Nutella: Round 2

My hubby is transitioning jobs this weekend and requested some cupcakes to give to some of his co-workers as parting gifts. His boss is a Nutella fan, so I revamped a recipe that I had tried before.

The first time I made Nutella cupcakes I used a recipe for a Nutella cake and a Nutella frosting from an online source I can no longer find. The frosting was good. The cake was dry. I filled the cupcakes with chocolate ganache, drizzled the frosted cakes with the ganache as well and topped them with toasted hazelnuts. The cupcakes looked and tasted great. They also got rave reviews from my family. I didn't think they had enough Nutella flavor (and also the cake turned out dry), so I knew I would do something different the next time. Here's my first batch. Forgive the bad picture.

This time I decided to use the chocolate cake recipe from BHG I have been raving about. I also decided to fill the cupcakes with straight up Nutella.

I used a new Nutella frosting recipe from My Baking Addiction as I can't find the first one I used and topped the cakes with either toasted hazelnuts or a hazelnut chocolate chunk.

The first frosting recipe I used was a lot smoother than this recipe, but I like the flavor of this one better. They are both very decadent. It's Nutella. What da ya expect?

Oh, and the cupcakes were a hit with Matthew's co-workers. They're a hit with me too.

Baking Day

Last week I got to spend the majority of my Monday baking. Matthew took the boys to the park and I had the whole kitchen to myself. (Thank you Love!) I made three different cakes and four frosting recipes. I felt like I was on Cupcake Wars. Here are my cakes cooling.

The first cake I baked was a pink lemonade cake with a pink lemonade frosting. The recipes call for actual powdered pink lemonade drink mix and they taste just like pink lemonade. I've been feeling like I should decorate my cupcakes a little more. Just frosting is getting a little boring. The recipe for these cupcakes called for a dusting of pink lemonade mix. I thought they tasted "lemonady" enough so I sprinkled them with white nonpareils. I made the mistake of piping the frosting on all my cakes and then adding the sprinkles. Most of them fell off. I either need to add them as soon as I've piped or make my frosting less stiff. These cupcakes adorned my brunch table for a friend's visit.

The second cake I baked was a hummingbird cake. I used a gluten free recipe from Cupcake Project using blanched almond four. Fabulous - absolutely fabulous! I also loved that it only called for the fruit and some honey and no extra sugar. It didn't need it at all. I chose to frost with a simple cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I used my favorite recipe from BHG and added a half teaspoon of cinnamon. Next time I may leave the cinnamon out of the frosting.

The third cake I made was supposed to be a gingerbread cake. It turned out more like a molasses cake in my opinion. I wasn't sure what I was going to do for the frosting. First I tried making a molasses frosting. I based the recipe off of a honey frosting recipe I've done before. This was a complete disaster. The consistency and color were beautiful, but the flavor was horrible. I threw it out. There was no salvaging that one.

Next, I tasted one of the molasses cupcakes with the cinnamon cream cheese frosting I had already made. It was just okay. As I had mixed the batter and baked these cakes I smelled a hint of butterscotch. I decided to make a butterscotch frosting based on a white chocolate frosting recipe I have.

Butterscotch Frosting:
6 oz. butterscotch chips
1/3 cup whipping cream
1 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 - 2 cups powdered sugar

- Leave butter out for 30 minutes.
- Heat whipping cream to simmering and pour over butterscotch chips. Leave for 5 min.
- Stir to combine and then leave another 15 min.
- Gradually beat butter into butterscotch mixture.
- Gradually beat in powdered sugar until frosting reaches piping consistency.


As if that wasn't enough, I decided to make a brown sugar drizzle to fill the cakes with.

Brown Sugar Drizzle:

Bring 1 stick of butter, 1 cup of packed brown sugar and 1/4 cup of milk to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla and let cool to thicken.

This drizzle is like caramel, but not as smooth. Also, it has a distinct brown sugar flavor. This recipe remains grainy. If you prefer smoother textures, make a traditional caramel sauce.

I used a squirt bottle to fill my cupcakes with the drizzle. These work better than ziplocks for fillings that are a little looser.

I used a simple 2D tip to pipe the butterscotch frosting on top. I wish I could have thought of some cute way to decorate these. Maybe a molasses chew or a butterscotch candy on top.

I made this particular cake for a friend who loves spiced cake and caramel. She loved it. My hubby and I also loved them. Delish!

