week, and also to the fact that both my parents are attempting to lose weight. Hopefully I can make some on Saturday, although I'll probably halve the recipe to make 12 mini-cupcakes, in an attempt to streamline the caloric profile. Ganache instead of buttercream frosting would also knock out at least 250 calories. I'm contemplating a mocha cupcake with ancho chile powder and a chocolate ganache on top instead of frosting. (I plan on stealing some ancho chile powder from my unsuspecting boyfriend to facilitate this.)

Since I don't have any new pictures for you, here's an adorable blown-glass cupcake necklace from iHotto, which they carry in several colours, or at Fred Flare (Fred Flare is sold out of the chocolate one currently. Le sigh.)

More Springish Cupcakes

Lately, I've been in the mood for a pink and white cupcake, so what better cupcake than vanilla with sour-cherry filling and cherry brandy frosting? I used the Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla cupcake recipe from VCTOTW and filled them with some cherry sauce that was left over from making pie yesterday. I forgot that we had cherry brandy, and so was resigned to plain vanilla frosting until I remembered. Two teaspoons of brandy in about three cups of frosting gave it a nice cherry flavour.

The first cupcake of spring!

Cupcakes for Ransom

I've successfully implemented my terrible plan to bring my "sister" Rhiana over to the vegan side of cupcakes. She is now constantly attempting to run off with VCTOTW and the resulting cupcakes. Tonight, we exchanged her cookies-and-cream cupcake for my mint chocolate chip one. The trade-off was a success and ended amicably, see below.

Mint Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

When I was younger, the primary sign of spring was not the first robin sighting of the year, but the first pilgrimage to get mint chocolate chip ice cream on the east side of town. Now that I'm vegan, ice cream no longer sounds appealing, but mint chocolate chip does. A few nights ago, I was attempting to go to sleep, and the idea for these cupcakes came out of nowhere. (I wasn't even thinking about cupcakes; shocking, I know.) Today I finally made them!
The cupcake is the chocolate cupcake from VCTOTW, with 1/8 teaspoon of mint extract added. Fortunately I had a big 14 oz. bar of semisweet chocolate from Trader Joe's, so I thought a ganache on the cupcakes to evoke a ribbon of chocolate through ice cream would be nice. I just heated a little soymilk with about half the bar of chocolate melted into it, and the consistency turned out fine. For the frosting, I creamed equal parts shortening and Earth Balance spread, about 1/4 cup each, with about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1/2 teaspoon of mint extract. Enjoy Life chocolate chips got sprinkled on top to finish them off after I piped out the icing with a star tip to look reminiscent of ice cream.


I was really pleased with the way these cupcakes turned out; they're definitely going to be a new favorite around here. They are the perfect balance of mint and chocolate, and the ganache adds a little something to the overall taste and texture that just the frosting wouldn't have achieved. I recommend following these with a nice hot cup of mint tea!

Non-digestible cupcake...

In lieu of a real cupcake, today I present you with a knitted cupcake. The pattern is from Leigh Radford's One Skein Knits. The little pink dots on top of the cupcake are glass beads, although this picture isn't great. I was super-geeked to get the knitting books pictured below from Amazon yesterday, hence their inclusion.

Tomorrow, I'm planning to crank out a batch of mint chocolate chip cupcakes in between studying for my massive, upcoming anatomy test. A thin layer of chocolate ganache on the cupcake under the frosting sounds good; I may do that. I will have pictures up at some point tomorrow afternoon!

Goodness!

Imagine my complete surprise when, as most mornings, I went to the Cupcakes Take the Cake blog and was faced with a paragraph about my blog! Needless to say, today was a great day after that. However, apparently my profile here was linked to a couple blogs that I had when I was about 13... I swiftly deleted them, but I hope no one was too scarred by happening upon them, as I imagine they were very maudlin. (I couldn't bear to read them. Heh.)

