Korean KupKakes

These are for my Korean friend who has a ton of national pride. These were chocolate cupcakes out of a box, with strawberry filling. The filling is just strawberries, sugar, and water, boiled till it reaches a jelly-like consistency. I made holes in the cupcakes using a bottle cap, filled them up with the jelly, and then topped with store-bought icing.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Fresh Strawberry Filling

When I bake, there are three requirements...it has to be eggless, quick, and delicious. Here is one of my favorite combinations that I have used in both cake and cupcake form.

The cake is easy...I use Duncan Hines devil's food chocolate cake mix. Instead of egg, oil, and water, I add milk (to replace the quantity of water on the box). The cake rises very well even without the egg. You can make a sheet cake or cupcakes.

Filling: Fresh strawberries and sugar at a ratio of two-three table spoons of sugar per small basket of strawberries depending on sweetness of berries. Chop the strawberries up into very small pieces, and heat berries and sugar on the stove top at a high setting. Let the mixture boil, and the moisture evaporate, and stir often. Eventually, the mixture will start to resemble a jelly. You want to wait until this stage, as too much moisture in the filling with make your cake soggy.

For a cake, spread the filling between layers. If you will be storing the cake before consuming, a thin layer of frosting between each layer of cake and the filling will help keep the moisture in the filling out of the cake.

For cupcakes, use a deep bottle cap (one from a screwtop bottle of wine works well) to drill/scoop out a hole in each cupcake. Fill this hole with the filling, and then frost.

Frosting: I have used both cream cheese and chocolate frosting with this combo, and both taste great!

Halloween Cupcakes!

For Halloween, I planned to make cupcakes and decorate them as pumpkins. I made the cupcakes from a mix, and made an orange frosting using a simple recipe:
a box of confectioner's sugar, a stick of soft butter, 1/4 cup milk, and a teaspoon of vanilla. I colored it orange using red and yellow food coloring in about a 2:1 red:yellow ratio. I picked up green frosting & black gel from the grocery store, and planned to draw pumpkin tops and faces on the cupcakes...but it turns out my hand was not steady enough to draw pumpkin faces (when I tried they came out looking like a 5 year old drew them), so I just made green pumpkin tops, and wrote "Happy Halloween" on the cupcakes in black gel. They looked cute enough, but I don't think they were super tasty (although I may be biased, since I don't really like vanilla frosting).

Red (err, Purple) Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

So, red velvet cupcakes are kinda gross, because there's so much food coloring in them. But nevertheless, I was craving them one evening, so this is what came out of the oven! These are in the same vein as other "healthified" cupcakes--I used white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour. Also, we didn't have enough red food color, hence the purple cupcakes! I adapted Paula Deen's recipe from here.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients (yields 21 small-medium cupcakes)
1 1/4 c. white whole wheat flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cocoa powder
3/4 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. buttermilk, room temperature
1 egg, room temperature
1 Tbsp. food coloring
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter and flour muffin tins.

In medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. In a large bowl, gently beat together oil, buttermilk, egg, food coloring, and vanilla:


Add sifted dry ingredients to the wet and mix until smooth and thoroughly combined:


Divide batter evenly among 21 cupcake molds. Each cup should be 2/3 filled:


Bake in oven for about 15-20 min, turning pans once, half way through. Test cupcakes for doneness. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting with cream cheese frosting.

Earl Grey and Chocolate Chunk Muffins

I saw a recipe for earl grey cupcakes a few months ago and have been wanting to make them ever since. But I wanted to make them a little healthier so I converted them into muffins so I could add whole wheat flour and oatmeal and avoid the icing :) They turned out a little dry, so next time I would increase the oil to 1/2 cup and increase the milk to 2/3 cup.

Ear Grey Chocolate Chunk Muffins
yield: 12 medium-large muffins

1 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup instant oatmeal
1 Tbsp baking powder
3 teabags of Earl Grey tea
1 egg
1/3 c. honey
1/2 c. milk
1/3 c. vegetable oil
2 oz chocolate, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degreesF. Oil and flour a muffin tin. Thoroughly mix together flour, oatmeal, baking powder, and tea leaves. Add egg, honey, milk, and oil and mix until combined. It's ok if the batter is still lumpy. Stir in chocolate pieces. Evenly divide and spoon into muffin cups. Bake for 30 min or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.

