Cupcake Friday: Italian cakes!

This has been an unusual week, thus there is an unusual cupcake recipe this Friday: Italian cupcakes.  They were originally going to be funfetti, mostly because I wanted vanilla cake.  Unusual thing number one: I'm usually a chocolate girl.  Even though I had a perfectly good, untried, funfetti recipe, I decided to go ahead and veganize it.  Unusual thing number two: I used a flax egg instead of applesauce.  Then I realized we didn't have proper sprinkles to make the funfetti magic. Oh, I really must buy some soon!  After all, how can one call themselves a baker sans sprinkles?  After scooping the batter into my new silicone cupcake holders, I discovered some quite ancient christmas themed sprinkles...and thus Italian cupcakes were born!

The cupcakes are vanilla, there's the white.  The sprinkles had red and green.  Instead of looking out of place, I decided to jump at the chance to honor my studies and dub them "Italian cakes".  Then, unusual thing number three happened.  I decided to forego frosting.

*pause*

Shocking no?  I'm usually such a frosting girl, but this week, call it laziness or whatever, I decided to present bare cupcakes.  And you know what?  They were FANTASTIC!

I hardly missed the frosting because the cupcakes were so full of flavor with an absolutely to-die-for texture.  It's rare that I will comment on the texture of a cupcake, usually they have a, well, cakey texture.  These cupcakes, however, were moist and dense, basically everything you would want in a cupcake.

Actually, I think these would make positively brilliant normal sized cakes with the appropriate adjustments to proportions/baking times.  With that recipe, I'd totally add frosting.  A proper cake must have frosting.

photo source

Italian Cupcakes (original recipe from How Sweet It Is)
makes 6 cupcakes


4 tbsp Earth Balance

1/2 cup sugar (I used 1/4 cup brown and 1/4 cup white)

1 flax egg (1 tbsp flax + 3 tbsp water)

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/6 cup almond milk

Sprinkles!!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream earth balance and sugar(s) together until light and fluffy, about a minute depending on how melty your butter is when you start.  Add in flax egg and vanilla and beat until combined.  It will still be slightly water-y, but you want as much as possible to be absorbed into the batter.

Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Add in half the ingredients, mix gently until just combined. Add in the milk, mix in.  Add in the rest of the dry ingredients, mix until just combined.

Pour batter into cupcake liners until they are 2/3 full, about a tablespoon and a half of batter per liner.
Bake for 18-20 minutes.  They are done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

What kind of theme cupcake would you make?

Cupcake Friday: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Coconut

I'm proud of myself this week.  And you should be too.  I didn't look to Crumbs to come up with these cupcakes as I usually do.  No, this time I came up with the flavor combinations by myself, asking friends and family what they thought would make a good cupcake.  The frostings, fillings and combinations were truly my brain child this week.

I'm obviously making great strides in my cupcake baking.  Accomplishment number one of the summer, sorted.

In all seriousness though, not only were these the most "original" cupcakes I came up with, but they were also the most delicious cupcakes I have made thus far.  Everyone who ate them thought so.  Which is part of the reason that you should make these right now.  Seriously, they are that good.

Plus, I got to use my new cupcake holders from Sur La Table, total win!

The cupcake base was my old standby with whole wheat pastry flour and canola oil.  I used one tbsp of brown sugar.

Peanut Butter Frostingy-glaze
makes enough for one cupcake heavily frosted, or two lightly glazed


1 Tbsp Almond Milk (I'm sure you could use other types of milk, but I only have almond)
1.5 - 2 Tbsp Peanut Butter (I used White Chocolate Wonderful)
Dash of sweetener

Pour almond milk into a small bowl/large cup and add 1.5 Tbsp of peanut butter.  Stir with a fork until the mixture begins to come together.  Depending on desired thickness, add in more peanut butter.  Stir until the almond milk is totally blended into the peanut butter and has a runny, but slightly firm, consistency.

For the filling of this cupcake, I used some straight-up peanut butter, which contrasted quite nicely with the light-er frosting.  Since I used an already sweet peanut butter, I did not feel the need to add anything to it in order to give it a more traditional frosting flavor, though someone using natural peanut butter may want to.  Try it before you add it!

Chocolate Fuge-Frosting Filling
makes enough to frost one cupcake or fill two


1 Tbsp coco powder
1 tsp Agave
1 tsp vanilla
generous splash of water (~1/4 tsp maybe?)

Mix the first three ingredients together in a small bowl until they are fully blended.  Add in the water slowly, mixing as you go.  Start with less water, the more you add, the softer the frosting will get.  There will be a little hardening afterwards, but not considerable amounts (unless you refrigerate/freeze it!).

