Earth Day Cupcakes

Here is the idea: Anyone can grow mint! Seriously, it's practically impossible to kill, and it thrives easily. It also can grom from cuttings. SO, I thought, make a cupcake that provides pretty much everything needed to start an herb garden. It has the pot and the mint - just eat the cupcake and throw in some dirt and water.

I did get to make the Earth Day cupcakes, and I'm quite happy with the way they turned out! I used a Chocylit recipe for the rich chocolate cupcakes and for mint buttercream icing, and it was delicious. The cupcake itself was almost more like a brownie. I used the mint extract for the flavoring of the icing, and it was good, but I think I might use creme de minthe next time, just because. The recipe below reflects my minor charges, such as the addition of food coloring, the use of locally available ingredients, changes in cooking time for the flower pots, etc.

Chocolate Cupcakes

24 regular cupcakes / 350 degree oven

2-100 gram bars of Hershey 60% cocao

3 sticks butter

2-1/4 cups sugar

8 eggs

1-1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

pinch of salt

(24 mini flowerpots)

1. line flowerpots with parchment and place on a baking sheet.

2. break up chocolate and transfer into the bowl of a standing mixer.

3. add butter to the chocolate and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. stir until chocolate melts and butter is combined.

4. remove from heat and stir in sugar. let mixture cool for 10 minutes.

5. beat in an electric mixer for 3 minutes.

6. add one egg at a time, mixing for 30 seconds between each

7. sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and a pinch of salt into the mixture and mix until blended.

8. scoop into lined flowerpots and bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Mint Buttercream Frosting

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

4-5 cups powdered sugar, sifted

1/4 cup milk

1/8 teaspoon all natural peppermint extract

1 tube of green gel food coloring

1. beat butter until creamy, scrape bowl.

2. add 4 cups of sifted powdered sugar, milk, peppermint extract, and food coloring, beat until combined.

3. add more powdered sugar as needed to get piping consistency.

4. pipe on icing.
4. top with a sprig of mint

Kissing Law School Goodbye

I attended my last class of law school today. In celebration, I had people over last night for a pot luck/game night. We played Catch Phrase like only lawyers can, with lots of yelling, fighting over rules, and insistence that both teams were equally inconvenienced. It's funny - as 1Ls, we were very aware that we were starting to make lame law jokes in every conversation; now, the legal termanology has become such a part of our vernacular that we don't even notice any more. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

The party was fun, and I enjoyed having people over. And I enjoyed baking and cooking. Roasts are fun and easy. My kitchen was completely destoyed over and over, but is pretty much back to normal now.

Martha Stewart Cheesecake

I have made this cheesecake before, but I've always had to make two out of one recipe because it is intended for a 10" springform pan (and frankly, is a little too much, even for that), and I haven't had one. I finally found a 10" pan at T.J. Maxx, and was super-excited to try it out. It even had a glass bottom, that I thought that would be great, because it would be even prettier for serving.

HOWEVER, I'm not the brightest, and I was cooking about 10 things at once. I set the cheesecake on the stove and turned on a burner for something else. Apparently, I turned the wrong burner on though, and I shattered the glass. Oops.

At any rate, after scraping off the glass, I was left with a great (giant) cheesecake from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. I'm pretty sure it must be healthy, what with the 7 packages of cream cheese. ;)

Coming soon:

I swear!
cheesecake
Earth Day cupcakes (mint and chocolate)
THE party favors (to be revealed)
banana cream pie
et. al.

Cupcake Hero Ponderings - Earthday

This month's theme for cupcake hero is Earth Day. I was really stumped by this one, and was desperate for inspiration until I found it! I was looking at the finalists for Martha Stewart's cutest cupcake contest, and it clicked. Someone submitted a cupcake in a mini terracotta pot, with an actual green plant sticking out of it!


I think I'm going to do a mint chocolate cupcake with a sprig of mint 'growing' out of it. The mint can either be eaten or planted, because mint grows really easily from cuttings! It's like a (single) herb garden in a cupcake! I think it'll be cute... and the mint icing will already be green, so it'll make great grass. I think I'll try it both with green mint grass and with crushed oreos over it to look more like dirt. We'll have to see.

Cosmo cupcakes

I love alcohol, pink, and sugar, so these were a must! I found a blog (which unfortunately appears to be have been abandoned) that is exclusively cocktail-based cupcake recipes, and I really wanted to try the cosmos. I was invited to a crawfish boil this weekend and promised to bring baked goodies. I took the rice krispy treats and these, and they were a real hit!

