NYE 2015 Champagne Cupcakes

Even though we moved and no longer have our fantastic roof deck, we decided we still wanted to throw a New Years Eve party. I'll do a separate post on the party and decorations, but wanted to share the updated cupcake recipe. Last year I made champagne cupcakes with champagne butter cream, and they were so good, I decided to make them again. However, this year I updated them a bit to improve the butter cream and went with the mini version because it's adorable. These are such fluffy cupcakes and perfect for any celebration. Enjoy!

Sparkly dress from Rent the Runway

Champagne Cupcakes

1 box white cake mix

1 ¼ cups champagne

3 egg whites

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Heat oven to 350. Place foil baking cups in 24 mini muffin cups.

Mix dry cake mix and champagne in mixer. Add oil and egg whites. Mix on medium speed until batter is smooth. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.

Bake 20-22 minutes. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.

Champagne Butter Cream

½ cup room temperature butter

¼ shortening (Crisco)

4 cups powdered sugar (more if the butter cream seems too liquid)

1/3 cup champagne

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix room temperature butter, shortening, champagne and vanilla in mixer at low speed. Sift powdered sugar into mixer cup by cup allowing to mix thoroughly in between.

Once the cupcakes have cooled, pipe the butter cream onto the cupcakes and add desired garnish. I used these little pearl candies I got from AC Moore (craft store) because I thought they looked like champagne bubbles! 

Happy New Year!

xo

Alison

Christmas Hot Cocoa Cupcakes

I have officially been blogging (with varying levels of consistency) for a year! I started in December 2013 with So, I have decided to start a blog. Can't believe it's been a year. I've loved building this blog and filling it with my own silly stories and experiences. It's been great to look back at this incredible year. Some blog highlights for me.

All of my cupcakes
So many vacations
A few posts going 'viral' on Pinterest (Our First Christmas, Harry Potter Bridal Shower, and Hair, Hair, Everywhere)
Our House
and of course
Pierce!

Looking forward to many many more. 

For Christmas this year, I went with a comfort beverage combined with my favorite, cupcakes! I found a great Hot Cocoa Cupcake recipe from Lick the Bowl Good and figured I had to give it a try for Christmas. They were FANTASTIC! The cake was so moist and the whipped cream was so much lighter than the typical butter cream icing. Perfect for Christmas day. Enjoy!

Hot Cocoa Cupcakes

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ¼ cups sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup prepared hot cocoa*
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Makes 12 cupcakes.

For the hot cocoa, I used whole milk, unsweetened cocoa powder, a few chocolate chips, and powdered sugar. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt in stand mixer. Add in canola oil, hot cocoa and vanilla and mix until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between. Fill a lined muffin tin ¾ full. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Let cool to room temperature prior to frosting.

Whipped Cream

1 ¼ cups heavy cream
1/3 cup powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in a stand mixer and beat until thick and creamy, or when peaks form without collapsing.

Decorating

Add the Whipped Cream to a piping bag with tip and pipe onto cooled cupcakes. Smash candy canes and chocolate for garnish. Take a mini candy cane and insert into the side of the cupcake. Bakers note: wait until right before you serve to add the whip cream and decorations. The candy cane will melt into the cupcake and look a bit messy. 

I hope you had a wonderful holiday!

xo
Alison

Thanksgiving Gingerbread Cupcakes with Cinnamon Butter Cream

Thanksgiving this year was a busy one for us. Kyle is big on creating our own little family traditions, so this year he wanted to do a Thanksgiving dinner just the two of us. I loved this idea, but we still wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner with our families, so this meant three dinners over three days. That's a LOT of food. 

For our dinner, Kyle and I came up with the menu together and spent the day in the kitchen whipping up our dishes. We even put our turkey in brine the night before, which I will definitely do it again. The whole meal ended up being really awesome, although we cooked way too much food. 

Turkey brine

Who needs serving dishes? 

A casual Thankgiving for sure

After dinner snooze

For our family dinners, we went to each of our parents houses and both families requested that we bring cupcakes. For Kyle's family, I made squash cupcakes with maple cream cheese butter cream. You can find the recipe here. 

For my family dinner, I made Gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon butter cream icing and a little 'acorn' decoration on top. I LOVED the cupcake flavor, but they were a tad dry. I altered this recipe a bit to improve the result. Enjoy!

Gingerbread Cupcakes

1½ cups flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1½ cups butter, softened
1½ cups sugar
3 tablespoons molasses
¼ cup milk (more or less for desired batter consistency)
4 eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix  flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a medium bowl. In stand mixer, cream together butter, sugar, vanilla and molasses. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between. Gradually add in dry ingredients until well combined. Add in milk until batter is desired consistency. Fill a lined muffin tin ¾ full. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool to room temperature prior to frosting.

