I've been using this chocolate cupcakes recipe for years ever since my mom and I found it in Cook's Illustrated a while back, and I love it. The buttercream frosting recipe was new, however, and it was so delicious! I loved the Nutella flavor. It wasn't overpowering, but it was just enough so that you taste it and still know it is a hazelnut buttercream. Then, since I was feeling so adventurous, I made some rolled fondant (homemade) to decorate the tops. I had a blast! I don't really suggest the recipe I used, but you can make some at home or buy it in stores, or not use it at all and decorate with buttercream.
Recently, I've been watching tons of episodes of this show on the Food Network called "Cupcake Wars", which just gave me this buildup of desire to make really pretty and decadent cupcakes. So, I did. And they were very pretty, and very decadent.
I've been using this chocolate cupcakes recipe for years ever since my mom and I found it in Cook's Illustrated a while back, and I love it. The buttercream frosting recipe was new, however, and it was so delicious! I loved the Nutella flavor. It wasn't overpowering, but it was just enough so that you taste it and still know it is a hazelnut buttercream. Then, since I was feeling so adventurous, I made some rolled fondant (homemade) to decorate the tops. I had a blast! I don't really suggest the recipe I used, but you can make some at home or buy it in stores, or not use it at all and decorate with buttercream.
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So yesterday was my birthday, but today is my birthday celebration/party. Every year for everyone's birthday, we invite our cousins over to have dinner with them and celebrate that way. It's really fun and I've been looking forward to it all week. The best part, though, is that my mom finally agreed to letting me bake my own birthday cake, and man did I have a blast. I tried to make it the most spectacular of cakes that I've made. The red velvet is soooo good, and believe me because I've been searching for a really good red velvet cake recipe for a while, and this one's definitely a keeper. Red velvet is almost always paired with cream cheese frosting, but if you're not a fan of that (which then I would consider you to be crazy, sorry), you can pretty much use any other frosting you want on top. But just believe me, use this cream cheese frosting, it's awesome. Plus if you look up recipes for red velvet cake, they're always paired with cream cheese frosting, always. They just go really well together. So, happy birthday to me, and I hope you enjoy the recipe!
Today was day 4 of my Cambridge School of Culinary Arts Baking Class! It was so much fun! Today was cupcakes and cakes day, which is perfect for me because tomorrow is my birthday! They gave us plenty of really great recipes to choose from, making my decision even more difficult, but I settled for Coconut Cupcakes, since I've always wanted to make them and never seem to have coconut in my house.
These are absolutely delicious! You may have already guessed they would be so judging by the fact that they use a total of 5 sticks of butter, but hey, they're not supposed to be healthy, right? If you are wondering how to toast coconut, simply lay out your coconut on a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper and put it in a low temperature oven (say around 250 degrees) for 5 minutes or so. But keep an eye on them, because depending on how hot your oven really is, they can toast very easily and you don't want to burn them. For the garnish, it says you can either sprinkle with coconut or dip the tops in coconut. I suggest dipping the tops in coconut because the coconut stays on more easily and you get more coconut per cupcake, which is always a plus. Anyways, it is a pretty simple recipe and doesn't take too much time, just make sure you wait long enough for your cupcakes to cool before frosting them or else the frosting will melt. You can even stick them in the fridge to speed things up if you'd like. Enjoy! Recently, my mom went to Denver to visit a friend, and her friend was nice enough to allow my mom to come home with probably the best surprise present anyone could ever come home with, a new cookbook! It's called The Cake Bible, and it's just about the coolest thing ever. I flipped through the entire book and this recipe caught my eye. Maple? In a cupcake? Sounds awesome. So, as I usually do when I feel like celebrating, I baked today when I got home from my last final of junior year! Now to the recipe.
This cupcake is absolutely delicious! It is honestly the best cupcake I have ever had in the world. And, it makes your whole house smell like pancakes after they've baked. And even now, 3 days after making them, I still walk into the kitchen and can distinctly smell a maple scent. You can also make two cake layers with this recipe, you just have to adjust the baking time (which I gave the adjustments for below). To give it the maple flavor, you use maple sugar instead of regular sugar and add extra maple flavoring. I found maple sugar in Whole Foods if you're trying hard to find it, or if you don't have one of those around I'm sure you can find it somewhere else. To frost the cupcake, I simply used my very favorite buttercream frosting recipe and added half the amount of maple flavoring instead of the vanilla, and it worked wonderfully! If you would like, you can top the cupcakes with chopped walnuts as well. Enjoy! Happy Birthday to my younger brother, Elliot! I was so excited to make him his cake today, and I had all these wonderful ideas in mind. Maybe chocolate hazelnut cake, coconut cake, lemon cake. So I go up and ask him, "What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?" His reply: "Just go to Shaws, Katherine." Seriously?! I haven't convinced this kid yet that I AM SO MUCH BETTER THAN SHAW'S?! Of course, I did not take this advice. Instead, I merely pretended those words were not spoken and asked him one more time, "Elliot, what kind of cake do you want for your birthday?". "Vanilla with white frosting". Ok, I can do that. Simple, but delicious.
