Cakes and Cupcakes

I love baking, which I only realized quite recently in the grand scheme of things – about a year ago I decided that I wanted to learn how to make cakes from scratch that tasted better than boxed mix, topped with my own homemade frosting, and I even taught myself how to make fondant. My first cake was a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and topped with homemade fondant.

I didn’t think it was half bad, given it was my first try. Still, my new love of baking easily and quickly turned into a love of baking cupcakes. I made a batch with fondant on top and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to try to do that to cupcakes when you can just pipe the icing on to make it look great. Also, people were mistaking the fondant for the icing itself, and were surprised by the layer of REAL icing underneath! This is kind of a good thing, since it meant that the fondant tasted good, but bad because I wanted the taste to come from the true icing and cake and not the fondant!

By the way, forgive the images, they’re all from my cell phone and from well before I started using my father’s HD camera 😀 I’ll get better glamor shots of my cupcakes around the holidays because I plan on making lots of them!

If anyone would like recipes I will gladly post them, but for now I just wanted to enthuse about cupcake making 😀

Also, if some of the cupcakes look small, it’s because they are! I often make mini cupcakes because they bake and cool faster than regular sized cupcakes (and I get impatient!), but I also get complaints from friends and family that they aren’t big enough, so I sometimes make both small and large.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

These were the first recipe I made, and are still by far everyone’s favorite. The Guinness gives them a milder chocolate flavor – you can taste the stout but just barely. They taste great with the homemade cream cheese frosting. My sister has demanded that I make these for her when she comes home for Christmas because she’s a huge Guinness fan 😀 You may notice on the frosting of a few cupcakes in front is an almost yellowish looking bit – this is actually edible gold dust that I tried applying by sprinkling onto the frosting. It ended up clumping too much to look good.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream

These were supposed to be made as Almond cupcakes, but my brother is allergic to anything almond-y so I tried my hand at making homemade vanilla cake instead. The cake alone reminds me of the taste of a sugar cookie, I love it! The Salted Caramel Buttercream is some of the richest, most delicious icing I’ve ever had – no joke! That’s not boasting either, I didn’t make the recipe up XD It calls for you to hand make the caramel that you put in, and trust me, it’s worth it. It’s so sweet and delicious. If you’re a fan of caramel, you’d love it! Some people find it too sweet though. I sprinkled the top with edible glitter – it kind of reminds me of that fake snow stuff that you can get for miniature towns – it’s really cute and doesn’t detract at all from the taste.

Vanilla Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Possibly the quickest and easiest cupcakes to make. A friend was leaving town and requested some cupcakes at the last minute and I figured this would be a good pair! I sprinkled these cupcakes with some plain old white granulated sugar.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Can you tell I like cream cheese frosting yet? XD Oh, I forgot to mention as well that my brother is getting married this upcoming June and his fiancee and him decided to ask me to bake them cupcakes for their wedding “cake”! This is why a lot of the cupcakes are white or pink and have sparkley decorations on them. For these guys I tried sprinkling yellow sugar on top, but I ended up not really liking the look. I wanted orange sugar since they were for Carrot Cake Cupcakes, but the local grocery store didn’t have any 😆

And finally, for my favorites…

Mocha Cupcakes with Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting

These are the most delicious cupcakes ever if you like rich chocolate and mint flavors. However – a warning – they are easily THE MOST fussy cupcakes I’ve ever made! The recipe calls for freshly brewed coffee which is just fine in itself, but the addition of which tends to make the cupcakes very fragile after baking them. I’ve made them twice and both times they have sunk – instead of creating a nice dome like most cupcakes, these dome and then sink back into themselves just a little, creating a flat top. If they bake over the edge of the cupcake wrapper you have to VERY carefully pry them off of the muffin tin and pray that the top itself doesn’t come off in the process! The best way I’ve found to make them is to make them purposely small in the wrappers so that they don’t bake over at all, and stay completely within the confines of their little cupcake wrapper prison 😛 Still, even though they are a royal pain, they are a seriously rich and moist cake and the frosting ties it all together perfectly. I’m definitely making these again for christmas. I topped them off with some crunched up peppermints 🙂

Anyway, if anyone wants any of these recipes, PM me or just hollar in this thread and I’ll post it 🙂

Hehe.. thanks guys! I wish I didn’t love eating them as much as I love making them too 😆
Also, thanks Pegasi and twindragonsmum for the links! I’m running out the door right now but I’ll definitely be checking them out later 🙂

I totally forgot to answer your question didn’t I!

Fondant (the way that I make it) is a mixture of melted marshmallows and confectioners sugar. When you knead them together in the right amounts, it creates a dough-like substance which is sweet and edible and you can color and cover cakes and cupcakes or make little shapes out of it. It’s all the rage right now for people’s wedding cakes and whatnot – it just makes the cake look smoother and more streamlined.

It’s actually pretty fun to make, and super easy – but requires a LOT of kneading! Also, your hands get super sticky before the dough sets because of all of the melty marshmallows you have to stick your hands in 🙂 I’m not terribly fond of the way that fondant tastes – I think it detracts from cupcakes simply because it’s got a very marshmallow-y flavor, but its certainly fun to decorate with, and it’s really easy to peel off slices of cake – it’s not required eating!

If you’d like to try making it I can find the exact recipe for you!