Resurrection Cupcakes

My resurrection cupcake

I had a little green icing leftover one day, so I decided to try something out. I have previously mentioned that I was trying to figure out how to make a cupcake that reflected my faith, but didn't seem. . . I don't know weird. I mean really, I can't imagine eating a baby Jesus (at Christmas) and it just didn't seem right to put a cross on a cupcake (at least to me). To me, cupcakes just seem to scream CELEBRATION! So I began to think, what is it I "celebrate" at this Easter season. It is the resurrection. So I decided to make a cupcake depicting something so significant to the Christian faith. . . the empty tomb.

I started out with a cake mix. It was just a nice simple thing . . . I think it was cherry chip because I wanted to experiment with some cherry icing. Anyway. . .I knew I could do my empty tomb cupcake a few different ways. I could stack a mini cupcake on top of a regular sized cupcake. . . to give it a more domed shape. . . I could just pile it high with icing. . . or I could do it this third way.

I used my handy dandy "cupcake corer" tool and cut out a portion of the cupcake. I filled my hole with a little icing. I put a little black icing on the top of the small piece and then I placed it on its side. I don't have pictures of this. . . I honestly didn't think about it as I was doing it. This was such a spur of the moment idea that I really didn't think to have my camera handy during this process in order to blog about it.

I thought it looked like a one eyed monster here :()

After I put the black icing on it, I piped the green icing on with my "grassy" tip. I mentioned in a previous blog that you could use this tip or just a star tip and do an elongated star for grass.

My grassy tip

I thought it needed some type of a "stone" that was rolled away. I had some leftover "robin's eggs" from a previous project and used one as a stone.

I thought of just using a little white icing until I hit on the "robin's egg" idea

I thought I needed a path also. I used a little brown sugar and patted it down to make my path.

There really isn't much more to say. . . I normally say something like these were a cute and yummy cupcake. .  but I have a hard time thinking of it as "cute". It is very symbolic. . . and it tasted good. You can't really go wrong with a mix. :)

Easter Bunny Cupcakes

While the Easter Bunny isn't the most significant part of our Easter celebration, he is still cute little symbol at Springtime.While I still contemplate how to make a cupcake to reflect my faith, I had this sweet little bunny idea in my head. I honestly don't know if I saw it on Pinterest, or if it was just totally one of those things I envisioned.

I started out my cupcake with a cake mix. I wanted to doctor it up a bit, to put my own stamp on it.

My starting point--Picking a cake mix

To put my stamp on it, I chose to replace the eggs with banana. The ratio is supposed to be one banana per egg.

I mashed these with my hand mixer.

I left the oil the same as what was on the box, but I replaced the water with a strawberry-banana nectar.

This is the brand our store carries, but other brands exist.

After it was blended well, I placed them in my prepared cupcake pans (I have tried the others and I think the Reynolds Stay Brite baking cup is just the best). I normally do not get 24 cupcakes out of a mix. . . it is closer to 18. This time, I did get 21.

Now if this recipe looks familiar, I have blogged about it before here. I just used this one, because I had everything on hand and needed to use my bananas. Depending on what my goal is with the cupcake depends on if I use a cake mix or make it from scratch. If it is "cuteness" I am after, a lot of times I will start with a cake mix. It will just save a lot of steps since for that particular cupcake, I will be spending the majority of my time on the decorating.

I made my traditional buttercream which is 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup shortening, approx 4 cups of powdered sugar (I sift it first and it makes it so much better), 2 TBSP milk and 1 TSP vanilla. I tinted my icing green to give it the grassy effect. I probably could have made it a deeper green, but if too much of the coloring goes in, sometimes, it affects the taste of the icing.

My first step after making the icing was to place it in my "piping" bag with a #233 tip. When using a tip such as this one, you really need to make sure you have no lumps in your icing. This is another fabulous benefit of taking the 30 extra seconds to sift your powdered sugar. If you don't have this tip, you can also use the star tip and do the same type of thing.

