To use the free shipping code in the NellieCakes Etsy shop! Just type in LuckyClover to redeem it! I’ve also added a few new items, so check ‘em out!
If you’re looking for something specific for a birthday party or whatnot, feel free to message me too! I can make all kinds of cupcake wrappers to suit your needs!
The wood paneling cupcake liners are finally in my etsy shop! It took me forever to make them, but they came out great. Check ‘em out!
I’m back, and I’m bringing the good stuff with me. That lovely picture up there? Yeah, that’s a strawberry cupcake and it’s so good it’s like a punch in the face. But a good punch in the face, like if a carebear did it. Out of love.
I know strawberries aren’t in season right now, but that’s the best part about these cupcakes. You don’t need fresh strawberries to make them. (Of course, you could use fresh ones if you want to.) I plan on whipping up a batch of these as soon as I get sick of all the holiday flavors because they’re red enough to work with Christmas colors, but they taste fresh and spring-like. They’re the perfect balance to all the heavy spice-filled confections that come out this time of year. No matter how much I love gingerbread (And I really love gingerbread), I can only take it for so long before my tastebuds start to throw a coup.
Here’s the recipe to these awesome Strawberry Dreams:
Ingredients:
Preheat the oven to a standard 350 degrees and line the cupcake tins. Sift both flours, the baking powder and salt together in a bowl and set it aside.
Cream the butter and sugar until it’s light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and mix it in well. Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure to incorperate each one completely before adding the next.
Add the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with one addition of milk. Make sure to thoroughly mix everything in before dumping in the next addition. Add the red gel food coloring. I added a glob about the size of a pencil eraser, but you can mess with the amount depending on how pink you want the cupcakes to be.
Carefully mix in the strawberries.
Divide the batter evenly among the cupcake tins, filling each cupcake 3/4 full.
Bake them until the tops turn a golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. (If the strawberries are still cold when you mix them in, allow for a little extra time when you bake them.)
Allow them to cool completely on a wire rack.
Frost with your favorite icing. (I used a new recipe for the frosting on these, which I’ll post tomorrow. It’s very light, and it doesn’t have any butter/shortening in it, so it goes very well with the fresh strawberry taste!)
You could probably use any fruit with this recipe, but depending on which one you choose, I might take out the vanilla. The idea of canteloupe flavored cupcakes in the summer makes me almost giddy.
As everyone knows, I lost the cake contest. I’m not bummed about it though. I placed second because of all you awesome people, and I couldn’t be happier with that. I love you guys too! (Collective AWWW.) So I didn’t get the grand prize, which was a thousand bucks to that store and getting to meet Duff. I’m sad I didn’t get the money, but the meeting Duff thing… I’m not that upset over.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d never turn down the possibility of meeting a celebrity chef or any chef/baker in general (because I love learning new things from new people), but I’ve never been a huge fan of Ace of Cakes. I respect Duff, (for his artistic ability) but one of the few things I heard him say has always irked me.
I watched an episode of Cupcake Wars once, and he happened to be one of the judges. When he was introducing himself to the contestants (or vise versa, I don’t remember), he said they had to make a cupcake that impressed him, which was going to be difficult because he hates cupcakes.
I do understand his point of view. (I try to see everyone’s point of view, no matter what the situation.) He thinks cupcakes are inferior to full size cakes because they take a lot less effort to make, and all of his pastry chef skillz aren’t put to use making them. And that’s true… but that’s also why so many people love cupcakes. It’s easy to make a pretty cupcake compared to covering a tiered cake in fondant, for example, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about the comment.
Because he said that, I get the feeling that he doesn’t respect the bakers that specialize in cupcakes, let alone amateur bakers at home who love to bake them. It makes me look at him a little differently because after he said that, he looked like a pompous jerk who was too good to waste his time on something that’s starting to look like the world’s favorite dessert. I mean, who doesn’t like cupcakes?
If I would have won that competition, I’m not sure I would have been able to keep my mouth shut about this. I’m not very good at staying quiet about the things that bother me in a big way, and I don’t issue someone else respect simply because the TV tells me to. I know he’s a fantastic baker, if only from the photo’s I’ve seen of his work, but that felt like a shot to all the people that love cupcakes for the same reason he hates them. Just because a cake didn’t take a day to construct doesn’t mean it’s not worth any accolades.