Vanilla-Coconut Frosting
makes enough for one cupcake


1 Tbsp Coconut Butter (soft/melted)
1/2 tsp Agave
1 tsp vanilla
splash of water

Mix together coconut butter and agave.  Add in vanilla, mix until it has all been absorbed and looks almost crumbly in texture.  Slowly add in some water and mix while you go.  The final texture should be slightly spreadable and slightly crumbly.  You may need to use your fingers to help mold the frosting on.

To make the coconut cupcake extra pretty (the coconut butter frosting tends to look a wee bit mucky), add some coconut shavings onto the top of the cupcake.

What cupcake flavor would YOU create?

Cupcake Friday: Inspiration Station

Brilliant rhyme, no?  Okay, so maybe it's not such a brilliant rhyme, but due to another mind searingly hot week, for this edition of cupcake friday we'll be talking about places to get inspiration for your cupcakes!  Sometimes it's easy for me to think of what kind of cupcake I want, yet other weeks I have absolutely no clue.  Generally, my inspiration is found through a mix of blogs, books and famous cupcake-eries. If you want to inspire yourself to make some gorgeous cupcake creations, here are my recommendations.

Blogs/Internet

Chocolate Covered Katie - I always use the single serving cupcake as my base recipe for my creations.  It makes the perfect amount, is vegan and endlessly adaptable.  There are also a good variety of inspiring variations on here, not to mention good vegan frostings!

Annie's Eats - This entire blog is a baking inspiration, but I adore her cupcakes.  They are gorgeous, each looks like a little work of art.  I look at this blog when I want to create some impressive, unique and gourmet cupcakes.

Tastespotting/Foodgawker - Just entire in cupcake and prepare to be amazed.  Whatever you want to find a recipe for, you'll be able to find it here.

Books

Dorie Greenspan - Generally, I find all of her cookbooks completely inspiring.  My personal favorite is Baking: From My Home to Yours, though I also really enjoy Paris Sweets.  She doesn't have many dedicated cupcake recipes, but all her cake recipes can be adapted.  The frostings are one of the highlights from this cookbook, they are all rich, decadent and delicious!

Pretty Party Cakes - One look inside this book and you will be in absolute awe about the myriad of ways in which one can decorate  a dessert.  If you need/want to make the most beautiful cupcakes of your life, definitely try this out!  Lots of her recipes call for using rolled fondant, you can either make your own or buy it prepackaged.

Hello Cupcake - Looking through this book originally sparked my desire to get fancy about cupcake making.  They have so many ridiculous ideas in here and even though most of them I would never have a reason to make, they still push me to be more creative with the cupcakes I do make.  And I now know that it is possible to make a cupcake that looks like corn on the cob.  Winner.

Stores

Crumbs - I'm definitely vocal about my love for this cupcake shop!  It's where I find the majority of my inspiration to create fun cupcakes that people will love.  They look appetizing, yet not so beautiful that you can't eat them.  Plus, they strike the cupcake/frosting ratio just perfectly.

Magnolia - When I'm in the mood to make cute and pretty cupcakes I turn to Magnolia.  The colors, the swirl of the frosting, the sprinkles, everything about Magnolia's cupcakes screams lovely.  These are the original cupcake in a way, establishing the classic buttercream and frosting/cake ratio.

Baked - From their interesting flavors, to the brilliant combination of tastes and textures, I always look to Baked if I'm in need of some sophisticated cupcake inspiration.  Their cupcakes may look unassuming, but pack a serious flavor punch, something which I appreciate.  I'm more inspired by the flavors as opposed to the actual recipes of these cupcakes, I may not need to know how to make their cupcakes, but I'm eager to create my own version that looks like it!

Cupcake Friday: Cookie Dough and Vanilla

This week's cupcakes were straight Crumbs inspired.  Cookie dough is one of my absolute favorite flavors, though I've never liked how they have a chocolate as opposed to cookie dough filled centre.  Obviously, I needed to change this!  I'm not a huge vanilla fan, but my parents are, so I chose to re-do the traditional vanilla cupcake into something that, hopefully, turned out a bit more exciting.

