Posts Under She Bakes! Category
Mother’s Day is today, but we had an early celebration chez moi with my mom and grandmother yesterday. I had them both over for Brunch – it was far from a healthy brunch, but boy was it delish!
Gluten Free Chai Tea Cupcakes
Both my mom and my sister are gluten intolrant, and lately I’ve been suspecting I am as well. I’m going gluten free for a month (currently on day 5!) to see if that helps how I’ve been feeling – but more on that another time. Needless to say, brunch had to be gluten-free for my mom’s sake (and I guess, possibly mine!) – so I decided to go balls to the wall and work on making this awesome Chai Tea breakfast cupcake recipe I’ve been meaning to make gluten free… and do cake balls. I don’t half ass when it comes to baking – I love baking (and eating the results, which is how I ended up falling in love with fitness… haha ;)
Gluten Free Cake Balls
So, after some research and a ridiculous overload on GF flour and cake mix at Bulk Barn (I will be baking GF yellow cake for the rest of my life), I was ready to get down to business. The morning’s menu?
Chai Tea breakfast cupcakes, chocolate covered vanilla cake balls, non-alcoholic sangria (my mom also can’t have alcohol – the poor thing! luckily I didn’t inherit THAT terrible allergy), and banana split bites.
Banana Split Bites
Yum.
Tea time! Only we'll be eating it.
Gluten-Free Chai Tea Cupcakes Bake @ 375° for 18-20 minutes | makes 24 cupcakes
- 2 c all purpose gluten free flour
- 1.5 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 c sugar
- 4 chai tea bags
- 1 1/4 c milk, heated
- 1/2 cup softened butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 2 eggs
- 3/4 (ish) a cup Nature’s Path Crunchy Maple Sunrise
Put the milk in a saucepan and heat until it’s JUST simmering on the stove. Once it’s ready, take it off and add your 4 chai tea bags – let it steep for 5-7 minutes while the milk cools a bit. While its steeping, mix the gluten-free flour, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a bowl, and set aside. Next, cream the butter using a beater, and then add the sugar and vanilla, mixing until it’s combined. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each. Fill your cupcake liners, and then sprinkle the Crunchy Maple Sunrise on to. Pop them in the oven and bake at 375° for 18-20 minutes. Chai Cream Cheese Drizzle (to top the cupcakes with!)
- 85 grams (about 1/3 a 250 gram brick) low fat cream cheese, softened
- 2 tbsp butter (softened) or margarine
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/4 c icing sugar
- strongly brewed chai tea, cooled
The spread! Om nom.
Combine the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla in a bowl and beat until fluffy. Add the icing sugar (I recommend doing this a little bit at a time as it’s easier and doesn’t make a gigantic mess, especially if you’re using a hand mixer like I do!), and continue to mix it in. Finally, add your chai tea in bit by bit until the consistency is thin enough to drizzle, but not so thin it’s totally liquidy. Using a spoon, drizzle it over the top of your cupcakes. If you had tons leftover (I did), you can use the Wilton #230 to fill the centers with more icing. Oh, yum. I only wish I had thought of this before serving them! I ended up filling them the day after as I found the cake dried out quite quickly (a side effect of the GF flour, maybe?), and this gives it extra moisture. Finally, eat them and love them. Or, if you’re serving them up for a brunch like I did – pair them with this wicked non-alcoholic sangria (or, just flip the cranberry juice out for a bottle of red wine and make it alcoholic!)
Psssst! Looking for the Chai Tea Breakfast Cupcake nutritional information? You’ll find it here!
Delicious non alcoholic Sangria
Non-Alcoholic Sangria
- 4 cups of cranberry juice
- 1 c orange juice
- 1/4 c lemon juice
- 1 pear
- 1 apple (I used a granny smith green one – they’re my favourite! :)
- 3 c carbonated lemon lime beverage (ie. 7UP or Sprite)
Combine the cranberry juice, orange juice, and lemon juice in a pitcher. Slice up your fruit, and add it it. Allow it to sit for a few hours before you’re planning on serving it (I prepped this the night before, so the fruit was good and infused by the morning). JUST before serving it, add in the pop – you don’t want to do this too early, or it goes flat. Toss in some ice and volia! Tastiness in a pitcher. Happy mother’s day to all you fabulous moms out there.
