Caramel Frosted Cupcakes

Not a huge departure from what I've done in the past, but who doesn't like chocolate and caramel together?  Just before girl's night this month I realized that we hadn't properly celebrated our friend Jen's birthday.  I remembered from a previous party that Jen had mentioned the only thing that could make these cupcakes any better would be if they had caramel inside them.  Unfortunately I didn't have the time to experiment with this idea (although I'd like to in the future!); I decided the next best thing would be caramel buttercream frosting on the chocolate cupcakes.

I used this cupcake recipe and used the buttercream seen there as a base for the frosting

Caramel Buttercream Frosting

12 oz (approximately) of unwrapped caramel candies
1 tsp water
1 cup butter, room temperature 
5 cups powdered sugar
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract


In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Microwave the caramel and water in a separate bowl until melted and smooth.  Allow it to cool just a little bit and then temper it by adding about 1/2 cup of the butter-sugar mixture until smooth.  Then incorporate the caramel into the rest of the butter and sugar mixture.  Beat in the milk and vanilla and continue mixing until well incorporated.  Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting.

The frosting is really fantastic and goes perfectly with the chocolate cake.  The caramel flavor isn't overwhelmingly strong, but you'll definitely know it's there and once in a while you get a nice chewy little piece of caramel that didn't get fully mixed in.  Yum!

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Thomas' Birthday Cake

Thomas' birthday was two weeks ago, so of course I had to make a special cake for my hubs!  He asked for chocolate cake with mango filling, buttercream frosting and toasted coconut.  I thought white or yellow cake might go with the mango and coconut better than chocolate, but he wanted chocolate, and what the birthday boy wants, the birthday boy gets!  And let's face it, it's pretty hard to go wrong when chocolate is involved!

For the cake I turned to my good friend Fannie Farmer.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

1 2/3 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teasoppon salt

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk + 1 tablespoon lemon juice)

1/2 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

The recipe calls for buttermilk, but I don't normally have this on hand, so I do an easy substitution.  Just use one cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice mixed in.  Allow it to sit for 10-15 minutes so the milk can go sour.  I do this first and then work on the rest of the recipe while I wait for chemistry to work its magic on the milk.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together.  Then add the milk, oil and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.

I used the same handy trick from Alton Brown for baking this cake as I did for Jayme's cake to make sure I could get it out of the pan easily.  Check out the details here.  Add the batter to the pan.  

Pop it into the oven for about 30 minutes (I rotated it halfway through).  Allow to cool a bit before removing from the pan, and allow it to cool completely before removing the paper.  Then do it all again to make the other layer!

Mango Buttercream Filling

I am sad to say that this was kind of a bust.  The flavor was good, but the texture wasn't quite what I wanted and it didn't have much structural integrity as I needed (big problem for the filling of a layer cake!).  Needless to say I was really disappointed, especially since I wanted Thomas' cake to be perfect (he's pretty much the most wonderful husband ever, so I think he deserves an awesome cake, don't you?).  But I wanted to get the cake done before Thomas got home from work and time wasn't going to allow me to try something else.  That being said, I'll give you the gist of what I did so you don't make the same mistake!  Isn't that considerate of me?  Yeah, I thought so, too.  You're welcome.

I used canned mangos to get about 1 cup of mango puree.  I went for canned instead of fresh mangos because mangoes can sometimes be a little fibrous and I wanted to avoid that texture.  I also strained the mangoes before pureeing.

I mixed the mango puree in with a half batch of my buttercream frosting (recipe to follow since I used it to cover the cake).  I think the root of the problem is that mango has a pretty high liquid content which I failed to account for.  I have since explored the interwebs a bit and have concluded that mixing mango with buttercream is simply not a good option for filling, but will try some other means to make a mango filling in the future.

Buttercream Frosting

This is pretty much a fail-safe recipe and you've seen it before, but here it is again, this time increased by half:

1 1/2 cups butter, room temperature 

6 cups powdered sugar 

3 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Beat in the milk and continue mixing until light and fluffy.

Toasted Coconut

1 bag sweetened shredded coconut

 

Set the oven to somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Spread a thin layer of the coconut on a cookie sheet.  

You'll definitely want to use a Silpat or line the sheet with foil just in cake some of the coconut burns, because that would be really unfun to try and clean off later.  Place the coconut in the oven for about 2 minutes, then pull it out, toss it around and pop it back in for another 2 minutes.  It's burns easily, so don't walk away from this.  And make sure you have some extra on hand just in case you do burn some - I didn't even need to use the entire bag to make enough to cover the cake.

Putting it together

I still don't have a pretty serving platter, so I carefully placed one of the cakes on a cutting board.  Since the filling wasn't as firm as I wanted it to be I evened out the top of this cake.  

I also put some buttercream in a bag and snipped the corner off.  I piped it around the edges of the cake to create a dam to hold the mango filling on top of the cake.  Next I poured the mango filling on top of the cake, being very watchful of the edges.  

