Vanilla Cupcakes

I've been on the hunt for a decent vanilla cake or cupcake recipe for a while now, and I've finally found one I like. It's light and fluffy and tastes like butter and vanilla. I really like it. I made these for my friend's birthday the other day. I topped them with chocolate icing and white sprinkles... so it makes it hard to tell from the picture that they are vanilla cupcakes.

2 1/4 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla (or more)
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 24 muffin cups.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the milk, vanilla and butter and beat well at medium speed for at least one minute. Add the eggs and beat again at medium speed for at least three more minutes, scraping the bowl as you go.

Fill muffin cups about 2/3rds full. Bake 20-25 minutes.

Toy Story Cupcakes!

So, I saved the best for last this week. I made these cupcakes for a friend who was having a birthday over the weekend, you may remember the cakes I made for her last year. This summer I posted on Facebook asking for suggestions for what to make for my brother's cake and this particular friend suggested Toy Story characters. Those weren't exactly what I was thinking of for my brother but I made a note of her suggestion for when her birthday rolled around.


I'm still working on perfecting the art of buttercream transfers, so there are some issues with the eyes and also with the alien's ears and half of Woody's hat being missing, but overall I'm really happy with how these turned out. And I had so much fun making them on Sunday, it was great! Plus the look on my friend's face when she saw them was priceless. :)

Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

For my young adults group last week I decided to make cupcakes. Chocolate mint cupcakes to be exact. And I had several recipes I wanted to try out so I decided to just go for it and I realized that each recipe only made one dozen. I was expecting to have 10-15 people at the young adults group and young adults have a tendancy to like home baking so I figured I'd need at least two for each person. So I figured I needed at least two dozen cupcakes or possibly three dozen. And it turned out I had three chocolate mint cupcakes recipes that I wanted to try out. So I went for it.

Peppermint Patty Brownie Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup margarine (or butter)
1 cup white sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa
12 peppermint patties

Preheat oven to 350. Line 12 muffin cups. Melt together butter and chocolate chips. In another bowl mix sugar and salt, stir in melted chocolate. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in cocoa and flour. Spoon one spoonful of batter into each muffin cup. Place a peppermint patty on the batter and then top with more batter to cover the patty. Bake for about 35 minutes.

These were very tasty. Brownies, with peppermint patties in the middle. They were the favourites of the three types.

Chocolate Mint 'Vegan' Cupcakes

1 cup (soy) milk (I just used regular milk because I don't really care about the vegan factor)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar (I used regular vinegar because it's what I had)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 12 muffin cups. Mix milk and vinegar and let sit for 10-15 minutes. Mix together milk mixture, sugar, oil, vanilla and mint extract. In another bowl mix together flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Slowly mix into wet mixture. Beat well. Spoon into muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes.

These were surprisingly good. I was not expecting vegan cupcakes to taste this good. They weren't spectacular exactly but they were pretty tasty. They were the second best of the batch.

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

NOTE: I really did not like these cupcakes. Personally I thought they were disgusting and that they tasted like bread. But I took them to young adults and everyone insisted they weren't that bad. So I'm posting the recipe and you can make your own decision, if you want to take the chance. (Personally I'd make the vegan ones again before I'd try these again)

6 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp butter (or margarine)
1/4 cup butter (or margarine), softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
1/2 cup chocolate milk (I would recommend using the bought stuff from the store, that stuff that's artificially thickened, rather than the stuff you make yourself with the chocolate powder or sauce)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup (6 ounces) mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 12 muffin cups. Melt together cocoa powder and 2 tbsp butter. Cream together sugar and 1/4 cup butter. Stir in melted chocolate mixture. Add eggs, mint extract and chocolate milk. Beat well. Beat in flour and baking soda. Stir in chocolate chips. Spoon batter into muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes.

For frosting on all of these cupcakes I just used my usual recipe with mint extract rather than vanilla.

Cupcake Pop Fail

So yesterday I decided to try Bakerella's cupcake pops as a birthday present for a friend. I started with 63 cake balls and ended up with only 26 presentable cupcake pops. (Of course it didn't help that I dropped about 20 cake balls on the floor before I'd even barely started and I had to throw them out)

Some of my cupcake pops turned out like the ones on the left (what they're supposed to look like) and the rest turned out like the ones on the right. (Impaled on the lollypop stick).


