Tag: Cupcakes

Graham Cracker Cupcakes with Lime Buttercream Frosting

November 18, 2015February 11, 2017

I know, it’s fall. Or basically winter. It’s cold and blustery here in Portland. The gray and rain have settled in, and I personally am loving it. There’s lots of tea and squash in my life and that’s just my favorite. And yes, probably most blogs are (sensibly) posting all those rich fall recipes that you’ll make for Thanksgiving. This is not one of those recipes. It could be, I suppose, but then your family might get mad that there’s not apple pie AND pumpkin pie AND pecan pie. But they wouldn’t be too mad, because they’d be eating these graham cracker cupcakes. With lime buttercream frosting. How could you be mad?

My friend Mac’s birthday was on Monday, and when I asked him what kind of birthday treat he wanted, he gave me three options: coffee, peanut butter, or lime. What with all the rich, sweet treats that around this time of year, I wanted to go with something bright, something that got me excited about all the winter citrus that my grocery store will soon be carrying. So after a little digging around, these are what I made. You should think about making them too.

Graham Cracker Cupcakes with Lime Buttercream Frosting

Makes 12-14 cupcakes | Adapted from Bon Appetit + My Recipes

Ingredients

Graham Cracker Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (from about 12 graham crackers, pulsed in a food processor), plus 2-3 Tbsp for dusting
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
zest of 1 lime
3/4 cup whole milk

Lime Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp lime zest (or the zest of one lime)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1 16 oz package of powdered sugar
3 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
1-2 Tbsp whole milk

Instructions

Graham Cracker Cupcakes

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. In a small bowl, combine the 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and lime zest, mix to combine. Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk (which you’ll add in two additions), mixing to combine after each addition.

Put roughly 1/4 cup batter in each cupcake liner. Bake for 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean, rotating halfway through. Allow to cool in the pan for 3 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish.

Lime Buttercream Frosting

While the cupcakes are cooling, prepare the frosting. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, lime zest, vanilla, and salt until creamy. Alternate adding the powdered sugar and lime juice in three additions (so you’ll add roughly 1/3 of the box of powdered sugar, mix to combine, then add a tablespoon of lime juice, mix to combine, x3). Then add 1 Tbsp of milk and mix to combine. If the frosting is still too thick, add milk a teaspoon at a time, beating after each addition, until you’ve reached your desired consistency. Frost your cupcakes, and sprinkle with the remaining graham cracker crumbs.

Delicious Chocolate Cupcakes (that also happen to be gluten-free)

October 13, 2012February 4, 2017

If you read the title, let me preface this post by saying that I am not often a baker of gluten-free food… Actually, I’m not ever really a gluten-free (GF) cook, if I have anything to do with it. The GF baked goods that I have had in my life are generally sad, deflated looking little things, and usually don’t taste super. So, I try to avoid it.

As you may know, this past year, Jonah and I were nannying for a family, and they are gluten free. I had baked some things for them before (muffins, breads, even pie) and while they were impressed because it usually was pretty good, I was not. You’re going to tell me that pie dough that I made with potato and coconut flour and butter was better than my usual flour-butter-shortening? I don’t think so. But when Roza’s birthday rolled around (see photo below), I wanted to make her the best GF cupcakes I could find. How could you not with a face like that? And I must say, If you just gave me that cupcake, I would not know that it doesn’t have any sugar or flour in it. It is perfectly fluffy and dense at the same time, perfectly chocolatey without being too sweet… It was good. So yeah, these are, by non-GF standards, good cupcakes.

Now let me tell you a bit about Roza. She is the cutest 4 year old I’ve ever met in my life. With a voice like a cartoon character and an endlessly positive attitude, she always had the ability to make me howl with laughter. She was super into Curious George at the time, and we had been reading her this story where George is home alone and finds all these party favors and decorations and cake ingredients, etc. for a party, so he decorates and makes the cake, and then it turns out the party is for him! So Roza’s mom decided to do the same thing. All week, Roza cleaned the house with her little miniature broom for a party she knew we were having, and then she and I decided to make cupcakes for said party. Then, at dinner on Friday with her parents and me and Jonah, we surprised her with the fact that this all was her own birthday party! It was the most adorable thing ever. Their family doesn’t eat sweets a whole lot, and usually sweets aren’t things like chocolate cupcakes, so she was pretty enthused by the idea of baking sweets like these. While we were making them, we had this conversation about 20 times:

Roza: Annie, do you know what is yummy?
Annie: What’s yummy, Roza.
Roza: Chocolate… (Breaks into giggles).

