Cupcake Vineyard's Prosecco Cupcakes

For adult celebrations: The Sparkling Wine Cupcake, made (appropriately so) with Cupcake Vineyard's Prosecco.

The frosting is pure gold.  The cake part...eh...working on it (how do you fold egg whites into batter, anyway?)  But there's nothing like a little boozy cake to raise your glasses to!

NECAPcakes

Last June, I went into my new school to meet my new set of kids.  Smartly or stupidly, I told them that I liked baking cupcakes and that I would probably bake them some if they were good.  Things I learned/were reinforced from that visit: 

a) middle schooler's remember everything you tell them unless it's related to something upon which they will be assessed, 

2) especially if it's about food, and 

iii) it's silly to make promises like that before you find out whether you're going to be on the 40-student team or the 60-student team.

Not even a month in, they wore me down.  "Remember you told us you would bake us cupcakes?"  "When are you going to bring us cupcakes?"  "How 'bout them cupcakes?"  So, I promised them all NECAPcakes, to be given at the end of NECAP-testing week.  Which, oh right, was also the week progress reports were due and we had 50 parent conferences.  5 dozen cupcakes?  No problem.

I had it all planned out.  Bake the cupcakes Wednesday night after the first set of conferences and frost them after Conference: Part Deux.  You know what happens when you get home after meeting with 25 parents and it's 8:30 pm and you don't have a microwave so you turn the oven on low in order to thaw out your frozen butter so that it's softened but not melted because you can't use melted butter to make swiss buttercream frosting because it just won't whip up like it's supposed to and then you get on your computer and have three e-mails from parents and teammates regarding tomorrow and you decide it's important to answer them and by the time you remember the butter you have a plate of melted butter in your oven?  You throw in the limited amount of powdered sugar and cocoa powder you have, whip it into submission, and hope for the best.  Turns out, it tastes a lot like the frosting version of a Wendy's Frosty!

Whew!  Interesting part: the next day I had a couple of kids walk up and say, "Huh, peanut butter.  Not what I expected."  To which I replied, "Huh, peanut butter.  Not what I put in."  That one still perplexes me.

4 Dozen Cupcakes and a 60th Birthday Cake!

Whewie, was this week a busy one!  Just moved into a new apartment, went camping with a team from the middle school, and had a BBQ with my own team.  Oh yes, and I also had to make over four dozen cupcakes and a gluten-free 60th birthday cake.

So, this is what my Wednesday started out as (following 1 trip to the store to find gluten-free flour and 1 more, different trip to the store to find strawberries and good butter for buttercream).

You've already seen the chocolate chip cookie dough-filled cupcakes before, but after my students heard about them, I think I would've been run out of town if I didn't show up with them.  "You must bring the cupcakes, Ms. Kovaliv."  "Did you remember to make the cupcakes Ms. Kovaliv?"  "I have to talk to you about cupcakes.  [Enter brief anticipatory pause.]  You're bringing them, right?"  Well, I had no choice.  So, I made 53 cupcakes.  This, after another trip to the store, because I needed 7 cups of powdered sugar, and lo and behold, I only had about 2.  Oh, and vanilla.  I'd run out of vanilla.  (3 store trips, thus far.)

Then, when that was all done, I tried my hand at my first ever gluten-free cake.  My dad keeps telling me that I shouldn't "experiment" when I'm baking on a deadline.  But, I haven't learned my lesson, and I had a minor panic attack when my strawberry gluten-free cakes turned out of the pan like this:

Yes.  That's approximately 3/4" high.  Some cake to celebrate a fabulous 60th birthday, eh?  So, store trip number 4 to buy more gluten-free flour mix.  I usually am a little Martha Stewart in my use of store-bought mixes (i.e. I am admittedly unnecessarily snobbish about my desire to make things from scratch), but when it comes to gluten-free, I trust those mixes more than myself.

Hooray!  A much more acceptable cake structure.  Time to frost and decorate!  But no!  I've run out of eggs!  Store trip #5, ladies and gentlemen.

But here it is!  An entirely gluten-free strawberry and vanilla cake with lemon buttercream frosting and a dark chocolate butterfly to top it all off.

Carnival Cupcake Contest!