The basic instructions for cupcake pops. Full, illustrated instructions from the inventor herself can be found here.

1. Bake a cake in a 9x13 pan. I used my favourite chocolate cake recipe found here.
2. Make about 2 cups of cream cheese icing
3. Crumble the cake into little bits.
4. Mix the cake with icing.
5. Make the cake into little (1-1.5") balls
6. Freeze these for 15 min or so
6. Shape the balls into oblong shapes.
7. Using a small flour cookie cutter, press half the ball into the cookie cutter so that the top of the mini cupcake is rounded and the bottom has little waves. (Basically so it looks like a cupcake)
8. Freeze these for another 15-20 min
9. Melt some chocolate. I used dark and milk.
10. Dip the bottoms of the cupcakes in the chocolate.
11. Place the un-chocolated side down on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Stick lollypop sticks in the chocolated side.
12. When these have dried melt some coloured candy melts.
13. Dip the other side in the coloured melted candy.
14. Stick the sticks in a piece of styrofoam, decorate with smarties and sprinkles and let dry.

Here's how the nice ones turned out.
And the rest did something like this:

So here are some more pictures of my cupcake pop attempt.

Blueberry Muffins

Yesterday I made two different types of blueberry muffins, one from my muffin cookbook that my grandma gave me and another that was an adaptation of my mother's blueberry lemon cake.

Blueberry Muffins from the 'Mad about Muffins' cookbook

1/2 cup margarine, softened
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1/2 cup milk
2 cups blueberries

Preheat oven to 375. Prepare 18 muffin cups. Cream together margarine and sugar. Beat in eggs. Add vanilla, baking powder and salt. Mix in the flour and milk gradually, alternating between the two. Stir in the blueberries. Spoon batter into muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Lemon Blueberry Cake - in cupcake form

3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp baking powder
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp lemon rind (about how much comes off one lemon)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups blueberries

Glaze
2 tbsp lemon juice (about how much comes from juicing one lemon)
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 24 muffin cups. Beat butter until creamy. Beat in sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. In another bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Stir into the liquids alternately with milk. Stir in lemon rind and vanilla. Fold in blueberries. Spoon into muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes or so. While they are baking stir together lemon juice and sugar and let stand while the cupcakes bake. Spoon over warm cupcakes when they come out of the oven.

I took the cupcakes to work today and they went over quite well. Of course it took everyone most of the day to figure out who brought them. Apparently one of the guys tried to take credit for baking them, until his girlfriend pointed out that he probably doesn't even know how to turn on an oven. :P Finally someone figured it out at about two in the afternoon. So I heard people telling me how awesome they were both before and after they knew I'd made them. :D

"Red" Velvet Cupcakes and Homemade Pizza

I'd never heard of Red Velvet Cupcakes until I started baking and reading baking blogs and websites and stuff. Apparently they are a big deal in the American South. They sounded interesting, basically chocolate cupcakes dyed bright red. So I thought I'd give them a try. I found one of Allrecipes' top rated recipes to try.

4 tbsp cocoa
2 ounces of red food colouring (I have no idea how much this is, so I just dumped in everything I had)
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vinegar

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare muffin cups. Make a paste of the food colouring and cocoa. Combine buttermilk, salt and vanilla. Set aside. In another bowl mix together oil and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in cocoa mixture. Beat in the buttermilk mixture alternately with flour until just incorporated. Then mix together the baking soda and vinegar and gently fold into the batter. Spoon into muffin cups and bake 20 min or so.

Okay, well I should have known this recipe was going to turn out weird when I read that one of the steps involved recreating everyone's favourite first grade science experiment. I also didn't have near enough food colouring to use so they turned out as kind of brown-y, pink-y velvet cupcakes. But they were pretty tasty! Although one of my friends told me I was not allowed to call them Red Velvet Cupcakes, so we just started calling them The Special Surprise Cupcakes.

Then some friends and I made pizza for dinner.