And for those of us who may not be mom’s, always remember this key piece of wisdom when dealing with your mom:
“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no: you’re going to get it anyway.” – Erma Bombeck
As seen on: Sweets for a Saturday #69, The Sundae Scoop #28, Makin’ You Crave Monday, Weekend Wrap Up Party, Made By You Monday #98,
Featured on: Cupcakes Take the Cake, FoodGawker
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Ah, Easter – the time for chocolate, bunnies, coloured eggs, and zombies. Now, every year for Easter – on Sunday – my whole family gets together (cousins, aunts, and uncles included) for a big ol’ fashioned dinner party. Usually there’s ham or lamb (this year it was lamb), lots of veggies, wine, and an array of dessert. One year, I brought really cute Easter cupcakes- and, well, ever since my affinity for cupcakes has grown, and with it, my family’s expectations that Lauren+Cupcakes are a package deal. This year, I decided to go “back to basics” and make a traditional carrot (cup)cake to bring instead of my usual cheat-with-a-box-mix-and-make-look-pretty strategy, but of course there had to be a Lauren twist… so I baked the traditional cream cheese icing on the inside (thanks for the idea, Pinterest) and threw a coconut buttercream icing on top.
Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Filling and Coconut Buttercream Icing
Super delish.
Carrot Cupcakes [Adapted from “Sam’s Famous Carrot Cake” on allrecipes.com]
Bake @ 350° for 20 minutes | makes 30 cupcakes
- 2 cups shredded carrots
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup buttermilk**
- 3/4 cup applesauce
- 1 tbsp oil
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup flaked coconut
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- 1 cup crushed pineapple (with juice)
- 1 cup raisins
**If you don’t have buttermilk on hand (I never do, nor do I buy it especially for recipes!) use this substitute: 1 tbsp lemon juice + 1 cup skim milk. Add the lemon juice to a measuring cup, and fill with milk to the 1 cup mark. Let sit for 5 minutes – volia! Buttermilk substitute. Use the amount the recipe calls for.
Shredded carrots
Peel 2-3 large carrots, and shred them until you have two cups (medium to tightly packed). Set aside. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon using a fork. If you’re using bulk items, be sure to sift them first. Set aside.
Mixing the dry ingredients
In another bowl, combine the eggs, buttermilk, applesauce, oil, sugar, and vanilla. Using a mixer, mix well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient bowl, and mix well. Measure out your add-ins (in this case, coconut flakes, pineapple, raisins, and walnuts). If you have whole or half walnuts like I did, you’ll need to crush them down to a smaller size – I put them in a ziplock bag and used a hammer to crush them into smaller pieces. Totally therapeutic, I might add.
The hammer is my secret weapon in the kitchen. Seriously, I use it so often!
Add the extras into the batter, one at a time, folding them in using a large wooden spoon or spatula as you go. Set the batter aside, and prepare your filling.
Cream Cheese Filling
- 1 (8-ounce package) light cream cheese (room temperature)
- 1/4 cup white (granulated) sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Put the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl, and using your hand mixer or KitchenAid, thoroughly mix the ingredients (until creamy). Line your cupcake pan, and fill 1/3 of the way with carrot cake batter. I used an icecream scoop, and put one small-ish scoop into each cup. Next, put a small scoop (about 1/2 a tbsp) of the filling into each cup.
Yup, the cream cheese is baked right into the middle
Finally, fill the cup the rest of the way to 2/3 full (about 1/2-3/4 an ice cream scoop) by dropping the cake batter on top of the filling. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the batter clean. If you stick it through the filling part, it will come out with gooey filling on it – that’s totally OK as long as the cake batter is baked. While they’re baking, prepare your icing!
Coconut Buttercream Icing [Adapted from my favourite Wilton Buttercream Icing Recipe]
- 4 cups icing sugar
- 1.5 cups shortening
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 2 tbsp coconut flakes
Remove the cupcakes from the oven and let cool. Once they’re cooled, take them out and ice them anyway you want. I used a Wilton #12 Round Tip for the white – gently pressing down while swirling the icing across the cupcake to give it a flatter look. Next, I sprinkled coconut flakes on the icing. I then used the #103 Petal Tip for the carrot, starting with the thick end of the tip to make the thick end of the carrot and pulling across the cupcake while reducing pressure. Once the icing had sat for about 5 minutes, I used a knife to mark lines into the carrots. Finally, I used the #3 Round Tip to make the green tops of the carrots.
