CupcakeQueen to self: Can we...the royal we... figure out how to make an ice cream cupcake? Well, "we" haven't eaten these yet...they're still in the freezer until after dinner tonight...so we'll have to let you know that part a little later...but the experiement does seem to be a SUCCESS!
You have to admit that this is a novel sight to find when you open the freezer door...it's definitely been making eveyone smile this afternoon. The cupcakes are based on Martha Stewart's Brownie Cupcakes. Very easy to make!
Once the cupcakes are cool, get out the Edy's Ice Cream and let it soften a bit. Meanwhile, use a small spoon or a small ice cream scoop to remove the middle of the cupcake and make a hole. Save what you take out...well, you can eat some of it if you want. You won't need it all! Put a small scoop of the ice cream into the cupcake's hole.
Smush it down into the cupcake and then put part of the top you scooped out, back onto the top of the cupcake and flatten it out a bit. Frost your cupcakes right away and then whisk them into the freezer until dinner time. If you take them out just before you eat dinner, they should be thawed out when it's time for dessert and the ice cream will have begun to melt!
As you can see, Layla...as usual can't wait!
Here's the recipe:
MARTHA STEWART’S BROWNI CUPCAKES:
INGREDIENTS
Serving: Makes 12.
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
11 ounces best-quality semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, (optional)
Nonstick cooking spray
Mrs. Milman's Chocolate Frosting
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-count muffin tin with cupcake liners, and spray generously with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.
In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and 8 ounces of chocolate. Stir until smooth. Remove from heat, and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Add flour, cocoa, and baking soda. Stir in the melted chocolate until combined. Stir in remaining 3 ounces of chocolate and nuts if desired.
Using a 2-ounce ice cream scoop, fill cupcake liners 3/4 full with batter. Bake until a firm crust forms on the cupcakes, about 20 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool, about 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan, and continue to cool on a wire rack.
Ice cupcakes with a generous amount of chocolate frosting.
Mrs. Milman's Chocolate Frosting
While this frosting is cooling, you'll need to stir it as instructed; otherwise, the frosting around the edge of the bowl will harden and the frosting at the center will remain liquid. The finished frosting should have a consistent texture. Lois Milman, the creator of the frosting, always uses Nestl; morsels and makes only one batch at a time. Spread the icing on Moist Devil's Food Cake as soon as it is sufficiently chilled; it holds its shape well on the cake.
INGREDIENTS
Serving: Makes 6 cups.
24 ounces Nestlé semisweet chocolate morsels
4 cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
DIRECTIONS
Place chocolate morsels and cream in a heavy saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until combined and thickened, between 20 and 25 minutes. Increase the heat to medium low; cook, stirring, 3 minutes more. Remove pan from heat.
Stir in corn syrup. Transfer frosting to a large metal bowl. Chill until cool enough to spread, about 2 hours, checking and stirring every 15 to 20 minutes. Use immediately.
Hope you enjoy them!
Have a great week, CQ
More Than One Reason to SMILE: Martha Stewart's Brownie Cupcakes Packed with Edy's Slow-Churned Vanilla Ice Cream
Where Are Those Cow Tales: AKA Apple Caramel Cupcakes Topped with Homemade Cows Tales
This cupcake project took about 4 hours from beginning to end...and that includes the run I had to make to Whole Foods for some dried apples...which turned into a $56.24 excursion! I had a little piece of paper with three items on my list when I went in the store and walked out with two shopping bags of "other duties as assigned" products. At first I was just walking around holding stuff in my arms and soon realized that my stay was going to be much longer than I planned. oh well...it was a cold and rainy Sunday in Washington, DC!
This was going to be a simple...key word here is simple....project, because I wanted to spend some time on my design for my another web site I'm working on. Well, that didn't happen and I just had to let it go. I found a recipe in a cupcake book that's called Cupcakes and Other Goodies, which is sort of dorkie looking and is shaped like a cupcake. Okay, I dealt with that. I found just what I was looking for...and that's when I had to go shopping for the dried apples. I wanted to combine the apple cupcakes with caramel frosting and I wanted to make some Cows Tales to go on top. 
I found a simple recipe for the Cow Tales and they were really easy to make...just caramels, butter, half and half, and confectioners sugar...and some marshmallows. The photos above show (1) the caramel ready to be rolled around the marshmallows, and (2) the rolled up "log," and (below) the final product beng sliced after "the log" was in the fridge for a couple of hours. Whew!
