Baking With The Sis: Neapolitan Cupcakes

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My sister is on her Spring break, so she is back in town! Mid April is an odd time to schedule break though, but I guess that's the way dental school rolls. None of my sisters' spring breaks coincided with mine. Sad.

When my sisters were younger, my dad used to buy neapolitan ice cream for them to eat. I however only remember him buying french vanilla ice cream. What made it special was sprinkling Rice Krispies on top to get that crunchy texture along with the silky smooth ice cream. Is that a weird combination? I just know it's one of my more vivid memories of my childhood. Of course what I remember the best deals with food. 

I have attempted to bake with my sister several times in the past. Yet, each project has gone terribly wrong. We made chocolate cookies that came out of the oven deformed, mangled, crunchy, and just bad. They looked like amoebas. We tried making buttercream together. Who knows what went wrong there. The frosting was curdled and lumpy. Today we made cupcakes and aside from this batch, they puffed up, sunk, and spread into amoebas in the cupcake tins. Come to think of it, whenever we need to refer to one of these baking endeavors, we just need to say one word: amoeba.

I must give her credit for the piping of the frosting on these cupcakes though. She did a fine job. She was able to utilize my brand new french piping tip. It is so pretty!

Below is the recipe for the buttercream frosting that literally tastes like strawberry ice cream. I ended up mashing the frozen strawberries with a fork instead of whipping out the food processor so that there were bright red speckles throughout. The cake itself is half chocolate cake, which you can find the recipe here, and the magnolia vanilla cake, which you can find a reference to here. I normally hate confectioner's sugar frostings because I find them grainy. However, I find that you just need to beat the frosting for a very long time so that it gets smoother, fluffier, and creamier. Enjoy!

Whipped Strawberry Frosting
From Sweetapolita
INGREDIENTS

• 3 sticks + 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 4 cups sifted confectioner's sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk
• pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons strawberry puree, made from frozen strawberries

DIRECTIONS

1. Beat the butter on medium speed of a mixer until pale and fluffy. Roughly 8 minutes.
2. Turn down the speed to low and dump in the rest of the ingredients except for the strawberry puree. Beat for one minute, and then increase the speed to medium again for 6 minutes so that the frosting becomes very light and fluffy.
3. Add in the strawberry puree and beat to thoroughly combine. Use immediately. 

Cute Critter Cupcakes

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Spring is officially here! It's been inexplicably warm lately. Scratch that, sweltering. Both Thursday and Friday emulated the heat of summer. Imagine two straight hours of class at high noon sitting under the beating sun... in jeans! Sweat fest much. Where are the drizzles of rain, the light breezes, the crisp air?

The panda freaks me out a bit... My mom though it was cute though!

On the bright side it is Spring break, which means plenty of time to relax, study a bit, and catch up with old friends. Of course I'm going to bake like a maniac. I'm thinking strawberries and cream scones tomorrow morning. Peaches and cream? We'll just see what flavor I am craving when I wake up.

This is NOT the cupcake recipe below, but the first recipe I tried had an interesting method of crumbling butter into the flour to make a sandy mixture. Unfortunately these cupcakes collapsed:(

I am obsessed with the Draw Something app for the iPod touch/iPhone. It is the new Words with Friends and it has swept the nation it seems. I think what makes it so entertaining is the fact that you can watch the process of the person drawing the word. My sister had to draw the word "pregnant". At first it looked like an alien parasite in someone's belly, and then it looked like a spider hugging a person. That sense of satisfaction when the epiphany strikes you makes the game worth while. It's worth it even if you get stuck staring at the screen, rotating the iPod because you think if you look at it from another angle the amoeba looking doodle will start to resemble something. HAHA. 

These cupcakes took forever. Surprisingly not as long as the cupcakes from my cupcake wars battle earlier this month. I bought gel food coloring and that made the colors very vivid without altering the texture of the buttercream one bit. Using fondant or modeling chocolate probably would have been the easier route to make the facial features, but unfortunately I had neither on hand. I just stood in the kitchen for two hours smoothing out the buttercream. It was well worth it. The little chuckle my dad gives me as he walks by my baking projects is the seal of approval of mission adorable/cute accomplished.

Pretty pink tissue paper flower I made

Try out the recipe below! The little chickadee would be perfect for Easter, the puppy for a birthday party, and well the panda is just random quite honestly. The cupcakes were absolutely delicious. One of the best yellow cake recipes I've made. Use any vanilla buttercream you desire, but I do recommend using one that does NOT crust, unless you are a lightning fast froster/decorator. The ears are simply sliced marshmallow pieces frosted in the buttercream. Enjoy!

Classic Yellow Cake

From The Smitten Kitchen

Yields 12 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

• 240 grams cake flour 
• 1 teaspoon baking powder 
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 200 grams sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla 
• 2 eggs 
• 1 cup buttermilk

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
2. On medium speed of a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the buttermilk and vanilla. It will look very curdled at this point.
3. Add in the eggs one at a time. 
4. Mix in the flour on low speed in three parts. Be careful not to over mix. Spoon into cupcake liners until 3/4 of the way full and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. 