Well, I finally did it. I ate frosting... butterscotch frosting... all by itself... a significant amount of frosting... maybe two or three cupcakes worth. It was too much to throw away, but not enough to want to save, so I piped it into my mouth. I didn't feel sick after, but I did feel a little guilty - but just a little.

Chocolate French Buttercream

This week I tried another fancy buttercream. I chose to do a chocolate French buttercream to go with a basic chocolate cake recipe from BHG I've been wanting to try. If I haven't mentioned this before, most of the BHG recipes I try are from a special edition magazine they did on cupcakes.

This chocolate cake recipe is terrific. Why am I not surprised? So far, everything I've tried from BHG has been great. I made the mistake, however, of filling my cups too high and the cakes baked up over my cupcake liners like big flat hats; not very nice to look at. While I like bigger cupcakes (it makes it easier to eat just one), I'll be careful not to over-fill with this recipe again. Hmm, maybe I should try making jumbo cupcakes.

The buttercream was the fun part. I got my recipe from CDKitchen. It had a five start rating. I started off by melting my sugar and whipping whole eggs.

This frosting, like the Italian buttercream, is a lot softer and lighter than American buttercream. It has the texture of whipped cream. It's also way less sweet. Before I flavored it with chocolate it was almost not sweet enough.

I was a little panicked when I added the butter at the end of the process. The mixture was all soupy. I thought I might have done something wrong and ruined a whole batch. Luckily, I was in a very experimental kind of mood. I turned up my mixer a little higher and just let it keep beating. Several minutes later I could tell that it was thickening. Whew! That was a close one.

After I got the consistency I wanted I added a few ounces of melted semi-sweet chocolate to the buttercream. I meant to weigh out 3 ounces or so, but I couldn't find my scale so I just eyeballed it. I think I ended up with 1/3 to 1/2 cup. I can't believe it worked. I always wonder how chefs on TV can just eyeball stuff and dump it in (not that I'm anything like a chef on TV). Anyway, it looked right, so I went with it.

When it came time to frost my cupcakes I decided to fill them with the buttercream first. I then stumbled my way through a couple of piping techniques. What I really needed was a big round piping tip. Is it just me or is every store in every city always out of basic big round piping tips? I'll have to order one online I guess. I'm usually able to get away with cutting a hole in the corner of a ziplock bag. Cooked buttercreams are so delicate though and my ziplock technique didn't work as well, but I did the best I could.

Both recipes are keepers. The chocolate cake I'll do over and over. The frosting I'll probably reserve for special occasions or when I'm baking for someone who doesn't like overly sweet and heavy frosting.

Pistachio Blunders

I put two recipes together to make what I thought was going to be a spectacular pistachio blueberry cupcake with a crumb topping instead of frosting. I should have taken more pictures along the way, but got caught up in the many steps of this endeavor.

I started off with a recipe I found in Food Network Magazine for a pistachio tea cake made with finely pulsed pistachios. Instead of topping each cupcake with a cherry like the recipe said, I decided to top them with fresh blueberries and a pistachio crumble that goes on top of a coffee cake. I found this second recipe in a cookbook that Costco was giving out for free one day. I've made the original coffee cake recipe before and it is fantastic.

Here's the the crumb topping recipe:
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp butter, melted

While my hopes were high for this cupcake, I was brought low fast. The original pistachio cake recipe instructed me to bake the cupcakes for 8 minutes and then add the cherries. I'm guessing so they wouldn't sink to the bottom of the cakes. I followed that direction and pulled out the cakes at 8 minutes to add my blueberries and crumb topping. I baked them another 12 minutes just like the recipe said.

The original recipe for the crumb topped coffee cake baked for an hour. My crumb topping was no where near crusty enough. Also, the cupcakes that should have been done were still all gooey. This is what I get for combining two pretty different recipes.

After lamenting for a while, I put the cupcakes back in the oven hoping they would cook through and the crumble would brown a little more. It all worked out in the end.

I was hoping for some authentic pistachio flavor out of these. I mostly tasted coconut and blueberry. The next time I'm craving pistachio flavor I might try a pistachio pudding cupcake recipe.

Italian Buttercream

I finally purchased a stand mixer. Don't be jealous, but I found it on Craig's List; a KitchenAid, brand new, in the box, for $140. Yay for that!

I've been waiting for this lovely machine to try my hand at Italian and French butterceam recipes as you need eggs/egg whites whipping as you slowly drizzle in a hot sugar syrup. I wanted to try Italian first as I have never tasted it. I used Martha Stewart's Grand Marnier Italian Buttercream recipe, but omitted the Grand Marnier - this time around anyway.

