I♥cuppycakes!

Happy Birthday Dear Husband

Source: googleimages

Husband is turning the big 3-0 today. He’s officially O-L-D!

Let’s sing him a song to cheer him up.

♪ This is your birthday soooong!
It’s not very long… HEY! ♪♫

Happy Birthday Dear Husband. Me love you long time.

Red Velvet Hi-Hats

I know. I know.

I’ve been a big slacker in the cupcake contest/event department these last few months. (Sorry Cupcake Hero and Iron Cupcake!) Blame it on a lack of motivation, time, energy, all of the above, whatever.

No matter the reasons, I knew I had to make time for the Mixing Bowl cupcake contest even if it cut into my Girls Next Door (guilty pleasure #839457) marathon. (Don’t judge me. Its like a train wreck. I can’t look away.) Though I admit the $200 prize money was a great incentive to make the time.

Hey… Don’t give me that look!

You can’t tell me that wouldn’t motivate you too esp in these hard economic times. Heck I’ll dance around in a chicken suit on a street corner if you pay me enough. What can I say? Money is motivating. And momma needs a new pair of shoes to pay off her credit card.

The rules are pretty simple. Create a cupcake. Upload picture to their website. Then there’s some fine print that no one reads and that’s it. Easy right? You’d think so but its not. I tend to make things more difficult. I get anxious with “too” much creative freedom. I need guidance, rules, restrictions. So coming up with a cupcake… any cupcake… was alot harder than I thought.

But eventually I went to my happy place (ie Tarjay LOL) and while shopping the 1 spot decided to create a cupcake for my husband. He’s turning the big 3-0 this Saturday. I figure this was a good opportunity to bake his favorite cupcake with a little something extra. I guesssss he deserves it.

Shameless plug alert! If you wanna vote for my cupcake. Click HERE and scroll to page 3. CB’s red velvet hi-hats. Thats me! And… if you’re bored at work, you can vote for me every day! How’s that for shameless plugging? HAHA

Recipe adapted from Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski & ::Cupcakes!:: by Elinor Klivans

Print this recipe

Makes about 12 cupcakes

INGREDIENTS

For red velvet cupcake
1-1/2 cups cake flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp vinegar
4 drops red food coloring (I used a couple squirts of Ateco red color gel)
3/4 cup sugar
4 tbsp butter
1 egg, room temperature

For cream cheese frosting
8oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 lb (~4 cups) powdered sugar, sifted

For chocolate coating*
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (I used 1/2 milk chocolate and 1/2 semi-sweet chocolate)
3 tbsp canola or vegetable oil (I used vegetable oil)

* This recipe makes a good amount of chocolate but its easier to work with more than less chocolate when dipping. You can always use leftovers drizzled over ice cream. Yum!

INSTRUCTIONS

To make cupcakes—
Preheat oven 350F. Prepare cupcake pan with liners.

Sift together cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a bowl. In a large Pyrex measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk, vanilla, vinegar and red food coloring; set aside. In a stand mixer with flat beater, beat the sugar and butter on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add the egg. Mix to combine. Add the flour mixture in 3 additions alternating with buttermilk mixture in 2 additions, ending with the flour mixture.

Fill each liner about 2/3-3/4 full. Bake about 22-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool before frosting.

To make frosting—
Combine the butter and cream cheese together in a mixer fitted with a flat beater attachment until creamed. Add vanilla extract. Gradually add powdered sugar. Scrape down the bowl as needed.

Using a Magic Tip 9ST round tip, pipe cream cheese frosting onto cupcake. Freeze to set frosting while making chocolate coating.

To make chocolate coating—
In a heatproof bowl, combine the chocolate and oil and melt over a saucepan of simmering water. Stir until chocolate melted and smooth. Let cool for 15 minutes.

To assemble cupcakes—
Holding the cupcake upside down by the bottom, dip the cupcake into the chocolate until all the frosting is covered. Let excess chocolate drip off.

[NOTES: You can leave the cupcake liner on if you like but I found it easier to dip all the frosting into the chocolate when I took the liner off.]

Then let cool at room temperature for 15 minutes so the chocolate firms up.