Everything turned out pretty much the way I wanted it to go. The vanilla butter cupcakes (from a cake mix) with the diced, dried apples were good...not great...but acceptable. The caramel frosting was so amazing...it tasted extraordinary. The cows tales...or tails...well, they worked. And, one could eat them separately...without even making the cupcakes...or one could just make the cupcakes with the caramel frosting...or one could just go to Whole Foods. It's really up to you! You can see more of the Cows Tales Cupcakes photos HERE.
And, THIS is the newest baby in our family: Aiden Steele (born April 12) with his daddy, Jason (who will be leaving next week for a another tour of Iraq). Jason, Kristi, and Aiden are from Spokane, WA, and are living in Las Vegas....so, say "Hi" to Aiden....and to his daddy and mommy, too. Stay safe, Jason.
Below are the recipes for the cupcakes and the cows tales!
Cows Tales Ingredients:
• 1/2 lb. Light caramels
• 1/4 c. half & half
• 2 tbs. butter
• 2 c. confectioner sugar
• approx. 17 regular size marshamallows
Directions:
• Combine caramels, half & half, and butter in saucepan.
• Heat until caramels melt.
• Once melted, take saucepan off heat and stir in sugar.
• Pour mixture onto buttered wax or parchment paper.
• Spread into a 16x5 inch rectangle.
• Lay the marshmallows end to end along one of the long sides of the rectangle.
• Working with the side of the caramel rectangle that is under the marshmallows, gently
detach the caramel from the paper and roll it over the marshmallows to form a log.
•Wrap the log in paper and refrigerate for a couple of hours.
• When chilled, cut into 1/4 inch slices.
• Try to serve chilled, because once warm, the candy loses some of its dense, sticky
texture.
Apple Cupcakes with Caramel Frosting
Yield: Makes 24 cupcakes
Ingredients:
1 package (18-1/4 ounces) butter or yellow cake mix, plus ingredients to prepare mix
1 cup chopped dried apples
Caramel Frosting (recipe follows)
Chopped nuts (optional)
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 24 standard (2-1/2-inch) muffin pan cups with paper baking cups.
2. Prepare cake mix according to package directions. Stir in apples. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling 2/3 full.
3. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until toothpicks inserted into centers come out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes to racks; cool completely.
Caramel Frosting
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. Melt butter in 2-quart saucepan. Stir in brown sugar, evaporated milk and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; cool to lukewarm.
2. Add powdered sugar; beat until frosting is of spreading consistency. Add vanilla; beat until smooth.
Rock on!
CQ
Hershey's Reese's Chocolate-Covered Cookie Cupcakes: Too Good to be True!
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| I found these new cookies at CVS...who'd have thought...and they inspired this cupcake experiment. And, really the coolest thing about them is the bottom...and it says Reeses! So cute! I really had no idea that it would happen. | |
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| So, I came home, found a box of dark chocolate cake mix, some mini-chocolate chips, and one cup of sour cream. Followed the cake mix iinstructions, dumped in the extras and mixed away. | |
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| I twisted the top of of each cookie and put the bottom with the peanut butter filling on it in the bottom of each cupcake liner. Then I poured the batter the batter in! Baked it for 17 minutes. | |
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| Everyone agreed...they these tasted awesome! | |
| LAST YEAR ON THIS DATE: Week 50: Midnight Madness Cupcakes! | |
Chocolate Chip Cookie and Brownie Cupcakes: What Could Be Better?
Okay...so I thought I would make some chocolate chip cookies the other day. I saw a cool/funny recipe in the local paper and wanted to try it out. This recipe said to make the cookies and then let the cookie dough stay in the fridge overnight...could I wait...hmmmm...okay I waited until 7:00 a.m. the next morning and made a batch. Pretty good! So good that I wanted to figure out how to use them in a cupcake. I've already done one with cookie in the bottom. But, could I make it work on top? Stay tuned~!
I used brownie mix for the cupcakes (which I've done before...they are so nice and chewy...), so I mixed up a batch and put one ice cream scoop in each cupcake liner...what a funny name...and then I rolled enough of the cookie dough into a ball and flattened it out and it fit right on top of the brownie batter and into the liner. I was nervous about how long it was going to take to bake, so I started with the timer at 12 minutes...that was way to soon. The cupcakes ended up taking about 22 minutes to bake!
