Showing posts with label Cupcakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cupcakes. Show all posts

17.5.10

When Life Gives You Lemons...


...make these!

These are so delicious! Little mini perfect bite size pieces of sunshine!

After you take these tart, fabulous, lemony mini muffins out of the oven you dunk them in a lemon sugar liquid mixture and after they have cooled you top them off with a lemon glaze. Delicious, right?

This is such a versatile recipe. You can make mini muffins or a couple of loaves. Or, go for the hybrid version like I did and split the batter to bake both! If you like lemon these definitely won't disappoint. Enjoy!

 Mini Lemon Muffins
Adapted from: Barefoot Contessa Parties!

Ingredients

1/2 pound unsalted butter at room temp
2 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
4 eggs at room temp
1/3 grated lemon zest  (6 to 8 lemons)
3 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of salt
3/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice divided
3/4 cup buttermilk at room temp
1 tsp vanilla

2 cups of confectioners sugar, sifted
4 TBS fresh squeezed lemon juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease mini muffin tins (and an 8x4 inch bread pan if you want to make a loaf).

Cream butter and granulated sugar with an electric mixer or hand mixer for 5 minutes, or until light and fluffy. With the mixer on medium speed, add the eggs, one at a time, and the lemon zest.

In a medium bowl sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another small bowl, mix 1/4 cup of lemon juice, the buttermilk and the vanilla. Add the flour and buttermilk mixtures alternately to the batter, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide batter into the bread pan and the mini muffin pans (only fill cups halfway). Bake bread pan for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until cake tester comes out clean. Bake mini muffins for 11-13 minutes and rinse and regrease muffin tins after every batch.

While the cake is baking, combine 1/2 cup of granulated sugar plus 1/2 cup of lemon juice in a small saucepan on medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and let cool. When the cakes are done, cool on a rack with a cookie sheet underneath for 5 minutes. Dunk the mini muffins into the sugar and lemon mixture and pour mixture over loaves and saturate them. Allow cakes to cool completely before glazing.

For the glaze, combine the confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice in a bowl, mixing with a wire whisk until smooth. Pour over the top of the cakes and allow the glaze to drizzle down the sides.

14.3.10

Happy St. Patrick's Day!


Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'm Irish, well part of me is and it's enough for me to celebrate and bake with green!

I used a French Vanilla cake mix for the cupcakes and added green food coloring (you could also use green decorating paste which would give you a more vibrant green) for some festive flair.

I used this recipe for the cream cheese icing (so good!),

1/4 cup cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups icing sugar
8 drops of green food coloring

In bowl, beat cream cheese with butter; beat in vanilla. Beat in sugar in 2 additions until smooth.

I topped these wee cupcakes with some green sprinkles and a little art!

Sláinte ("Cheers!" in Irish Gaelic)! I thought I'd spare you and not write this entire post Gaelic... You're welcome ;-)

25.12.09

Snowman Cupcakes


"Frosty the snowman..."

These cupcakes were so much fun to make and a huge hit this holiday season.

I used a mix for the cupcakes (::gasp::) as these marshmallow snowmen were a little bit time consuming :-)

I adapted this recipe from Martha Stewart but there are lots of fun Christmas snowman cupcake ideas.

Click here or here for some other fun alternatives.

I hope you're having a wonderful and joyous Christmas day celebrating with the ones you love!

Merry Christmas!


Snowman Cupcake How-To

(Please note there is so much room to be creative with these mini Frosty's!)

This snowman wears a fine winter hat: a chocolate-covered mint beret. His plump figure is two marshmallows -- cut a slice off the top one and squish to make it smaller. Dabs of icing hold parts together. His eyes are chocolate sprinkles (poke holes first with a wet toothpick), and his nose is cut from an orange gummy fish.

For the cupcake

You can be ambitious and bake your cupcakes from scratch or take the easy road and use the box mix (which tasted delicious) like I did. Follow directions as listed.

Once the cupcakes have cooled generously cover with icing and securely place your snowman on top! Enjoy!



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