Have I mentioned how much I love her? I have? Ok. I’ll stop.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

Note: A lot of GF recipes will not use just coconut flour. In fact, when I told Roza’s parents that this recipe only had coconut flour, they didn’t think it would be very successful. But the key is using LOTS of wet ingredients. Coconut flour soaks up moisture like nothing else, so in order to balance it out, the batter will seem pretty wet. But it works, I swear.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

¼ cup coconut flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
¼ tsp sea salt
½ tsp baking soda
3 eggs
¼ cup canola oil (the recipe called for grapeseed, but I used canola because it’s what we had around)
½ cup agave nectar (we did a little bit less than this since their family is into less sweeteners)

Frosting

1 cup chocolate chips (preferably dark)
½ cup canola oil (again, the recipe called for grapeseed, but I still didn’t have any)
2 Tbl agave nectar
1 Tbl vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Instructions

Cupcakes

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine coconut flour, cacao powder, salt and baking soda and stir. In a larger mixing bowl, blend together the eggs, oil and agave. Then mix the dry into the wet, and stir until thoroughly combined. Line your cupcake tin with liners, and scoop about 1/4 cup of batter into each liner. Bake them for ~20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Frosting

In a small saucepan over very low heat (or in a double boiler, if you’re feeling that it’s necessary), melt chocolate and oil together. Stir in the agave, vanilla, and salt. Then put the frosting in the freezer for 15 minutes to chill and thicken – mine took longer than 15 minutes to thicken up, but then it was a bit difficult to spread because I think I left it in the freezer for too long… I’m sure there’s a happy medium here, I just didn’t quite hit the nail on the head my first try). After removing from the freezer, whip it with a hand blender (or transfer from the pot you used to a standing mixer and use that) until it is fluffed up. Spread over the cupcakes and enjoy! Roza definitely did.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

January 14, 2012February 1, 2017

The other day I was hanging out with my dear friend Erica. She was craving some red velvet cupcakes, and so, like a good friend, I told her I’d make her some. That’s right. That’s what friends do for each other. We make cupcakes.

I had never made red velvet cupcakes before, or really thought about what’s in a red velvet cupcake, so I was a little surprised when I started doing research. Cocoa powder, LOTS of red food coloring, buttermilk and white distilled vinegar? Uh… ok. I found a wonderful recipe on a great blog called Ming Makes Cupcakes. I’d made cupcakes from this site before and the pictures are so pretty. I really can’t wait to try more. I ended up doubling the recipe (I wanted to make more than 12 cupcakes!) except the food coloring, which I didn’t double because I didn’t have anymore and one little bottle seemed like enough. However I didn’t double the frosting because it seemed like it’d be enough, and it was!

Anyway, I packed them up and took them to rehearsal (for the show I’m in with that friend, Erica) and they were a huge hit! Nice and moist, good frosting to cupcake ratio, and perfectly red. They were a little bit oily for me, so I think next time I might try bringing down the amount of oil. Also, I wouldn’t have minded if they had been a teensy bit chocolatier. Oh well, some things to play with for next time. They were still incredibly delicious. Enjoy!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes

2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbl cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 Tbl red food coloring
1 tsp white vinegar
2 tsp vanilla

Frosting

1 stick butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Instructions

Cupcakes

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder. In an electric mixer, combine the dry ingredients: oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla. Now, slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. I did it in batches, just to make sure it was getting thoroughly blended with no clumps!

Put cupcake liners in your cupcake pan and fill them up with batter. I found that you could actually fill them pretty full. These cupcakes don’t rise a ton, so I filled them up probably 3/4 of the way. Now bake them for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Frosting

While the cupcakes are cooling, clean out your mixer bowl, put it back together, and beat the butter until it’s light and fluffy. Add the sugar, milk, and vanilla, and beat until the consistency looks like frosting. If it’s too dry, add a little more milk. If it’s too wet, add a little more sugar.

Time to frost them. I started out not using too much frosting because I wanted to make sure there was enough for all of them, but there was plenty to go around. I love icing cupcakes, making the tops look like they would at a little bakery… So fun.