When they came out, I turned down the liner to the place where the cookie met the brownie and it ended up looking like it had a tutu on...so funny...but different! One thing to remember is that with this recipe, you have, have, have to spray the cupcake liners, or the brownies won't want to come out and the liner may stick to the brownie part. I topped the cupcakes off with vanilla or chocolate frosting and everyone loved them!Here is a link to the chocolate chip cookies recipe: The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie by Brian Patterson, Gazette.
Strawberry-Lime Stuffed Cupcakes, Oh My!
This cupcake definitely caught my eye when I found it on the Food Network web site...I just had to try this. And, it was no small effort! First, you need to make extra-large cupcakes to get that strawberry in there. In fact, I used my new "Texas"=sized (XXXL) Cupcake tin! I was pretty sure that no one would actually appreciate eating a cupcake that large, at least in my family...except maybe James or John.
So, I only made two of the jumbo cupcakes and the rest I turned into the mini-byte-sized cupcakes. With these I just used the frosting on top and a small piece of strawberry on top of that. This frosting...by the way...is so tangy...it is only confectioner's sugar, lime zest, fresh-squeezed lime juice. It was sooooo good, we ate it out of the bowl!
It was such a beautiful day today that we ate lunch on the deck for the first time this year. Layla joined us, of course. I haven't told you yet, but Layla, Nigel, Harry and Chuck had a photo session with Amanda Jones. She was here in the DC area for three days and we went on Friday morning. Here are some photos I shot of the photo shoot. It was awesome and we can't wait to see the proofs.
The recipe for the Strawberry-Lime Stuffed Cupcakes is below. Have a great week and don't forget to eat a cupcake every day!
FLASHBACK: Last year at this time, we were making Chocolate Caramel Walnut Cupcakes.
Rock On!
CQ
Here's the recipe from the Food Network Kitchens:
Strawberry-Lime Stuffed Cupcakes
makes 6 jumbo cupcakes
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
2 large eggs, room temperature
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
Icing:
1 1/3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated lime zest
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 drop green food coloring
6 large ripe strawberries, hulled
Green sanding sugar
Fresh mint leaves or candied leaves
Equipment: 6-cup jumbo muffin tin
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line the muffin tin with cupcake liners.Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.
In another medium bowl, beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until light and foamy, about 2 minutes. While beating, gradually pour in the butter and then the vanilla.
While mixing slowly, add half the dry ingredients, then add all the milk, and follow with the rest of the dry ingredients. Take care not to over mix the batter. Divide the batter evenly in the prepared tin.
Bake until a tester inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool cupcakes on a rack in the tin for 10 minutes, then remove. Cool on the rack completely.
For icing: Mix the confectioners' sugar and lime zest in a medium bowl. Add the lime juice and mix with an electric mixer to make a firm but pourable icing. (If needed, add up to 1 teaspoon more juice, but take care if the icing is too loose it doesn't set properly.) Add food color to make a pale pastel green icing.
To assemble: Remove cupcake from its liner. Cut and remove a strawberry (coned) shaped portion of cupcake from the top of each cupcake, leaving about 1/2 to 1-inch of cake in the bottom. Stuff each cake with a strawberry and cover with a little bit of cake. Spoon and spread icing over the top of the cupcakes. Sprinkle with green sanding sugar. Top with small mint leaves or candied leaves.
Happy Virtual Birthday: Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes with Chocolate Fudge Frosting
Two birthdays on March 16 inspired these cupcakes...my nephew... Chris... and John's girl friend... Kate... they don't know each other... but they both know me! Chris lives in Pittsburgh and Kate lives in Washington, DC. Kate actually got to eat some of these... unfortunately, Chris did not...sad face...but Chris did get a TMX Elmo from the Cupcake Queen and her peeps. 
These babies ... from a recipe in 125 Best Cupcake Recipes
Hasson says of this recipe: "How could I have a cupcake book without a brownie-inspired recipe in it? I couldn't, so here's a deliciously chewy and chocolaty cupcake that I am very pleased with. They'll disappear off the cooling rack faster than you can say, "Chocolate brownies." And, she was right!