Meringue style frosting is a lot more involved than your run of the mill butter and powdered sugar frosting (American buttercream). I had two to three things going at the same time.

Here's my stand mixer working at the egg whites with sugar syrup and my hand mixer getting ready to go at the butter.

This buttercream is wonderful. If you like whipped cream or meringue kind of flavor and texture this is the buttercream for you. My hubby, who likes more of a whipped cream frosting rather than a buttery one loved this. Funny as there is more butter in this recipe than in your basic American buttercream. A friend of mine thought it was a lot like a cream puff filling. Might have to tackle cream puffs next - or better yet, make a cream puff cupcake.

While the frosting recipe was the star of this show, I still wanted to try a new cake. I went with a basic vanilla cake from BHG. This recipe is on my favorites list. It's almost biscuit-like. The texture is nice and dense just like I like. The cake went great with the frosting, but a little too boring for me.

Because I had so much Italian buttercream left over (the recipe makes a huge batch) I tried another cupcake a few days later. I was worried about the frosting and read up online. It will keep 3 to 5 days. I stored it in my fridge in an airtight container, brought it back to room temperature and re-whipped it in my stand mixer. It was like the day I made it.

So the second cake I made was part of a recipe for a lemon meringue pie cupcake (again from BHG). I followed the recipe for the baking of the cakes, but went in my own direction by filling each cupcake with lemon curd and topping with my Italian buttercream.

The original recipe had you just add a small dollop of curd on top of each cake and then top with real meringue.

My one gripe about this cupcake recipe is the consistency. No matter how much I baked them (I nearly over-baked them) the tops were left a little mushy - like they weren't cooked. The flavor, however, was great. The finished cupcake reminded me of a piece of lemon meringue pie with less lemon tang. Maybe a homemade curd instead of a store bought one would have helped. I wish I could have been more creative with decorating the cakes. I wasn't feeling inspired so I kept it simple.

Payday Cupcakes

I love Payday candy bars. When I found a recipe for a Payday cupcake I scrawled it on my list of cupcakes to try. I had planned on following the recipe as closely as possible but ended up deviating in a few places. You can find the original recipe on Your Cup of Cake. It's a basic white cake frosted with caramel frosting, topped with salted peanuts and a caramel drizzle.

This recipe calls for a doctored white cake mix. I went ahead and used the website's directions instead of my own favorite way of doctoring cake mixes. The cake turned out really soft and fluffy and crumbly. I know some people really like a soft and fluffy cake, but I like denser cakes, so next time I'm sticking with my own way.

One thing I did my own way was use my own caramel frosting recipe. Most caramel frosting recipes end up tasting pretty similar and my version calls for milk instead of cream. Here's my version.

Caramel Frosting:

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 - 2 cups powdered sugar

- Bring brown sugar, butter and milk to a boil over medium heat
- Cook and stir 2 minuters
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla
- Cool to lukewarm
- Gradually beat in powdered sugar until frosting reaches spreading consistency

You know how I like really thick frosting? Well, this time I went too far. The frosting looked great and I thought I'd make it even better by adding a little more powdered sugar. I thought I had done a good thing until I tried to pipe it. It was just too thick. It would barely come through the piping tip and then it pushed my tip right through my ziplock bag. Instead of putting the batch back in the bowl and beating a little milk into it, I decided to spread it on then and roll the whole thing in the salted peanuts. I ended up having to really push the peanuts into the frosting to make them stick, but it worked out.

I originally wanted to make the cakes look like the picture on the recipe, but as my frosting was unpipable (yes, that's a made up word) I opted for a simpler decor. I think my version looks more like an actual payday, but they are not as pretty as the original recipe.

I finished each cupcake with a drizzle of store bought caramel ice cream topping (another slight deviation). After tasting one, I added additional salt over the top of all the cupcakes. Even after that I thought they could have probably used more salt.

Terrific flavor! I'm glad I went with the white cake. I had contemplated substituting a peanut butter cake, but I think that would have made it too overwhelmingly peanutty (another made up word).

Birthday Cupcakes

I made myself some birthday cupcakes this past weekend. Maybe making your own birthday cake is not your idea of a good time. It sure is mine. It was my pleasure to make cupcakes for my special day and to share with my friends, being addicted to baking and all.

I made orange-scented chocolate cupcakes. I had intended them to be dark chocolate, but in the end they just tasted like chocolate - and orange of course.

