Burnt Bottoms

This post is inspired by my friend, Bern. If your bottoms (I mean your cupcake's bottoms) are burning, here are some tips that might help. Just a side note, I want to just emphasize that I'm no professional. These tips are just tips that have helped me in the cupcake making process:

-Use cupcake liners

-Make sure you pre-heat your oven to the appropriate temperature

-For conventional (or radiant) ovens*, place your pans in the middle rack, NOT the bottom. You might even be able to place them on the top rack but it all depends on your oven.

-Half way through baking, turn your pans around so that the heat isn’t concentrated in one area. For example, with my oven, cupcakes usually take about 22 min. to bake. So I set the timer to 10 min. When the timer goes off I turn the pans then set the timer for another 12 min.

Hope this helps :)

*Want to know the difference between conventional (radiant) ovens and convection ovens? Click here.

HAPPY BAKING!

My Mother's Day Gift

With much anticipation...my Mother's Day gift arrived!!! Here it is...


"What is it?" Well, it's a Cupcake Courier, of course! I've been transporting my cupcakes in the foil pans with lids, that you get at the supermarket. Those worked fine until I had to bring lots, and lots of cupcakes. With the fear of having messy cupcakes, I would often frost them when I arrived to the location. With these, there's no need to fear. These are great. "The CUPCAKE COURIER is a rectangular, translucent plastic container that holds three stackable cupcake trays. Each tray has 12 deep cups to hold each cupcake secure. It has a comfortable handle, and 4 bottom latches that hold the base securely." - cupcakecourier.com. Do I sound like a commercial or what? Well, when I find something useful and efficient, you bet I'll be excited!

Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Buttercream

As requested, by my younger brother, I made a Vanilla Cupcake with Chocolate Buttercream. The same frosting I used with the Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcake. The reciped I used for the Vanilla Cupcake was similar to the Coconut Cupcake recipe except I changed it up a bit. Since the batch can yield 36 cupcakes (there's only 5 of us in our household), I packed a dozen and a half for my husband to take to his office. The others stayed here for the kids and I to devour.

notice there's two missing? How funny!

Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

After my Red Velvet disaster, I was determined to make a yummy cupcake again. So that evening, we had a few friends over and I whipped up some Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes topped with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. Success!

Red Velvet Woes

This past mother's day I made a batch of Red Velvet Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese Buttercream frosting. I've made this recipe before and turned out really fabulous. Unfortunately, this batch was less than yummy :( I think I know what happened. I was really tired when making these and I didn't mix the ingredients correctly. The cupcakes ended up really, really dry. The frosting too had a mishap. As I was about to put the sugar in the cream cheese and butter mixture, all the family started coming and I grabbed the granulated sugar instead of the confectioner's sugar. So the frosting ended up being gritty. The taste was there but the texture was all wrong! So...lesson learned...when baking be alert, awake and set out the ingredients ahead of time (if you can)! I didn't even bother taking a picture of it. It was just wrong.

Coconut Cupcakes

Martha Stewart had a cupcake week recently. There she shared tons of yummy cupcakes which included her favorite, a Coconut Cupcake. I attempted her recipe and since then I've made this at least 4 times in the past 3 months. This recipe is definately a keeper!

photo courtesy of MarthaStewart.com

Chocolate Cupcake with Vanilla Buttercream

You can find the chocolate cupcake recipe in More From Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery. This recipe is so light and fluffy. It's just yummy!

I'm going to go devour one right now...mmmm!