BOM: Cupcake Challenge 5/175

I wasn't going to make cupcakes this weekend, but whenever Valentines rolls around, I can't help making delectable treats. In honor of Valentines, I used one of the holiday cupcake recipes. Brownie cupcakes topped with pink tinted vanilla frosting and brownie bites.

These precious, paper liners from Wilton made a nice show of Valentine's Day. They come in a pack of 75 (25 of each design).

Quite a large assortment of ingredients. Lots of flour, lots of eggs, and lots of butter—lots of mixing.

I ended up doing a lot of mixing by hand. Instead of using my electric mixer, I opted for a hand mixer because I was using quite a large bowl.
 

The batter is ready to be spooned into those paper liners. Isn't it chocolately looking? What, with 12 ounces of Ghirardelli chocolate, it out to be.

Fresh out the oven. I had an additional brownie pan for the cutouts (the part of recipe that didn't go over well).

Electric mixer is a must for this fluffy vanilla frosting which I tinted pink with some drops of red food coloring.

I probably waited too long to cut out my hearts from my pan of brownies. So, I just cut little squares to top the cupcakes with. They taste delicious! I'm thinking I might make them again sometime soon.

All images courtesy of yours truly

Because of Martha | Valentine's Day 2011

First and foremost, let me wish you a very happy Valentine's Day. I love this holiday because it is another craft-friendly one. My lucky co-workers get showered with handmade goodies once again. Last year, I made little treat bags. This year, I ended up making something edible (it was a tough decision). I turned to the "Queen of Crafts" for ideas and wound up falling in love with the Valentine's Cookie Sandwich Pops. Hit the jump for process and results images.


All photos are courtesy of yours truly

BOM: Cupcake Challenge 4/175

Thanks to last fall's purchase of Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook, I challenged myself to make all 175 recipes. I have no deadline or anything. Instead, I make them as they come. Though I am not going in any particular order, I have been skipping through sections to switch up the difficulty. This edition is all about Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes.

As usual, I gathered my ingredients. This is for the chocolate batter.

I also had to grab some other ingredients for the peanut butter filling. Just a couple needed here. You can also see the recipe right there. Doesn't it look delicious in the photograph?

Next step was to work with the chocolate batter. It was not too bad. Chocolate is usually a bit messy for me.

Before I could really throw the chocolate into a paper lined muffin pan (yes to easy clean up!), I had to get my peanut butter filling mixed. Surprisingly, this whole process did not require use of a mixer, just physical mixing.

The recipe called for alternating between chocolate batter and peanut butter filling. Then, you were to swirl the top. I think my measurements were off though.

After baking for nearly 40 minutes, I had the finished result. Maybe not exactly like the photo, but very tasty. I'm thinking that my skills are slightly improving though, so that's a relief.

Because of Martha (BOM): Cupcake Challenge 3/175

I was busy this past weekend. Busy enough to pop out two cupcake challenges. This third challenge is the Snickerdoodle Cupcake. Are you familiar with the snickerdoodle cookie? It is delicious and one of the few cookies that I am really good at making. 

So, I got my ingredients together. There was a good amount of cinnamon making an appearance. However, it was actually a fairly standard bunch of ingredients overall.

Dallas was little help. He wanted me to throw his string. He was a huge distraction during this process.

Yay, paper liners! Cleanup was a snap. I used plain white baking cups from Betty Crocker.

So, this was how my cupcakes were supposed to turn out. I didn't have the knack for piping, but let me continue. You'll see soon enough. (T-T)

Mixing was easy. My ingredients only required measuring and sifting. Talk about a simple Sunday baking project.

With my dough ready, I managed to fill my cupcake liners. Trust me when I say that it was stretching it to get 24 only because I over-filled my first batch. But 28 would have been a weird number anyway.

This is one batch coming out of the oven. They are crinkly on the top and they smelled like cinnamon heaven.

Here is where things took a turn for the worse. My piping skills were atrocious. However, I blame this partly on the fact that I don't think my frosting was stiff enough. I was just afraid of making it dry and it drying out. However, they taste really good, so I will just have to practice piping for the future. Then, I'll revisit these with the appropriate skills.

Because of Martha (BOM): Cupcake Challenge 2/175

For any unfamiliar readers, I am a fan of Martha Stewart. She (and her genius employees, of course) is very talented at coming up with excellent recipes and crafts. I happened upon her Cupcakes cookbook and BOOM!—lightbulb. I decided since there are 175 cupcakes total, I'd do the crazy thing and make each one. This is not a Julie & Julia thing, but it is proving to be delicious. I have no set deadline or time to make cupcakes, but there are moments when you need a cupcake. In the future, I hope that this will aid me in becoming a better baker with more ideas and several tricks up my sleeve. 

