Apple Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Yet another recipe adapted from Canadian Living. I baked this for my boss's birthday. This was a perfect Thanksgiving/fall recipe and the aroma while baking was AMAZING.  My brother's verdict who is a taco-bites with occasional desserts kind-of-person was: "This is surprisingly good!". Sharing this at work, I got a lot of feedback that this actually wasn't too sweet, and smelt very good!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla 
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup milk with 1 tsp lemon juice allow to stand for 5 minutes)
• 1 1/2 cups of cake-and-pastry flour (or all-purpose flour)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp of ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp of ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg
• 1 medium-sized apple grated, drain juices (I used honeycrisp Apple). 

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Celsius. 
2. In butter mixture: Beat butter, and gradually add brown sugar. Add egg, vanilla and beat until well mixed. Combine buttermilk. Set aside.
3. For dry mixture: In a separate bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. 
4. Stir in dry mixture gradually (beating between additions) until well combined. Beat in apple mixture. 
5. Bake for 17 minutes, or until cake tester comes out dry. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (125 g, or 3 ounces) of cream cheese
• 1/2 stick (2 ounces) of unsalted butter
• 1 cups confectioner's (or icing) sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

** this makes just enough icing for the amount of cupcakes in the recipe above 

Steps

1. Beat together cream cheese and butter until fluffy.
2. Beat in vanilla and cinnamon.
3. Gradually add confectioner's sugar (half a cup at a time), beating between additions. Scrape down sides as necessary.
4. Ice cupcakes (once cooled down) with a 1M Wilton Tip. 

These were the honeycrisp apples I bought from farmer's market. 

STEP BY STEP ILLUSTRATED INSTRUCTIONS »

Celestial Chocolate Cupcakes

I've always been fascinated by events in the night sky. I took a course in university undergrad called "Origins of the University" - we studied how stars are born and how they die, beginnings of the universe and how to determine the chemical composition of distant planets and stars. 

Nowadays, I like receiving the "astronomy events" updates from National Geographic on my Facebook feed, and there's a LOT happening in August (e.g. meteor showers!).  So we thought we'd dedicate this cupcake post to the celestial events that happen in August. 

I was inspired by these celestial cupcakes I saw on the Canadian Living website. However, we decided to use a vanilla buttercream instead of plain frosting, and milk chocolate stars instead of fondant. I've never used "Royal Blue" icing colour before, but it produced this beautiful deep blue colour reminiscent of the night sky. This was so much fun to bake and decorate!

 

Celestial Chocolate Cupcakes 

Ingredients:

• 1 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1 cups granulated white sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
• 1/2 cup 2% whole milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup boiling water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line cupcake tray with paper liners
2. In a bowl, add your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt and instant coffee. Stir with whisk. 
3. In a separate bowl, beat your wet ingredients: milk, vegetable oil, eggs, vanilla. 
4. Add wet ingredients gradually to dry ingredients bowl and beating with a mixer on medium. Add boiling water and beat.
5. Fill your cupcake liners 3/4ths full of cupcake batter. 
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before icing. 

Royal Blue Vanilla Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 4 cups confectioner's sugar (aka icing sugar)
• 2.5 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• 2.5 tbsp 2% milk, slightly colder than room temperature. 
• Royal blue icing colouring and black icing colouring. 

Directions:

1. Cream butter on medium speed until smooth.
2. Add confectioner's sugar a half cup at a time and beating on medium speed. 
3. Stir in vanilla and salt.
4. Add milk until you have the desired consistency - add more milk if you want softer frosting add less if you'd like it firmer. 
5. Add royal blue colouring first, THEN darken it with very little black icing colouring. 
6. Put in icing bag, then use Wilton 1M icing tip to frost your cupcake in a swirl pattern. 

Chocolate Stars

You need: 

• Yellow milk chocolate wafers
• Star chocolate mould

Directions:

1. Melt the chocolate wafers in the microwave 30 seconds at a time. 
2. Fill the melted chocolate into the star mould.
3. Put in freezer for about 5 minutes, or until solid.

The cupcakes in my special "cupcake transporter caddy" from Wilton.

STEP BY STEP RECIPE ILLUSTRATED INSTRUCTIONS >> 

Vanilla Cupcakes

I baked cupcakes for a friend's birthday. She specifically asked for "vanilla cupcakes" so I pulled up a classic Martha Stewart recipe for cupcakes. The recipe is actually not to sweet and the cupcakes plain are quite delicious!

Recipe from Martha Stewart.

Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour (not self rising)
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 12 tbsp unsalted butter (room temperature) or 1½ sticks of butter
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 ¼ cups milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 
2. Prepare dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt, whisk together and set aside. 
3. Prepare wet ingredients: combine butter and sugar with electric mixer until fluffy (4 minutes). Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. 
4. Alternate dry flour mixture & milk INTO wet ingredients: Start and end with flour. 
5. Fill cupcake paper liners ⅔ full. 
6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. 

Banana-Pecan Cupcakes

I baked Banana Pecan Cupcakes for my co-worker Stacey's birthday. I wanted to try something different other than red velvet cupcakes! This recipe was adapted from Martha Stewart. 

This goes well with cream cheese frosting or caramel buttercream. 

Tiramisu Cupcakes

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Tiramisu Cupcake Recipe.

Tiramisu cupcakes were one of the more challenging recipes I've tried since it incorporates different techniques I hadn't used in baking before. This recipe certainly requires a bit more time than your usual vanilla, chocolate or red velvet cupcakes and I had a hard time finding some of the ingredients (e.g. Mascarpone Cheese for the frosting).

Mascarpone Frosting

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Mascarpone Frosting Recipe.

Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Shredded Toasted Coconut

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Toronto Desserts: Prairie Girl Bakery

So I had the opportunity to visit the infamous Prairie Girl Bakery which specializes in Cupcakes. They had a variety of flavours, special cupcake of the day and everything was freshly made.

One of my good friends had brought cupcakes from Prairie Girl Bakery at a Girls Night we had a while back. So I decided to visit this downtown location at King St East and Victoria Street intersection.

I ended up getting the mini ones and they were delicious!!

Vanilla/Vanilla and Red Velvet/Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Prairie Girl Cupcake Bakery

The store front!

Menu and service.

Their "cupcake wall" of different cupcake protraits

Their large cupcakes were actually HUGE with generous amounts of icing.

Serviced on purple napkins, very classy!

Halloween Party Inspiration

I'm putting together a few ideas for a Halloween Party that I'm hosting this year at my new condo downtown. Having my own space has been wonderful as I can organize, decorate and clean to my heart's desire without parents looming over and questioning everything I'm doing (they're not big on events and holidays). 

I've been browsing Pinterest and WeHeartIt as well as many mommy blogs for potential ideas for a Halloween Party. 

In this Entry:

1. Halloween Desserts
2. DIY Halloween Decor
3. Halloween Table Setting Ideas

Girls Night, Cupcakes and Bubbly

Trying to move on from a recent relationship break up, I invited the girls over for a Girl's Night at the new Condo I recently moved into: