Cupcake Numero Dos: Blueberries-and-Cream

Cupcake Recipe #2: (it went MUCH better than last time :) )
Blueberres-and-Cream Cupcakes (page 42)
Source: Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Cookbook

**I did this with a variation: instead of using whipped cream as the topping, I used the same fluffy white frosting recipe from the yellow buttermilk cupcakes and it was SUPREME! Muy bueno.**

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups milk, room temperature
• 2 cups fresh blueberries, plus more for garnish
• **homemade whipped cream (or one batch of fluffy white frosting-recipe on previous post)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line standard or mini muffin tins with paper liners.

2. Whisk together both flours, baking powder, and salt. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla.

3. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each. Fold in blueberries by hand.

4. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until pale golden, about 25 minutes for standard and 15 for mini.

5. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature in airtight containers.

6. Dallop with whipped cream before serving or frost with white frosting and garnish with sugar crystals and extra blueberries.

 Straight from the oven

 Before baking

 Before frosting

 And after :)

Lovely! 

You may be thinking.....blueberry CUPCAKES? I definitely only thought that came in muffin-form...but this is not so. Blueberry cupcakes are perfect for when you are in the mood for a fruity dessert or when you are craving a little extra sugar for breakfast, brunch, after lunch, in between meals.....

My 2012 Cupcake Craze

My most exciting 2012 New Year's resolution by far is my goal to make 25 different cupcake recipes and blog about each one this year. To start off this journey with a BANG I made two different cupcake recipes in two days. I'm full of cake. 

Cupcake recipe #1: 
Yellow Buttermilk Birthday Cupcakes (page 26)
Source: Martha Stewart's Cupcakes Cookbook

Ingredients:

• **3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup plus 2 TB butter, softened
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 5 large whole eggs plus 3 egg yolks
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Fluffy White Frosting (page 302):

• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 pound (4 cups) powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
2. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium. Add whole eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add yolks, and beat until thoroughly combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, and beating until combined after each. Beat in vanilla.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely.

**I made a HUGE mistake and substituted regular flour for cake flour. DON'T DO THAT. It makes the cupcakes DRY and nasty nast. Instead, if you need to substitute, for every 1 cup of cake flour, substitute one cup of regular flour minus 2 TB mixed with 2 TB cornstarch. TRUST ME I TRIED IT. (But let's be honest, it's much easier to just bite the bullet and BUY CAKE FLOUR.)  

Frosting:

1. With an electric mixer, beat butter on medium-high speed until pale and creamy, about 2 minutes.
2. Reduce speed to medium. Add the confectioners' sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed; after every two additions, raise speed to high and beat 10 seconds to aerate frosting, then return to medium-high. This process should take about 5 minutes. Frosting will be very pale and fluffy.
3. Add vanilla, and beat until frosting is smooth. If not using immediately, frosting can be refrigerated up to 10 days in an airtight container. Before using, bring to room temperature, and beat on low speed until smooth again, about 5 minutes.

So funny story, I made these cupcakes for my friend Daniel's 16th birthday, and frosted them all cute and even made a "16" out of pretzels on one of the cupcakes. So I was decorating like crazy and when I was done I left the house and forgot the cupcakes to bring to Daniel. When I got back from his party, I decided to eat one and I SPIT IT OUT because it was SO DRY AND TASTELESS. Wow. At least I got pictures of how cute they looked. You can look at the pictures and just imagine that they tasted moist and delicious. AND as I was typing out the ingredients list here, a day later, I realized that I HAD FORGOTTEN TO PUT THE BUTTERMILK ! No buttermilk in my yellow buttermilk cupcakes, and no cake flour. What a fail. Well, at least I learned something. I think :) 1 cupcake recipe down, 24 to go! 

Easy Curly-Q Christmas Ornaments!

Me and the sisters and my mom made these adorable ornaments that we found out about on pinterest (awesome craft website) yesterday and they turned out just ADORABLE:

These are actually really easy to make!

