Reese's Cupcakes

For my MIL's birthday, I asked her if she wanted chocolatey or fruity?  She voted chocolate.  I then asked her if she liked Butterfingers or Reese's more? Reese's.  And thus became this year's birthday cupcakes!

 

I found Gluten-Free Chocolate cake recipe found here and it did not disappoint.  I'm still using the Namaste Perfect Flour Blend that my Costco sells, but eventually I need to work on mixing up my own blend. 

I topped these with the peanut butter buttercream and some chopped Reese's.  My goodness.  Talk about delicious and rich!

These are the perfect blend of a not too sweet cake and yummy peanut butter goodness on top.

Enjoy!

For the GF Chocolate Cake Recipe.

Peanut Butter Butter Cream
2 sticks butter, softened
16 oz Powdered sugar
1 tbsp Vanilla
2-3 tbsp milk
2/3 cup peanut butter

Whip the butter and peanut butter until smooth and creamy.  Gradually add in powdered sugar.  Once all of the powdered sugar is incorporated, add in vanilla and a tablespoon of milk at a time until frosting is desired consistency.

Frost cupcakes and top with chopped Reese's.

Spiced Chocolate Brownies

In sheer excitement over my new found gluten free baking journey, I think I may have overdone it on stocking.  As I said before, as soon as I accepted the challenge, I ordered about 20lbs of different types of flours from Vitacost.com.  When they were delivered to my door, the cardboard box was a little disheveled and when you opened it, all of my flours were in individually packaged "bricks" stacked together.  As I unloaded my flours, my husband joked that it looked like (what he would imagine to be) a drug shipment.  We still laugh about this "delivery."  About two days after, I found the Namaste GF flour blend at Costco which I ended up loving and buying 4 bags of.  At this point, you'd think my pantry would be well-stocked, if not overly-stocked.  Well, let's not stop there.  Over a month ago, I was visiting my sister in California and I decided to stock up on bags of almond meal from Trader Joe's.  At this point, Austin's new TJ store had yet to open, so I wanted to make sure I had almond meal a plenty to get me through to the opening.

Little known fact though, I'd never used almond meal before so I'm not entirely sure why I thought I needed so much of it.  In any case, I had opened one bag to get a feel for texture, etc, and after a month of being in the fridge decided I'd better use it.  Insert Foodgawker search for almond meal recipes here.

This recipe was to showcase a specific brand of molasses.  I did not use that brand, I used what I had.  It also said to bake pan brownie-style, but I liked the idea of individual bites.   

These brownie bites taste a little bit like a mixture between a cake-y brownie or dense cake.  Take your pick.  Then I dressed them up with a shot of cinnamon chocolate buttercream and they were delicious!

I kind of want to experiment with the spices a little more.  Maybe add cloves and nutmeg?  More gingerbread style?

I basically followed this recipe that I found on Foodgawker with a few changes you can see below. Enjoy!

Mini-Spiced Chocolate Brownies
1 cup almond meal
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp flour (I used Namaste GF blend)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp molasses
4 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line mini-muffin pan and fill liners 2/3 full.  Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool then frost.

Spiced Chocolate Buttercream
1 stick butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tbsp milk

Cream sugar and powdered sugar until smooth.  Add cinnamon and vanilla extract. Add 1 tbsp milk at a time and whip until desired consistency.

Witch Hat Cupcakes

Happy (almost) Halloween!  While many bloggers have been featuring spooky recipes all month long, I went the Fall route with apples and pumpkins.  But don't you worry, I have something festive to share with you!


First, to get in the spirit of the holiday, the hubs and I carved pumpkins with our friends on Saturday night.  

Evidently, the hubs has an artistic side that only comes out around Halloween and pumpkin carving.  He always "freehands" his pumpkins and they turn out the best.  So jealous.

Last year:

His is the dog on the very right. No stencil. Nothing.

This year:

His is the TX Longhorn.  And mine....the cupcake, obviously. But hey, I freehanded mine this year, too.  Just not as impressive as a longhorn. Whatever. 

Now onto the rest of the festivities!  After I brought those Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes to work last week, one of my co-workers approached me and asked if I'd be interested in making cupcakes for her to take to her daughter's soccer team celebrating her 9th birthday.  Give me an opportunity to bake and I'll take it.  Especially when she said it could be something Halloween-y.  

After doing a little research, I found an idea for Glamourous Witch Cupcakes by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen.  Thought these were too fun so decided to give them a try.

Result:

Pretty darn cute.

I went with a chocolate cake base with purple liner.  Electric green buttercream icing with purple sparkle dust on top.  I bought "Chocolate Melts" from the grocery store to dip cookies and sugar cones in.  Then a fondant rim.  

I was looking for a very flat cookie to use as the brim of the hat and ended up going with Keebler Fudge Striped Cookies and dipped the vanilla side in chocolate.  

At first, I tried the little pearl candies on the brim, but they just didn't do it for me.  That's when I took them all off and decided to go with my new favorite...fondant.  

My co-worker sent me a picture of how she packaged up the cupcakes to give out at the game and thought it was too cute not to share and such a good idea.

So if you have a Halloween party this weekend and need something festive to take...here ya go!

Happy Halloween from the both of us!

Festive Witch Cupcakes (adapted from CCQ)

(printable recipe)

1 dozen cupcakes, flavor of choice (Need an easy recipe? Try this one!)