Snow Day:)

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When life gives you a snow day, you make CAKE!

The first thing I saw this morning. My face = ^o^

The wishing and hoping, the praying and dreaming for the first snow day of the year paid off! Quite honestly though, I probably wouldn't have had stepped outside into the snow even if there was class today. Heck, the whole state should have shut down. Who in their right minds would want to go into the wind and snow?

I sprinkled the top with a bit of sanding sugar for a little sparkle!

I must admit that indeed it is was pretty outside this morning and throughout the afternoon. Beautiful snowflakes clinging onto the window as the wind swirled the rest of the snow throughout the air. Still, I wouldn't go outside into the winter wonderland. Instead, I slaved over the oven to make an ombre cake! I contemplated the color for a while. One sister wanted pink, the other purple, and I wanted blue... The difficulties of opinions!

I went ahead and took another go at the Magnolia vanilla cupcake recipe. Past experience has led to dense, dry, flavorless cake. This time I used the last of my cake flour and I do believe that resulted in success. The cake is moist and fluffy! I'm embarrassed to even say I disregarded this recipe!

Ooooo! I LOVE the hues of purple<3

Excessive use of food coloring disturbs me, and yet I think there's a level of whimsical appeal that you can only achieve with well, red-90 or yellow-06 dye. The cake is a lovely gradient of purple, but my finger tips are stained blue and red. My thumb looks like I have frost bite because it's so blue. However, that would never be the case because let's stress again that I'm not going into the blizzard. Next time I play with coloring, I will wear gloves!

Nothing too experimental here today. Check out the Magnolia Vanilla Cake recipe here (you may want to substitute all the flour with cake flour instead), and the tasty vanilla buttercream here. Enjoy! And for those who were fortunate enough to bum around like me today because of the blanket of snow, let's raise our glasses of hot cocoa and relax for the rest of the weekend. 

Creamsicle Cupcakes on Accident

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First off, frosting just hates me. I've never been able to make the luscious topping in one go. Every time I end up dumping this thin sugary concoction into the trash because something just has to go wrong. This time I tried making a simple confectioner's sugar and butter frosting in attempts to make a mango buttercream. FAIL. I wasted the liquid gold, the mango purée, after trying to incorporate it into the butter and sugar. Maybe I added too much, but without the amount I introduced it just tasted like butter. In the end it was a curdled mess even after 20 minutes of constant beating. Into the trash can it went.

I had no mango left and so I had to scratch that flavor off my list. Instead I had some lovely oranges I bought last week and well they seemed promising. Look at how juicy it is!

So I started to make a cooked frosting that seemed simple enough and boy was it worth it. The frosting was creamy and tart and apparently tasted like a creamsicle according to my family. Now the sad part... I had no clue what they were talking about. I've only had one of these childhood staples once in my life, which was recently when I revealed to my eldest sister I was deprived of them. Heck. I didn't know what a creamsicle was. I mean what kind of name is that!?

The cupcake was pretty delicious too. I've been on the quest to find that perfect vanilla cupcake recipe because some just fall flat in my opinion *cough* Magnolia's *cough*.  They always seem to turn out dense and flavorless. How much vanilla extract do I need to add!? Then a thought came to me, Remember those Betty Crocker box cake mixes? I recall a little icon saying there was pudding added and so I took the initiative and added instant jell-o pudding to my batter. The result... DELICIOUS. I have no other adjective in my vocabulary to describe something that tasted good. It was concentrated vanilla in a cupcake. It was also moist but not to the point where it falls apart because it's so delicate. Yeah, that's happened to me too.

Now since this was a basically an experiment I shall give you guys the recipe that I can devise after sifting through my thought process when making these cupcakes. Please remember that I can't really remember. Lol. Uhhhh. Okay. I add ingredients according to how it tastes. A dash more salt. A splash more vanilla. Whatever seems to be missing I throw it in. I will continue to modify this vanilla cupcake to fit my tastes. Someday it will become the golden.

Enjoy!

Vanilla Cupcake

Loosely adapted from smittenkitchen

Yields 6 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons vanilla pudding mix
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 3/8 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup buttermilk, well-shaken

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 350°F

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, pudding and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add egg, beating well and scraping down the bow to incorporate well.
3. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined Add flour mixture in three batches, being careful not to over mix.
4. Fill cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.

Orange Buttercream

Loosely adapted from Magnolia

Yields enough to frost 6 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 teaspoon orange zest
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup butter, room temperature
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon orange extract
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a small sauce pan reduce the orange juice until thick over medium heat. Then add the  milk, flour and orange zest, whisking constantly until the mixture becomes thick. About 10 minutes. Take off heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. In a small bowl beat the butter for a few minutes. Add the sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Do not worry, it should look grainy.
3. Add in the cooked milk mixture and beat until frosting becomes significantly lighter in color.
4. Add in the orange and vanilla extract. At this point you can also add more sugar and beat until dissolved if you prefer a sweeter frosting. Use immediately!