I thought I'd go ahead and reprint the recipe here for your convenience.

Ingredients

For Cake:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
3/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of triple sec
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup dried cranberries

For Frosting:
3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
Pinch of salt
A stick of room temperature butter
2 tablespoons of sweetened lime juice (such as roses)
1 tablespoon of milk
A few drops of red food coloring
1 lime for garnish


Be especially careful not to open the oven during the first 20 minutes of baking as it will increase the chances of your cupcakes falling flat on their butts. This recipe has a little extra weight on top also due to the cranberries so just trust me on this one and keep your sticky fingers off the oven door for the first twenty minutes. The cupcakes when done should be golden brown and irresistible looking. (I know one of mine never made it to the frosting stage!)



For Cake:Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake liners. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and give it a quick stir to combine. Place eggs and sugar in a bowl and beat on medium with an electric mixer until light and foamy. About 2 minutes. Melt butter (about 1min in microwave) and pour over eggs and sugar whilst beating. Add triple sec to eggs, sugar and butter mixture then turn mixer to low. Add half the dry ingredients to the mixer. Add milk and orange juice Add remaining dry ingredients. Continue mixing until remaining dry ingredients are combined (no more than a minute) being careful not to over mix the batter. Immediately divide batter equally among the 12 cupcake liners. I like to use an ice cream scoop to do this. Helps keep each cupcake uniform size. Sprinkle a little pinch of cranberries on top of each filled liner and put in hot oven immediately. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the middle of the cupcakes comes out clean, with no crumbs. Place on a baking sheet to cool.
When cupcakes are completely cooled you can begin to make the frosting.Place 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar, salt and butter in a bowl and cream together using a stand or electric mixer on high until light and fluffy. Turn the mixer to low, add half of the remaining confectioners’ sugar, the lime juice and milk, then the remaining half of the sugar. Turn mixer to high and beat until fluffy and of piping consistency. Add food coloring until the color of the frosting looks similar to Barbie pink Frost cooled cupcakes in your favorite way Garnish with a slice of lime

Rice Krispy Treats

Yumm! I don't know why, but this simple dessert always makes me happy. Perhaps it has something to do with never having these kinds of sugary snacks when I was growing up.

I added the remainer of a bag of chocolate chips, and a bag of chocolate chunks that were lying around. ...because chocolate is good. I also was a little short on rice krispies, since I was just trying to use up what was left of a giant box of rice krispies after making the Easter treats. I went ahead and used as much marshmallow fluff as I normally would, because I love gooey treats!

Giant Cupcake!

I finally got a chance to use my new pan! One of my friends has a birthday tomorrow, so we went out to lunch (and shopping) to celebrate. I thought this sounded like a great excuse to bake a giant cupcake, so out came the pan!

I have a few recipes that I've been looking forward to trying out, but everyone else seems certain that red velvet is the way to go. After weaseling out of making little red velvet cupcakes for tomorrow, I felt that I did have to give in to the birthday girl's request today. So... I tried a new recipe. I can usually depend on Southern Living not to lead me astray (because they believe in butter as much as I do), so I went with one of their recipes. Because of the shape of the giant cupcake pan, I had to leave it in the oven for a little over an hour and a half. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, since it was so deep, but I still would be happier if it would cook more quickly! I'm impatient. I also used the Southern Living recipe for cream cheese icing. I was afraid that I would need more than one batch of the icing, but I think it was actually a bit more than I needed, with the shape of the cake. The icing was also a little less sweet, and a little softer than I might normally make, but I was happy with it. I imagine that t could have made it a bit stiffer and sweeter by adding more powdered sugar, but frankly, it sounded like too much work.

Tomorrow, it's regular-sized cupcakes and rice krispy treats!

flowerpot cupcakes

I am honestly refraining from baking until I turn in this paper, but I did have to whip up some quick cake mix cupcakes so that I could decorate them for the Martha Stewart cupcake contest. I had to get this out of my head while I could still submit it. ;)

Master Baker March Challenge Roundup

I loved making all the Easter treats! I suppose that I have more than a little streak of competitiveness. While I am normally quite lazy, a competition moves me to action pretty quickly. Master Baker's March contest is a great example! Here are all the treats that I made with the theme ingredient: Easter Candy!

Reese's Egg Banana Bars

Reese's Egg Granola Banana Bars

Easter Rice Krispy Treats

(made with Peeps and Mini Reese's Eggs)

Mini Reese's Egg Cheesecake

S'more Peep Bars

Mini Cadbury Nest Eggs

...Just posting this makes me want to bake more!