“Food is symbolic of love when words are inadequate.” — Alan D. Wolfelt
Show your special someone how much you love them this Valentine’s Day with these raspberry lemonade cupcakes!
A little bit of freeze-dried raspberry powder packs a punch when flavoring buttercream without adding extra liquid. You can find freeze-dried fruit powders on Amazon or in my case I ordered some from Blueprint.com and they come in all different flavors!
It’s the first of October and officially time to say that autumn is here in Michigan, the leaves are turning vibrant colors all around…the temperatures are dipping lower…and you can hear the leaves crunching under your feet as you walk.
So now all that’s left to fill your senses are the aromas of cinnamon and the flavors of cloves, cardamom, and ginger that will hug your taste buds when you bite into these cupcakes!
Everyone’s Easter egg hunt should end with a sweet treat like these carrot cake cupcakes.
They are super moist and delicious, and instead of the overly sweet american cream cheese frosting you usually find with carrot cake these babies are swirled with a Swiss meringue buttercream with white chocolate drizzled in. That’s right…and you won’t miss the cream cheese one bit!
While I can’t take credit for this recipe because it’s the master baker Ron Ben Isreal’s recipe, I did convert it from a cake into cupcakes.
Did you know that carrots have been used in cakes as sweeteners since medieval times? We’ve come a long way since then…but a good thing never gets old when it comes to food, it just gets reinvented.
A good cupcake recipe is like a four leaf clover… hard to find and lucky to have. So put this one in your pocket and save it with all your other treasures.
Top it with my Irish Cream Espresso Buttercream and you’ve got gold!
This is a mint lover’s dream!
A moist chocolate fudge cupcake covered in hot fudge and grasshopper cookies-topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with more cookies and Andez Mints.
Who doesn’t love the combination of banana and peanut butter?
For my nephew’s graduation open house I decided to make a variety of cupcakes for him. One of the inspirations I had was to make a cupcake that tasted like moist banana bread and pair it with my Tiger Butter Frosting that is a Swiss meringue buttercream flavored with white chocolate and peanut butter. It was divine…it had the perfect balance of flavors! I attempted to test dipping it in chocolate as well but decided it was too sweet and the original recipe was perfect.
Needless to say, the cupcakes were a hit at the open house…actually everyone was eating the cupcakes instead of the cake. I even seen a few people go back up for a second and third cupcake…lol. So I guess you could call them a success.
I work 10 hour days at my job so making cupcakes for an event like this I had to prepare ahead of time. I researched a bit and tested freezing cupcakes to see how they would hold up and see if they would stay moist after a few weeks. I found this technique worked well and I was able to make cupcakes a couple weeks in advance on my days off and they tasted exactly the same and were still super moist.
After cupcakes have cooled completely wrap them individually in plastic wrap and place in ziplock bags or in an airtight container, place in freezer. To unthaw, remove from freezer and unwrap…place on a cooling wrap for a few hours till cupcakes come to room temperature before frosting. I also made my buttercream a day ahead and placed in the fridge. The frosting also has to come to room temp before you can pipe it. Frosting takes only around an hour to warm up enough to re-whip in the blender once more before piping. Then you are all set to decorate your cupcakes after that. Easy prep so you don’t have to stress the night before baking or the day of an event.
I took some inspiration for the banana cupcake recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and tweaked it by adding some chopped walnuts and pairing it with my frosting recipe. Normally I like to adjust recipes more to my liking but she did such a good job that I kept it pretty much true to her recipe- Bravo Sally! She has a wonderful blog and some amazing recipes, if you haven’t visited her site you should check it out.
