Lemon Cupcakes with Blackberry Frosting

Lemon Cupcakes with Blackberry Frosting

This week I wanted to do something a little different than I'd been doing. I went with a light fruity flavor instead of another heavy chocolate cake. Kind of my way of bringing on the summer. We all need that to happen soon! I looked at a bunch of different fruity cupcakes, but a lot of them wanted me to make a curd, and I don't know that I'm ready for that step in my cupcake relationship. Maybe one day ;) The best cupcake recipe (and easiest for my sake) I could find was at All Recipes. I pretty much just searched Pinterest for lemon and blackberry cupcakes and this is the one everyone recommended. 

This was the best cupcake I've made to date. Everyone liked it and everyone wanted another one immediately. I wish I'd made more! I only made 12 this time, since I almost always have so many cupcakes left over. That was a mistake. Never tell a hungry person there are none left. 

The one thing I had some trouble with was finding blackberry jam without seeds in it. There was only one blackberry jam in the whole Jon's grocery store. It was in the international foods section, and it had seeds. Ugh. So I took a strainer to it and literally pushed the jam through with a spoon so it didn't have any seeds. It may not of been bad with seeds in it, but I absolutely hate seeds in my jam. So it was more for me than anything. I also just kind of guessed on the lemon juice and zest part. It says 1/2 a lemon for 12 cupcakes, eh. Mostly did the juice and zest to taste. I did learned how to correctly juice a lemon, though, so that's something!

If you need a quick, refreshing, light cupcake then you need this recipe! It's easy and delicious. And a huge hit! This will for sure be my go-to cupcake from now on.

The cake part of the recipe barely filled the liners. If you do end up splitting the recipe in half then it may only make 11 full cupcakes. I was a little disappointed in that part. Not sure how the 24 cupcakes recipe would turn out, though.

This was my strained blackberry jam. No seeds!

I added more red food coloring to the frosting so it was this pretty pink color. It was too little and dull without the food coloring. Just add the food coloring to your desire, though.

It didn't really say to buy blackberries for the garnish, but they look much better with them on top. And it's a nice little treat to start the cupcake. I heart blackberries.

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.