If You Like Pina Coladas

And getting caught in the rain...

If you're not into yoga...

If you have half a brain...

These cupcakes are fun to make, YUMMY, and great for summer!

No, that picture at the top isn't a regular Pina Colada, it is a Strawberry Colada for a little inspiration!

I found the recipe in the Betty Crocker- Big Book of Cupcakes. Yes, I am lovin that book! The recipe however was a bit incomplete I found as it didn't tell how many eggs to use, just to put them in one at a time. Weird, anyways....

 

Ingredients/Directions for Pina Colada Cupcakes

2-1/2 cup Unbleached All Purpose Flour*

1 cup sugar

1 stick margarine*

Strawberry Applesauce (one of those single serve cups, about 1/2 cup)*

2-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp coconut extract

1 tablespoon light rum*

3 eggs*

Half or a little more of a 20oz can of crushed pineapples, drained (save juice), no measurements just eyeball it*

1/4 cup pineapple juice from the can*

1/4 cup milk

 *denotes my changes or more or less me just doing stuff my way as usual, so I changed most everything. I can't remember how many changes it takes before a recipe is considered your own?!

 

In the book it does have you to do things in certain orders, but I just put all the dry stuff in the mixer, followed by all the wet stuff and they turned out fine! I filled my liners between 2/3 and 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for 18 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. This recipe made 21 cupcakes for me.
   

Cute seashell cupcake liners are Mary Engelbreit from Michaels.

    

Now onto the frosting...

First, let me tell you I have never cooked frosting in my life!

This was fun!

 

Ingredients/Directions for Tropical Frosting

2 egg whites, beat just until stiff peaks form (leave that in your mixer and move on to the stove!)

  

In your 1qt sauce pan...

1 TB water

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup corn syrup

 

Mix those 3 ingredients well and then cover and turn burner on medium until reaches a rolling bowl...just keep peeking...about 3 to 5 minutes depending on your stove. No stirring, don't touch it. Remove lid and continue to boil untouched for 4-8 minutes or until candy thermometer reads 240 degrees. This took about 6 minutes for me.

As soon as the sugar mixture reaches proper temperature, SLOWLY pour into your mixer turned on medium, keep it going and add 1 teaspoon coconut extract and 1 teaspoon light rum (I didn't have rum extract, just used rum!)

Keep mixer going for about 3 minutes until stiff peaks reform.

    

For some reason I had a lot of fun making the frosting!

My husband got me the book Sugar Baby by Gesine Bullock-Prado, she is Sandra Bullock's sister. Anyway, I have yet to make anything in the book, although I do want to one day! It is a great book with some stories in it and I did buy a candy thermometer because of it. I also learned by reading the book that molten hot sugar (what you are making in the pot for that frosting up there) boils hotter than water and it will stick to you and burn you like nothing else, so be careful and this is definitely something you don't to sling in your face when you put it in the mixer and you don't want small children around when you are making it.

   

Back to the Cupcakes

Frost the cupcakes with a spatula, press on some coconut, top with a paper umbrellas and enjoy! I put fresh strawberries on some of them too!

Anyway the cupcakes and frosting are YUM, and if you like Pina Coladas...just make them!
 

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These Cupcakes are linked up to:

A Well-Seasoned Life: Sweet Indulgences Sunday

Sweetology: Tea Party Tuesday

Cupcake Tuesday
This Chick Cooks: These Chicks Cooked
Lady Behind the Curtain: Cast Party Wednesday
Something Swanky: Sweet Treats Thursday
Miz Helen's Country Cottage: Full Plate Thursday
Alli N Son: Sweet Tooth Friday
Sweet as Sugar Cookies: Sweets for a Saturday

These Cupcakes were featured at:
Miz Helen's Country Cottage: What's for Dinner Next Week 7-10-11

My Oh My Mojito Cupcakes!

I have been wanting to make Mojito Cupcakes for some time now and today is the day!

For the cupcake, I doctored up a box mix...yes...a box mix! I used a Betty Crocker White Cake mix, 1 cup of Mojito Mix, 1 Tablespoon Lime juice, 4 egg whites, 1/3 cup of unsweetened applesauce, and as much chopped mint as I could get off my little plant and still leave enough for the top. (That was about 30 leaves of mint chopped up.) It could have used more! Mix all that together and bake at 350 for 18 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. The liners are from Nordicware...the color is perfect for these cupcakes!

