Lime-Vanilla Cupcakes with Cucumber Buttercream

Lime-Vanilla Cupcakes with Cucumber Buttercream sound strange, right? But I promise the only thing they are is strangely delicious. The cupcakes are very light, the cucumber buttercream is refreshing and you'll want to eat them all immediately. Gale and Kimberly said they were the best cupcakes I had ever baked and Kimberly asked that I forward the recipe to her Mom. This one is a keeper.

Almost as exciting as enjoying cupcakes was the fact that I successfully managed to halve a recipe. Perhaps relearning math is working! My only tweaks beyond halving the recipe were increasing the vanilla extract to its 1 teaspoon level and using a mixture of plain soymilk and heavy cream in lieu of regular milk as I didn't have any on hand.

On an separate note, I won the contest Cathy at Not Eating Out in New York hosted a few weeks ago and will be attending Just Food's Let Us Eat Local event tonight. My recipe also will be published in Just Foods' Veggie Tipsheets. I couldn't believe it but I'm very thankful. Best wishes to the other three people who entered the competition, which Cathy recapped here.

Apple Cider Cupcakes/Mupcakes with Caramel Buttercream

Last Saturday night I felt super ambitious and decided to adapt not one but two cupcake recipes to make Apple Cider Cupcakes. Because I really needed that many cupcakes. It took a couple days and a little effort to give them away but the cupcakes are all gone at this point.

They, and kale chips, were the perfect accompaniment to viewing age inappropriate movies with friends, who I won't incriminate. Fortunately I had already seen High School Musical 1 and my taking on too much baking didn't make me miss out on anything new since I finished in time for the hilarious HSM 2. Next up is HSM 3 with either 17 Again or Grease. I'm so 28 going on 12 sometimes.

While both cupcakes were good, I felt like the Apple Cider "Mupcakes" (recipe below) were the clear winner: moist, light and not too sweet with delicious chunks of apple inside. They didn't even really need frosting though I certainly iced them with a Caramel Buttercream that I could, and did, eat by the spoonful.

The regular Apple Cider cupcakes, adapted from this recipe which I made last May, domed beautifully just like the original cupcakes with Bailey's. However, they didn't taste like apple cider and were a little dry and crumbly. Perhaps I should have balanced the ingredients differently. Maybe some other time.

Apple Cider Mupcakes i.e. Muffin-Cupcakes
(Adapted, as usual from the best cupcake recipe ever, Mango-Chile Cupcakes. Mupcakes coined by Leslie.)
Makes approximately 12 regular size cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup 0% Fat Greek Yogurt
1/3 cup Apple Cider
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 egg, at room temperature
1 apple, peeled and cubed

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Line or grease and flour 12 wells in a cupcake pan. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, mix thoroughly. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt to the butter mixture. Add the greek yogurt and apple cider to the rest of the batter and beat until well combined. Fold in apple. Fill each well 2/3 of the way full. Bake about 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted the center of a cupcake comes out mostly clean. Cool briefly in the pan, then remove cupcakes to wire racks to cool completely before icing. Ice.

Caramel Buttercream

For the caramel buttercream, I made Chef Jane's caramel sauce, which is the easiest caramel I've ever made; it doesn't even require butter. While it cooled, I creamed a room temperature stick of butter. Then I added spoonfuls of caramel sauce, 1/2 cup portions of confectionery sugar and splashes of half and half to taste. The end result was rich but not overwhelming. I don't feel right posting Chef Jane's recipe but I will tell you this one is pretty similar. 

 Recipe 1 on the right (lighter ones) and Recipe 2 on the left

Peach Mupcakes with Mascarpone Frosting/Cointreau-Peach Buttercream

On September 9, Leslie posted about our Spain planning/Ratatouille viewing where she served Thomas Keller's very delicious and complex Ratatouille recipe and I brought Peach Mupcakes with Mascarpone Frosting or Cointreau-Peach Buttercream. These mupcakes are a delicious adaptation of the Mango Chile Cupcakes with Key Lime Frosting from April's movie night. All 8 tasters agreed.

Clearly the recipe is out of season but I suspect using frozen peaches would work and two orange events were last weekend, Halloween and the ING NYC marathon, making it kind of timely. The cupcakes are moist, light and not overly sweet. Mascarpone Frosting** lets the cupcakes flavor shine without being overly sweet. Unfortunately it quickly disintegrates in heat (or if you overbeat it) thus the Cointreau-Peach Buttercream. The buttercream was a result of my not having milk and decided on a whim to substitute the two handy liquids. It was exciting to discover that buttercream doesn't have to be restricted to milk, butter, confectionary sugar and extracts.

I highly recommend making these cupcakes and your own variations. I'm thinking my next batch should be apples/apple cider and a maple or brown butter frosting.