See how it looks kind of stringy and grass-like

If you have ever made one of those cakes that are filled with the "stars" all over. . . you will know exactly what to do next. You take this tip and just dab all over, pulling out a little to give it the grassy effect. If you have never made one this way. . . that's ok. You can still do this too. You seriously just plop the icing all over the place. Because it is supposed to look grassy, you could even just make a big circle all over the cupcake. I am sure after one or two times of doing a cupcake, you would get the hang of it. If you mess up, you could always peel it off the cupcake and try again. You might practice on some waxed paper or parchment paper before you go to the cupcake.

You can tell that this is just squiggles. This tip is fabulous.

After that I thought it needed some cute little Easter Eggs.

My Easter Egg option.

I just placed these right on top of the cupcake. I only used 3 on each one, because I wanted to put the peep on top.

My "Easter Eggs"

This would actually make a really cute cupcake on its own, but I needed to add the peep. You can also take a little more of your icing and cover your "eggs" with them. . . to make them look a little more hidden.

Still a cute cupcake, even without the peep.

These were a cute yet simple cupcake. The batter for this cupcake is moist. I am sure they would keep, refrigerated, for a couple of days. They just normally don't stay around longer than 24 hours. With the added cuteness of the season, these were gone in an instant.

Butterfinger-y Cupcake

Butterfinger Cupcake

I make a pretty yummy dessert around Halloween time that is a "homemade version" of my most favorite candy bar. . . the Butterfinger! Now that I am in this cupcake mode,  I should try to make a cupcake that reminds me of that oh so fabulous candy bar. I was trying to figure out how to do it, when a friend told me she made a healthful Butterfinger shake and she used butterscotch pudding mix. I thought it was crazy, but I tried to make my own version, and lo and behold, it tasted just like a Butterfinger! I thought I will try to find a really great peanut butter cupcake recipe and add some butterscotch pudding mix to it. I found a fabulous starter recipe here. And bonus, it has a really good chocolate buttercream frosting recipe too!

As soon as they were cool enough, I frosted this yumminess. I will be totally honest, I am not one of those really good people who never taste a batter because of the raw eggs. I know, totally not OK, but I did it anyway :) When I tasted the batter, I thought the cupcake would be more "Reese's Peanut butter cup like". After it was baked and iced. I think it had a definite butterfinger taste. I made 18 out of this recipe, and I frosted 13 in this way. I didn't have enough to finish doing the little swirl, so for the remaining 5, I just slathered it on and then garnished it with crushed Butterfingers--I just barely had enough icing for this. I didn't even have enough left over to eat by itself later ;) This was a yummy cupcake. The cake itself was a little on the crumbly side, but it was oh so delicious! As soon as I got them done, I immediately shared this with the teachers at school. It was perfect timing. ..  most of them were finishing up lunch.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2/3 cups sugar
3/4 cups butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 4oz package butterscotch pudding mix

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and prepare cupcake pan. I use liners. The Wilton Brand is OK, but I prefer the Reynolds brand.

Sift flour and baking powder together in a large bowl. Add in eggs and sugar and combine with an electric mixer. (It begins to look really lumpy, but don't worry, it will smooth out.) While mixing, add in the butter, then the vanilla.

You can use the non sugar-free option, this is just what I had available.

Mix in the peanut butter. . . stream in the milk. The last thing I added was my pudding mix. And I blended it together. I used my "handy dandy" Pampered Chef scoop, and I put 1 scoop in each, and I made 18. I baked these for about 20 minutes.

Frosting:
1/4 cup shortening (I use Butter Flavored Crisco)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp Vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
2 TBSP milk

I put this together like I do all my buttercream recipes. I start by blending the butter. Then on this one I added the cocoa. I always do my milk and vanilla next. And my last ingredient is my powdered sugar. I do sift my powdered sugar, I think it makes a huge difference. I can always tweak my recipe a bit--add in more sugar or milk based on the consistency I want. This recipe would easily frost 12, but not quite all 18 since I like to pipe my frosting using a piping bag and a large tip (1M).

 Since I didn't quite have enough to pipe it on all the rest, I just "smeared" the frosting on top. I sprinkled crushed a Butterfinger candy bar on top to garnish.

Cupcakes with crushed Butterfingers on top.