Cinnamon Butter Cream

½ cup butter (1 stick)
½ cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon vanilla
4-6 cups powdered sugar, sifted


Using an electric mixer, cream together butter, shortening, cinnamon and vanilla until smooth and well-combined. Gradually add in the powdered sugar, mixing well until your frosting is desired consistency. Use a pastry bag to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.

Acorn Decoration

Hershey kisses
Chocolate chips
Mini Nilla wafers

Pipe a small amount of icing onto the bottom of a Hershey kiss and attach to the flat side of the Nilla wafer. Pipe icing onto the flat part of the chocolate chip and attach to the other side (curved side) of the Nilla wafer. Viola! Acorn decoration complete. (Seriously the easiest 'recipe' I've every typed out...)


I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

xo
Alison

Pink Velvet Cupcakes and Mini Ombre Cake

We are back from our annual family beach trip! Such a fantastic week, I can't wait to share the details. The theme nights were so much fun and we've already selected the themes for next year. Now we're trying to get back in the swing of routine a little bit more tan and a lot more relaxed. I'll do some posts about the vacation, but before we left we had to celebrate my sister-in-law to be, Rose's birthday! 

Love this girl!

We have some pretty set-in-stone birthday traditions. We always celebrate at my parents house with dinner and the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the dinner and cake. My mom even has certain pictures she gets every single year (seriously, we checked and they go all the way back). For this year, Rosie requested the cupcakes I made for her Superbowl party! I was so excited to revisit that recipe, but I couldn't do bright blue, orange and green cupcakes, so we went with pink instead. 

Rosie loves animal print so these liners were a must

I also didn't want to just make cupcakes. I wanted to get our traditional cake picture and have something for her to cut into. Looking through my local kitchen store, I was able to find a small cake pan and decided to make a tiny little ombre (kinda) cake to go with the dozen cupcakes. It wasn't a total success - it looked more like a giant cupcake - but boy was it delicious! Pretty sure Rosie had a wonderful birthday, but we certainly enjoyed celebrating her! 

For all of the 'kids' birthdays this year, my parents gave us a long weekend away in the mountains on a beautiful lake. It's the perfect gift for this group, another vacation together! We can't wait.

For the full recipe head over to the Superbowl cupcakes post. 

Sort of cute

Loving my new piping tip

Yummy cake!

My favorite girls

Hubby

Oh this loverly lady

Cheers!

Pops

Can't wait to share pictures of the vacation theme nights. Everyone truly outdid themselves this year. Until then!

xo
Alison

Lavender Cupcakes with Butter Cream Icing

I have been wanting to bake with lavender for quite sometime, but hadn't really had the opportunity. So when my friend Megan offered me some of her stash of dried lavender, I knew exactly what I was going to whip up! It was right around my husband and my birthdays so I decided I would have these instead of a cake (my husband is not really a baker and I didn't want a store-bought cake). 

BIRTHDAY CUPCAKES!

Lavender is perfect for baking. It's not a flavor that a lot of people have had before and the fragrant, floral taste isn't for everyone. Most of the recipes I had seen for lavender cupcakes had paired a cream cheese icing, but I thought a butter cream would let the lavender stand out a bit more. I was not disappointed. Enjoy! 

(I apologize in advance, there is a spot on my camera that I am unable to get off. It's on ALL the pictures, grr..)

Those are carrot cake cupcakes in the back. I'll do a post on those soon.

Lavender Cupcakes
½ cup butter (room temperature)
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons dried lavender (I used a pinch more)
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup honey (I used champagne honey)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cups milk
2 teaspoons Wilton Violet food coloring (add more if you so desire)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, lavender and salt. Set aside. In stand mixer using paddle attachment (or bowl using hand mixer) beat butter until cream (this is why it needs to be room temperature!). Add sugar, honey, and vanilla mixing until combined. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well between each addition. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk to the stand mixer, and mix until batter is completely combined. Add food coloring slowly until you get to your desired color. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 way full. 

Bake for 16-18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

I did not intentionally match my nails to the cupcakes...

Butter cream Icing
2 cups unsalted butter (room temperature)
½ cup milk 
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
4-6 cups confectioners' sugar 

Combine butter, milk, salt and vanilla in stand mixer and beat until combined. Add the confectioners' sugar a half a cup at a time, mixing well between each addition. Pipe the butter cream onto cooled cupcakes and add any embellishments. I used fondant flowers from my local kitchen store in the Italian Market.

And finally, a little snapshot from my birthday dinner with Kyle. My present was a fully planned long weekend down the shore, and this was his way of telling me. :-) 

I will definitely be sporting these shades on our trip

xo
Alison

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! This was our first as a married couple, but we HATE going out on Valentine's day. We love eating out usually, but on Valentine's they jack up the prices, pile in tables close together and usually the food leaves something to be desired. We prefer to stay in and Kyle cooks. It's intimate, romantic and far less fussy than going to a restaurant. 