Homemade Pizza

1 cup warm water
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp yeast

Add ingredients to bread machine in listed order. Set to 'Dough' Press start... wait 2 hours, you have pizza dough. Roll out onto greased pizza pan. Top with pizza sauce and your favourite toppings. Very tasty.

Cupcake Fest: Part 3

Part 3 of the Cupcake Fest is entirely devoted to Grad Cupcakes. The idea for these cupcakes came from the immensely talented Bakerella. I made two rounds of them with two different flavours of cupcakes each time.

Decadent Brownie Cups
1 cup butter (margarine)
* 4 (1 oz) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
Mini peanut butter cups

*Each Unsweetened chocolate square can be substituted with 3 tbsp of cocoa powder and 1 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 18 muffin cups. Melt together chocolate and butter. Remove from heat and mix with sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Stir in vanilla. Then add flour and salt. Spoon into muffin cups. Press a peanut butter cup into the centre of each. Bake for about 18 minutes.

Classic Chocolate Cupcakes
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
**8 (1 oz) squares semi sweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly

**I substituted 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips for the semi sweet chocolate squares. They can be easily melted in the microwave

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 18 muffin cups. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add oil, milk, eggs and vanilla. Stir until well blended. Stir in melted chocolate until well mixed. Spoon into prepared muffin cups. Bake 25-30 min.

Chocolate Surprise

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup margarine, softened
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 egg whites
1 cup chocolate chips, melted
30 mini Reeces peanut butter cups

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 30 muffin cups. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Mix well. In another bowl beaet sugar and butter. Add milk and vanilla. Beat in flour mixture slowly. Add egg whites. Stir in melted chocolate. Spread one heaping tablespoon of batter into the bottom of each muffin cup. Add one mini peanut butter cup and then cover with more batter. Bake 24-26 min.

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup margarine
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 18 muffin cups. Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Beat butter and peanut butter together. Beat in sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add in flour mixture and milk alternating in small batches. Spoon into muffin cups. Bake 23-25 min.

For the peanut butter frosting I just added an extra 1/2 cup or so of peanut butter to my regular frosting recipe.

For the grad hat toppers. Take a mini Reeces cup, turn it upside down. Put some frosting on the top. Top with a square chocolate. Then add a Reeces pieces and a licorice, securing with more frosting.

Oh, and as a note, I think I should add my frosting 'recipe'

I don't really have a recipe for icing. Basically you start with 1/4 cup or so with butter and stir in a cup or so of icing sugar. Then you add a teaspoon of vanilla, a few tablespoons of milk and enough icing sugar until it is the consistency you want. For chocolate icing just add 1/3 cup or so of cocoa powder to the second batch of icing sugar addition.

Cupcake Fest: Part 2

I made these for a youth group get together a few weeks ago, originally posted June 14, 2009

Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

1 package of white cake mix
1 cup water
3 egg whites
2 tbsp vegetable (canola) oil
1 can of frozen pink lemonade concentrate, thawed
Red food colouring

Preheat oven to 350, prepare 24 muffin cups. Mix together cake mix, water, egg whites, oil and and some of the pink lemonade. (The recipe book says 1/3 cup but I didn't think that tasted very pink lemonade-y so I used about half the container, basically put in as much or as little as you want) Add in some food colouring to make them as pink as you like. Spoon into muffin cups, bake for 18-22 minutes.

For icing, I just made my basic icing and added some of the pink lemonade until it tasted pink lemonade-y then I added more icing to thicken it up. But then I was running out of icing sugar which is why the icing in the pictures doesn't look very solid.

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

2 1/4 cup flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter (margarine), softened
2 tsp vanilla
3 egg whites
1 cup crushed Oreos (about 10)

Preheat oven to 350, prepare 24 muffin cups. Mix flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in sugar. Add milk, butter and vanilla. Add egg whites and stir. Mix in oreos. Bake 20-25 min.

I iced these with just regular vanilla icing and topped them with more crushed oreos.

I made these for my Young Adults group a week or so ago. Originally posted July 12, 2009

Hazelnut Cupcakes

1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup Nutella
1/3 cup butter (margarine), softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk

More Nutella

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 18 muffin cups. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In another bowl combine Nutella and margarine until smooth. Beat in sugar then eggs and vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with milk. Spoon butter into muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes. When cooled, frost with Nutella. Top with chopped hazelnuts.