ENJOY!

Husband rating: A/A+
He is still a red velvet purist but raved about covering the cream cheese frosting with chocolate.

Wifey rating: A/A+
I like red velvet. Its not my favorite but I like it. Let me just tell you that adding the chocolate coating over the cream cheese frosting is AH-FREAKING-MAZING. If you like chocolate, you’ll love my twist on the red velvet cupcake.

“I do want to express myself, okay… And I don’t need 37 pieces of flair to do it.”

I made the Y2K7 switch from MySpace to Facebook last year. I didn’t use to be but since I’ve been getting flair from various Facebook friends lately, I am officially addicted to the “Pieces of Flair” application.

I hope you get the movie reference. If not, please do yourself a favor and rent the movie.

Wanna see some of my flair?

Click image to enlarge

Do my friends know me or what?

My personal favorite is the “whore” one. I literally cackle every time I see it.

Oh… and I threw in a Twilight flair just for the Hale of it! tehee…

Thank You For All You Do Cupcakes

Wow.

Either you all really wanted to win some cupcake liners or you have strong opinions on what cupcake flavor says “thank you”. I bet its the former rather than the latter huh? Either way the response was awesome! Thank you for all comments. I will post the random winner by this weekend.

Let me back track a little bit and give you some background.

T is a high school teacher. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before but there you go. He’s involved in alot of activities and many times those activities are accompanied by his wifey’s (that’s me!) cupcakes. I guess you could say that his students and coworkers are kinda cupcake spoiled by me. So naturally when he wanted to give a little something something as a thank you to 2 students’ moms who went above and beyond for a recent school related activity, cupcakes were the natural suggestion. But I was at a loss as to what would constitute a good “thank you”. Hence my inquisitive post and twitter to all my readers.

I found myself reading all the comments nodding my head in agreement with practically every flavor. Vanilla good. Chocolate good. Fruit good. Crunkcake great! See? You really can’t go wrong with any cupcake. Heck even a meatloaf cupcake sounds pretty darn tasty to me! (T vetoed that idea though. Buzzkill.)

I have to admit I am not sure if I should love or hate the ones that left a comment about a variety pack b/c ultimately that’s what T enthusiastically agreed with. His rationale was that in a variety pack it’s like getting more than one “thank you”. Personally I think the one that bakes should be the one that chooses what to bake but what do I know right? But don’t worry. I made T do all the dishes. LOL

We narrowed down the choices to 4 cupcakes.

Mocha cupcakes w/ whipped cream and chocolate jimmies
Chocolate cupcakes w/ chocolate buttercream
Funfetti cupcakes w/ vanilla buttercream and rainbow sprinkles (see recipe after cut)
Red velvet cupcakes w/ cream cheese frosting and heart sprinkles

So… how do all the cupcake etiquette police out there think we did?

I think we dun good.

Continue Reading Thank You For All You Do Cupcakes…

Electrolux Cupcake Exchange to fight Ovarian Cancer

If you keep up with anything and everything in the cupcake world (like me) you’ve probably heard that Electrolux is teaming with Kelly Ripa to fight Ovarian Cancer, one cupcake at a time. What do I think? I say… FanFREAKINGtastic! So I wanna do my part to spread the world.

The gist is: the more virtual cupcakes we send, the more money Electrolux will cough up donate to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Here’s what I am gonna do.

Today. Valentines’ Day. All day. If you send me a cupcake, I’ll send you one too! Leave me a comment letting me know you sent me one with a valid email address so I can return the flavor. teehee.

It doesn’t take long. Just register. Pick your flavor (Hubs was a little upset that there was no red velvet option though), pick your frosting, pick your topping, pick your cupcake liner, write a message and send! Its fun! (and free). Easy peasy.

As a bonus, every virtual cupcake you send will enter you to win a Red Hot Washer and Dryer from Electrolux. (See more deets on their website.)

I must be getting old b/c the possibility of winning a new washer and dryer makes me giddy. Heck I don’t even have an old one. I still have to lug my laundry down the hall. ‘Tis the joys of apt living.

Happy Valentines Day readers!