Thursday, August 25, 2011

Cupcakes, cupcakes and more cupcakes....

It seems that the world is obsessed with cupcakes these days, and I admit, I am as well. To me the cupcake is perfect...it's all just for you, your own little cake, packaged to go in it's own little wrapper. When I first started writing my infrequent blogs, my niece introduced me to her favorite food blogs, from those I started looking for other blogs that peaked my interest. Of course, becuase of my said obsession with cupcakes, I looked for cupcakes blogs. My favorite cupcake blogs are cupcakeproject.com, sprinklebakes.com and cupcakebakeshop.com. They are fantastic! Lots of fun information, great recipes and places to find really beautiful cupcake wrappers. Along with a few wonderful cookbooks (Magnolia Bakery is one of the best) and the fun blogs, my friend in Philadelphia sends me messages about the new flavors she is trying from the cupcake truck that parks near her school. But, since I don't live in Philly and we have no cupcake trucks here, I just make my own. Here are a few of my most recent concoctions.

One of my favorite foods is caramel, I like it in all its many forms, sauce, candy, topping, whatever. As I was perusing the internet one day looking for inspiration I found salted caramel cupcakes. What??!! Oh my good golly I believe I found heaven on earth. So, I made them. Delicious. Really delicious. These are the ones that I made for a friends birthday not too long ago.


The 'halo' of caramelized sugar was my favorite part. It really made them look professional. I felt I had outdone myself!

On the Cupcake Project blog I found a recipe for cherry coke cupcakes. I was intrigued, especially since it said that I had to order special cola extract from a homemade soda company. Oh my! So, I did and I also ordered orange cream soda and cranberry gingerale extract. I mean, why not?

The recipe has no butter or eggs in it, so I was a little concerned that they weren't going to be as delicious as I wanted them to be, but I was wrong. They were fabulous. You put maraschino cherries in the bottom of them so it's like a little cherry surprise when you bite into them. The icing is basically a cream cheese icing with the cola extract, I didn't like the color of the icing all that much, but the flavor was wonderful. I put a little powdered sugar snow on top to make them look fizzy. These little darlings where a big hit at work.


A little drizzle of concentrated cherry juice makes them all that much more irresitable. Pretty and tasty.

Since the cola cupcakes where such a hit, I figured I could make some orange cream soda ones just as easily with the given recipe, and I was right. They were pretty darn good as well, but I did like the cola ones better.


A little sprinkle of white pearl sugar just made them that much prettier. I would call them orange blossom cupcakes, but I think that's a muffin recipe.

Cupcakes are a great way to cheer yourself up on a day to day basis. I make them at least a couple times a month just because I can. Most of the time it's taking a box recipe and adding a twist, like the lemon raspberry cupcakes I made recently. Duncan Hines lemon cake filled with store bought lemon curd mixed with raspberry preserves and iced with lemon cream cheese icing. Yummers. One day I will learn how to make a good buttercream and frost my cupcakes with something besides cream cheese icing, but for now I kinda like my cream cheese frostings.

Go forth and bake some fun cupcakes!

For the cherry cola cupcakes go to cupcakeproject.com. I substituted the orange extract for the cola extract to make the orange cream soda deliciousness. For the salted caramel cupcakes go to sprinklebakes.com, they are triple salted caramel cupcakes, caramel filling inside, salted caramel icing and salted caramel decorations.




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