On to the cupcakes! Living in the tundra, i.e Michigan, spring can never come too soon. I've been wanting to make some spring-like cupcakes lately, so today I decided on banana cupcakes with orange-vanilla frosting. I was very pleased with the result: the base cupcake is from VCTOTW and the frosting is my own concoction. I'm not crazy about radioactively-tinged frosting, so I wanted just a little hint of orange. The colour on the pictures below isn't exact, though, it's a bit more orange than the tan it appears here.

Cupcakes need to sun themselves, too.

Mr. was most intrigued by the sight of a lone, helpless cupcake that strayed from the pack. Don't worry, I didn't let him eat or lick it, although I don't think citrus flavour was particularly appealing to him anyways.

Edit: The cupcakes were deemed a success by my, ah, testers (unwitting victims, if you prefer.) It was suggested that I use the orange frosting on a vanilla cupcake for a creamsicle effect, which I may make at a later date. If I do that, I will definitely use both vanilla and orange frosting piped together for an authentic look, as well as some soy yogurt in the cupcake batter for a moister crumb.

Mocha cupcakes, or, how to get your morning kick

The chocolate cake has a little bit of coffee in the batter for moistness, in addition to instant coffee as the drip-coffee wasn't enough for flavour. I was going to make the buttercream frosting just coffee, but I decided to put some cocoa powder in it as well. Finally, finally got some decently large icing tips and a new bag, so it's easier to pipe frosting now. I topped it off with some grated dark chocolate and dark-chocolate covered espresso beans. I must admit that they are very good first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee...

The Great Cupcake Experiment

(Yes, I'm posting a lot in one day, but I'm putting my previous cupcake pictures up today...)
I have this dream/plan to one day open a vegan cupcake bakery, and I want to branch out from published recipes into my own combinations or at the very least, variations. Never having any experience with this, I'm going very slowly by just starting out with variations.

The First Cupcake:

Last week I had a sudden, overwhelming desire to eat a white, fluffy cupcake. This was odd. I'm usually a chocolate/variation on the chocolate theme cupcake kind of person. Vanilla tends to strike me as boring. However, I baked my first batch of vanilla cupcakes. I used the basic vanilla cupcake recipe out of VCTOTW and decided that it needed a little something, namely, raspberry. I added some raspberry syrup to the batter and to the frosting as well, which went over well with my cupcake testers. (i.e, my family and boyfriend) I was a little disappointed with the consistency of the frosting, as we'd recently switched from EarthBalance to SmartBalance margarine... SmartBalance doesn't set up as well. First cupcake below:

The Second Cupcake:

Two days later, the first batch had been completely devoured and I had ideas for improving the cupcake. This time, I used the same vanilla cupcake but put a little almond extract in it and a swirl of raspberry jam in before baking. For the icing, I divided it into two batches, tinting one pink with raspberry juice and flavouring it with raspberry syrup. The other batch stayed white and received almond extract. I piped them out of one bag for a variegated effect, although that cursed SmartBalance was still wreaking havoc on the texture. (As you can see below...) I need to work on the dual-icing piping technique, although the SmartBalance also factored into eradicating my nice swirls.

Verdict: It was likened to marzipan by my mum, and the general consensus was that the first batch didn't even come close to the second.

My fridge's sexiness rating ratchets up with cupcakes inside.

Greetings

I decided to create an all-cupcake blog to chronicle my cupcake mania. First blog postings are always the worst, so I will be glad to get this over with.

I'm a dietetics major, but I fully endorse the consumption of cupcakes. In fact, I've been eating one daily for quite a while now. I also have been losing weight, so maybe I should author one of those fad dieting books: The Cupcake Diet. (The titles seem to need to be cliched for them to sell.) One cupcake a day, provided it is supplemented with a healthy vegan diet.

I'd much rather open my own cupcakery (as it were) though.

All right, let's end this painful introduction. Here's a cupcake picture to get you in the mood.



This is Mr. Wook, he dearly loves cupcakes. Unfortunately, he doesn't get to eat them because he is a cat and I worry about him getting sick. He does get a lick of frosting now and then, which seems to satisfy him. In this picture, he is investigating a Black Forest cupcake with sweet cherry sauce filling from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. (Hereafter referred to as VCTOTW, if I need to reference it.)