Katie's Birthday Cupcakes!

My friend, Katie, turned 21 yesterday. She requested red velvet cupcakes from me, and I gladly obliged!

My mother gave me this recipe, and it turned out GREAT. Everyone loved the cupcakes, and Sara and I loved eating the leftover icing.

So here is the recipe for the cupcakes. This is actually a red velvet CAKE recipe put into a cupcake pan instead of baked as a layered cake.

Cake Recipe:

1 cup of butter (room temperature)

2 ½ cups of cake flour

1 ½ cups of sugar

1 cup of buttermilk

2 eggs

2 teaspoons cocoa (unsweetened)

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 oz. coloring

1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1) Cream butter and sugar together

2) Add eggs and blend well (1 at a time)

3) In a separate bowl, combine flour and cocoa. Add a little at a time to butter mixture.

4) Add vinegar, salt, baking soda, vanilla, and buttermilk. Blend well.

5) Add food coloring last.

~ I used neon green food coloring instead of red, because green is Katie's favorite color. It was weird to eat green cupcakes, but they still tasted amazing!

6) Bake cupcakes at 325 degrees for 16 minutes.

~ In my oven, these took a little longer. I filled them up a little too much, so some of them took a little longer to cook all the way. There is a fine line between these being done and getting a little dry, so keep a close eye on them!

Cream Cheese Icing Recipe:

1 box of 10x sugar

1 8 oz. cream cheese package (room temperature)

1 stick of butter (room temperature)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1) Cream sugar, cream cheese, and butter

2) Add vanilla and blend well.

After the cupcakes cooled, I put the icing in a sandwich bag for decorating. I recommend this if you don't have an actual icing bag to use! Cut the tip of the bag, just a little bit. If you cut it too big, too much icing comes out and it is more difficult to control. Icing the cupcakes from the bag allows you to do neat things with it- like flowers, patterns, etc.

This recipe is one of my favorites! I love the icing so much. I hope you'll enjoy it, too!

Key Lime Pie Disaster

Today, I attempted to make key lime pie cupcakes. I was really excited about them! Sara and I bought the ingredients with our groceries (and I had to send her back to the store for a couple I forgot to write on the list) and I started baking.

An hour and a half later, the cupcakes were done. And tasted weird. I have no idea why or how they turned out so incredibly strange, but they did. Something about them just wasn't right!

However, the icing, made by Jake, was really good! Very lime-y, but yum.

So, because of the disastrous result, I will not be posting the recipe! Or the pictures. But, never fear! I am going to try again. Trial and error is what it's all about, right? They definitely won't be the next attempt, but in the next few months I am going to find a new recipe to try.

If you have any ideas/suggestions for this week's recipe, please post it and I'll give it a try!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffin Success!

Hello, all! Welcome to my blog, which will be all about baking cupcakes, muffins, etc.

Today, I decided to try some banana chocolate chip muffins. Call them my Elvis special (minus the peanut butter). I was inspired by bananas that I bought last week. They began to get a littletoo ripe to eat, so I wanted to try to use them creatively.

Because it was spur of the moment, I didn't have most of the normal muffin ingredients. Instead of making them from scratch, I used a chocolate chip muffin mix.

I mashed up 1 cup of bananas (it took me 2 bananas to get to 1 cup). I added them to the muffin mix, along with 1/2 cup of milk. This made 12 regular sized muffins.

I put them in the oven, which was preheated to 350 degrees. They cooked for 20 minutes and came out perfectly! I have already eaten three of them. Too bad my roommate doesn't eat bananas OR chocolate. I guess that means more for me!

Photo by the lovely Sara Herring

Tomorrow, I am going to try to make key lime pie cupcakes! Stay tuned for how that recipe turns out.