The Lorax Inspired Cupcakes

My Lorax inspired cupcakes

I just love how I can plan on something. . . then something new happens. . .and I have to change my plans. I always joke that, "Man makes his plans. . . and God laughs!" I had my next few blogs planned out of previous cupcakes I made. . . but since I am a substitute teacher, and it is flu season, I got the phone call a lot this week. I knew some of the classes were doing some Dr. Seuss themed things since his "birthday" is tomorrow. I thought how great would it be to do a cupcake of Seussical proportions. . .My inspiration was The Lorax. Now I have not seen the new version, but that drawing of him is where I got my motivation. I obviously cannot share them with the children at school, but I can share with the teachers and my own children can share in the fun of the cupcakes.

Polaner's All Fruit

I made these an orange flavor, both in the cupcake and in the icing. I started with my favorite white cake recipe as my base and I made a basic buttercream and used orange extract and orange juice instead of vanilla and milk. I needed to make it a little different so I could make it orange flavored. You could also use a white, yellow or lemon cake mix and do the same things. I will post the recipe at the end. What I did was add orange extract to my cupcake recipe and then I added about 1/4 cups of orange jelly (I used Polaner's All Fruit). You could most definitely do this to a cake mix if you didn't want to make the cake from scratch.

I found these fabulous eyes at Walmart, and I thought they would be perfect for the eyes for the Lorax inspired cupcake. The package I bought was the Large size. It had 24 in the package for $3.50 .

 

Candy Eyeballs

I made a double batch of my buttercream icing and tinted most of it orange. I reserved about 1 cup and tinted it yellow. I flavored it all orange. For a basic buttercream that you want to pipe on to cupcakes (single recipe)--1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup shortening, 2 TBSP liquid (I usually use milk, but for this today I used OJ) and 1 TSP of vanilla (today I used orange extract).

I used the #21 tip to pipe the orange on to the cupcake. What is great about this is that it can be a little "messy." I just piped it on. You could also spread it onto the cupcake and then just put a few strategically placed "elongated star shape" onto it. I pretty much did a big squiggle all over it, and then a few "elongated stars" to make him look "hairy"

The base of the Lorax cupcakes

The next step was to put the eyebrows and mustache on the fella. I tinted this icing yellow. I used the #32 tip (it is a little broader). It is very similar to the "shell" design that you might make in cake decorating. I did the same thing for his mustache.

The Lorax with eyebrows and mustache

Originally I didn't have the nose on, and it was just missing something. I remember that I had some orange M & Ms left from a previous project, so I thought those would make the perfect nose. I got these at the candy store at the mall. They have a variety of colors.

The Lorax with his nose.

My final step was to put on those fabulous candy eyes. I think they turned out SUPER CUTE! And they had some pretty good flavor!

Packaged up and ready for some of the teachers at school

Now for my orange cupcake recipe. I have made a "orange dreamy" cupcake before and this is slightly different.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1/2 TSP vanilla
1 1/2 TSP orange extract
1 1/2 cup flour
1 3/4 TSP baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup orange jelly (Polaner's All Fruit)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar together. Add the eggs in one at a time. Add the flavorings (vanilla and the orange). Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture, slowly add in the milk. Fold in the orange jelly and tint the batter if desired. This make about 18 cupcakes for me. Bake for about 20 minutes.

After cooling, I decorated those cupcakes.

I thought they were super cute, and that they tasted quite nicely too. It was fun to do and fun to eat. I will be honest, this is one of my favorite "looking" cupcakes. I really like my tie-dyed ones too, but I think these. . . take the cake! (Yes the pun was intended!)

If you want my recipes/ideas for my Tie-dyed cupcakes or any of my others, you can check my archives or follow any of the highlighted words (those are links to other sites or blogs).

Strawberry Cupcakes

Strawberry Cupcake

I have been looking for a strawberry cupcake recipe from scratch. I love to use my cake mixes, but sometimes you just want to put a little more "homemade" into something. I found this recipe that I thought sounded fabulous. . . and then I put my little touch onto things. Oh, and the fabulous idea for flavoring the icing. . .I am in love with that and going to use that for so many other recipes. Then I found on the "joy of baking" website a really great fruit flavored whipped cream (you have to look at the bottom of that link to see my inspiration, I tried to make that sponge cake into cupcakes, and I failed miserably at that). This whipped cream could be used for anything, a topping, a filling, just to eat:)! I really think the cupcake recipe you could change up the fruit and make an entirely different cupcake, but it would use the same foundation. I was really excited by finding it and I cannot wait to experiment with it some more. Well, now on to what I did for this batch of cupcakes. . .