1 batch buttercream icing

1 dozen sugar cones (may want extra in case you crack some)

1 dozen flat-shaped cookies

edible sparkle dust, purple or green (optional)

chocolate melts, dark or milk

purple and yellow fondant

1.  Bake cupcakes according to directions and allow to completely cool.  

2.  Using a serrated, cut about 1" off the top of the sugar cones. (Most difficult part!)

3.  Microwave chocolate melts.  Dip sugar cones and cookies in chocolate and allow to cool and harden on wax paper.

4.  Cut out fondant strips and piece together for rim.  Strip of purple, square of yellow, very small square of purple.

5.  Once cones have hardened, dip the circular end of the cones in the chocolate and place on top of chocolate cookie.  Allow to harden.

6.  Wrap fondant rim around chocolate cone and using a dab of water, secure in place.

7.  Frost cupcakes with open star tip.  Dust with sparkle powder.  Place hat securely on top. 

Buttercream Icing

2 sticks of butter, softened

2 tbsp milk or heavy cream

2 tsp vanilla extract

4 cups powdered sugar

Blend together butter, milk/cream, and vanilla until smooth.  On low speed, add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time until fully combined.  If frosting looks too thick for piping, add 1 tbsp milk at time until reaches desired consistency.  Increase to medium speed and beat frosting until light and airy.  Add food coloring at this point.  Frost cupcakes.  

Triple Threat Chocolate Cookies

As we all know (or should know), I'm not a huge chocolate fan.  In this household, I like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips...and a little cinnamon.  So you might as well just give me a snickerdoodle.  However, I'm probably one of few people like this.  I'm pretty sure most people love chocolate.  And this cookie is for them.

Way back in February when we bought our house (!!),  a family friend, who happens to be a real-estate lawyer, looked over all of our closing documents to make sure they were all legit.  Since he's a family friend and all, he did all of this work for free, however, I intended to pay him with cookies. (Obviously)

When asked what his favorite types of desserts were, his daughter said "anything with chocolate." Thus, I made this cookie but tweaked it to be more intensely chocolate-ly.

These cookies are jam-packed with cocoa, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 60% dark chocolate chips.  Whoa. Intense.

To be honest, after trying this dough, I thought I may have turned a new leaf and started to like chocolate.  Then I ate a snickerdoodle blondie and resumed my old ways.

Sidenote: I forgot to take pictures of these cookies before dropping them off at my parents for them to deliver to said lawyer-friend.  But, I have an amazing mother who so graciously snapped a few pictures for me and my obsessive self so I could blog about them. Thanks, mom! :) 

Triple Threat Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from RecipeGirl

1 1/4 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups AP flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 (12 oz) package semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 (12 oz) package 60% cocoa chips (I used Ghiradelli)

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Cream butter and sugars together until smooth.  Add vanilla and eggs and beat well. 

3.  In separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt and mix together with whisk.

4.  Slowly incorporate into butter mixture until combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

5.  Eat some dough.

6.  Drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Transfer to wire rack and let cool. 

Enjoy!

Cupcake Kick

So I've officially decided I'm on a cupcake kick....or there just happened to be two birthdays within a week's span of eachother and rather than make a whole cake, I chose cupcakes. Regardless, July 4th was my good friend Kendra's 25th birthday. Kendra and I have known eachother since 1st grade (crazy, I know) and grew up great friends. When we were younger, she would spend every birthday with my family out at the lakehouse, it sort of became a tradition, but as we got older, birthday at the lake became a thing of the past and we both went off to different schools and only recently became reunited!

Moving on.  Same as last week, I did my research (aka text said friend) and asked what her favorite kind of cake was.  Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Okay then. Easy enough, right? Wrong.

Little did I know, yellow cake is actually a baker's dilemna.  The more and more I searched for the perfect recipe, the more and more I read about homemade yellow cakes coming out dry and "not as good as the box." Well, I was determined not to use a box mix and googled and googled homemade cake recipes with good reviews.

I finally found one from the Smitten Kitchen that she called the "Best Birthday Cake Ever." Her post about the cake seemed confident and I was sure it had to be better than a box.

When it came time to bake my cake, I had already gone to the grocery store for needed ingredients, set them all out on the counter, got out my measuring cups and went to work.  First ingredient, cake flour. Drat! I didn't have cake flour, I had "all-purpose" flour.  Would they work the same? I wasn't sure. And didn't really want to google it and find that it did indeed make a difference. So I went with it.

The batter was delicious but.......very thick. Is that a flour difference? Probably. Oh well, I scooped my batter into cupcake liners and baked.  Smelled good, looked good. Have you noticed that homemade yellow cake is not nearly as yellow as box cake? I choose to believe that box cakes probably add yellow #50 and my batter didn't have dye in it. 

Initial cake test: tasty but a little dry. Boo. Maybe icing would fix it?

I also searched for a good chocolate buttercream icing that was relatively simple.  Nothing that sparked my interested so I used my great-grandmother's no fail chocolate frosting recipe.

Chocolate Frosting

1 stick butter (room temperature)
4 cups powdered sugar
3 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla
4 tsp milk

Mix butter, sugar, and cocoa. Add vanilla and milk. Blend till smooth.

Icing=yum.

Icing on top of cupcake=semi-yum.  Still wasn't pleased with the cake texture. Not that it stopped me from eating them.

All topped off with some colorful sprinkles!

Now you may wonder why I didn't do some sort of red, white, and blue theme, since her birthday is Fourth of July afterall. That's so overdone. I kept my cucpcakes simple but cute.

Still on the lookout for a good yellow cake recipe...or maybe I'll just follow the instructions next time and use cake flour.