I really wanted to taste the orange so I used both orange extract and fresh orange zest and juice. There are many things I will do differently if I ever make these cupcakes again. One thing I'll cut out is the extract. It gives the cake a bit of an artificial taste. I used the extract in the cake, in the frosting and in the bark adorning each cupcake. It worked well in the bark, pretty well in the cake, but not so well in the frosting. I decided to use the extract in the frosting instead of the zest because I didn't want pieces of zest in my teeth. I think that is a risk worth taking to get that natural orange flavor.

My cake was a dark chocolate cake recipe made with some strong coffee to compliment the chocolate. The last time I made this cake it was darker. The recipe calls for dark chocolate chips which I omitted this time. Maybe they make a bigger difference than I thought. I also added a teaspoon of orange zest and a teaspoon of orange extract. As far as the orange flavor goes, it worked like I wanted it to. It was definitely an orange-scented chocolate cake and not overpowered by orange flavor. I added the orange flavoring right after adding the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar.

For the filling I tried a recipe using sweetened condensed milk. I adapted it from a lime flavored filling. I added a tablespoon of orange zest and 1/3 cup of fresh orange juice to the milk and put it in the fridge to thicken. Well, it never thickened. I tried to pour it down the middle of my cakes anyway and the cake just soaked it up. Not good. I think I've made this mistake before. To fix the problem I quickly made some whipped cream frosting and mixed it with some of the condensed milk mixture. The flavor was great and the consistency was good, so I piped it into the cakes. Unfortunately, the bottom of the cupcakes were a little mushy from the first filling attempt.

The frosting was a basic chocolate frosting recipe using melted chocolate. I used unsweetened chocolate instead of semi-sweet to get a dark chocolate flavor. It didn't really work. It tasted almost the same as it always does. I added a couple of teaspoons of orange extract. This is where the extract tasted the most artificial. Luckily the fresh zest and juice in the filling made the whole cupcake work better and taste more natural.

When I first thought about making an orange-scented chocolate cupcake I thought about garnishing with candied orange zest. I looked up a few recipes and decided to scrap that idea as I didn't want to put so much work into a garnish. I chose to make an orange dark chocolate almond bark instead. It is so easy. Cover a baking sheet with foil, sprinkle whatever nuts or goodies you want running through the candy, melt your chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave (be careful not to burn it), mix in any flavoring, and pour over the nuts. Stick it in your fridge until hard and then break into pieces. It looks great and tastes great too. I love when easy things are so impressive.

Will I ever make this cupcake again? Maybe if someone requests it. I do know what I'll do differently the next time.

Simplicity

Sometimes I feel like the cupcakes I come up with are a bit complicated, especially when I'm layering flavor upon flavor. While the idea of making a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting is boring to me, I do think there's something to keeping things simple. Yesterday I went with a simple almond cupcake.

I used an almond cake recipe from the back of my Hello Cupcake! book. I used a plain white frosting that called for a bit of almond extract and topped the cupcakes with toasted almonds.

The cake portion turned out to be the best cake I've ever baked. It was moist and the texture was absolutely perfect (not too dense, not too light), and it was fluffy to boot. The recipe called for almond paste instead of almond extract. It made a huge difference. The almond flavor was definitely present, but more subtle than when I use almond extract. The natural almond oil in the paste also contributed to making a moister cake. I give all the credit to the recipe.

The frosting ended up complimenting the cake instead of the other way around. I've found that most people like it that way (I'm one of those frosting people that likes a little cake with my frosting). This is the first shortening based frosting I've tried. The beauty of this frosting is that it is not too sweet. It's the perfect frosting to let any cake shine. The frosting is a Better Homes and Gardens recipe.

Creamy White Frosting
1 cup shortening
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 pound powdered sugar
3 to 5 Tbsp milk

- Beat shortening vanilla and almond extract for 30 seconds.
- Gradually add 2 cups sugar.
- Add 2 Tbsp milk.
- Gradually beat in remaining sugar.
- Add enough milk a tablespoon at a time until frosting reaches spreading consistency.

I used a star tip to pipe several flowers over the cakes. I got this idea off of Pinterest. It was so easy; just squeeze out frosting right in the middle of the cake until you get the size flower you want, then stop squeezing. Repeat the process surrounding the middle flower. Each frosted cupcake immediately got a small piling of toasted almonds.

I toasted the almonds at 375 for 4 or 5 minutes. Toasting nuts brings out their nuttiness. I like to do this when nuts are topping cupcakes. I actually prefer not toasting nuts when they are going in a batter or being cooked in a dish.

I'd call this cupcake attempt my most successful thus far.