The first thing I did was gather my ingredients. I had to do a little shopping for some, because while they may be common in many pantries, it wasn't in mine. This recipe doesn't use crazy ingredients, but I just don't keep seedless strawberry jam on my shelves and I needed to get fresh strawberries (and kiwis). According to the original recipe, it makes 12 cupcakes. . . I made 12 regular sized and then I had enough leftover to make about 16 mini cupcakes after I added the kiwi to it. The ingredients for the Strawberry Cupcakes will come first.

Ingredients:
2 TBSP Seedless Strawberry Jam (I used Smuckers "Simply Fruit")
1/4 cup finely diced fresh strawberries
1 1/4 cup All-Purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick of butter (half cup)
2 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
Pink gel dye (gotta make it look pretty)
1/3 cup milk
Strawberry buttercream icing (I will put that recipe at the end of this blog)

Strawberries & Jam

Preheat oven to 350.

Start by combining your jam and strawberries, set aside.

Sift together flour and baking powder, set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar.

Add the eggs, one at a time.

Alternate adding in the flour and the milk--add a little flour, add half the milk, a little flour, the other half of the milk, the rest of the flour--it incorporates a little better when you do it that way.

Finally, fold in that strawberries and jam mixture. Pour into your prepared cupcake/muffin pan. I like to use the Reynolds Staybrite baking cups. And bake for about 20 minutes.

Strawberry-Kiwi cupcake

I had batter leftover and I wanted to do a little something different with it. A friend of mine suggested I make some Strawberry-Kiwi cupcakes sometime. I had picked up some kiwi at the store, and I was trying to figure out how to put it together. Thankfully, with a little of this batter leftover, I had my chance to experiment with it. I chopped up 1 kiwi finely and folded that into my batter (I probably had about 1/3 of it left, so if I were doing this as a complete recipe, I might add 3-4 kiwi, diced finely, to the batter). I baked these mini cupcakes for about 12-15 minutes. I had a little bit of Strawberry Whipped cream leftover from a chocolate cupcake filling--that is the next blog:)

For the Strawberry Whipped Cream:
I started with putting my mixing bowl and my whisk attachment into the freezer for about 15 minutes. I poured in 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and 1 Tablespoon of sugar and mixed until stiff peaks formed. Then I folded in about 1/3 cup of that seedless strawberry jam. I topped those mini cupcakes with some small chunks of kiwi. YUMMY!!!!!!

For the Strawberry Buttercream icing:
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup butter flavored Crisco
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 TBSP milk
Pink gel dye (food safe, Wilton brand)
2 TBSP Seedless Strawberry Jam*

Blend the butter and Crisco together. Add in the powdered sugar and milk as you need to. . .you might need more milk depending on the consistency of the icing you want. Add in that vanilla.

*You can change that to whatever jam you want and make a yummy, fabulous tasting icing.

I had some icing in my refrigerator leftover from 2 days before that I didn't use completely. I added some strawberry jam and pink gel dye to this and put it in my stand mixer. It made a lovely, yummy icing.

Buttercream icing will last about 2 weeks in your refrigerator if it is well sealed, so I am told. I honestly don't know as I don't keep it that long. I have made it ahead of time--like for my kids' birthday parties--when I know my day is going to be very full.

Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

It's been a while since I have blogged about my cupcakes. . . not because I haven't done any. It's just that I have had a couple of days to really play around with cupcakes and icing and I am trying to decide what to start with. Since I last blogged (on Valentine's Day), I have made a Cookies & Cream cupcake and played around with carrot cupcakes again, found a new strawberry cupcake recipe and a new method for flavoring icing, and I played with fillings for my chocolate cupcakes. So I guess I will just start with the Cookies & Cream and know that the strawberry will be next, and then new filling ideas for the chocolate cupcakes will follow that and OH MY GOODNESS, I just remembered about another cupcake I made combining leftover batter that I got all prepared for (and that my family LOVED) and never blogged about. . .It's good to know that I have my blogs figured out for a while.

