Blackberry Bottoms

Okay, so I tweeted that I was going to attempt these cupcakes a couple days ago. I did, and here they are for your inspection.

I had purchased some gorgeous fat blackberries from the farmers market last weekend, and I knew I wanted to use them in a dessert. I chickened out on a pie. Plus, I don't like pie. Instead, I went with cupcakes. I intended for these to be buttermilk vanilla cupcakes with blackberry centers/filling. Instead what happened is the berries were too heavy and fell through the batter as they baked, ending up on the bottom of each cupcake. So I rechristened them Blackberry Bottoms.

That's the bad news. Construction, fail.

The good news? They still tasted real delicious. Kind of muffin-esque. And all that means is that I can convincingly eat them as a breakfast food. Oh. Yes.


Plus, you can't tell there's anything awry at all... very innocent and proper looking...


Until... chomp chomp. The blackberries have been located.

Cupcakes Two Ways

Yesterday I had fun experimenting with two new frostings for cupcakes, and got some lovely results!

First up was strawberry buttercream, made with some fresh strawberries. I cut off the very edges of the berries to get rid of the seed thingies, and then smashed them up and blended them in with some vanilla buttercream. I piped that onto the dark chocolate fudge cupcakes and great googly moogly, did they turn out beautifully!


Next I made some chocolate buttercream with half semi-sweet and half dark chocolate. I figured that would cut nicely the sweetness of the sugar in the frosting. I crushed some cocoa-roasted almonds (such as these) and dusted the tops of the cupcakes to finish. YUMMY.


One of the perils of piping with buttercream frosting is that it is suceptible to heat. Since it is made with butter, it can get melty sitting at room temperature or go soft from the heat of your hand in the piping bag. But I can't bear to make frosting with shortening, which gives it this greasy sort of taste, so I just tried to keep the frosting cool at the various stages of decorating, and it seemed to work out okay. The chocolate, in fact, gave me some trouble because it wasn't very pliable after I stuck the piping bag in the fridge for a few minutes. I had to knead it around a bit to get it working. But to me the taste of real butter in the frosting is totally worth it.

Next I think I am going to make my first attempt at some sort of cake or cupcake with a filling... stay tuned!

Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

Now that I've got that Eurythmics song stuck in your head, I'm free to share with you the latest in my series on yummy things I've been baking.

This is one of my all time favorites, and a family classic. Here's what we're cooking: Italian Creme Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. It makes a spectacularly beautiful triple layer cake but I wanted to send some to Ben's office and some to mine so I made it cupcake style.

So get your gear together... really basic ingredients. The only things you might not have on hand (unless you're a baker too) are buttermilk and pecans. Every thing else is common-found kitchen stuff.


This cake, like many others, asks you to separate the egg yolks and whites for two different steps in the recipe. You always want to do this first because the egg whites do best when they are allowed to get near room temperature. I always learned it was best to put them in a metal bowl, too. So here you go:


Now (and again this is the common first step in baking) cream the butter, shortening, and sugar together. I liked this action shot:


Then add the eggs and beat that together. Next you alternately add the buttermilk/vanilla and the flour/baking soda/salt mixture. You'll end up with a very pretty thick cake batter. Mmmm.


Now for the finishing touches on the batter. Time to chop those pecans. I use my sweet hand mixer attachment but a food processor would work too, or I suppose you could chop them by hand if you're feeling crazy. I mean ambitious. I like to get them into very fine pieces. Now you see them:


Now you don't!


Now stir those into the batter by hand. Next, time to beat the snot out of those egg whites. If you sort of tilt the bowl and hold it then use a hand mixer and just kind of beat them against the side of the bowl, it works well. Beat until very stiff, so that when you pull the beaters out they leave little peaks. I also think a good sign is if you sort of tilt the bowl and the whole mess moves as one blob that you could slide out in one piece. Such as:


Now gingerly fold the egg whites into the batter. I would recommend using a soft spatula. You really want to preserve the fluffiness of the egg whites as you stir it into the batter. It might take a few minutes to do it properly, but it will be worth it. It should feel like the amount of batter has increased and changed consistency to be a little lighter and fluffier and thinner. But not runny!