These were pretty amazing. Although I think it was entirely the amount of Nutella involved. The cupcake parts weren't particularly special but with the Nutella frosting they were pretty tasty. I think in the future I'd just make regular chocolate cupcakes, throw hazelnuts into the batter and then frost with Nutella. But still, they went over well at YA, one person I know at at least 3.

Cupcake Fest: Part 1

I've made a lot of cupcakes since I started with my bake-a-thon. So I'll post them all in a row over the next few days, starting with the first ones I made.

Froot Loop Cupcakes - originally posted March 6, 2009

This week I thought I should make some kind of cupcakes and I wanted to try some non-chocolate ones. I found this recipe in the LiveJournal community bakebakebake.


Froot Loop Cupcakes

1/2 cup butter (I used margarine)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
Zest from 1 Lemon
Zest from 1 Orange
1 1/2 cups Froot Loops
(Optional, but recommended) Icing Sugar

Preheat oven to 350, Line 12 muffin cups
Cream butter. Add sugar to butter and continue to cream. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Beat in vanilla.
In another bowl sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in three batches, alternating with milk. (ie mix in some flour then some milk then more flour then more milk ect.)
Add the lemon and orange zest.
Spoon batter into muffin cups and then sprinkle generous amounts of Froot Loops onto each cupcake.
Bake for 20-25 minutes then let them cool completely before sprinkling icing sugar on the tops.

So, I really like cupcake part of this recipe but unfortunately baking the Froot Loops makes them a little dry and stale. I think little kids would probably love these and they're really easy to make but I'm not sure if I'll make them again. I'll probably use the cupcake part of this recipe again because they were very tasty cupcakes.

Sorry about the quality of the picture, I didn't have a camera so I had to angle the webcam on my computer to take a picture without getting icing sugar all over it.

EDIT: Okay, I felt I had to add this. These cupcakes are good the first day you make them only! The cake part is still good the next day but the Froot Loops turn into these weird chewy soggy fruit loops. So I would suggest only making these the day you plan to eat them. They are not good after that.

These cupcakes are, however, amazing, if instead of Froot Loops, you top them with:

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz (half a package) cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Icing sugar (about 3 cups)
Yellow Food Colouring

Cream together cream cheese and butter. Beat in about a cup of icing sugar and the lemon juice. Continue adding icing sugar until it is the desired consistency. Then add some yellow food colouring.

This is pretty tasty icing! I liked it, its lemony and sweet and pretty good. But it made too much for the dozen cupcakes that the froot loops recipe made so I decided to make some more cupcakes. So I found this recipe.

Lemon-Lime Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups butter (or margarine), softened
3 cups white sugar
5 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon extract
3 cups flour
3/4 cup of lemon-lime pop (ie Sprite or 7-Up, I used Sprite Zero because its what I had)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and sugar. Add in eggs, one at a time. Add in the lemon extract and some of the flour. Add the rest of the flour and the pop in small bits alternating between the two. So add a little flour, a little pop, a little flour, a little pop ect. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Decorate with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing.

Cola Cake

The recipe for these came off of the Coca-Cola website. My family has been calling this my mystery dessert because I listed the ingredients that we needed from the store without saying what I was making. My family was confused as to what recipe would call for mini marshmallows, Coca-Cola and buttermilk.

2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 cup margarine or butter
3 tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup Coca-Cola
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together sugar and flour. Mix in marshmallows. In a sauce pan mix together butter, cocoa, oil and Cola and bring to a boil. Pour over dry ingredients. Mix well. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk and mix in with the other ingredients along with the eggs and vanilla. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and bake for 35-45 minutes. (I poured it into muffin cups and baked for 20 minutes)

For frosting take your regular recipe and use Coke instead of milk.

I didn't like these very much. I thought they were too moist, more on the gooey side of moist and I couldn't taste the Coke or cocoa at all. But that might be because I'm coming down with a cold. My family could taste the Coke though and they said the cupcakes were pretty good. I don't think I'll make them again anytime soon though.