Peach Mupcakes

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature (I used salted and it was fine).
3/4 cup soy milk, at room temperature (any milk would work)
1/4 cup peach nectar, at room temperature
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 egg, at room temperature
3 peaches, blanched, peeled and cut into cubes*

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Line or grease and flour 12 wells in a cupcake pan. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, mix thoroughly. Add flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt to the butter mixture. Add the milk and peach nectar to the rest of the batter and beat until well combined. Fold in peaches. Fill each well 2/3 of the way full. Bake about 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted the center of a cupcake comes out mostly clean. Cool briefly in the pan, then remove cupcakes to wire racks to cool completely before icing. Ice.

*Bring water to a boil. Cut a cross into the bottom of the peaches. Add to boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain. Peel as soon as you can handle them.

**I forgot to bookmark which recipe I used for the marscapone frosting, but I'm sure you can findn a good one via the every useful Food Blog Search to the right.

Molly's piping skill! It was my first time using the pastry bag...harder than it looks...but not bad.

Paella and Irish Carbomb Cupcakes

In an ultimately successful campaign to sell me on a September Spain trip, Leslie had her friend Kristin and me over to view Vicky Cristina Barcelona and to eat delicious Paella with Chicken and Sausage. It was rich and filling; I especially loved the fresh taste of the parsley which broke up the tomato flavor and color.

My contribution were these politically incorrect, delicious Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes. Frankly it has been so long since I made them that I don't remember my impression beyond finding them amazing and a bit time consuming to make. I want to say the cupcakes were moist, rich and dense. But who knows? I guess I'll have to revisit the recipe and drink more leftover Guinness. Damn! Life is hard...

Yes, this recipe taught me that I can drink beer and it really isn't so bad. I still don't go out of my way to consume beer but the 6 year "allergy" has ended.

Baileys Irish Cream Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

I made these Baileys Irish Cream Cupcakes for a delayed dinner, dessert and wine viewing of Gossip Girl at Meg's the other week. They were my first foray into baking with the Baileys I purchased specifically for that purpose in the Bahamas.

As soon as I saw their perfectly domed tops coming out of the oven, I was in love. My cupcakes/muffins have never before had perfectly rounded tops. I suspect beating the egg whites into stiff peaks before folding them into the rest of the cupcake mixture, instead of just mixing in whole eggs, creates this effect. I have to admit I wish it could be done with less work, but I still will make these again one day.

The resulting cake is very moist with a pound-cake like texture and you can taste the Bailey's without feeling like an alcoholic. The frosting is a rich chocolate. I really enjoyed how the mixture of shortening and butter made the icing more of a solid, easily spreadable mass.

Mango-Chile Cupcakes with Key Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

Saturday Leslie made Mango-Chile Cupcakes with Key Lime Cream Cheese Frosting for our dinner, Wedding Crashers and Saturday Night Live night. I had forgotten how hilarious Wedding Crashers is. I love that movie and Zac Efron on SNL wasn't half bad.

We were doubtful throughout the baking process... The batter looked awfully wet and tasted like like a muffin - almost healthy - which cupcakes obviously never are. The frosting required a lot more confectionery sugar than stated in the recipe. And with the addition of all that sugar would the lime flavor hold? Then they required 15 additional minutes of baking time. All our worries for naught. The cupcakes didn't rise evenly, which apparently made frosting harder than normal, but they tasted good. By the time we ate our second "mupcake"* they tasted great and they tasted even better a day later. These cupcakes are addictive.

The cupcake is like a muffin - very dense nad moist with a fruit flavor that you can't forget thanks to the mango chunks. The chili flavor is very subtle, so much so that I would consider adding more in the future. The frosting is divine; as Leslie said while we were eating it from the bowl it is just like key lime pie filling. If you make these be careful not to over frost or you'll obscure the mango flavor of the cupcake.

This summer we plan to create a variation on this recipe for peach mupcakes with a marscapone cheese frosting. We just have to figure out how to make the cupcakes a touch lighter. Who's in?


And, yes, we used the leftover mango nectar with vodka and soda to make cocktails.

*Leslie came up with the term mupcake to describe them and it is/was perfect.

Vanilla Vanilla Mini Cupcakes

To celebrate my friend Meg's birthday a few weeks ago and my new mini-muffin tin, I made cupcakes for the first time in over a year. In an attempt to be on time to the party and use ingredients I already had I decided to stick with vanilla, which is my favorite anyway.

This strategy didn't work out...I still went to the grocery store and was a good hour late for the party. Fortunately, the cupcakes made that excusable!

I used Tartelette's listed recipe and switched out the listed frosting for the matching frosting from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. I chose yellow coloring for the icing as that is Meg's favorite color to wear in the summer (I think). I don't recall liking the resulting frosting in the past, but this time it was very good. I think the trick is to be very cautious when adding the confectioner's sugar. My frosting was much softer than in the past and retained a tasty butter flavor.