I soon realized the filling wouldn't be able to support the top layer of cake on its own, so I stuck some toothpicks in around the edges of the cake (sticking halfway up so they would go into the top layer) to support the entire structure.  I very carefully placed the top layer of cake on and then quickly frosted the entire thing so the buttercream could act as a glue to keep the mango in and the whole thing standing tall.  I took handfuls of the coconut and sprinkled it all over the cake and pressed it against the sides.  

Lastly I took some of the remaining buttercream and mixed in some food coloring so I could write on the cake.

Ta-da!

The whole thing tasted really good!

Happy Birthday, Thomas!

No-bake cookies

The hubs has been asking me to make these for a while, so in honor of the Superbowl I decided to find a recipe for some no-bakes to try them out in hopes of having them live up to Thomas' expectations.  I snagged a recipe from a friend and tweaked it just slightly based on a few other recipes I saw.

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk

1/4 pound of butter (1 stick)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup peanut butter
3 cups oatmeal

3/4 cup shredded coconut (optional)

For anyone trying to cut calories, she has this to say about the butter, "It's VERY important to not use tub margarine in this recipe. If you do, the cookies will turn out black and will never properly harden."  So let that be a warning to you all.  And let's face it, butter makes everything better.  And I'd rather put something natural in my body that happens to have a bit more fat in it than something with less fat but is laden with chemicals, so that's my two cents on the matter.

Back to the cookies!

Combine the sugar, milk, butter and cocoa powder in a large sauce pan on the stove.  Heat until butter is melted.  Be sure to stir continuously so nothing burns to the bottom of the pan.  Bring the contents of the pan to a full boil and let it boil for a full minute, timing accurately.

Remove the sauce pan from heat.  Stir in the peanut butter, salt and vanilla until well combined.  Tip: if you give your measuring cup a little shot of Pam before measuring the peanut butter it will be much easier to get out of the measuring cup and clean later.  Add the oatmeal and coconut and stir.  I used regular oatmeal, so I put the lid back on the pan and let the residual heat work on the oatmeal for around 5 minutes to soften it up a bit.  If you used quick cooking 1 minute oats then you don't have to do that.

Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper (or a silpat) and let harden.  If you want to speed that up a bit, pop them in the fridge.

I made two batches, one with coconut and one without.  Both were equally well received.  I thought the coconut gave it a little extra chew and structural integrity and overall liked them more, but both were good.  Most people couldn't really tell the difference between the cookies with and without coconut, so take that for what you will.

We also found out that if you're from Minnesota you call these something else, because upon entering our friends' house and announcing that we had brought no-bakes we were met with a resounding chorus of "Oaties!!".

And yes, they did live up to Thomas' expectations, so this recipe lives on to be used again another day. 

Chocolate Cupcakes

Last night was the sometimes-monthly-girl's-night and I got to bring dessert (yay!).  Of course I had to make something chocolaty, although the hubs said no matter what I made it would also be discriminatory.  He says that we're discriminating by not inviting the boys to these gatherings, especially since they always invite the girls (even to poker night!).  To retaliate, the boys ate out and went bowling while the girls had dinner in and drank wine.

Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand: chocolate.  I decided to make cupcakes (the hubs keeps saying I need to branch out from cookies, so I am trying to master the art of cupcakes) and use a new recipe since my usual one, while very yummy, results in a somewhat crumbly texture that can get a tad messy.

I picked a new recipe for the cupcakes but decided to stick with my usual buttercream frosting.  The cupcakes came out so moist and had great flavor.  They also came out less crumbly than the other recipe.  Someone commented last night was that it was one of their favorites of the desserts that I've made.  Given that I rarely bring home leftovers of my baked goods, that tells me it's a keeper!

Chocolate Cupcakes

2 cups white sugar
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla.  Mix for 2 minutes on medium speed of mixer.  Add the boiling water last, and mix it in well.  The batter will be really thin - that's okay!

Place cupcake papers into mini-muffin pan and almost fill the papers with batter.  I put my batter into a really big measuring cup that has a spout so I could pour the batter in and it worked out quite nicely.

Bake for 10 minutes.  They are done baking when a toothpick comes out clean.  Remove from pan and allow to cool on wire rack.

Those indentations on the top are from flipping them onto the cooling rack.  But the frosting is going to cover them, so it's no big deal.

Makes about a million mini-cupcakes.  Okay, you caught me, it doesn't make a million.  But it makes about 70, which is still a lot!


Buttercream Frosting


1 cup butter, room temperature
4 cups powdered sugar
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract


In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend the sugar in one cup at a time.  You may need to stop and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl a few times to make sure it all gets thoroughly incorporated.  Beat in the milk and continue mixing until light and fluffy.  Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting.

The final result:

Both of these recipes are very closely based on some that I found online:
Cupcakes
Frosting