So, to raise money for the 8th grade trip to Boston, the middle school held a carnival with a fire truck pull, pie-the-teacher-in-the-face, and other fun little games.  They also had a cupcake contest!  I hemmed and hawed about entering, but then felt really guilty for not contributing.  So in the final hour (because really, when else does baking happen?) the night before the contest, I decided I had the ingredients on hand to make french toast cupcakes with maple buttercream frosting!  

Revel in this little bit of heaven!  There's a crumble layer baked right in with the cupcake, and some cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top of the frosting to add a little pizzazz!  Thanks to Shelby for the adorable gingham wrappers as they totally sealed the deal on these gems.

There were so many fabulous cupcakes at the carnival that day!  Kids and parents alike entered some delightful looking beauties.  It was a day full of sunshine, smiles, and heavy heavy firetrucks (well, apparently only for the "Intern" team... that truck seemed light as a feather watching other teams pull it!).  Now we're that much closer to Boston!

Sparkling Wine Cupcakes!

For my 25th birthday, I had lots of people say, "I hope you aren't making your own cake!"  But, I didn't see the problem there, because I love making cake!  That, and using friends as guinea pigs for new recipes, like Sparkling Wine Cupcakes!  The frosting was incredibly light and fluffy and delightful, but I need to learn how to fold egg whites into cake batter...the cupcakes were a little dense, but still flavorful.

Photo Credit: Dana!

And, with the help from Joe, my mom sent me some lovely tulips!  It was nice to get to share my birthday with some close friends! :)

St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

Last New Year's, I found a recipe for Irish Car Bomb cupcakes and thought it would be only appropriate to make some for St. Patrick's Day!  These are supposed to have a whiskey ganache in the center, but I didn't have the ingredients, so I just left that out... but you wouldn't know that from the pictures, would you??  They are Guinness chocolate cupcakes and Bailey's Irish Creme frosting.  Little bit of Irish heaven right here.

Happy Valentine's Day 2010!

So I decided to try my hand at sugar flowers this Valentine's Day.  Here's what I came up with:

April Fools!  Oh wait... it's a little early for that (but it sure felt like April today)!  No, these are just the beautiful flowers Joe had delivered to my work.  Aww.


For real, though, nobody's gonna lay a finger on Joe's Butterfinger-themed Valentine!  So, one of Joe's favorite candies is Butterfinger, so I thought I would make him some Butterfinger cupcakes for Valentine's Day!  My concern was how to keep that characteristic Butterfinger "crunch" in a baked dessert.  So, I decided to make some Butterfinger cookie dough balls and put them in the center of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.  By freezing the dough balls before hand, I hoped that they wouldn't soften up the Butterfinger pieces on the inside.  Fortunately, I was right!  I made far too many Butterfinger-cookie dough balls, though, so Joe got a few cupcakes and a bunch more Butterfinger truffle balls.

I know you can't see the "truffle" filling, but it's in there.  My peanut butter frosting didn't work out the way I intended it to, but I think it turned out pretty well!  Those are also little Butterfinger hearts on the top.  Aww.

Sunflowers and Monarchs

Summer wasn't over yet! I made these little treats for an office party.  My second attempt at using chocolate to decorate was pretty successful!  The butterflies are made of melted dark chocolate and orange candy melts with some non-pareil decorations.  They were actually easier than the sunflowers!

The cupcakes were a simple chocolate with buttercream frosting.  I tried to make it look like a field of sunflowers and visiting monarchs!

Cookie Dough Lovers, unite!

I thought I was being quite creative coming up with the idea for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cupcakes; turns out tons of people have done it before, but no one I knew had ever tried one.  Thus, these were born.

Devil's food chocolate cake, brown sugar buttercream mousse, and a delightful ball of cookie dough on the inside.  Yah, they were pretty good.

Update: I recently re-made these at my brother's request.  Here's a little sample of what the preparation process looks like.  Just cover those little nuggets with more batter, and you're on your way!

The way to a man's heart...

...is totally through his stomach.  So I said Happy Valentine's Day with Chocolate and Ancho Chili Mini-Cupcakes!

Cupcakes and beer!

My first attempt at creating with chocolate.  It turned out pretty well and stood up like this for a while until my wicked hot apartment had something to say about it.