This yellow cake can be tricky, but man oh man it is delicious. Make sure, and I cannot stress this enough, that all your butter is very well creamed into the mixture before you add other ingredients. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, because if it is not, it will clump and melt in the oven and that will result in holes in your cake. Believe me, I learned the hard way. Nevertheless, if this doesn't happen, this cake is really dense and moist and delicious! I needed to leave mine in the oven a bit longer, but it actually just ended up being really moist because it was slightly undercooked (which I liked!). In the pictures, I used my previous recipe for Buttercream Frosting to frost the cake, which I left a link to down at the bottom. If I had been able to choose, however, the Easy Chocolate Buttercream recipe would have gone really well with this cake as well. Usually whenever there is a birthday in the house, it means that either a chocolate or vanilla cake is being made, period. There isn't much thought put into it. If it's my brother or sister, it's probably vanilla. If it's me or my mom or dad, it's definitely chocolate. However, this year I actually asked my sister beforehand, especially since I'm much more adventurous than I was last year, and she asked for a carrot cake. At first I was hesitant, because it doesn't seem very birthday cake-like to me, but that is what she wanted, so I made her a carrot cake.
It was a fabulous decision, too, because this carrot cake is absolutely phenomenal! It has such a delicious combination of spices, and just the right amount of nuts and carrots to make it simply delicious. It will smell so good coming out of your oven. Most people top off carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting, so I gave a recipe for that below. I would definitely recommend this recipe, it was amazing! I had to quickly wash the bowl of frosting so I wouldn't just lick it clean myself, it was that good! And of course, since it was a birthday, I did a little decorating with some left over frosting. Hope you like it! You can never go wrong with chocolate cake, however you can go wrong with the recipe. I have tried several over the years and noticed a couple things that I will share with all of you. First of all, I find that a lot of cake recipes ask for all these unnecessary difficult steps in the process and you end up with a cake that is just as good as one where all you do is throw the ingredients into an electric mixer and put them in pans. So this is the latter, since I find that more appealing to do on my Friday afternoon, as much as I like baking. Sometimes they ask for buttermilk and I have to figure out how much of the dry powder goes in and when, or when they tell you to melt over simmering water (that is really the worst). This cake is very easy and absolutely delicious. It is also VERY chocolatey, which I'm sure none of you will have any problems with. Some of you may be wondering what the difference is between Devil's Food Cake and plain old chocolate cake, which would be a very good question. I looked it up before I made the cake out of curiosity and apparently Devil's Food Cake is usually more airy through the use of extra baking powder and is usually made with water, sometimes boiling. They seem pretty similar to me, but they're still chocolate, so I'll accept them both.
Also, if you take a look at the pictures, it was in fact used as a birthday cake when I made it. Happy Birthday to my little cousin, Delilah, who turns 6 this Sunday! I'm happy to announce that about 2 weeks ago, at the age of 16 years and 201 days (a mere 21 days over the earliest time I could legally do this), I passed my road test! I'm now an official licensed driver, and I must say it is pretty awesome. The best part so far is getting to drive out to the store whenever I want to fetch some ingredients I need for new recipes I want to try.
Anyways, back to cake, right after I got home from my successful road test I decided it was time to celebrate a bit. In came the cake (only several hours later)! This cake recipe is very simple and yields a nice big, white cake with beautiful and extremely tasty buttercream frosting. Below the recipe for the cake and frosting is a note on how to change the amounts used in the frosting for those cake decorators out there who want extra to do some fancy things like I did. The ribbon could use some work, and the rosettes are getting there, but hey it's the first time I've ever tried something like that, so I was pretty proud. To get the pink frosting, I simply used the extra buttercream frosting, added a couple drops of pink food coloring, and stuffed it in an icing bag. Enjoy! |
AuthorMy name is Katherine and I love, love, love to bake! You can find all my baking adventures on this blog, plus you can follow me on Social Media by clicking below! Archives
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