Can you see who is in the shadow yearning for a cupcake? She didn't get a cupcake this time...no chocolate for doggies...but she did get to have a tiny taste of the vanilla frosting. She's such a good doggie!
Cool Washington Post Article About Online Cupcakes!
Fun Article about buying cupcakes online In today's Washington Post Food Section!
Cupcakes That Click
The Obstacle for Online Bake Shops: Selling Customers on a Leap of Faith
By Kelly DiNardo
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 14, 2007;
Chocolate cupcakes, topped with a deep brown frosting and dotted with sprinkles, crowded one platter, alongside vanilla cupcakes covered with cloudlike swirls. Filling a second were large yellow cupcakes that had malt balls tucked into their ribbons of icing, and more chocolate cupcakes, this time with three-inch mounds of spun sugar crowning their tops. A rainbow of cupcakes with light brown, bubble-gum pink and crisp white buttercream overflowed off a third plate.
As each plate emerged from the kitchen, a chorus of oohs rang out. As each platter was set down, a jumble of observations -- "It looks like matted hair." "Oh! They're so pretty, I want one of each!" -- poured forth. And as each taster took another bite, the din of commentary grew.
"The frosting tastes like chocolate pudding." "It's like eating a stuffed animal."
"I like how dense and moist this one is."I had lured four friends, all online food writers, into an unofficial taste test. Nycci Nellis, 37, of TheListAreYouOnIt.com; Amanda McClements, 28, of Metrocurean.com; Melissa McCart, 34, of CounterIntelligence; and Adam Bailey, 27, of DCist.com had indulged in this sugary bacchanal to see whether they could taste the difference between online and storefront bakery products.
Such Web-based purveyors as igourmet.com, Tienda.com, LeVillage.com and even Amazon.com have long offered a plethora of foodstuffs, from olive oils to cheeses to bonbons, online. Of-the-month clubs have delivered wine, bacon and potato chips to doorsteps every month since Harry & David started their Fruit-of-the-Month Club in the 1930s. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that U.S. online food and beverage sales will reach $7.2 billion in 2007, up from $6.2 billion in 2006. Food sales, though, are the smallest percentage of online commerce; in 2006 computer hardware and software topped the list, with projected sales of $16.8 billion.
Shipping speeds and plastic foam containers with ice packs have made it possible to send even perishable items. Shipping ice cream, however, still remains drastically different from mailing a dessert with a delicately whipped topping. Yet even for bakeries hawking fragile, frothy confections and wary of the "smushed" factor, selling their wares online is a growing business. For some, an online bakery is preferable to a traditional bricks-and-mortar shop.
"I can't imagine how much money it costs to have a storefront," says Krishna Brown, owner of ShoeBoxOven.com, a Silver Spring-based online bakery. "I didn't have the funding to support an actual infrastructure, but I didn't think that should stop me."
Brown, 32, began selling her baked goods at the Arlington Farmers Market last May and had so much success she quit her full-time job doing Web design for the Peace Corps to open ShoeBox Oven in November. Now, each morning at 2 she takes over the kitchen at Ray's the Classics restaurant in Silver Spring and whips up desserts for wholesale and individual retail patrons. In the months she has been open, individual sales have fluctuated between four orders a week and more than 30 a week. The desserts are delivered the same day they are made, and pickups are available at both Ray's restaurants (the other is Ray's the Steaks in Arlington). While 85 percent of her business is for pickup or delivery, she has shipped by two-day mail to destinations as far away as Albuquerque.
ShoeBox Oven is one of the few solely online bakeries in the area, but other shops with traditional storefronts are looking to expand in that direction as well.
Within months of opening five years ago, CakeLove took phone orders and delivered buttercream cupcakes around the Washington area. In 2003, the U Street bakery began shipping other desserts, but it quickly discontinued the operation until about a year ago, when it began offering Box-O-Luv, a package containing brownies and a vanilla poundcake.
We don't have the facilities that are really required for shipping," says owner Warren Brown, 36, who plans to expand CakeLove's shipping business by midsummer. "When you go to a place that does ship, you see how much room they use; it's the size of two or three CakeLoves."
Teresa Velazquez, owner of Baked & Wired in Georgetown, has considered adding online ordering but remains cautious for different reasons.
