Cracker Jack Cupcakes

Cracker Jack Cupcakes

I've always been a baseball fan. I grew up loving the Atlanta Braves, thanks to the parents. So to celebrate baseball season starting, I made a Cracker Jack cupcake! This one included: peanut butter cupcake, caramel frosting, Cracker Jack topping, and caramel drizzle on top. I got the recipe from Better Recipes. 

You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find Cracker Jacks. A little exaggeration, but had to go to 3 different places before I found any. Finally found some at the AmPm convenient store. Also, it's surprisingly hard to "drizzle" caramel. To heat it up enough to make it drip, but not burn. Yeah, couldn't do it. So I used two of those little caramel dips.

These were interesting. I really love peanut butter, so that part was good. I also like caramel. The part I was disappointed in, and I think was the verdict among most people, was the Cracker Jack on top. I wanted it to be crunchy like out of the bag, but it was a bit soggy because of the frosting and drizzle. I am not a fan of soggy foods, at all. So next time I would probably put the Cracker Jack on top right when I was about to serve it. 

One last thing, GO BRAVES!

The batter was really thick. Meaning heavy cupcakes.

I like how the tops looked on these. 

SO much extra caramel on top. Maybe too much?

Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes

Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes

Easter has, by far, the best candy of any holiday. Halloween is a close second, but you only ever get the mini versions or crappy tootsie rolls. Easter has Brach's jellybeans, Reese's eggs, Robin's eggs, and the delicious Cadbury eggs. So the cupcake for this week was a Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcake. I got the idea from the Cupcake Activist. I got the dark chocolate cupcake recipe from Brown Eyed Baker and the buttercream frosting from My Baking Addiction. 

I used the mini Cadbury Eggs for the cupcakes. The cupcake recipe was already for 12 cupcakes, but I cut the frosting recipe in half. I put all of the cupcake batter into the liners, but I probably would take some out of each if I did it again. They overflowed a little bit.

I think everyone enjoyed this cupcake, but it was mostly just a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. Not much of a Cadbury Creme taste to it. It was nice getting into the middle of the cupcake to the Egg, but next time I'm going to look for a frosting that tastes more like the fondant inside, instead of just vanilla. I think a large Cadbury Egg would have been too much, though. I rarely finish a whole one, and that's when it's not inside of a cupcake.

The eggs have to be frozen when you put them into the batter.

The batter overflowed a little bit for these. 

They were still a little warm when I took this, so it doesn't look all that great. But it tasted good!

Fire and Ice Cupcakes

Fire and Ice Cupcakes

Last Sunday was the Season 2 premiere of Game of Thrones, this awesome show on HBO that everyone should be watching. So for the premiere I decided to dedicate my cupcakes that week to the show. I googled "Game of Thrones cupcakes" and came up empty handed, so went to the twitter-sphere to get some ideas. One of my sister's friends gave me the idea of fire and ice, a theme of the show. Then I went looking for spicy but sweet recipes. I found a really good Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcake recipe on Write Meg's blog. Chocolate and cayenne with cinnamon buttercream frosting...perfect!

The interesting thing about this cupcake is that it is a vegan cake. I literally told no one this. It's better that way. The icing is not vegan but the recipe on the blog is a vegan recipe, I just changed a few things to make it not so vegan: regular butter instead of vegan butter sticks, and skim milk instead of soy milk. The recipe also says to use between 1-2 tbsp cayenne pepper, so I went to the middle with 1 1/2 tbsp cayenne.

It was about half and half on this one. Half of the people really really liked it, while the other half pretty much hated it. It definitely had a kick to it at the end. I mean, I like spicy foods, always have, so I had no problem with it. A few people that don't like spicy foods (my sister) still actually liked the cupcake, and a few people that don't like spicy foods couldn't finish it. Crazy polar opposite reactions. I'm not sure I'd ever make this one again, but definitely a good experiment. If I did do them again, maybe I'd try 1 tbsp cayenne just to see if that helped the wimps ;)

Cayenne pepper is such a pretty color.

Perfect size. I'm gettin' good at this, guys.

Look at the liners! Dragon skin for Game of Thrones! (ok so it's really leopard...use you're imagination)

Cookies and Creme Cupcakes

Cookies and Creme Cupcakes

This week was my "almost sister-in-law's" birthday, and by that I mean she's my sister's boyfriend's sister. Confusing. I know. But we're really good friends, so of course I was going to make whatever cupcake she wanted this past weekend. The only requirement she gave me was Oreo's. So immediately I thought cookies and creme cupcake. I found a really good recipe on Annie's Eats blog. This blog is super cute. 

I cut the recipe in half to make 12 cupcakes because I knew we'd have cake, too. I used 2 egg whites instead of 1.5 though. I'm not sure if that extra .5 of the egg whites really made a difference or not. My sister told me it should be fine, so I was okay with it. Also, I'm apparently really good at slowly opening the Oreos so all the creme is on one side (things to put on my resume). But what I'm not very good at is cutting them in half for the garnish. Ruined a good bit of Oreos, and by ruined I mean gave those to Ricardo to eat (sister's boyfriend).