Surprise!
I have to say, these turned out amazing and were a huge hit at Easter (as were the leftovers at work on Monday!). The recipe does make a TON of cupcakes – even after taking them to Easter dinner with my family of 11 and pawning a bunch off on them post-meal, I had a number leftover (14!) so I kept a few for The Boy and I, then took the rest to my coworkers. Office favourite this week, right here. ;)
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For last year’s Superbowl, I made these cute maple bacon cupcakes. So, when the boy suggested an impromptu Superbowl gathering at his place on Saturday night; I immediately promised our friends Superbowl cupcakes – specifically, those aforementioned maple bacon cupcakes. But, then I got excited daydreaming about all the possibilities out there for an epic Mancake 2.0 – and hence, the Chocolate Beer Cupcake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting and Bacon “Sprinkles” was born.
The Mancake 2.0
And no, my friends did not complain that they weren’t the promised maple bacon cupcakes of last year – and for the record, both the boy and I thought the Mancake 2.0 was far tastier than the Mancake.
2012 Superbowl cupcakes = huge success.
One of my complaints when I made my Irish Car Bomb cupcakes last year was that the cupcake lacked the beer flavour I’d been hoping for, so I went on the hunt for a) a better recipe for the beer cake and b) a better stout to make it with.
Chocolate Beer Cupcakes
Bake 16-18 minutes at 350° || Makes 24
- 3/4 cup cocoa
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 350 ml stout beer (this is one bottle or ~3/4 of a tall boy) – I used Faxe 10% Extra Strong
- 1 stick butter (melted)
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 3 eggs
- 3/4 cup light sour cream
- DRY MIX: Combine the cocoa, sugar, flour, and baking soda (set aside)
- WET MIX: Combine the beer, butter, and vanilla extract – mix well.
- Add the eggs to the wet mix one at a time (mix after each)
- Add the sour cream to the wet mix
- Pour the dry mix into the wet mix slowly, mixing as you pour
Om nom.
Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
- 3/4 cup shortening
- 12 ounces softened light cream cheese
- 4 cups icing sugar
- 2-4 tablespoons maple syrup
- Cream the shortening and cream cheese together
- Add the icing sugar gradually, mixing as you go
- Add 2 tablespoons maple syrup, try it, and add up to 2 more if you’d like (I used 4)
Bacon Sprinkles
- Bacon – and lots of it.
- Fry the bacon up so it’s nice and crispy (or not-so-crispy if you’re like my boyfriend and like it less charred than I do ;)
- Set aside to cool
- Finely dice/crumble the bacon so you have tiny sprinkle-like shards
- Or, just buy bacon bits if you’re feeling a bit lazy or pressed for time ;)
Once baked, set the cupcakes aside to cool, and then pipe the icing on the cupcakes any way you want – I went with the standard 1M swirls. And, for the (deliciously awesome) finishing touch – sprinkle the bacon bits (and LOTS of them) on top. Serve to your guests, and, if they’re a bunch of football-and-beer-loving men (or women!) keep extra bacon on hand. My boyfriend routinely topped his mancakes with “M’OOOORE BACON! *insert manly grumble here*”
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I love s’mores. In fact, it must be a hereditary thing – my mom, dad, and sister all love them too.
Or it’s because they’re just so damn good. I mean, ooey, gooey, marshmallows with a toasted brown top and melty chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers? Oh my god, yum.
Either way, when I polled my friends to get cupcake suggestions for our New Years’ party (I’m the “cupcake lady”, it’s pretty much expected I show up to parties with cupcakes – I suspect I’d be sent home if I ever came without them ;) a number of them suggested s’more cupcakes.
Okay, I said, sounds interesting!
And delicious.
Interestingly delicious.
The delicious s'more cupcakes in all their glory.
Afterall, how can taking someting like a s’more and turning it into a cupcake be a bad idea? I started thinking about it. Graham cracker crust, chocolate marshmallow cake, and marshmallow icing – sounds delish.
And they were.
I’m not always one to toot my own horn, but OH MY GOD they were so. good. And I think the fact that the 20 s’more cupcakes I brought to the party were eaten in under 30 minutes is a testament to that.
So of course, I have to (and was even asked to!) share the recipe.
There’s three parts to it – the graham cracker crust, the actual cupcake, and the marshmallow icing.
The best part is, it’s a fairly simple recipe to make.
