Baking into Halloween

I always say holidays are a perfect excuse to bake. Not just to bake but bake with themes and decorations. The pumpkin craze continues and I still wanted to make something with pumpkin but without actual pumpkin in it. Long story short, one of the people I'm baking for cannot have actual pumpkin. To the spice cabinet!

All I needed was cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger to give it that fall/pumpkin flavor. You can even by Pumpkin Pie Spice at the grocery store.

For once, I didn't want to go too crazy with the cupcakes so I made a simple yellow cake and a simple-ish frosting. I used shortening in the frosting to help it hold a little longer too and you can't even tell the difference. There's vegetable shortening but and vegetable shortening with butter flavor. I suggest the butter so it's not too greasy and actually tastes like what it's supposed to.

One reason I didn't want to go too crazy is because I had fun Halloween stuff to add. 

Found these at HomeGoods. Make sure you don't rip the entire seal off, otherwise you may end up with way too many sprinkles on a cupcake. 

Anyway, I added some of the pumpkin spice mixture to the cake batter but mainly saved it for the frosting. A last-minute thought was also adding some brown sugar with did add a lot without overpowering anything. 

The frosting also had a chance to stand out by using a simple yellow cake recipe. All that's left is to frost, decorate and enjoy!

Wait until you see the cookies I made with the leftover frosting. Happy Halloween!

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Super Cupcakes for a Super Birthday

I was asked a very big favor a month ago and was very excited. I was asked to make cupcakes for a five-year-old's birthday and not just any kind of cupcakes (why be boring?), super hero cupcakes.

I found out he likes chocolate so I obviously had to make a chocolate cake but I didn't stop there. I added cream cheese and Nutella in the center. It definitely broke up the chocolate without losing too much of the chocolate flavor. Different textures usually help. 

My original intention was to put a hot chocolate mousse in the middle, but that didn't go so well.

Now onto the decorating. I made a normal buttercream frosting and divvied it up to make different colors per super hero. Spiderman obviously got red, Superman was red, blue and yellow (I bought the appropriate cupcake paper too) and Batman was blue. I found some toothpicks with the characters and decided to add M&M's on top, for another different texture. 

Needless it say it was a success and I'm really excited for more themed cupcakes. Shoot me an email if you're looking for something sweet for your next event! In the meantime, I can't wait for October...

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Break me off a piece of that ...

I think that Kik-Kats are kind of underrated. They're not usually the first thing people think of when you say candy bar but I realized it's the perfect mix of chocolate and crunch and good consistency for a frosting. I've also had requests for red velvet cake and instead of the normal cheesecake frosting I mixed it up with some crumbled kit-kats. Simple, but delicious.

I've done red velvet before - for Valentine's Day, how cliche! - and I wanted to mix it up. I did before by adding chopped up white chocolate and chocolate chips to the frosting and white chocolate chips in the batter but anyone can make a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting. My creativity escaped and I've been thinking about what I can make with Kit-Kats and this was perfect. I LOOOVVEE Red Velvet and balancing it out with a buttery frosting with the milk chocolate from the Kit-Kats balanced it out pretty well. 

I've got quite the knack for turning candy into cupcakes. Any more ideas??

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Why don't you build me up, buttercup baby...

Now that the Foundations are in my head...

Here's a take on a couple of the best candies around; peanut butter cups and Reese's Pieces. I've always made chocolate chip cookies with Reese cups in the middle but now I've turned it into a cupcake. And I couldn't just put any old frosting on top, had to add some crunch and compliment it with it's hard shelled crunchy counterpart. 

I put them in a ziplock and crumpled them up a bit, not too much so they'd still be crunchy and added them to my normal butter, powdered sugar and vanilla frosting and it's pretty epic. But before all of that, we can't forget about the hidden treasure that is the peanut butter cup in the center of the cupcake. 

Too much? No such thing. Right out of the oven they were good and still gooey but even better after a night in the refrigerator. I've always put chocolate in the refrigerator - taking after my father who does the same - and the fridge helps hold everything together. 

And there you have it, death by peanut butter. The Reese's Pieces on top balance out the rich chocolate in the center while still keeping it in the same candy family and it's perfect for a late night sweet tooth.

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