We decided not to do gifts this year and get goggles for our snowboarding trip instead. But Kyle of course went above and beyond. I woke up to roses and breakfast before work, hen he came home from work he got busy in the kitchen and then he surprised me with chocolates and a beautiful locket! What a guy. My contributions paled in comparison, but he was still pleased. I picked up some of his favorite beer, got a nice card, made some cupcakes and set the table with our new china from the wedding. Really wonderful day. 

Re-purposing a vase from last Valentine's day

Now I'm sitting on the couch having just watched the USA hockey team win in a crazy shootout versus the Russians, nursing my champagne headache and thought it would be the perfect time to share my cupcake recipe. Enjoy!

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe:

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cocoa powder

1 ½ cups vegetable oil

1 cup buttermilk

2 large eggs

2 tablespoons Wilton red food coloring (I didn't have time to get this so I had to use grocery store food coloring - hence the pink cupcakes)

1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In your mixer, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. In a separate bowl, mix together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla. Slowly add the wet mixture into your stand mixer with the dry ingredients. Mix until thoroughly combined. The batter is so velvety!

Only fill the cupcake liners 2/3 full. Bake for 20-32 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting. 

Cointreau Ganache
½ cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon Cointreau liquor 
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I eyeballed this measurement, so I may have used more)

In a saucepan, bring the heavy cream and Cointreau to a bowl. Reduce heat and slowly add the chocolate chips stirring continuously to avoid burning. Add to piping bag or some other injecting mechanism and inject into the center of the cupcakes. If the ganache spills out the top of the cupcakes, don't worry about it - it will be covered by butter cream.

Cream Cheese Butter Cream
1 package cream cheese, softened
2 sticks butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar 

In mixer, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together until smooth. Add the sugar a half cup at a time, mixing well between each addition. Mix until very light and fluffy. 

Pipe the butter cream onto cooled cupcakes and add any embellishments. 

Chocolate Embellishments
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Melt chocolate in double boiler. Add to piping bag and create the designs of your choice on parchment paper (we had just run out that morning so I used plastic wrap). Let the designs harden in the refrigerator for as long as you can before adding to cupcakes.

Of course I had to do some fun Valentine's nails! For more of my crazy nail designs click here.

Thanks for visiting!

xo
Alison

Super Bowl XLVIII Cupcakes

For the Super Bowl this year we went to a party at my brother and sister-in-law (elect)'s house and had a really fantastic time. I didn't really care about who won the game, but I did have some Block Pool and prop bets going, so that kept it interesting. 

Rosie did a really nice job hosting and there was quite the extensive spread: tons of dips to look like a football stadium, wings, nice cheeses, sandwiches, and enough booze to take down an army. Really great event. 

I couldn't even get a picture before everyone dug in!

When I asked her what I could bring, she suggested cupcakes which I couldn't have been happier about! But of course I couldn't just make any old cupcakes, they had to be themed some how. So enter way more blue, green and orange food coloring than I'd ever seen in my life.

I found a blue velvet cupcake recipe that would be perfect for both teams and had some bros help me find the perfect color for both the Broncos and Seahawks. The first batch was a total bust, unfortunately. The batter was a lot thicker then I am used to so I accidentally over-filled the cupcake tin and the end result was top-heavy yet collapsed cupcakes. They were still delicious so I persisted with the second batch. Success!

Blue Velvet Cupcake Recipe:

2 cups sugar

½ pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 teaspoons Wilton Navy Blue food coloring (add more if you so desire)

2½ cups cake flour

1 teaspoon salt 

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In your mixer, cream the sugar and butter, mix until light and fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time and mix well after each addition. Mix cocoa and food coloring together to form a paste, and then add to sugar mixture; mix well. Sift together flour and salt. Add flour and salt to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Blend in vanilla. In a small bowl, combine baking soda and vinegar and add to mixture.

Warning: Batter will be very thick. Only fill the cupcake liners 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting. 

Cream Cheese Butter Cream
1 package cream cheese, softened and halved
2 sticks butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (1/2 for each batch)
5 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (2 1/2 for each batch - or more to your taste)
1 teaspoon of Crystal Colors powdered food coloring for each color choice (I used Tahitian Sun for the Broncos and Moss Green for the Seahawks)

In mixer, beat half the cream cheese, half the butter and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla together until smooth. Add the sugar (2 1/2 cups) a half cup at a time, mixing well between each addition. Add the food coloring until you get to your desired color and mix until completely incorporated. Increase the speed on your mixer and mix until very light and fluffy. 

Repeat for the other color choice. Pipe the butter cream onto cooled cupcakes and add any embellishments. I used royal blue Sanding Sugar and football decorations to go with the theme. 

I'm working on a full wedding post, but I went to upload the pictures and my thumb drive wasn't working - Yikes! Luckily we had already loaded all of the pictures on my mom's computer. Crisis averted. So here is a little teaser (and one of the only ones I do have on my computer).

End of the best night ever

I hope everyone enjoyed the Super Bowl!

xo

Alison