Curly-Q Christmas Ornaments:

supplies:

• crochet hook
• 4 scrapbook sized paper's worth of 6-inch long paper strips each about 1/2-inch to 1-inch wide (you will end up with more than you need for one ornamnet) 
• ribbon (for adornment) 
• empty see-through ornament balls

 

1. Cut up your strips of paper (6 inches long, about 1/2-inch to 1-inch wide)
2. Curl each paper strip around the crochet hook as shown above. 
3. Slide each curled roll of paper into the ornament and continue to do so until the ornaments are as full as you want them. You can also add curled ribbon to the mix. 
4. Tie a ribbon around the top and hang it on the tree! 

Christmas Crafts and other such Merriment.

My Mom showed me this awesome gift idea, and so I made it and it turned out really well!
You can google it and hundreds of different recipes will show up for it. But here is the wonderful recipe I used:

The Homemade Brown Sugar Scrub
-Mix together 1/2 cup (or less) sweetened almond oil [or just regular] with 1/2-1 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tsp of Vitamin E (optional-you can cut open a few vitamin E liquid gel caps to get this) in a medium sized bowl. 
-Add 1 cup brown sugar.
-Pour into small glass jars and print out FREE cute holiday gift tags from www. LollyChops.com and stick a small circular one onto the lid with double sided tape and/or tie a holiday gift tag with ribbon around the bottle and give give GIVE!! 


*A website did tell me that you can substitute almond oil for pure sesame oil (not roasted), vegetable oil, or extra virgin olive oil since almond oil can be expensive and hard to get in bulk*
*When you double the recipe, about 3 small-medium size jars are filled*


Like I said, this made a stellar gift:

The oil will separate from the scrub so you just need to mix it  a little before use.

Me and my friends had a fantastic Christmas party just for kicks at my house last night, and we ended up making these adorable cookies:

(The most amazing gingerbread cookies ever, my Grandma Carolyn's recipe :o) )

And we made our own wrapping paper! That's something I like to do every year and so Savanna, Miranda and I just decided to do this at around 2:00 am the other day don't ask us why.

Basically it is craft paper that we cut into sheets about present sized, and then we painted foam Christmas stamps (found easily at Michaels) with paintbrushes and acrylic paint and stamped them on the paper! We also got a little crazy and added glitter and puff paint too :o)

The finished product!! So cute right?? (wrapping credit goes to Katie Houston)

Snowflake fun...(notice how there are little PEOPLE in the snowflake!!)

Our beautiful tree!

My First Post (:

I dance, I read, I bake, I laugh at everything, I do spontaneous crafts, I stay up way too late organizing, I sing in the kitchen, I fall down the stairs, I want to go to Italy, I want to be a dance teacher and a pediatric dietician, I love taking pictures, I can't watch a football game for my life, I hate the aftertaste of cooked peppers, I love holidays and my family, disneyland is my magical place, I love making breakfast with my dad and talking to my mom everyday after school, I love to drive because I can, I'm going to fly across a stage someday, I secretly wish I was a princess just so I could go to balls and wear ball gowns, I look forward to watching cliche Christmas hallmark movies with my sister Katie way too early in the morning over winter break, I love sister time with Christina where we do crafts or go to dance classes, I love having my hair done for me, I love foot massages (getting them, not giving them), I love not worrying but I always do, I like to write and I love keeping a journal, I save movie tickets and candy wrappers, I look at cookbooks and dog ear hundreds of pages, I don't watch tv but I adore movies, I love riding bikes even though I'm no good at it, I love coloring with crayons and homework you can do while listening to music, I love Utah mountains and being active, I love cats and sometimes dogs (it depends on their personality), I love babysitting and making my bed, you don't want to come near me if I haven't eaten all day, I don't like physics but I love chemistry, I wanted to be Clara in the Nutcracker since I was 5 years old and I didn't get the part, I like yoga and pilates and quoting youtube videos, I'm the leopard in Tarzan, and I'm going to be 17 years old in less than a month.

And I've never made a blog before.

That's all you need to know about me.

On this blog (which is for my personal satisfaction and enjoyment more than anything else), I am going to post the things I bake, the pictures I take, the crafts I make, funny stories, just about anything that is share-worthy.

TTFN