"There's always that factor of not stretching yourself too far," says Velazquez, 43. "I don't want to lose the quality of the product in mass producing things. If I can do it and not sacrifice the quality, I would."
There are challenges besides shipping logistics and growing a business too quickly. Getting customers to make the leap of faith about buying an item they haven't seen or smelled might be the biggest hurdle for an online bakery. In fact, Forrester Research found that the main reason people don't like to shop for food online is that they like to see or touch food items before they buy them (the report didn't mention taste).
For just that reason, owners of the new Alexandria bakery Buzz have thought about adding online ordering but decided against opening an exclusively online bakery. The bakery is part of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, a local chain of restaurants that include Tallula, Vermillion and Rustico.
"Part of the bakery experience is to see and smell the products being made," says co-owner Michael Babin, 39. "We have a kitchen that allows that. We have things out to taste. That's all part of the experience."
Taking that leap of faith was the biggest hurdle for our Web-savvy tasters, who all agreed they would order online -- but only from a storefront shop they already knew, liked and trusted. Nellis, the only one to have ordered from an online bakery before, epitomized why. She bought something sight unseen -- well, unseen in person -- and got burned.
"I ordered these beautiful cupcakes for my son's birthday," Nellis says. "They looked just like they did on the Web site, but unfortunately they were tasteless. To spend that kind of money on cupcakes that didn't taste good wasn't worth it."
ShoeBox Oven's Brown has found most of her sales are by word of mouth: Customers she met at the farmers market or who made the leap tell their friends about their experience. Not having a storefront does pose challenges for Brown, who says she plans to return to the Arlington Farmers Market again this year.
"I can't wait for the market to open up again so I can gauge my customers' responses," she says. "It's a test kitchen of sorts. We use them as guinea pigs. We were able to see what worked, what didn't work."
As for what worked and didn't for our four tasters, well, they all knew which desserts had come from ShoeBox Oven. Our tasters thought the exaggerated presentation, the slightly crushed spun sugar topping and a "prepared" flavor gave ShoeBox Oven away. The group sampled cupcakes -- something everyone carried, which made comparing easier -- from Baked & Wired, CakeLove and ShoeBox and thought Baked & Wired was tops for its moist cakes and cream cheese frosting.
After tasting the cupcakes, the group looked at the Web site for ShoeBox Oven and thought the "over-the-top" cupcakes made sense because they needed to make a visual impact. In person, the cupcakes were "impressive initially" but came off as "overdone." For now, all four prefer to wander into a traditional bakery, press their noses against the glass cases, take a whiff and see which decadent confection calls out to them.
White Mountain Chocolate Cupcakes...and One Turtle!
Inspiration smacked me right in the face...not once but three times...to get me to make these cute cupcakes from Elinor Klivans' cupcakes! book: her photograph of the cupcakes she'd made, the thought of chocolate and sour cream together, and, finally, the challenge of making Seven-Minute Frosting! As if that weren't enough...I got inspired about what to put them in. So, I rummaged around for the little flower pots that I just knew I'd seen somewhere on some shelf in my house somewhere! I managed to find 5 of them. Ok. That was a start. Then I remembered that I had those pink mini-cups...made out of paper. I ended up with 20 of those guys. Then what? I found 1 of the smallest little flower pots...smaller than the rest... and used that, too. 
The Seven-Minute Frosting (SMF) turned out to be pretty easy, but it really takes SEVEN minutes to beat it up! I was beginning to doubt that it was going to "happen"...I checked the timer and it said that 6:34 minutes had gone by and it was still not as thick as I thought it should be. But, in the last thirty seconds it all firmed up. Then I added the vanilla and almond, whipped it a little bit more and there it was....nice and puffy AND thick!
Layla really wanted a bit of these...she was stuck to my side the entire time I was baking. She's really amazing...she stays completely focused on the task of first making the cupcakes and then making the frosting and then putting the frosting on and then taking the photos. She's extremely patient and doesn't carry a grudge because she can't eat chocolate! Ok. I did give her some of the fluffy meringue-like frosting!
Surcie made me go to Target and spend more money on this Turtle...just kidding....she knows that I love the the TERPS...and, I only needed a little push to head over to Tar-shay as we like to call it.
These were a big hit at the office...the turtle is made of individual cupcakes. You can buy it in the baking section of Target!
Rock On!
CQ
