Apple Cider Cupcakes

Breaking news!!! I'm still alive! It has literally been so long since I've baked and blogged that I've forgotten how to do everything. Seriously. When I went to edit my photos, half of them were out of focus because I've apparently forgotten how to use my camera...

Here is a quick recap of the past few months: I've since moved to San Francisco and have already finished my first quarter at FIDM and I absolutely loved it. It reminded me how much I love learning, how much I love shopping, and how much I enjoy procrastinating (in the beginning at least). And although I don't want my break to end, I'm looking forward to starting the next quarter and it feels pretty darn good!

So... I had originally planned to bake off some alcoholic cupcakes first, but when I found out my nephews and niece (who are ages 2, 4, and 5) would be visiting, I decided to change it to a more kid-friendly cupcake... Anyway, for the past month, I've been looking forward to the arrival of autumn and these encompass the season pretty well, if I do say so myself. The cake itself has the sweet cinnamon and apple flavors you'd find in hot apple cider, and the caramel buttercream adds just the right amount of creamy richness. And bonus: your whole house smells like Christmas when you're baking these!

The Ingredients (makes about 2 dozen):
For the cupcakes:
-3 1/2 cups flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp ground cinnamon
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
-2 cups sugar
-2 tbsp vegetable oil
-4 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 cup unfiltered apple cider

For the caramel sauce (from Ina Garten's recipe; optional, you can use store bought):

-recipe can be found here

For the frosting:
-1 cup unsalted butter, softened
-1 cup vegetable shortening

-1 1/2 cups caramel sauce, or to taste

The Directions:

Tip: If you choose to make your own caramel sauce, be sure to make it far enough ahead of time to allow it to cool, which may take up to 4 hours. 

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line your cupcake pan.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together and set aside.

3. Beat the butter and sugar together until combined.

4. Add eggs, vanilla and oil one at a time and mix until combined.
5. Stir in the cider.
6. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet, mixing until just combined.

7. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely.

8. Cream the butter and shortening together until combined.

9. Slowly add the caramel sauce, making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to keep anything from settling.

10. Consume and enjoy!

Rainbow Cupcakes

A close friend of mine has been requesting some rainbow cupcakes for well over a year now, so I finally gave in and made them for her. As pretty as these turned out though, I'll have to admit that I don't plan on doing these again for quite some time, as it is very time consuming. And if you're semi-OCD like me, it could require a lot of patience as well as a steady hand. I mixed up and dyed the batter in no time, but filling the cups and spreading out all the colors took days. Okay, not really, more like 5 to 15 minutes per color. But because my batter is a little more thick, it took a little more elbow grease and careful spoon maneuvering to get the colors to spread out.


If you're not OCD like me though, you can always just spoon the batter in without spreading it out first and they'll still come out nicely!


Happy 2012!

The Ingredients (makes about 2 dozen): 
For the cupcakes:
-3 1/2 cups flour
-1 tbsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 cup unsalted butter, softened
-2 cups sugar
-2 tbsp vegetable oil
-4 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1 cup milk
-assorted food coloring (I used gel)
For the frosting:
-1 cup unsalted butter, softened
-1 cup vegetable shortening
-1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, or to taste
-1 tsp vanilla extract


The Directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line your cupcake pan(s).
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
3. In your mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add eggs one at a time, mixing until combined. Then add in the vanilla and oil, mixing well.
4. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the wet, mix until combined, then add 1/2 the milk. Repeat until you run out of both. Make sure to scrape the bottom of the mixing bowl between each addition, especially after the dry, to ensure everything is mixed in.
5. Divide the batter into 6 bowls/cups and add the food coloring until desired color is reached. I divided the batter evenly, but upon filling the cupcake liners, I realized I should've divided it so that my bottom color would have the least amount of batter and my top color would have the most since I wanted to spread out each color to the edges of the liners.

I reused some plastic cups from a coffee shop I frequent so I didn't have to worry about the dyes staining my dishes

6. Fill cupcake papers and bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean, rotating the pan halfway through to ensure even baking.

7. Cream the butter and shortening together. Then slowly add the sugar and follow with the extract. This can also be dyed with the food colors, if desired.
8. Consume and enjoy!

September's Cupcake Of The Month: cà phê đá (Vietnamese Coffee)

I can't believe it's the end of September already! It's crazy how fast time is flying by. Since my last recipe post in August, I've been busier than ever with school, babysitting and trying to keep up a social life so it was nice to finally be able to take some time out this weekend and not think about anything else but the recipe at hand. 


Now, it's been quite a while since I've attended school full time, so this fall was definitely a big change for me. At first, it was a little difficult keeping my dates for appointments and such in order, especially since I have the worst habit of never writing anything down or forgetting to write things down by the time I have a chance. I started mixing up dates or forgetting certain details, which at the end of August, completely threw me for a loop.


Someone had ordered a dozen and a half cupcakes from me for the first weekend of September but somehow when I went back to write it in my calendar, I wrote them down for the last weekend of August! And I didn't realize my mistake until I was standing there in my kitchen, with all the cupcakes ready to be frosted. Needless to say, I was pretty mad at myself. Mad that I had written down the wrong date, mad that I had gone so far into the cupcake-making process before realizing my mistake, and mad that I now had two dozen cupcakes to find homes for (which is actually harder than you'd think). Luckily, I know some of the most awesome people in the world who graciously ate multiple cupcakes just for me. 


Now to find people to eat these...


Overall, these cupcakes weren't bad, but they could have been better. As you could probably tell from the title of this recipe, these cupcakes were inspired by Vietnamese coffee. Unfortunately, they lacked that strong, distinct coffee flavor. That was mostly my fault, though, because I was lazy and used normal coffee instead of espresso or Cafe du Monde coffee. But if you don't have either of those on hand, I'd strongly recommend making some of the coffee syrup from my tiramisu cupcakes and doing the same thing I did in that recipe. The cupcakes also came out really fluffy, which I like, but they were also dry, so I added a tbsp of oil to the recipe below.


And again, I have no process pictures. I have this other bad habit of getting bored very easily. After about the hundredth time of taking pictures of the same thing (i.e. the batter making process), it starts to become repetitive, and not to mention, very time consuming. So I've decided that the only process pictures I will be taking now will be of techniques or steps I've never mentioned before, unless I have extra time and the steps aren't time sensitive.


Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe and of course, if there are any questions about this or any other recipe, past, present, or future, feel free to email me! I will be more than happy to answer them!


But seriously, the next time you're making Vietnamese coffee (or even just normal coffee) at home, try Cafe du Monde. You won't be disappointed.

The Ingredients (makes about one dozen):

For the cupcakes:

-1/2 cup butter, softened

-3/4 cup sugar

-1 1/2 cup flour

-1 1/2 tsp baking powder
-1/8 tsp salt
-3 eggs
-1 tbsp vegetable oil
-3/4 tsp vanilla
-3/4 cup espresso or very, very, very strong coffee

For the frosting:

-1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

-1/2 cup vegetable shortening

-1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, or to taste
-2 tsp vanilla
-pinch of salt

The Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line your muffin pan.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl and set aside.

4. Add eggs, vanilla and oil one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition.

5. Add 1/3 of the dry to the wet, then 1/2 the espresso and alternate until you run out of both. Make sure to mix thoroughly and scrape the bowl, especially after adding the dry ingredients.

6. Once batter is smooth, bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

7. Cream the butter and shortening until well combined.

8. Slowly add in the condensed milk, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure nothing settles at the bottom.

9. Once the buttercream is sweet enough to your tastes, stir in the vanilla and salt.

10. Consume and enjoy!