Blueberry Cupcakes with Avocado-Lemon Frosting

Sometimes to make cupcakes you have to process a few blueberries.

It's summertime! hooray!

I felt as if I hadn't done a cupcake in a while (like, a really really long while) so the best way to ring in my new favorite of seasons seemed obvious. A nice, summery cupcake!

After toying with a few different ideas, I decided I wanted to do a blueberry cake with an avocado frosting. Why? I can't remember. But I do remember all of my friends shuddering in horror at the thought, thus making the challenge irresistible.

I came up with the following recipe:

1.5 - 2 cups fresh blueberries
1 1/3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch Kosher salt
1/2 cup milk
tsp vanilla
3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
8 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 tsp powdered ginger

Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another. Cream together sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time and mix until incorporated. Add dry and wet ingredients alternately. Fold in food-processed blueberries. Fill cake liners to nearly 2/3 full and bake at 350 degrees for 24 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Folding, then scooping.

The cakes came out pretty well, except without that nice, domed rise. I have to figure out what I'm doing wrong there. Maybe not baking long enough, or overfilling my cake liners, or not using enough chemical leavening. . . . sigh. These technicalities escape me sometimes. Regardless, the cakes were tender and moist, with a beautifully vibrant blueberry flavor. I might use more ginger next time, but they were quite delicious.

Flat yet fine.

The frosting was really exciting for me. I figured that since avocado is so fatty it would be a good substitute for butter in a cream cheese frosting. I was also hoping to maintain that lovely green color by adding some acid, in the form of citrus. I wanted to use Meyer lemons, but was unable to find any.

Recipe:

2 ripe avocados
4 oz cream cheese
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 lemon's juice
vanilla

Mash avocados with lemon juice and vanilla. Add cream cheese and beat until incorporated. Slowly add sugar and beat until the mixture reaches frosting consistency. May adjust sugar and lemon to taste.

GREEN!

I was right about the color - it was awesome. And the flavor was nice. The brightness of the lemon came through at first taste, followed by a cool creaminess brought in by the avocado. Only about half of my tasters could actually identify the avocado in the frosting, actually. Nobody wanted to throw up after eating them, which is the important part. I actually got nothing but positive reviews of this recipe.

Man, I love the colors!

All in all I'm super happy with this recipe. Both elements of the cake stand alone in their flavors, and the flavors marry well together. The frosting did discolor after almost 2 days, but I think that's pretty good.

March 9 - Rosemary Caramel Cupcakes

Rosemary: who knew?

Most of the time, my ideas for cupcake flavors come from drinks. Why is this? I don't know, I guess. Drinks are easy to make delicious, and I suppose I think the same would follow for drink-inspired treats. I'm right sometimes.

Anyway, the my hero has a kickass recipe for monkeybread that involves rosemary. It doesn't seem like it should work with a sweet caramel-y dessert bread, but it's super tasty. So why wouldn't it work for cupcakes? The answer is that it would. It really really would. In a way that could only be described as EPIC WIN.

Shiny happy cupcakes.

So here we go.

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
leaves off 1 sprig of fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated. Very finely chop rosemary and add to milk. (Well, that's what I did. I'm not sure when it would be optimal to add the rosemary or to where exactly, but this worked fine) Combine baking powder and flour. Alternately add wet and dry ingredients to batter and beat just until batter is smooth. Fill baking cups 2/3 full and bake for 17 minutes.

Hey, there's rosemary in this milk. Weird.

I was a little concerned when I saw the rosemary in the batter, like people would be picking it out of their teeth, but this turned out to be a non-issue.

Green speckles be damned!

I adapted this recipe from the hazelnut cakes I made for Nutella Day, so I knew they would rise beautifully. And I was totally right. The cake was perfectly fluffy and tender, and somehow the rosemary brought out the buttery-ness of the . . . butter.

Naked cakes!

I wanted to do a caramel frosting to keep with the monkeybread theme of the cupcakes. I searched about on that internet, and found a great-sounding recipe on allrecipes.com, but it seemed a bit complicated. I'd only made buttercreams and cream cheese frostings in the past, so I was a bit nervous, but everything turned out pretty ok.

