Crazy Cupcake Duo

I haven't been doing much baking lately, probably because it's so hot I hate turning on the oven and making it hotter than hot. But, since it was my awesome friend Randi's bday this weekend I decided to pull out all the stops and try two new cupcakes. The first was a Chocolate peanut butter concoction with a Resse's cup at the bottom. I plopped the Reese's cup in the foil liner, poured in the chocolate cupcake batter and baked as usual. It was topped with delicious peanut butter buttercream icing and some cocoa for show (I'm being inspired by Cupcake Wars to get a little fancier with the presentation haha). The second cupcake was a chocolate cake with caramel injected after baking and topped with a cream cheese, chocolate espresso icing and finished with espresso sugar crystals. Here are some pics of the duo:



The overall consensus was that the peanut butter ones were awesome and the other ones were pretty good, but most preferred the peanut butter. I don't really have recipes for either one since I just made them up but the cakes were from Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake recipe. The Peanut Butter Buttercream was made with about 1/2c peanut butter and a stick of butter and 1/4c of shortening. Then powdered sugar to whatever consistency you like. The Espresso icing was 1 brick of cream cheese, 1/2 stick of butter, 1t espresso ground, and 1/3c of cocoa. Once again, add powdered sugar to desired consistency. I used my Pampered Chef Icing gun to inject the caramel (I couldn't find dulche de leche so I just used caramel ice cream topping).

Dalmatians for Anders

Last year for Anders' birthday I attempted to make a chocolate cake with a cream cheese ribbon through it. That resulted in two cake pans with chocolate cake on the top and cream cheese goo severly stuck to the pan. So for Valentine's day I made another attempt at 'Dalmation cupcakes'. The recipe worked out really well. I make my own dark chocolate cake batter and fill the liners about halfway or 2/3rds full. Then I make the cream cheese mixture with semi-sweet chocolate chips and add one cookie scoop of that to each liner. The cipcakes end up looing like chocolate cupcakes from the outside but they have a yummy cream cheese surprise :) I topped Anders' birthday cupcakes off this year with cream cheese icing at his request. This is what thy look like on the inside:

Happy Housewarming Kristine and Loi!

My friend, Kristine and her boyfriend, Loi, recently had a house built here in Houston. It's everything they've ever wanted because they had it built to their specifications and it's amazing! They did a really great job painting and decorating and I can't wait to hang out there all the time! for their housewarming bbq I made some red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing! I have just one pic of them right after I finished icing them:



Congratulations Kristine, Loi, and Roxy :)

Bake sale fundraising!

For the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure the foundation asks that you raise $100 for breast cancer research. I did the usual Internet postings on facebook and twitter etc, but I wanted to find a way to generate more funds. I decided to bake treats and bring them to work and ask for donations in exchange for yummies. The first week was cheesecake brownies, zucchini bread, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. The second week I made pumpkin muffins, butterscotch brownies, and cherry brownie bites. This is the last week before the race and I decided to make the much loved dark chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate icing and my new favorite vanilla cupcakes with vanilla Swiss meringue butter cream icing. Here's a pic for drooling purposes:



So far my co-workers have donated $125 from treats. We'll see how we do this week! If you want to donate online, visit my race page here: http://www.komen-houston.org/site/TR/Race/General?px=1661165&pg=personal&fr_id=1060

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate!

I couldn't find a chocolate ice cream that struck my fancy at the grocery this weekend so I decided to make dark chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate icing. anyone who knows me has tried these babies and knows how delicious they are. Now if they were only fat/calorie/sugar free...




Noodle realllllly wanted one: