S'mores Cupcakes

S'mores Cupcakes

"-Hey, Smalls, you wanna s'more?

-Some more of what?"

If you don't know what that's from then Google it and go watch that movie immediately. No questions about it. I apologize it has taken me so long to write a blog on this one. It's been one of those weeks, or two... I went camping this past weekend so these cupcakes were my ode to camping. I hope you all have many camping trips in your future this summer. That delicious toasted marshmallow, plus the melted milk chocolate, AND crunchy sweet graham cracker.... it just cannot get better than that. I found the recipe on Half Baked's cake blog.

You will not believe how hard it was to find marshmallow fluff out here on the west coast. I looked everywhere (kinda). Also found out a number of LA-ians did not even know what the stuff was. Blasphemy! Marshmallow Fluff is delicious and should be eaten by everyone as a kid, and sometimes even as an adult. Boom, said it. Anyways, enough about that. I had to make my own marshmallow fluff for this cupcake. You really just take some mini marshmallows and corn syrup and cook it on a double boiler. I found that recipe on yahoo answers somewhere. It worked well enough I guess. Use the fluff if you can, though.

The one thing I was told a lot about this cupcake was that it needed more graham cracker. Next time I would put a layer of graham cracker on the bottom of the cupcake and even more on top. I didn't want the graham cracker crumbs to be soggy, but maybe they would be alright at the bottom. I dunno, but it's worth a try. The people have spoken!

Also, I was trying to be kinda fast with these near the end, so the frosting just rolled right off of the tops of all of the cupcakes. That's why they all look like they've been partially eaten. Kinda gross ha, but they tasted good!

Mmm... chocolate cake

The icing looked okay at first.

Here, not so much. Super messy, just like a real s'more!

Margarita Cupcakes

Margarita Cupcakes

For Cinco de Mayo weekend, of course I had to do a margarita cupcake. I found a recipe with not only tequila in the cake, but also brushed on top of the cake, and in the frosting. Made me a little nervous at first because I kind of hate tequila. We've all had a few too many tequila hangovers, am I right? The last thing I wanted was for it to actually taste like tequila. Nope. No way. But margaritas are delicious when made correctly! The recipe I used for this one was from one of my favorites, Brown Eyed Baker's blog. 

The cupcake had a lime taste to it. I added sooo much lime juice to get rid of that tequila flavor. I'm getting good at zesting! For the brushing on top part, I only did one brushstroke on top of each cupcake. I'm not joking when I tell you how nervous I was about putting tequila right on top of it. The icing was the best part. I had so much extra that I could do two layers on each cupcake. Then I added some lime zest, some coarse sea salt, and a lime slice on top of each.

The end verdict was there should of been more tequila. Surprise face. I was too nervous to do it, but I really should have. So if you decide to make these then just go for it. Maybe two or three brushes of tequila on each. I thought the frosting was a little too sweet, too. I would of liked more salt, I think. 

You can barely tell in this picture, but you could see the specks of lime zest in each cake.

No brush? I used a piece of cheese cloth. I just twisted it up so none of the strings would get into the tequila. 

They looked so pretty!

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

Last week's fruity flavored cupcake went over so well that I decided to do another fruity flavor...ish. Again, bring on the summer!! I found the recipe on Real Mom Kitchen's blog. Her cupcakes look super cute with all the garnishes. I did not go that far. 

The tough part was that the recipe called for White Cake Mix. I wanted to do it from scratch, so I found a recipe for the cake mix on Chickens in the Road's website. This blog post is awesome. It gives you the recipe for a regular box of cake mix (5 cups worth), and also tells you about the vanilla you would need to add, and how to switch out the powdered milk for regular milk: just replace the water that is included in the pink lemonade recipe with that much milk. Pretty simple enough. Just a lot of substitutions. The other part was the red food coloring I added instead of pink. I did about 5 drops of it into the cake batter, and 3 into the frosting. I also underestimated the amount of zest I would get from one lemon. The 2 tsp it calls for in the cake all came from one lemon. So I needed two lemons just for zest. 

These turned out delicious. Definitely had a sour taste from the pink lemonade packets, but I like sour. I had a friend eat 3 in one sitting! A couple people thought they were too sour, though. So make with caution. The pink lemonade recipe made so much extra frosting that she suggested eating leftover frosting with graham crackers. Tried it. A little too sweet. I liked eating the graham crackers alone more.

They flattened out more as they cooled down. 

I liked the way the frosting turned out. 

Pretty pink! Perfect for summer.