2 tbsp white sugar
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Place 2 tbsp sugar in a heavy frying pan over medium heat. At the same time, put all other ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Let the sugar cook until it melts and becomes dark brown - you know, caramelized. Set it aside, but not for too long, because if it cools it will get hard, and that's no good. Let the other ingredients come to a boil, then stir in caramelized sugar. Return to heat and allow to boil for two minutes, stirring. Take off heat and transfer to a bowl. Beat with handmixer until mixture reaches frosting consistency. This took a super long time for me, but it did eventually happen.

Here is where I would normally have pictures of me making the frosting, but Moos absconded with my camera because the cat was doing this:

animal + stupid = camera stealing adorable.

Anyway, these cupcakes were awesome. Totally freaking awesome. The rosemary came out in a really lovely way, and the caramel frosting was really creamy and had a great flavor. They're so good I can't even properly describe it. I know the combination seems strange, but the resulting delicious was mind-numbing.

Behold: the delicious!

February 24 - Turkish delight cupcakes (kinda)

I love you, Kitchen Aid.

These cupcakes were brought to you by my beautiful new hand mixer. Let me just say this: in a cagematch knockdown-dragout-fight to the death between Kitchen Aid and Black & Decker, Kitchen Aid kicks Black & Decker in the balls.

I decided I wanted to try to make Turkish Delight themed cupcakes - a rosewater flavored cake with pistachio frosting. Why would I do this? To utilize my other new toy, of course! Food processor power!!

So first: the rosewater cake.

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch Kosher salt
3 eggs (room temp)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp rosewater (I would use more next time)
6 tbsp unsalted butter (melted)
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together. Beat eggs until homogeneous, add sugar and beat until mixture lightens. Bring rosewater and milk to a boil in a small pan. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture, mix until just incorporated then add hot liquid in a steady stream. Stir in butter and vanilla. Fill cups just past half full, bake 17 minutes or until tops are springy to the touch and toothpick comes out clean.

Spring has sprung! Into my cupcake pan!

My rosewater flavor didn't come out as much as I would have liked, but the flavor was still nice. Like a lightly sweet yellow cake. The texture was also a bit tough, but I suspect I may have over mixed the batter after I added the flour. I was probably a little overexcited about my new handmixer. And who wouldn't be? It's beautiful!

Quite a nice rise, I think.

Ok, now for the frosting:

1 1/4 cups half and half
3/4 cup unsalted pistachio nuts (more on that later)
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks (room temp)
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
1/3 (ish) cup confectioner's sugar

Bring half and half and pistachios to a boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand one hour. Beat sugar, yolks, and flour until light yellow and well mixed. Bring half and half mixture back to a simmer and gradually incorporate hot mixture into yolk mixture. Return all to saucepan and put over medium heat until mixture bubbles thickly. Transfer to food processor, add vanilla, and process until pistachios are finely chopped. Refrigerate for two hours. Beat butter in large bowl until light and fluffy, then gradually incorporate pistachio cream. Add confectioner's sugar until desired sweetness is reached.

Like a pistachio hot tub.

Apparently it's unheard of to want unsalted pistachios. Why wouldn't you want salt? Salt is so delicious! Sigh. So after scouring the grocery store, I settled on a bag of shelled, roasted, salted pistachio nuts. And I rinsed them off. Yes, it's ghetto. I know. But you know what? It worked. So shut up.

I heart food processor.

The frosting turned out beautifully, really. The pistachio flavor was great, and it wasn't crunchy at all. The sweetness was there, but subtly so. I felt it was a very sophisticated cupcake. If such a thing exists.

For some reason I thought they'd be green.

While the Turkish Delight thing didn't really come through, the cakes were certainly tasty and somewhat unique. I think people were surprised at the flavor and mild sweetness of the frosting. I wouldn't change a thing about the frosting. More rosewater next time. The end!

February 17 - Envy, failure, and devil's food

Is lusting after kitchen appliances wrong?