Recipe: S’more Cupcakes
Graham Cracker Crust // 10 minutes at 325° // makes 21 crusts
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1.5 cup graham crumbs
- 1/3 cup melted butter
Mix the sugar and graham crumbs in a bowl, then melt the butter in the microwave (or on the stove!) and add it to the dry mix.
Stir until totally combined.
Next, spoon a heaping tablespoon of the mixture into the cupcake pan (I managed to fill 21), and press it down into the bottom so it’s firm.
I didn’t use cupcake wrappers to bake these in, but you probably could if you really wanted to.
Oh, and I used a shot glass to pack in the crumb mix, which worked pretty well.
Once they’re pressed into cup form, use your fingers to press the crumbs into the edges of the pan.
Pop them into the oven at 325° for ~10 minutes, until they are a little more solid (and a little less crumbly). I heard they’re supposed to be “golden brown” but honestly, I couldn’t see a difference… so about 10 minutes seemed to work for me.
Let them cool completely before filling them.
S’more Cupcakes // 20 minutes at 350° // makes 21 cupcakes with crusts
- The graham cracker crusts from the above step
- Your favourite chocolate cake recipe
- Large marshmallows
I don’t have a “favourite” chocolate cake recipe yet (typically I try new ones most times when I bake – so if you have one you love, let me know! ;) so use whichever recipe you love for the cupcakes. And, I have to be honest – I was lazy and just went with a box mix for these (thanks Betty Crocker!), but they turned out awesome anyway… so you can even go with a box mix if you’re lazy like me.
Spoon a bit of the batter into each graham cracker crust, and then place a large marshmallow into each cup.
Use the remainder of the batter to cover the marshmallows and fill the cups.
Pop them into the oven for ~20 minutes at 350°. Most of the marshmallow will melt away into the cupcake (which makes them really tasty, PS), but some will float all melted to the top and crust over in golden brown toasted marshmallow goodness.
Baking...
To remove, I used a knife to “carve” the edges of the cupcake out of the pan and then gently lifted them out. Flipping the pan (like I did with the first one) only got one cupcake out, and made a MESS with the graham crumbs. Carving them out worked much better – they will stick a little more than usual at the top because of the marshmallow stickyness, so be gentle to avoid ripping the cupcake.
Set them aside to cool, and prep your marshmallow icing.
...baked!
Buttercream & Marshmallow Icing // makes 3.5 (ish) cups
- 1 cup solid white vegetable shortening
- 3 tbsp water (then to thin out to “medium” consistency, I added 3 tsp and 1 tbsp of water after mixing)
- 4 cups icing sugar
- 1 tbsp meringue powder
- 2 jars of marshmallow fluff (approximately 1 3/4 cups) OR 1 jar and 1 cup (this last one was what I used)
The above recipe is the modified version of the Wilton Butercream Icing recipe I use for decorator icing, only I’ve removed the flavouring and replaced it with a ton of marshmallow fluff instead. I used the second marshmallow part – 1 jar of fluff and 1 cup (ish) of melted marshmallows, but this was largely because I decided I needed more fluff in the recipe (since it didn’t taste enough like marshmallows, and, uh, marshmallow icing should TASTE like marshmallows!) and the stores were closed by this point… so I improvised.
I’d recommend using 2 jars of fluff (approximatly 2 cups), because the melted marshmallow was very challenging to mix into the icing and had small chunks of crystalized marshmallow/icing that kept getting stuck in the icing tip – but it TASTED great. Not overpoweringly marshmallow, but you could tell a hint of the flavour was there.
I actually might even try modifying this recipe to have more marshmallow fluff next time – I’m thinking an equal amount of fluff and icing sugar, so 3/4 cup shortening, 2 1/4 tbsp water, 3 cups icing sugar, 3/4 tbsp meringue powder, and 3 cups of marshmallow fluff (so I really need to find a place that sells larger jars!) to make it even more marshmallow flavoured.
Finally, after icing the cupcakes, I cut a bunch of the large marshmallows in half and dipped one end into melted chocolate and let them harden (in the fridge to speed it up).
Then stuck them into the icing for decoration. Simple, right? But cute!
The final product:
Look pretty good, right?
The combination of chocolate, marshmallows, and the graham cracker crust really made them s’more like.
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did – I’ll be making them again, and likely soon.