I used the same recipe base, though I changed the ingredients slightly.  Instead of using applesauce, I opted for canola oil.  Although I usually choose whole wheat flour, we didn't have any this week, so I replaced it with white flour.  These replacements were quite nice.  Personally, I prefer the taste of whole wheat flour, in the future I will definitely be using that, but I think the canola oil change is here to stay.  The texture you get with applesauce is nice, dense and moist, but compared to the texture with oil, applesauce produces an undeniably gummy result.  The crumb when using canola oil produces a much more traditional cupcake texture, one that is highly comparable to what you would get at Crumbs!

For frosting the cookie dough cupcake I used this recipe.  I used brown sugar instead of white sugar and halved it.  Of course, you could make the whole recipe, use what you need to frost the cupcake and make cookie dough balls with the rest!  For chocolate chips I used Guittard semi-sweet.

I made my own frosting for the vanilla cupcake.  It ended up tasting like a sugar cookie glaze...I guess you could call it a sugar cookie cupcake!

Vanilla "Sugar Cookie" Frosting
frosts one medium sized cupcake


4 Tbsp Confectioners Sugar
1 Tbsp Flour
Almond Milk added as needed (at least 2 Tbsp)

Add sugar and some milk.  Stir.  Add in some flour.  Stir.  If needed add in more milk until you get the consistency you want.  It should be thick and able to hold some shape, but not chalky.  You also don't want it to be too runny or it will drip all the way down your cupcake.

What is your favorite kind of frosting?


Un Bacione,

Emilia

Cupcake Friday: The Best Cupcakes in New York City

It's hot here.  Like really hot.  So hot that I don't even want to turn on the oven and bake cupcakes this week.  Instead, let's talk about my favorite places to eat cupcakes in New York.  There are so many options, it helps to sort through the muck and find the truly quality cupcake-eries.

Emilia's Top 5 Cupcake Shops in New York.

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1. Crumbs.  Does this really come as a surprise?  I adore Crumb's cupcakes for their interesting flavor combinations, the perfect ratio of frosting to cake and the cake itself.  Try them once and you'll keep coming back, I guarantee.

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2. Magnolia Bakery.  There's a reason that this bakery has lines snaking around the block, their cupcakes are good!  The vanilla frosting is absolutely brilliant, sweet but not too buttery.  Try vanilla vanilla here, it's a winner!  Plus, the cupcakes are completely adorable.

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3. Sugar Sweet Sunshine.  A friend introduced me to these cupcakes a couple of years ago and I've never looked back.  They are positively delicious.  What makes these truly stand out are the deep rich flavors.  Everything tastes spot on.  Not an ideal location, but worth going out of your way for.

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4. Buttercup Bake Shop.  Owned by the same people as Magnolia, but different enough to be put on the list as a separate entry.  The cupcakes are moist (though a touch dryer than Magnolia) with even more frosting. I prefer the chocolate frosting here, the vanilla gets a bit too sweet.

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5. Cupcake Cafe.  The real star of the show here is the cake part of the cupcake, an ideal combination of moist and crumbly.  I'm not a huge fan of the vanilla icing, which verges on too buttery for me, but the chocolate is fantastic.

What is your favorite cupcake flavor?  Do you like a lot of frosting or a little frosting?
I love chocolatey cupcakes with lots of frosting!


Un Bacione,

Emilia

Cupcakes Take Two

Another Friday, another cupcake post!  Up this week we have one crumbs inspired beauty and one Emilia flavor creation.  The crumbs edition was cookies and cream (my favorite) and my personal concoction was with jam and granola.  I call it, the 'New House' cupcake because as of today I'm renting a house.  Oh yeah.

The cupcake recipe was, again, my favorite vegan one.  I wanted chocolate cake for the cookies and cream one, so I used a little less flour and added in some coco powder.  For flour, I used whole wheat pastry flour and sugar was brown sugar.

Now the frostings were all my own creations this week.

Cookies and Cream Frosting
1 tbsp (plus a wee bit more) Coconut Butter
1 tsp Agave syrup
splash of vanilla
Chocolate Cookie Crumbs (I used these in chocolate)

Combine the coconut butter, agave and vanilla in a bowl.  Stir until combined.  Add in some chocolate cookie crumbs, save the rest for decorating the top.

To create the New Home cupcake, I used blueberry jam and threw on some Ezekiel cereal.  This combination of flavors worked really well and got me thinking about creating a peanut butter and jelly cupcake, it might be coming soon!