As an urban dweller, there are many things I appreciate about my nearly adult lifestyle. My proximity to shopping, drinking, dancing, and varied and delicious foods is fantastic. This is why I've compromised a bit on the square footage of my hip Capitol Hill pad. Most noticeably in the bathroom and the kitchen. My kitchen storage space is nearly nonexistent. I have therefore been unable to possess the object of my desire: a stand mixer.

I could write poems about its beauty.

So when my friend Diane asks if we can bake together, I say, "hell yeah!" Why would I pack up and leave my familiar (if cramped) kitchen to bake across town? Well, the lovely company is one element, but my beautiful friend Diane also owns a fire-red super-sexy stand mixer.

Beat that batter. Beat it hard.
Yeah. . . that's right.

So I decided to try making devil's food cupcakes - a recipe I've never tried out before.

2 cups flour (I used self-rising, but I think next time I'll use cake)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened (Dutch process) cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda (maybe less next time - not sure)
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs (room temp)

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and sugar. Add all other ingredients except for eggs, mix on high for two minutes. Add eggs one at a time, mix batter until just incorporated. Fill cups halfway, bake about 18 minutes or until tops spring back when touched and toothpick comes out clean.

I'm used to filling cups 2/3 to 3/4 full, and having them rise in nice domes. This recipe behaved much differently than the others I've recently tried - when we filled them 2/3ish they waaaay overflowed their paper confines.

Oh no! Too full!

The tops ended up spreading out like cookies, and being just as flat. The cakes themselves were incredibly light. I am thinking I over chemically-leavened. Apparently self-rising flour is not for every recipe. Sigh.

Fallen. Just like my dreams.

After the first batch puffed and fell, we wised up and filled only halfway, resulting in properly sized cupcakes.

That's better! I guess.

I decided to go with a mint buttercream on top of these cakes - kind of like a baked hockey night. Or. . . . girlscout thin mints. Or ande's mints. Or that stuff that my dentist used to polish the plaque off my teeth.

Ah, the possibilities of mint-chocolate!

1 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/8 tsp peppermint extract

Beat butter until light and fluffy. Add 3 cups sugar in batches, alternated with milk/extract mixture. Add the rest of the sugar until desired texture/sweetness is achieved.

Look into the frosting. You'll see your future.

I would have added a teensy bit of green food coloring to make things pretty, but we didn't have any on hand.

So these were a bit of a disappointment. The flavor was great - dark and chocolately - but the consistency was all off. Waaaay too light, but at least they were moist. I also didn't add enough sugar to my frosting, I think, but again - the flavor was there. I would totally do this again, with a few adjustments.

Use your imagination.

But just imagine how cute these would have been with green pastel frosting and those little edible silver beads - French dragees. Those things are awesome.

Go to hell, Black and Decker

I hate Black and Decker.

I decided to try something a little more childish in my cupcake makings. I've been aiming for fancy lately, and I thought it would be fun to do something I would've wanted when I was a kid. And what's more childish than. . . peanut butter! Delicious!

My plan was to do a peanut butter and banana cake and make a honey frosting to go on top. Something light to balance what I figured would be a pretty heavy cake.

Here we go!

Cake Recipe:

1 3/4 cups self-rising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup (2 large) very rip bananas

Preheat oven to 350, whisk dry ingredients together. Cream butter and sugar, beat until fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, then peanut butter, bananas, milk, and vanilla. Mix until fairly smooth, banana chunks are okay. Slowly add flour mixture, mix until just incorporated. Fill cups about 2/3, bake 16-18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

I neglected to go shopping ahead of time for this project and my bananas were a far cry from ripe. So I thought I would cook the banana to bring out the flavor. Why did I think that? I don't know. It didn't work. It did, however, make the bananas and peanut butter very hot.

It sounded like Mac N Cheese.

It was pretty sweet, because halfway through making the batter my handmixer died. It died a loud and annoying death, leaving me in the lurch. Stupid thing. Let it be known that Black and Decker makes the world's worst handmixers. It only had 2 speeds: stupid fast and dangerous fast. Butter was everywhere. This may have been why my batter turned out so thick - kind of like oatmeal. But really thick oatmeal.

