MSC Sweet Potato Cupcakes

First off, let me say that sweet potatoes are my favorite vegetable. I could eat sweet potato any way they are cooked; tempura in sushi, in fabulous creme brulee at Acacia, baked on the hot bar at the UVA cafeteria, or mashed with marshmallows in our family's holiday casserole. I L O V E sweet potato. Just thinking about it makes me salivate, so when I saw that this month's MS Cupcakes Club Challenge was her Sweet Potato Cupcakes. Let me cut to the chase, these cupcakes were fabulous!! My dad and brother both made it a point to independently tell me that these were the "BEST CUPCAKES I'VE EVER EATEN! IN MY LIFE!!" My dad emphatically told me how good they are and ate 4 on the spot. My dad has been subject to many successful and unsuccessful cupcake attempts over the years, and for him to say these are his favorite EVER is really making a statement. Even the BF had nothing but praise for these little babies and he doesn't even like CAKE!

Unfortunately the recipe is not on the Martha Stewart website so I can't post a link, but I feel like if you google it someone will have posted this fabulous recipe. My only altera

tion was not bothering to make the candied pecans and using one large marshmallow as topping instead of mounding mini marshmallows. PLEASE try these cupcakes! They are delicious, perfect for a holiday party, and so easy to make!!

MSC- Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes

This month's MS Cupcakes Club recipe featured the Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes, in perfect time for Halloween. In the cookbook they have a super cute marzipan cupcake on each cake. Unfortunately I just spent 4 hours working on a garden themed cake with vegetables made of starbursts and laffy taffies and I was just not in the mood to take the time to make a bunch of tiny pumpkins.

Overall, this recipe is a grand slam! The cupcakes are not too overpoweringly pumpkin, they are very light and just the right moistness level. They are not dense and thick like pumpkin bread, and lighter and a bit sweeter than a muffin, they truly live up to a cake consistency. The flavor is amazing. My family doesn't usually like pumpkin flavored things, we're more sweet potato people, but these cupcakes definitely make me rethink that. They're delicious!

We started eating them without frosting because I made them late night, and the universal feeling was that they don't really need frosting at all because they are so delicious naked.

These cupcakes are a perfect way to welcome in fall and pumpkin season, and a cinch to make! I had all the ingredients already at home except for the canned pumpkin. I halved the recipe and still got 18+ cupcakes! For whatever reason Martha's recipes always turn out way more than the predicted amount. Overall this recipe was fantastic, and I will definitely be making it again!

MSC-Zucchini Spice Cupcakes

I joined Martha's Cupcake Club this week, where we make a Martha Stewart Cupcake cookbook recipe every month. This month was Zucchini Spice Cupcakes. These cupcakes are essentially like carrot cupcakes, except with zucchini instead. I can't really taste the Zucchini too much, but they are delicious nonetheless.

I also made the cream cheese frosting suggested with the cakes in the book. The frosting is really good, very cream cheesy. I did think it was a bit too sweet to eat a lot of it with the cakes. Next time I'll only add a portion of the sugar. I added a little lemon zest, I love it in just about everything, it makes it a bit more fresh and lively.

Can you see the little green specks in the cake from the zucchini? I can't, and the pictures a little blurry. I took some new pictures, but unfortunately they're not so great either. I don't have an external flash and it was a bit overcast, and I didn't have a good specimen to photograph, since all the good ones were scarfed up by hungry residents.
My team at the hospital will love digging into these tomorrow morning! Yum!!

***So I updated the post a bit. These cupcakes were AWESOME! I'd like to believe that they're "healthy" since they're made with zucchini right?? Not to mention the whole cream cheese and butter frosting part! *wink*wink* I'd like to eat a whole batch by myself, but I'm trying to quit ;)

Brain Confusion: Meatless Hamburger Cupcakes

Brain Confusion: Hamburger Cupcakes and Sugar Cookie Fries

My friend Lindsay and I decided to make cake for our Vegetarian friend's birthdays. We thought about making a fondant cake that looks like Cheese because one of them LOVES cheese, but instead settled on making Fast Food Dessert made famous by Bakerella and her Fast Food Fun post. Please refer to her post for recipe and complete instructions. These slider-cakes were awesomely easy and provided a real wow factor for all involved. We were really happy with the way they turned out, and our vegetarian friends were stunned with the finished product. I mean really, look at this, how conflicted is your brain? Looks like a super cute burger oozing with condiments, but realistically its a thousand grams of sugar waiting to send you into stark hyperactivity followed by a deep dark sugar coma.