Part of Sweets For a Saturday #51 & Sweet Treat Thursday .
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I recently baked for my very first wedding – 100 cupcakes and a bride’s cake (for cutting) to be exact – scary, I know.
My friend Vikki’s sister was getting married, and in the summer she asked me to make a World of Warcraft themed cake for the engagement party.
"Cake cutting", taken by the ever-talented Laura Dittmann
It was a huge hit: simple flavours (chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing) but some WOW themed decorations, including a giant purple skeleton guy (it was an action figure) – sorry WOW lovers, I forget the guys name.
Anyway, while at the engagement party (I also played photographer), her mom mentioned something about wedding cupcakes to me. I thought nothing of it, until at the end of the event, Vikki approaches me and goes “Oh, by the way — you’re doing the wedding cupcakes too!”.
Of course, I was flattered they thought I was that good – but also terrified. I’d already agreed to do wedding cupcakes for my childhood friend (who is getting married next summer), but like – that was a WHOLE YEAR away. Lots of time to panic, relax, panic, and relax before it had to be done.
Alyson and Josh were getting married on October 29, and it was almost SEPTEMBER.
Insert panic attack.
The next month or so was filled with me fretting over the number of cupcakes to bake (how many do you need for 140 guests when there’s also desert and a chocolate fountain?), flavours (the bride eventually settled on the same chocolate recipe I used for the engagement cake, and red velvet), and most importantly… what they should look like!
In the end, it took me (and my “team” of helpers who pitched in here and there – thanks mom and boyfriend! ;) approximately 15 hours across three days to do them all.
The two different styles of cupcakes I settled on.
I had the foresight to bake some of the cupcakes (namely the red velvet cupcakes, since they’re so time consuming!) a few days in advance and freeze them (thank god), which really helped with the “OH MY GOD I HAVE TO ICE HOW MANY” freak out I had at 7pm on Friday night when I got home from work.
The Boy ever-so-wonderfully was forced into took on the daunting task of making seven batches of Wilton decorator icing.
Yeah, seven. That’s 21 cups of buttercream icing. Made with 84 cups of icing sugar and 7 cups of shortening, as well as other assorted things (like meringue power and vanilla flavour). That’s a LOT of stuff.
I’m glad he likes me.
I discovered he is also WAY BETTER at mixing the buttercream icing than me – it was sooo creamy, perfectly fluffy, and easy to work with… I told him he could be IcingMaker!(TM) from now on, though he didn’t seem to love that idea.
Icing disaster!
He also makes a bigger mess than me, though, so maybe it’s for the best ;)
After much baking, cursing, baking, cursing, and dropping a freshly iced, perfect cupcake on the floor top-down (my dog narrowly missed on mowing down on the mess of chocolate crumbs and icing – I’m just too quick for her ;) – I finally finished them all.
All 105 of them.
All the cupcakes in all their glory.
That’s a lot of wedding cupcakes! They actually only ordered 100 cupcakes, but I had 5 “just in case” extras:
just in case… I drop one when setting up
just in case… a few get unfix-ably damaged en route
just in case… I get hungry on the way to the reception hall
You get the idea.
Now that the cupcakes were finished, it was time for the daunting task of tackling the bride’s cake – a small, 6″ round cake that was strictly for the purpose of cutting for pictures.
The Bride's Cake - love the toppers she chose!
It took forEVER to bake (like, probably almost 2 hours) because I made it super thick (instead of doing two layers, since I only had one 6″ round pan – and it was TALL)
I piped a ton of spirals, swirls, and dots in white overtop of the white icing (I’ve never used fondant to cover a cake – just cupcakes – and wasn’t about to experiment on this one! It’s on my list to play with it before my next wedding in August 2012!). I also added some roses, green leaves, and silver balls as an accent.
Phew.
It was a lot of work, icing the cake – it didn’t help that I seriously smudged part of my icing design at one point and I had to scrape it all off, re-ice/touch up the side, and then repipe the designs – and by this point, it was like 3 a.m. and I was TIRED. And my hand was, like, all iced out from the wedding cupcakes.
But, in the end I got it all done – and they looked awesome (if I do say so myself ;)
According to my friend, aka sister of the bride — they were also a huge “hit” at the wedding – literally.
Smush! Photo by the ever-talented Laura Dittmann
And, of course, I took a bazillion more photos – my favourite of which are here:
Congrats Alyson & Josh!