This is gonna be good. I hope.

They came out alright - more like muffins than cake, really. They domed really nicely in the oven, the were just very dense.

Muffins! Wait, that's not right. . .

Frosting time.

So I had to change my plan mid-project due to my SUPER CRAPPY handmixer's failure to not suck big time. After a bit of research, I settled on a marshmallow frosting, which didn't seem to require high speed mixing to reach a frosting-y consistency. Recipe:

2 cups mini-marshmallows
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter

Stir together brown sugar and milk over low heat until dissolved. Cover and let cook 3 minutes, then uncover and turn to high heat until mixture reaches 238 degrees. Careful, that's effing hot. Remove from heat and add butter and marshmallows, stirring until smooth. Continue to stir away from heat until mixture cools down and thickens. It's a fine line between overly syrupy and impossible to spread, so exercise caution.

Cheese curds n gravy! Wait, that's not right. . .

Everything turned out mostly okay, I think. That frosting's pretty touchy when it cools, so I'd just say frost your cakes quickly. The cakes themselves were, as I said, dense, and the banana flavor wasn't so awesome. Still, everything together was pretty good. I'd give it a rating of 87% intense. Do they go there? Yeah, sure. Especially with dinosaur sprinkles. Sweet!

Prehistorically delicious!

Happy Nutella Day!

Money shot.

My inaugural "official blog" post will be my entry for International Day of Nutella, which happens to be February 5th. Delightful!




I've been experimenting with cupcakes of late, because they're delicious and cute, and people love them. But mostly because they can be made singly if I'm uncertain of the effects of some of my ideas, and ruining one cupcake sucks a lot less than ruining an entire cake. Which I've done.

So in the spirit of Nutella Day, I thought I'd do a Nutella themed cupcake. Plus it gave me an excuse (as if I needed one) to go out and restock my Nutella supply. It never seems to stay in my kitchen for long. . .

My plan was to make a hazelnut cupcake and frost with a buttercream featuring the chocolate-hazelnut flavored Nutella. However. Hazelnut extract has proven extremely difficult to find, and I don't have a proper food processor to dustify actual hazelnuts for a batter, so I switched to an almond-flavored cake. Like it mattered. These cupcakes are basically a vessel for the frosting. Here we go!

The Cake Part:
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons milk

I started with all of my ingredients measured out. This is how adults cook. I learned it last month.

My Mise for this project.

Next I creamed my butter and sugar and incorporated my eggs. Batter is forming. More so after the addition of the dry and wet ingredients.

Locked and loaded.

So far so good. I filled the cups about 3/4 and tossed them carelessly in the oven. I'm a badass like that.

Perfectly measured.

I pulled them a couple of minutes early, my oven tends to cook a bit more quickly than recipes would like it to. I think I made the right call. Alton Brown would describe these cupcake tops as "GBD." I'm not going to tell you what he would mean by that.

Poof!

The Frosting Part:
3/4 cup unsalted butter (room temp)
3 cups confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup very soft Nutella

Here we go with the Nutella! I used a half cup of the good stuff. Then I ate the rest with a spoon. Just kidding. Or am I?

Pants zipped? Good, let's get at it.

The frosting was just a standard chocolate buttercream recipe with Nutella substituting for the standard melted chocolate. It worked out pretty well - fresh Nutella has about the consistency of melted room-temperature chocolate.

Nutella at 50% intensity!

The Results:

The recipe turned out really well. It rose pretty much perfectly, so I'm glad I used self-rising flour instead of AP. The cake was really light and fluffy, with a tight crumb and tender consistency. I made the right call pulling them a bit early, they were moist and the tops were a lovely bit of crunch on top.

I gave them over to my quality assurance engineer.

Game face!

ZOMG!
You can cook!

I'm pretty pleased with how this project turned out. I'll definitely use both the cake and the frosting recipes again - they were easy and tasty. I also have a ton of leftover frosting, despite my best efforts to push maximum capacity per cupcake. I'll leave my comment section open to suggestions as to what I should do with the rest. . .

Success!