These cupcakes were insanely easy to make, and lots of fun!! It's all prepared ingredients, so it only takes a little more time than it ordinarily would to make a box of cupcakes and a box of brownies. Decorating them uses food coloring, a can of icing and ziploc baggies, so its easy and cheap to decorate. No fancy equipment here.

One of the most labor intensive parts was actually putting the burgers and fries in the containers. We got containers from a local bagel shop. Lindsay bought them for $2. We made the fry holder using a print out from Bakerella's site. We also bought some of the little ketchup holders at Party City (for $1) and Lindsay made a "ketchup" out of strawberry jam.

Ready for the onslaught of burger-hungry vegetarians!

So cute!!

Here's how we did the icing... we used green coconut for lettuce on most, but made a couple with just green icing as lettuce for the few people that don't like coconut. We used sugar cookies like Bakerella for the french fries.

Yumm!! I think they turned out really well overall. Eating them is well...diabetes inducing. Total sugarfest. They are a bit sweet, but I LOVE sweets, so they were ok with me. Still though, I'd serve them with a nice cold glass of milk to cut the super sweetness of basically a cupcake brownie sandwich with extra frosting. Just looking at these pictures makes me crave hamburgers and cupcakes at the same time... confusing for my brain, but makes my belly happy.
yum......salty or sweet? you won't know till you bite it!

Easter Bunny Butts!

We had a few people down to the Farm for Easter this year, and my dad recommended cupcakes. Chocolate and the Brown Sugar Martha Poundcakes. The poundcakes were hard to jazz up, but it didn't matter because they went FAST. The chocolate ones though, I though how can I make these cute! I immediately got out my new Hello Cupcake! book and began flipping through. I love this book! It tells you how to create these ornate cupcakes using ordinary candy. It's a good primer for cupcake decoration. It helps stimulate creativity, and gives good ideas how to use candy to create new designs. In the end it was a toss up between the Easter Eggs and the Bunny Butts. I'm not sure what they call the Bunny Butts in the book, I don't have it with me right now, but some of the cupcakes are made to look like grass and the others like holes with bunnies jumping into them.

Now that's a happy face! YUMMM!
...and a bluebird nest inside the grill at the Farm. What pretty eggs!

What Lies Beneath that Foil Wrapper and Wholesome Looking White Frosting?

It looks just like a mild mannered cupcake. White frosting, rainbow sprinkles. Nothing too crazy. Boy does it have you fooled! This is the Clark Kent of cupcakes! When you take off that wrapper- BAM! Psychedelic colorful swirls!

How fun is that?? For my friend Peter's birthday I decided to make some awesomely colorful tie-dyed cupcakes using an inspiration I saw on Tastespotting. I figured I'd also kill two birds with one stone and make another of Martha's Cupcakes. I went with basic yellow. Who can go wrong with yellow cake, especially when you're gonna color it all up! Here's the cake recipe:

Tie Dyed Psychadelic Yellow Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs

Sprinkles, for decorating

FROSTING

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

3 cups confectioners' sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line the cupcake tin. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a liquid-measuring cup, mix milk and vanilla; set aside.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. With mixer on low speed, add half of dry ingredients, followed by milk-vanilla mixture, then remaining dry ingredients. Do not overmix.

Separate batter into smaller bowls, one for each color you have. Add food coloring to each bowl.

Spoon about a tablespoon or so of each color into each liner so that each color is represented and cups are about 3/4 full.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cupcakes 5 minutes in tin, then remove and cool completely on a rack before frosting.

Prepare frosting: in a medium bowl, with an electric mixer, beat unsalted butter, confectioners' sugar, milk, and vanilla extract until smooth. Mix in up to 1/2 cup more sugar or a few more teaspoons of milk as necessary to achieve a spreadable consistency. Makes enough for 12 cupcakes.

Aren't they great! I love how this one has a wave like pattern. See that one little crater in the middle? It happened in every cupcake! Isn't that weird? Anyways...Here's Peter enjoying a cupcake!

Yum! These cupcakes turned out great! A bit dense, probably the mixing in of the colors and stuff deflated the air bubbles a bit, but definitely tasty. The colors were amazing. I'd make them again just for the colors! I can't wait to experiment with different flavors in the different colors. Lemon for yellow, lime for green, strawberry for red. Could be a fruit salad in a cupcake!