Caramel-filled Black and White Cupcakes

Easter was recently, and that means lots of adorable egg shaped candies. I saw a few pictures on foodgawker of Cadbury creme egg cupcakes, so I decided to make my own version. Unfortunately I only have a small-medium muffin tin so I couldn't really fit an entire Cadbury egg AND cupcake batter. AND it turns out those eggs are mad expensive. SO I ended up getting mini caramel filled eggs. I couldn't decide if I wanted vanilla or chocolate cupcakes, so I went with both :D I modified the recipes based on what ingredients I had available, and I completely replaced all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour, which made the batter really thick and almost cookie- or muffin-like, as opposed to cake-like. Anyway, the chocolate cupcake recipe is modified from here, and the vanilla cupcake recipe from here.

yield: ~40 small-medium sized cupcakes
INGREDIENTS

40 caramel egg candies

For the chocolate batter

• 3/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sour cream

For the vanilla batter

• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups milk

For the frosting

• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
  
• 3/4lb. powdered sugar
  
• 1/2 c. sour cream
• 4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
  
• assorted food coloring, if desired
  

1. Preheat oven 350degrees. Butter and flour your muffin tin(s).
2. Make the chocolate cupcake batter. In a medium bowl, sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add the flour mixture alternating with sour cream, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
3. Make the vanilla batter. Put butter in mixer and beat at medium speed until somewhat smooth. Pour in sugar and beat well. Add 2 eggs. Mix well. Add: vanilla, baking powder, salt, flour, and milk. Beat until smooth.
4. Place a heaping teaspoon of chocolate batter into the bottom of each cupcake. Gently place an unwrapped candy on top of the batter. Then scoop a heaping teaspoon of vanilla batter onto of each candy. Because the whole wheat flour-to-baking powder ratio is pretty high, it's ok to fill these muffin cups up all the way.
5. Bake the cupcakes for ~15 min until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick (inserted as close to the middle as possible without piercing the caramel) comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting (but not necessarily before trying one :D).

6. For the frosting, beat together the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add the sour cream and continue beating while sifting the powdered sugar into the mixture. Add a few drops of food coloring as desired. Frost the cupcakes and enjoy! Make sure you serve the cupcakes at room temperature otherwise the caramel will be too hard and it'll interfere with the consistency.

Kiwi Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Last week, I used some cream cheese to make enchiladas. I had leftover cream cheese, and the best use for it I could think of was cream cheese frosting! Coincidentally, I walked into the breakroom earlier this week to see these:


Home-grown Santa Cruz Kiwis. I decided to try making cupcakes with the kiwis. I decided to modify a banana cupcake recipe (from Martha Stewart), because kiwis are acidic and high in water content, as bananas are. I halved the recipe, replaced the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour, and omitted the baking soda.

Makes 12 small-medium cupcakes
INGREDIENTS
For the cupcakes
3/4 c white whole wheat flour
3/8 c white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
3 Tbsp butter, melted
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
6 small kiwis
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

For the frosting
4oz 1/3 fat cream cheese, softened
5 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
~1 c confectioner's sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 12 small-medium muffin cups. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
2. Coarsely chop and puree kiwis
3. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, oil, pureed kiwis, eggs, and vanilla. At this point, Linda said to me "Now, all you need is ham!" To go with my seemingly green eggs hahaha
4. Stir wet ingredients to incorporate flour mixture (do not overmix). Dividing evenly, spoon batter into muffin cups.
5. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely on a wire rack.
6. While the cupcakes are baking and cooling, cream the cream cheese and butter together with an electric mixer until smooth. While still mixing, sift in confectioner's sugar. Begin with ~1/2 cup, and taste. Keep adding sugar until you get your desired sweetness.
   
7. Once the cupcakes have cooled completely, frost with as much frosting as you like! The frosting recipe made about twice as much frosting for my taste.
   

I noticed that the cupcakes were not green at all despite the kiwi, and so I decided to experiment with some food coloring to get green frosting. But it turned out more tourquise-ish...regardless, the cupcakes turned out reasonably tasty. The kiwi flavor wasn't very strong, but it just added a sourish, interesting taste. They definitely needed the cream cheese taste in the frosting to complete the package. The cupcakes did turn out incredibly moist and soft, despite the whole wheat flour. They were also a little dense, I think because of the high water content of the kiwis. Can't say I'd make these again, but they did go quickly when I brought them to a friend's house.