This installment features Pumpkin-Brown Butter Cupcakes. They seemed like a perfect Thanksgiving cupcake. They take all that is wonderful about pumpkin bread (or cookies) in cupcake form. 

 

Like everything else, this began with gathering my ingredients. Most of these are commonly used for pumpkin, so you'll notice the nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and light brown sugar as quite traditional. There were great deals on the price since it's baking season.

 This is my hopeful outcome, but let's get started.

The recipe called for the sage to be chiffonade. I had to do a bit of research and watch a video, but I think the sage added some good flavor to the mix.

After browning my butter, I measured and combined all of my ingredients. A Kitchen-Aid mixer will save your life, trust me.

Once my dough was the proper consistency, I spooned the dough into buttered-and-floured muffin cups. No liners for this one. Talk about messy.

About 22 minutes later, these warm cupcakes were ready to come out of the oven. They smelled divine. I wish I could attach the smell of fresh pumpkin-brown butter cupcakes to this post!

Once they were completely cooled, I dipped them in brown-butter icing. Maybe they don't look exactly like the ones above, but they are kind of close and very good. I loved these! They are not ultra-sweet so the glaze gives just the right touch. Talk about a well-balanced recipe.

Images by B. and me

Because of Martha (BOM): Cupcake Challenge 1/175

A recent purchase at Barnes & Noble has prompted me to challenge myself in the way that only a nerd like me would. When I noticed that the Martha Stewart's Cupcakes cookbook has 175 recipes, I thought that I may as well make each recipe. Don't start thinking Julie & Julia. I just thought that this challenge would help me improve at baking with extra sweet results. 

To begin, I thought it made sense to start with the very first recipe, which happens to be Chocolate Chip Cupcakes. It gathered my ingredients taking extra special care to follow the directions that were outlined (and even more, the amounts of ingredients). Other than a quick run to get unsalted butter because of my terrible math skills, I was ready to go. 

I began by mixing together my ingredients for the cupcakes. The recipe yields thirty cupcakes (exactly for me) and they were really beautiful on their pans both before and after baking. They took about twenty minutes a tin. 

While I waited for the cupcakes to bake, I worked on the frosting. It was a dark chocolate frosting that tasted really delicious alone (trust me!).

After cooling, I decorated the cupcakes and served them up for my sisters. They are quite sweet, which I was not expecting. Although I love chocolate frosting, I think that perhaps it was too much chocolate to go with the chocolate chip cupcakes. One snag I ran into with the frosting is that it has flecks of chocolate in it instead of being perfectly smooth. I think this was due to me cooling my melted chocolate too much. However, they are great cupcakes and they taste nice plain if you don't like frosting! Look forward to my next installment of my BOM: Cupcake Challenge coming later this month.

Recipe from Martha Stewart Cupcakes. You can purchase online or in any book store.

Because of Martha... Easter dessert

Easter is always a great time for eating and hanging out with family and friends. After a beautiful morning at church, I was ready to do some baking in the kitchen. My sisters handled the appetizer (vegetable kebabs) and the main course (rack of lamb, asparagus, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob), and I dominated the desserts. Hit the jump for more on the dishes.

Because of Martha... Valentine's Treats

So, I enjoyed a holiday today—President's Day—which has allowed me quite a vacation. Because I really couldn't go anywhere last week due to the snow, my Valentine's treat bags had to be saved for today. I wanted to give my coworkers something simple and easy as a gift. I don't care if they like the day, I just like to give presents. I got the idea and inspiration for this project from Martha Stewart. Instructions are available on her site and can be used for things other than Valentine's. However, what a way to make life easier. I tip my invisible hat to Martha for a quick project for under $20.

Image from NewfoundJoye

Because of Martha... Valentine's Day

Because of Martha, I will be equipped to give friends and family tasty homemade treats (I'm single, no boyfriend to surprise). I have just received my first issue of Martha Stewart Living and I will be whipping up some lovely morsels and gifts in no time. I might post some images of my efforts here or on flickr, so keep an eye out.

Because of Martha...

Because of Martha (BOM), I learn lots of helpful hints to use around the house. Since there is really no reason for me to keep these insightful tips to myself, I will spread them to you via my blog. However, my first BOM post will not happen until this weekend, so look forward to that!