Dove chocolate, caramel cupcakes

I've been a bit busy lately, it was moving time again, and without internet for a while but don't think I was slacking off. I seen a great recipe for "turtle cupcakes" on sweetopia so I decided to turn it into something a little more that I would like ( I am not a big nut person). So I came up with chocolate caramel cupcakes with a dove center :)

I baked them for almost the full time then with about 4 mintues left to go, I pulled them out and dug a little hole in the center to stick the chocolate caramel filled dove chocolate inside! Take a look!!

Pop those suckers back in for about 3-4 minutes and you have yourself one tasty treat my friends!

Heres a little peek on the inside...

Looks excellent doesn't it!?

They tasted much like a brownie, the consistancy was a bit dense but the gooey chocolate and caramel in the middle pulled it all together.

Topped half of them off with a couple pecans, and left the other half plain with just some drizzled caramel, mmm mmm mmm!



A little red, white & blue

At my work we participated in Relay for Life and one thing we had to do was create a basket that others would like to vote on and register to win. We had a theme of "red, whtie and blue" and what better to top off a basket than with cupcakes!? I Have never made fondant before, but really wanted to try so I found a super easy recipe for marshmallow fondant. Seriously, very easy, just marshmallows, water, powdered sugar and some shortening to make it not stick!

I just made some yellow cupcakes and tinted the buttercream frosting blue and red and put some cute little fondant stars on top.

These ended up tasting to me like a sugar cookie!

I think i needed a little more shortening on my cookie cutter to make the fondant not stick so much, then maybe the stars would have been a little more clean cut. Either way, they looked good and gave the basket a sweet treat to top it off!

Welcome summertime :)

What's your favorite fruit? Mine? Well it's a toss up between raspberries and strawberries so when I wanted to make a fruity cupcake I went with strawberry! I would say it was a good choice. They came out really cute (not very big and pretty dense) so topped with the pretty pink strawberry frosting and pearl sprinkles I thought they looked very....classy.......girly........ok, DELICIOUS! :) Take a look for yourself.

I love the flower liner with these little pink cupcakes. The frosting was almost like a whipped cream taste and went perfect with the cupcake being more dense.

Another view? Ok.

When they came out of the oven, I had to try one right away. Well, that one turned into about 4! They were soooo good I could not just eat one, and I even ate these before putting the frosting on!

I can almost bet that now with summer peeking around the corner I will be experimenting with more fruit flavors and colors!

My favorite cookie, now even better!

Whose with me when I say snickerdoodle cookies are the ultimate? I have always eaten these cookies, never made them myself so when I seen a recipe on Bakerella for snickerdoodle cupcakes I had to try it!

These were cinnamon sugar cupcakes topped with a cinnamon vanilla buttercream frosting then topped on that with a mini snickerdoodle cookie, then again with some more frosting. I made these for a work meeting and there were none left at the end so I knew everyone loved them! Here is how mine turned out...

Precious isn't it? :)

I like adding the mini cookies on top of the cupcakes, I like the looks of it and it also means two treats in one!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for BACON?!?!

I am a mega bacon lover! So when I seen recipes for bacon cupcakes I was all for it! These cupcakes went FAST even though some people were a little skeptical at first seeing the bacon pieces on top. I will not lie, I ate a few more than I should have and I bet you would too!

Here we got the maple cupcake with maple frosting sprinkled with real bacon pieces...lovely isn't it? :) I used butter flavored maple syrup because I love the butter taste and the frosting was suppose to sit in the fridge for an hour to set up, but I get antsy and had to get that frosting on there! These make a great breakfast treat!

S'more what?

What more do I have to say than SMORE! I'll let you jump right in...

So I'll get straight to the point, make these! They are delicious!

Ingredients:

    Cupcakes

      1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

      1-1/2 cups sugar

      1 teaspoon baking powder

      1 teaspoon baking soda

      ¾ cups cocoa

      ¾ cups graham cracker crumbs

      1 cup milk

      2 eggs

      2 teaspoons vanilla

      ½ cup oil

      6 marshmallows cut in half, plus more for decorating

      Graham cracker crumb topping

      ½ cup brown sugar

      ½ cup graham cracker crumbs

      ¼ cup butter, melted

      Genache

      4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate

      ½ cup heavy cream

      ½ cup butter

Directions:

      Cupcakes

1.  Preheat oven to 350∘F.

2.  In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda together with a wire whisk. Separate the mixture in half into two bowls.

3.  Stir cocoa into one bowl and the graham cracker crumbs into the other.

4.  Add ½ cup milk, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla and ¼ cup oil to the cocoa mixture and beat on medium until combined. Repeat adding the same ingredients to the graham cracker crumb flour mixture.

5.  Prepare the graham cracker crumb topping by adding the brown sugar and crumbs in a small bowl and pour on the melted butter. Stir until combined.

6.  Pour a little graham cracker cake batter into the bottom of your baking cups and then sprinkle the topping mixture lightly on the surface.     

7.  Place a marshmallow half on top and then cover the marshmallow with the chocolate cake batter until it is about ¾ full.

8.  Sprinkle more topping mixture on top.

9.  Bake cupcakes for about 15 minutes. Let cool and top with genache.

Genache

1.  Heat the butter and cream on the stove. Heat until just before it boils.

2.  Remove from heat and pour over chocolate. Let sit about 2 minutes.

3.  Stir until completely melted and smooth.

4.  Pour over cupcakes or dip tops of cupcakes in chocolate!

Enjoy! :)

If April showers bring May flowers, what does April snow bring?

So I was asked to make some red velvet cupcakes for a co-workers birthday, Excitement!! I make some, decorate them all birthday like, and have them all packed up in my carrying cases. Then this happens!

It was like Christmas again, and as much as I love this holiday, I do not like it in mid April! Because of this blizzard that strolled through our way, our meeting was cancelled and I did not get to present my lovely red velvet goodies :( I made sure the next day that everyone got to taste them though, don't you worry! Heres how my little beauties turned out!

The extra cream cheese frosting in the middle was AWESOME! I had only used half of the red food coloring in here (which is why they are not the most red) but I had made a second batch with 2 tbsp and they came out bright red which was very pretty! I probably do not need to tell you this, but they went like hot (cup)cakes! ;)