Cookies & Cream

Sunday nights after Bible Study we have a fellowship. It seems a pretty common thing in our church to do. The Bible Study group I am a part of had their turn to bring refreshments on Sunday night. I thought, since I am pretty decent at making cupcakes, that will be my contribution. I made my carrot cupcakes because I wanted to try something new for my decorations. I also made a new-to-cupcaking-recipe-for-me. I used to make this all the time as a cake. I thought it would be a perfect time to try it as a cupcake.

Cupcakes with the crushed cookies

This is quite a simple process. You can do this with your favorite white cake recipe. Since I was going for quick and easy, I chose the cake mix option. Put your cake mix together according to package directions. Before pouring into my prepared cupcake pan, I crushed a sleeve of Oreo cookies (any chocolate sandwich cookie will do). I used the Double Stuff, but I honestly thing the regular would work out fine, and maybe even a little better. I baked for the same amount of time (according to package directions) in my preheated oven. I usually let mine bake for about 20-25 minutes, depending on how full they are.

Trying to decide what looks better

After letting them cool, I made a buttercream icing that I used to put the "cupcake swirl" on top. I had some crushed cookies leftover and I sprinkled them on top. I also tried using an Oreo cookie, but I thought that was too big without REALLY piling on the icing. If you wanted to do the cookie on top, the mini variety of those would be a nice option. The other thing you could do, is put the crushed cookies IN the icing. Since I was going to be using my leftover icing for something else, I chose not to put the cookies in the icing.



This made a great cupcake. I had some left after church that I took to my friend who is recuperating from a wreck and she thought they were quite tasty. I always love having feedback on these cupcakes; I gotta know what people like :). I know what I like, as these cupcakes are mostly made according to my tastes.

The cupcakes I took to church, Cookies & Cream and Carrot

Strawberry Banana Cupcakes

The teacher gift

Okay, so today is Valentine's Day, and I will be honest, I am not the biggest fan. My husband proposed 2 days before Valentine's so that day is more important to us anyway. I don't need a day to tell people I love them; it is something that should be done daily. Trust me, I like any excuse for presents, so it is just a good reason for that, but it isn't my most favorite of our holidays. That being said, I was reluctant to make a Valentine's themed cupcake, not to mention that every time I tried, it failed miserably this year. That too, will go in my flops blog that I will create someday when I have the courage to show how "hopelessly flawed" I am :) I made a Strawberry-Banana cupcake. Not entirely "themey" but it is a little pink. When we were trying to figure out what to do for the kids' teachers to show our love and appreciation, making a cupcake was what I could think of. They seemed to like them.

I started out with a Strawberry Cake mix, used bananas (in place of eggs) and a strawberry-banana nectar instead of water. I made a strawberry buttercream and a banana buttercream and did a twisty design for them and I garnished the top with a strawberry. The end result is a moist and flavorful cupcake.

Strawberry Buttercream

Ingredients (for the cupcakes):
Strawberry Cake Mix (I used Pillsbury)
1 cup Strawberry-Banana nectar (our grocery store carries the brand Jumex)
3 Bananas, mashed
1/3 cup oil

Directions:
Mix ingredients well. Dollop into your prepared cupcake/muffin tin. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. I made 22, but it will depend on how full your tins are and how big your bananas are.

Strawberry Buttercream icing:
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup butter flavored crisco

Banana Buttercream

4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup Strawberry banana nectar (I used the rest of the can)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Banana Buttercream icing:
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup butter flavored crisco
4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 package of banana cream pudding mix (4 serving size)
1/4 cup milk (approximate, depending on consistency)
1 teaspoon vanilla

I made my two buttercream icings. I put them each in a small pastry bag. I snipped the top off each one and placed it into a larger pastry bag which was fitted with a #1M tip. I used the basic twist--starting from the outside of the cupcake going in towards the center. The result was not like the tie dyed cupcakes I have made in the past. Instead, it was two very definite colors. I thought it was a very neat look.

You can see the frostings are side by side

I garnished it with a strawberry quarter. The teachers I made them for were really glad to get them. . . at least that is what they told me ;)