Off to the cupcake pan with you! Do NOT overfill the cups; this cake expands a lot and then sinks down once out of the oven, so if it spills over the edges you'll be in trouble. It will still taste good, but won't be as pretty.


They bake up to be a lovely toasted brown color, and as I mentioned they will sink a little in the middle as they cool. Fear not, we're going to cover that with frosting. Little naked cupcakes prepare for their coats:


Whip up a little cream cheese frosting, give them a healthy dose, and voila. Done. Maybe garnish with a pecan or some pecan crumbs if you feel so inclined. Look how keeeeeyoooooote!


I defy you not to like this cake. People who don't like nuts like it. People who don't like cream cheese (me) like it. People who don't like people like it. I don't know what it is about the combination of flavors but yum! Recommended for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I don't have the recipe on hand as I'm typing this up at Ben's office, but I will post it when I get home or you can always message me and I'll share it. Happy baking!

Peanut, Peanut Butter. And Cupcakes!

Ten points to you if you knew that title was a play on the childhood "Peanut Butter & Jelly" song. A classic.

The other night I made some devil's food chocolate cupcakes (I confess, it was a box mix) with white buttercream frosting (that part was from scratch). They were delicious! However, at the end I had about six extra cupcakes with not enough frosting left to cover them. I decided I wanted to try a peanut butter frosting.

I've never done that before, so I just threw one together myself. Not much can go wrong when the working ingredients are peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, and milk. At first the frosting was very very thick, almost like cookie dough. It was delicious but didn't pipe onto the cupcakes very well. I added some more milk and voila! It worked!



They looked so cute and tasted very nice. The peanut butter frosting was not overly sweet, which was a nice combination. I think however that next time I would pipe on a smaller amount, or just put on a normal layer with a knife. The swirl of frosting was very pretty but I mostly tasted peanut butter with a little chocolate, and I was going for a more moderate balance. One thing that I feel sort of adamantly about is that above all else, dessert is supposed to be delicious. Looks are secondary... the icing on the cake, if you will. Ba-dum-bum-ching!

I made them late at night but I wanted to take their picture without having to use my flash. Enter Ben with his nifty new light rig that he uses for his video projects at work! Thanks babe for making my cupcakes look so good!

PS. By the way, I have a separate blog that I was posting my crafty and baking stuff on, but in the interest of simplifying I think I'm going to dismantle that and just post all that stuff here instead. So I might switch some of the posts over so they don't get lost in cyberspace. Be prepared!

Blogger Roll Call: Cupcakes & Cake Wrecks

Since the holidays are upon us and I might not be able to write my normal lengthy and thought-provoking (ha) blogs, I thought I'd start a little series which I am titling Blogger Roll Call. This is where I will give a little highlight of one of the blogs I follow and enjoy, and maybe in doing so some of you will discover you want to read them too! I keep a list which you can reference to the right of all these blogs but perhaps they need a little more explanation to get you interested.

So without further ado, I present the first edition of Blogger Roll Call, featuring Cake Wrecks and Cupcakes Take the Cake! I lumped these two together because they both deal with delicious baked goods, albeit in two very different ways.

Cupcakes Take the Cake celebrates the delicious beauty of cupcakes. The pictures on this blog are amazing - these cupcakes are literally tiny visual masterpieces.

These cupcake-lovin' ladies also post recipes and links to fancy cupcakeries all over the country. Before I read this blog, I would never have dreamed it was possible to create a vegan cupcake. I mean, I'll probably never actually do this, seeing as how things I love includes milk, eggs, and butter, but still. Good to know!

Cake Wrecks, as the name might imply, takes things in a whole new direction. Six days of the week, she posts submitted "wrecks" - professionally made cakes that are hideously ugly, poorly done, or have hilariously mangled inscriptions.

It is almost too good to be true that such monstrosities exist. BUT THEY DO. On Sundays, she provides a little break from the insanity and showcases "Sunday Sweets" - beautiful and cream of the crop custom cakes made by inventive and artistic bakers.

Both of these are a fun and delightful read, especially if you love baking and sweet treats as much as I do!