Cupcakes are meant to be simple, and decorating them shouldn’t be hard. That’s the joy of the cupcake! You make cupcakes to give away, to be shared, not to be used as centerpieces to some grand feast. (Although I do love that they’re being treated that way now!) You can decorate them as masterpieces, but you don’t have to, by any means. The versatility and the sense of giving that is ingrained in the whole idea of the cupcake is what makes them great. How dare he look down upon something that makes so many people happy, to bake and to receive.
I feel like he would look down on the things I’ve baked for my friends and family, and for this site, because they usually are cupcakes. Most people don’t have days to construct intricate cakes just for fun. I know I usually don’t! We can’t always bake something elaborate every time we want something sweet or to sweeten someone’s day. I don’t have a team of pastry chefs hiding in my cupboard, waiting to be released every time I turn on the oven. Normal people can’t bake huge cakes just for the fun of it.
Dear Duff, cupcakes are not the enemy! People love cupcakes because they’re more about the joy of giving than any cake could be. Hating them tells me you don’t remember what the most important part of baking is. The part that doesn’t involve a bowl or a rolling pin and has nothing to do with gumpaste or marzipan or what kind of chocolate you use. The best part about baking is when you get to give that cupcake away, and the smile on the face of the person that received it.
It’s seeing the happiness on their face because they know you took the time to remember them. Cupcakes say I love you.
How could you hate that?
Before I get to the cupcakes, I wanted to let you know about those cool balloon cupcake toppers I put on them. Nellie Cakes now has a store and those are on sale! I also have a few more styles, so go check ‘em out! I have a few more things coming soon, so keep checking back. I putting a link to the store on my side bar just in case you want to come back to it later. (This is just an experiment. I hope people like my stuff… We’ll see I guess!)
Here’s the recipe from the last post, as promised!
Pumpkin Brown-Butter Cupcakes
Ingredients:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line cupcake tins with cupcake liners (this recipe makes about 16).
In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Continue to cook, swirling occasionally, until butter turns golden brown. Skim the foam off the top and remove from heat. Pour the butter into a bowl to stop the cooking, leaving the burned bits behind. Allow it to cool to room temperature.
While you wait for the butter to cool, whisk together the flour, spices, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, whisk together both sugars, the pumpkin puree, the eggs, and the cooled brown-butter mixture. Add the flour mixture and whisk until combines. (The whisking broke my whisk, but it was over-due.)
Divide the batter evenly among the cups, scooping 1/4 cup of batter into each.
Bake, rotating the tins half way through the 20 minute baking time.
Once they’re done baking (and a toothpick comes out clean) transfer them to wire racks to cool. Allow them to cool completely before removing them from the tins.
These cupcakes are amazing. I think they’re my new favorite actually. They have an awesome pumpkin flavor and the tops have a great texture; kind of crunchy, but only on the top eighth of an inch. Paired with vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, it’s like having a cupcake version of pumpkin pie! Martha Stewart knows her cupcakes.
I finished these cupcakes last night at 3am for my Mom’s friend at work. They were throwing a little bridal shower for her during the day and my mom asked me if I could make her something cute.
Each dress is different. I think it took me 3 hours just to make those! I love the martinis though.
They’re Pumpkin Brown-Butter cupcakes with vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream with Vanilla Almond fondant accents.
Stay tuned because the recipe for the cupcakes is coming soon along with a couple more little tid bits I’m excited about!
Hey guys! Keep your eyes on CakeSpy… someone you know just might be featured there this week.
Plus, have you seen her amazing paintings? This is an example of one, but there are tons of originals you can buy, along with mugs, stationery, and my personal favorite- Team Cake and Team Pie pins and so much more!
I don’t know the exact date my posts are going to be published, but I’ll let you know when they’re up. I’m so honored to be included there with so many other great bakers!
Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes!
They were divine. I made 30 of them three days ago and they’re already gone. Of course, some of them ended up in the garbage because Evie only licks the frosting off, but I won’t hold that against her.
Wanna know how to make ‘em? Sure you do! Here’s the recipe!
Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients (for the cupcakes):
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line the tins with cupcake liners. (It makes between 18 and 21. I think it depends on how much I fill the cups on whatever day I make them.)
Throw all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix it by hand until it’s a little wet everywhere. (You don’t want to hit dry ingredients with an electric mixer. It’s messy!) Once everything is moist, pull out the electric hand mixer and mix everything until the batter is nice and smooth.
It’s going to be watery, so I usually pour the batter into a pitcher with a lip and fill the cupcake tins with that. Fill them until they’re about half full and put them in the oven.