It seemed like people liked these a lot. I only was able to try half of one, but I'm pretty sure the end verdict was 10 out of 10 people would have them again. The oreo crumbles in the middle of the cake were not too big, and they were not as difficult as I thought they would be to eat. They were a bit heavy, I thought. No one else said they were, but I like my cupcakes more light. 

I was worried the cookie bits would be too big, but they were perfect!

These are my awesome creme on one side Oreos :)

By far my prettiest cupcakes. I'm a little bit proud of myself.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Irish Car Bomb Cupcake

St. Paddy's Day is by far my favorite holiday. Not only am I Irish (the Coyle in me) and love drinking a good beer, my favorite color is green. I love everything green. And if I get to choose which color I want for something, that's the color I always choose. So in honor of my favorite holiday, I decided to make an Irish Car Bomb cupcake this week. I got the recipe from the lovely Brown Eyed Baker blog. I cut the recipe in half to make 12 cupcakes. Btw, cutting 3/4 in half is one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm exaggerating a little bit.

I didn't have as many people around to try this cupcake, but everyone that tried it liked it. The recipe itself was pretty easy. Chocolate and Guinness cupcake, chocolate and Jameson Whiskey ganache (look at me using fancy words), and Bailey's frosting. The frosting was the best part. It almost made it taste too strong, but there's not nearly enough liquor in it to get you as smashed as car bombs. The Guinness itself burns all out, just leaves a little flavor.

If you're looking to make a cupcake for your favorite friend who drinks way too much, then this is the perfect cupcake for them. It will give them enough of a taste to want to have a lot of them, and then go drinking with you afterwards. Not too bad an idea, if you ask me :)

The cupcakes kinda of dipped in the middle when I took them out of the oven. Interesting, but ok since I was cutting out the centers anyways. 

Delicious Jameson ganche in the middle. Just spooned it right in.

Bailey's frosting...YUM! What else can I use this frosting for?

Thin Mint Cupcakes

Thin Mint Cupcakes

The cupcake of all cupcakes. You have no idea how obsessed with Thin Mints I am. Last Saturday I went to the Ralph's down the street and bought four boxes of Thin Mints. I had to. So this cupcake was an obvious choice for this time of year. It was by far the most delicious homemade cupcake I have ever made, AND THEY'RE GREEN!!! This is my favorite color, if you didn't know.
I took the recipe from four different blogs. The first Thin Mint cupcake recipe I looked at was at the Mom's Crazy Cooking blog. This is where I got the idea, but she wanted me to use cake mix and I wanted to do everything homemade. If I'm gonna do it, then I'm gonna do it right. So I found a dark chocolate cupcake recipe for the bottom layer at one of my favorite baking blogs, Brown Eyed Baker. And the vanilla cupcake recipe at the same blog, Brown Eyed Baker. I put a Thin Mint at the bottom of each cupcake, and also crushed Thin Mints into the dark chocolate mix. For the frosting, I wanted something minty so I used the creamy mint frosting recipe at the Crazy About Cupcakes blog.
I made a batch of 24 cupcakes, and I think had about 18 different people taste them. Every single person liked them. I had a few people come back for seconds. These cupcakes were also actually better after they were in the fridge for a little bit (just like Thin Mints themselves). I'm thinking of going to buy more Thin Mints just so I can make these again in a few weeks. Do yourself a favor, and make these cupcakes. Immediately. You will not regret it.

Bottom layer chocolate. Top layer GREEN vanilla. I made it really green. 

My better batch :)

Minty frosting. Probably my prettiest cupcake, too. 

Thin Mint on the bottom. Two layers in the middle.

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes

Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes

New cupcake time! This past weekend my cousin was visiting from Arizona, and she's vegan, so I decided to do a cupcake that she could try. There are so many vegans these days that it was really easy to find a vegan cupcakes online. I got the recipe from the Mac & Cheese blog. It's not a completely vegan website, but the recipe for this cupcake didn't seem to hard. And after I double checked with my cousin, it was approved for her vegan diet.

We actually had almost all of the ingredients at the house already. Just had to take a trip to re-up our normal baking supplies (sugars and flour) and buy Soy Milk, and then took Kaitlin (my cousin) with me to Trader Joe's to help me figure out what the best vegan cream cheese and margarine was, both for the frosting. For the margarine, I bought Earth Balance. The cream cheese was really interesting, and luckily I had Kaitlin there to help me. All it says on the label is "THIS IS NOT A TUB OF CREAM CHEESE. THIS IS A TUB OF NON-DAIRY SPREAD." Yes, in all caps like that. I appreciate it's honesty and yelling. I would of never found this tub if my cousin hadn't worked at Trader Joe's before. I've never tried Soy Milk or vegan cream cheese before, and both were surprisingly really good.

I made 12 cupcakes, and 12 different people tried them. Even people who were skeptical about it being vegan liked them. I had 12 really good reviews. Everyone said they'd try them again, and my cousin said it was one of the best vegan cupcakes she's ever had. She took one back with her on the plane for her roommate. This recipe will now be my 'go to' for any event I'm going to that may have some vegans at it. I was very impressed.

The recipe calls for 2 whole oz of red food coloring. So I added a lot of red food coloring to it, but definitely not 2 oz worth.

Ended up being a good red color, I'd say. 

The icing was surprisingly delicious! :)