Both cupcakes were also filled.  The cookies and cream one had some chocolate cookie crumbs with a little coconut butter (not frosting), while the New House cupcake was filled with a mixture of jelly and cereal.  Look here for a tutorial about filling cupcakes.

I think the cupcakes this week were even better than last week!  I loved the idea of the cappuccino cupcake, but the buttercream just didn't work out for me.  The almond butter frosting also didn't really sit well with me.  This week, the coconut butter frosting turned out perfectly and the jelly imparted a really nice sweetness, though not cloying.  I'd definitely suggest making these cupcakes!

What is your favorite cupcake?  Do you prefer store-bought or homemade?

Un Bacione,

Emilia

Crumbs-Inspired Cupcakes

Who doesn't love cupcakes?  My friends got me the hummingbird bakery cupcake kit for my birthday and I've been dying to bake some cupcakes ever since!  Unfortunately, I didn't have any eggs in the fridge.  Nevertheless, I persevered and found a vegan cupcake recipe.  Sorted.

Of course, I wasn't content to simply follow the recipe ideas in the book.  No, I had to get even more complicated/creative.  I have a deep love for crumbs cupcakes and thought it would be awesome to try to make my own version of their creations.

For the cupcake base I used this recipe, which only makes one cupcake.  I wanted to make two, so I simply doubled the recipe.  I used applesauce and for liquid, I used almond milk.  My oven always takes about five extra minutes to bake these cupcakes, just keep an eye on them and test them using a toothpick.

So what kind of cupcakes did I make?

Cappuccino, like from crumbs, as pictured above.

and apricot almond, like this cupcake from Le Pain Quotidien.

To make the cappuccino cupcake taste like coffee, I subbed coffee extract for vanilla extract.  For the apricot almond cupcake, I used almond extract.

Then came frosting making time.  Immediately, I grabbed my hummingbird bakery cupcake book and gathered the ingredients to make their vanilla frosting.  Using my math skills, I figured out how to make a single serving of frosting.

Single-Serve Cappuccino Frosting

inspired by The Hummingbird Bakery Cupcake Book

2 tbsp Butter

5 tbsp confectioners sugar

Splash of Almond Milk

Splash of coffee extract

Dash of coco powder

Blend the butter and confectioners sugar together on medium speed until they are fully combined.  Then, turn the speed to low and add the milk and extract.  Blend until combined.  Turn the speed up to high and mix for about five more minutes.  Add in coco powder, mix some more.  The more you mix the fluffier the frosting becomes, so keep tasting it as you go along.

Almond Butter "Frosting" it acts more like a glaze!

2 tbsp Almond Butter (you may have to add in more as you go!)

4 tbsp confectioners sugar

1 tbsp almond milk

Blend almond butter and confectioners sugar on medium speed until they come together.  This takes quite a long time, but if you feel that the mixture is too crumbly after about five minutes, add in a little bit more almond butter.  Pour in the almond milk and blend on low until the milk is absorbed.  Increase speed to high and blend until you reach desired consistency.  This is a thick glaze-y frosting so keep that in mind when blending.  You are never going to reach the light fluffy level of a buttercream. 

**I found this to be extremely melty so I stuck my frosted cupcake in the refrigerator.  It will still run a bit, but much less.  Keep this is mind when frosting.  I was also making these on quite a hot day so it might be different depending on the weather in which you make them.

Not content to have normal cupcakes with frosting only on the top, once the cupcake cooled, I cut little holes into the middle.  In these holes I added some almond butter frosting and apricot pieces for the apricot-almond cupcake and some of my new chocolate-coffee spread with guittard chocolate chip for the cappuccino cupcake.  

who doesn't love a filled cupcake?

Then came frosting time.  I used my handy-dandy frosting knife and smacked some frosting on those beauties.  Last year, I had a friend who was really into decorating cupcake and taught me how to properly frost a cupcake to make it look at least kinda professional.  There are some good videos here and here.  To make them look even more spiffy, I added some chopped up apricots to the top of the apricot almond cupcake and some chocolate chips to the top of the cappuccino cupcake.

Now, crumbs adds a lot of frosting to their cupcakes, something which I'm all for!  So keep in mind with these frosting recipes that they will definitely give you a crumbs amount of frosting...

Yum!  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of my cupcakes this week, but my dad thought we bought them at a bakery (don't know if this is a compliment or not!), so that's got to count for something!

Stay tuned for more cupcakes coming next week!  In the meantime...

What is your favorite type of cupcake?  Do you like lots of frosting, or a little frosting?

Un Bacione,

Emilia