Bake them for about 20 minutes, rotating them half way through so they bake evenly. Make sure to test them with a toothpick before you take them out. If the toothpick comes out clean, you’re good.
Allow them to cool completely on wire racks before you try to ice them, otherwise your icing will melt all over the place.
Ok, time for the icing recipe. Feel free to make this while you’re waiting for the cupcakes to bake and/or cool.
Chocolate Buttercream
Ingredients :
Cream the butter until it’s nice and… well, creamy looking. Mix in the vanilla thoroughly.
Melt the chocolate in the microwave, 10 seconds or so at a time and stirring in between, until it’s completely melted. Pour the chocolate into the butter mixture and completely combine.
Mix in the powdered sugar, 1/2 cup to a cup at a time, making sure it’s completely mixed in before adding the next bit. Keep doing that until all four cups are mixed in. If it gets too stiff to work with, add a little milk, a tablespoon at a time, until it’s easier to mix. Don’t add too much though! Add just enough so your arm doesn’t fall off as you’re stirring.
Once all of the powdered sugar is mixed in, you can add more milk until you reach the desired consistency. Mine only required two milk caps full. (I pour it into the cap that’s on the gallon of milk and measure it that way. There’s no reason to be dirtying more dishes that I’ll have to wash later!)
Just as a side note, I bet these cupcakes would be even better with chocolate chips in them. If you’re going to do that (and obviously report back, because I’d love to hear how good they were), make sure you toss them in a little cake flour before adding them to the batter. Doing that will prevent the chocolate chips from sinking to the bottom.
Happy baking!
These are the cupcakes I made for the “We Love Sloan” party in the park. They’re nothing special really, just chocolate cupcakes and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. I didn’t want to make anything too crazy since I don’t really know what random people in a park are going to like, so I stuck the traditional flavors.
The recipes for both the icing and the chocolate cupcakes can be found in my recipe section!
I woke up this morning (late, thank you hubs) and I immediately started working on cupcakes for a party in the park near my house. It’s the first annual “We Love Sloan” party, which is to commemorate the month the villiage voted down dissolving itself. I don’t think anyone ever wanted to disolve Sloan, but this jerk came in and decided that all of the little towns and villages in western New York added up to more government than he liked, so he decided to cause a ruckus. It really made no sense, but he definitally got everyone in quite a tizzy. I was terrified Sloan was going to be dissolved, and we were going to be consumed by the giant town that surrounds us. We wouldn’t have good plowing or concerts in our little park, or any other niceties that come with living in a square mile villiage. Now, don’t get me wrong, the town around us (Cheektowaga) is nice an all, but I don’t want to live there. I like saying I’m from Sloan, especially since it’s tag line is ‘The Second Happiest Place on Earth”. Eventually I’ll post the photos of those cupcakes.
After I made them, my dad came over and we went crazy food shopping. He has a bad back, and he wanted me to lift all the heavy stuff for him and in return he loaded up my fridge with all kinds of good stuff. I now have 3 pounds of limes, 3 pounds of lemons, 4 pounds of unsalted butter, 6 peaches, 2 pounds of grapes, 6 kiwis, 8 quarts of tomatoes, 4 zuchinis, 16 tiny bottles of juice, 5 pounds of chicken nuggets, 3 bricks of cream cheese, 2 whole chickens, a quart of buttermilk and a dozen eggs.
Something amazing is going to come of this. I’m thinking something summery and filled with citrus. I’ll take suggestions though!
Oh, and remember when I asked you guys how I shoud decorate those cupcakes a long time ago? Someone told me I should cover one in something that looks like lace. Guess what? I finally figured out how to do that! I’ll show you that with the other photos.
I love when the days get cooler. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some summer, but after a while, cooler days end up being a nice change of pace because I can finally bake again.
These are Mini Chai-Tea cupcakes with a sweet glaze that adds just enough sweetness to them.
I decorated them with a few tiny hearts, some with little flowers. I like how simple they look. Once you take a bite of them, you’ll know they’re anything but simple though. They have a distinct autumn taste that reminds me of pumpkin pie and sitting outside the student union, drinking coffee when the year started up again. Of new books and organized folders. Fall feels like new beginnings to me.
Here’s the recipe, taken from Martha Stewarts Cupakes:
Ingredients:
Preheat the over to 350 degrees. Line mini muffin tins with paper liners (It made 48 for me.) Bring milk to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat; add tea bags, and let steep, covered, for 15 minutes. Remove tea bags, squeezing the bags over the pan and discard. Allow milk to cool completely. Whisk together both flours, baking powder, salt, pepper and spices.