(Chocolate) Chip Off the Old Block- One Third of the Way There!

This week cupcake convert Diana (Pashunfroot and Thyme to Lime) and I decided to make Martha's Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Buttercream. Check out her take on this chocolate chip madness here! This will be my 5th of the 15 cupcakes! 10 more recipes to go! I started a list to the right with links back to my interpretation of each recipe! I had a friend's birthday and a class to bring them to so that I wouldn't eat the whole batch! Good thing too, these are awesome cupcakes! The batter uses beaten egg white to help with the leavening, and it makes for a fantastically light and fluffy white vanilla cake.
Semisweet chocolate chips make for a fantastic chocolatey surprise, a little bitter compared to the sweet cake. The icing is a basic buttercream, ultra sweet, but when combined with the cake its alright. I would use mini chips or chop up the chips, because I don't like big chips in such an otherwise light and soft bite, and its difficult to spread on the cake. I would also consider using a different icing...I'm just not such a fan of the ultra sweet buttercream. I guess it works overall, but its not something I want to add more of to the cupcake, or eat with a spoon (not that I would...wink wink).
Overall, very tasty. Martha's on a real streak- 5/5 cupcakes I will make again! And, I'd even make the cake without the chips! The cake part is delicious! As always, you can find the recipe here!

I Want Some of your Brown Sugar...

If you haven't heard it, listen to the song "Brown Sugar" by D'Angelo. It's a nice smooth sultry song that's been in my head all week. I love dark brown sugar! The flavor is so deep and rich. It really can make a difference in a recipe. On my quest to make all 15 cupcake recipes in Martha Stewart Living Feb edition, my friend Diana (of Pashunfroot and ThymetoLime) and I decided to make the Brown Sugar Pound Cake Cupcakes with a Brown Butter glaze. This recipe is my 4th out of 15... still quite a few to go! Please check out Diana's interpretation of the same recipe at ThymetoLime!

These cupcakes are great! Delicious, sophisticated and rich, these cupcakes are on another level from the ordinary, run of the mill cupcake. The flavor is deep and intense, and the glaze elevates the overall cupcake to a new level. The flavor was reminiscent of the DB Caramel cake with brown butter frosting, but better. I prefer this cupcake, a little less sugary sweet, a little different flavor. They were easy to make. I goofed a little bit, I added 2 1/2 cup of brown sugar instead of 2 1/4, and I used dark brown instead of light brown as called for. I also added a bit of vanilla to the batter. My recipe made 30 instead of 27, and I felt like a little more glaze would have been nice... I was defeinitely scrounging to frost them all. When making the frosting, I put my butter on low, and it still browned up very fast. Make sure you watch the butter, if you don't it will burn right up. I used a sieve to separate the solids, and when I poured the butter into the powdered sugar, it sizzled loud! The recipe doesn't say to let it cool, so I just went for it... as far as I can tell, it didn't mess anything up! Here's the recipe.

Once again, another good recipe, I highly recommend it! Martha's on a roll- 4/4 cupcakes that I'd love to make again!

Addendum: My cupcakes made it to Tastespotting again!! Search: jesschubb. YEAHHH!!!!

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes..mmmm

As previously stated, I love the February edition of the Martha Stewart magazine! It has a whole spread on cupcakes! I posted about the coconut cupcakes before, and I made the pistachio raspberry ones too. I am making good headway into my quest to conquer all the cupcake recipes in the magazine! My mom has been itching for one of the Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes since we opened up the magazine in Costco! These cupcakes are really, quite good, especially the next day. Once the ganache has set it really makes them better I think. I think I could eat the entire batch of 18 if I were left unattended with them. So delicious! I made the cream and warmed the milk with a vanilla bean, but that was the only change I made. I will absolutely be making these cupcakes again and again. They are really showstoppers! You can find the recipe in the February Martha Stewart Living magazine, or online here!

Give this one a TRY!

Addendum 2/16:

After dreaming about my last boston cream pie cupcake ALL DAY at work, I just finished it. It was truly divine! Super cool news: I got accepted onto TASTESPOTTING!! It's my first submission, and I'm totally stoked! Woohoo! Please check out my photographical masterpiece!! (hahaha) You can search Boston Cream Pie cupcake to find it....I'm so excited! I called my mom and told her! Woohoo! Hooray for tastespotting!