With an electric mixer on medium-high, (I used a rubber spatula and my tired arm), cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 additions of the tea-infused milk and beating until just combined after each.
Divide batter evenly among lines cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake, rotating tins half way through, until tops spring back when lightly touched and are pale golden, 10-12 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.
To finish, dip the top of each cupcake in icing, then turn over quickly and let set. Cupcakes are best eaten the same day they are glazed; keep at room temperature until ready to serve.
Condensed Milk Icing
Ingredients:
With an electric mixer on medium-high (I used a whisk and my exhausted arm), whisk together butter, condensed milk and salt until smooth. Whisk in powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, until combined, then whisk on high speed until thick and smooth. Use immediately.
Remember those ice cream cupcakes I told you about a while ago? Well, these are them. Don’t they look amazing? Oh man… what I wouldn’t do to sink my teeth into one of those right now. Except I couldn’t actually sink my teeth into them, because immediately after I did that I would be rolling around on the ground, clutching my face, crying “TOO COLD! OH GOD IT HURTS! Quick! Eric! Punch me in the mouth so I can focus on that pain instead of this!” And I’m really not in the mood to get punched in the face today. It’s far too humid for that.
I would love to carefully eat one though. I’m sure you’re wondering to yourself, “Why aren’t you then?! They’re in your hands! Open it and eat one like the fatty you are!” OK, maybe not the fatty part. That was all me.
Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because they were $8.00. EIGHT.
For only six cupcakes. Do you have any idea how many goldfish crackers that would buy for my Evie? Like, 2 and a half packages. OK, so that’s not a lot but it seems like it when one bag lasts a week. So that’s 2 and a half weeks of fishies! My brain can’t handle spending that much money with zero nutritional value and would last a total of 6.4 seconds in my house. (Not only because we would devour them like we were starving to death, but also because my house is 100 degrees with 258% relative humidity. It would be soup before we opened the package.)
It has become my mission to figure out how to make these. Or at least something close. I probably should have bought regular ice cream at the store…
OK. Next week, it will be my mission to make these. I hope it’s still hot outside by then. This is Buffalo… for all I know, it may snow tomorrow.
I was originally going to write about how to make your own sanding sugar, which is cool in and of itself, but while I was coloring the sugar for the photos I was going to post I got inspired and decided to make some home made sugar decorations too! Here’s a photo of the finished product, just to wet your whistle:
Wet your whistle sounds gross. Sorry about that.
The cupcake is plain old chocolate, the icing is Swiss Meringue buttercream and the flower is completely made out of sugar. It’s a cute little thing, isn’t it? I’ve also decorated a cake with sugar stars and an owl.
To make your own colored sugar, you’ll need a cup of regular granulated sugar, some liquid food coloring and a very tight sealing container. I’m not messing around on this point. If it’s not super air tight you’re going to end up with sugar all over your kitchen and ants may or may not invade your home and eat your kitchen down to the floor beams. If this does happen, I will not be held responsible!
I didn’t find a single thing, because we never went (aw… sad face). Some friends of ours went and called us the minute they came back, which was when we were walking out the door. They told us a true horror story.
They didn’t complain about the quality of food, which I’m still sad I didn’t get to try. They were upset over the price of everything, likening it to extortion. With a bottle of water costing $4 and there being so many people there you couldn’t walk, but had to sway with the crowd, I tend to agree with them.
It was 90 degrees that day (a heat no Buffalonian is used to, with out winters dropping to 12 degrees), with tens of thousands of people jamming one street and a circle. Now, if that doesn’t sound bad enough, imagine that street lined with ovens and friers.
That may be my definition of hell. Especially with a 2 year that refused to nap that day. I was terrified to take Evie for fear that she’d melt or get sucked into the crowd and I’d never see her again. Would she become one of the lost Taste of Buffalo children, doomed to wander the streets downtown until its return next year, like ghosts on Halloween? I don’t know, but I didn’t want to risk finding out.
So there will be no photos of beautiful baked goods. With that review, I’m starting to doubt they would have lasted long enough in that heat to be photographed anyway.
But I did find something amazing yesterday! I can’t find a link to them, so I’ll have to buy them later and take a picture myself! Friendly’s makes ice cream cupcakes! I saw them at the grocery store yesterday. I was amazed (so much so, that I didn’t see how much they were.)! I’ll report back soon on this.
These are the chocolate cupcakes I made with the extra icing from the graduation cake. They look like they belong at a birthday party, don’t they?
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