(I did make a non-alcoholic version, but this could easily be changed by using 6 oz of Mojito Mix and 2 oz Light Rum instead of the 1 cup Mojito Mix.)

The frosting on the cupcakes was from the Margarita Cupcake Recipe in  Betty Crocker- The Big Book of Cupcakes.  For the frosting I folded together 2- 6oz containers of Yoplait Keylime Pie Light with 1-1/2 cups (1/2 a tub) of Cool Whip Light. I topped them with a mint leaf or two.

I also put a few birthday candies on some of them!

The cupcakes turned out nice anf fluffy! The frosting not very sweet taste of Keylime Yogurt and Cool Whip, it can really be eaten all alone, and that is what was done with the leftover frosting! Nice mint and lime flavored cupcake, low fat, low cal, simple goodness!

These cupcakes can be made from start to finish in less than an hour!

Enjoy!

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These cupcakes are linked up to:
Cupcake Tuesday
Sweetology: Tea Party Tuesday
Alli N Son: Sweet Tooth Friday
Bacon Time: Party Mindie Style
Mom's Crazy Cooking- Fun Summer Recipes
A Well-Seasoned Life: Sweet Indulgences Sunday
Cupcake Apothecary: A Themed Bakers Sunday
Cajun Sugar Pie
Everyday Sisters: Sharing Sundays (Theme: Mexican)

"Hello, Cupcake!" and "What's New Cupcake?" Cupcakes!

It's Flashback Friday!
This is a weekly segment that I post to show you some of my past adventures...

(As time has passed I have found a couple more pictures that I forgot to add- Halloween project added 3/20/2011, Gingerbread Boys project added 4/17/2011)

Last year when I saw the "The What's New Cupcake!" book by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson, I was immediately interested and also found that they had a previous book, "Hello, Cupcake!" These were cute, different cupcakes, that are more like artwork than food. These books are a must have, even if you don't bake, they are just fun to look at! If you do like to bake, these are certain to catch the eye of anyone that eats them! Anyways, I have re-created a few of there cupcake designs which are pictured below! I have changed each design slightly to fit my need. I hope you enjoy!

I made these Dog Cupcakes on 9/2/2010 for my Maltese Rex's birthday (of course he didn't eat them!)
I used funfetti cake mix and buttercream icing. For the nose and tongue I made some homemade fondant and colored it and molded the eyes, nose, and tongue instead of using the suggested candies.

"The House That Boo Built"...I made this for Halloween 2010. The trees were made from dark melting chocolate...yum! I did have to use a few toothpicks to hold up the trees. This was pretty fun to make!

I made these Turkey Cupcakes for Thanksgiving 2010!

It is a pumpkin cupcake with chocolate frosting. I used a box Spice Cake mix with a can of plain organic pumpkin, no eggs, no oil, no water, just the mix and a can of pumpkin. Yes it is super thick batter, but it works!

As far as the decoration, I had read many reviews about these falling apart, so I wanted to take extra care and time in making these. I started on Thanksgiving Eve. For the eyes I used that fabulous Wilton Cooking Icing, just dropped on a drop and put a sprinkle for the iris. The red waddle on the beak was made with Wilton Cookie Icing too! I let the mini cupcake face dry sitting normal overnight before assembling. I collected all the different colors of candy corn for the feathers around Halloween. The cookies were Anna's Thin Ginger cookies which I used *once again* Wilton Cookie Icing to glue on the candy corn the night before I needed them. When actually assembling the cupcakes o Thanksgiving Day, I put a toothpick into the face cupcake to stick it into the body cupcake. I also used a whole marshmallow to hold that cookie up, along with a couple strategically placed toothpicks.

I made these Cupcakes in Martini Cups for New Year's Eve 2010!

The cupcakes were not baked in the plastic martini cups. While the cupcakes were actually baking, I used corn syrup on the rim of each cup and dipped each in a different color sanding sugar to go with my color scheme. This dryed totally, pretty quickly. It took 2 containers of storebought frosting, melted in the microwave and then colored swirled in the cup until dried before placing the unwrapped cupcake into the martini cup to stop up the hole and then finished filling with the melted frosting. This is where an extra set of hands comes in handy to swirl that first spoonful of frosting in the cup until it is no longer trying to run down the cup. I used Jelly Belly's for these trying to coordinate colors with the frosting and the candies. For embellishments I used paper umbrellas I already hand on hand and gummy candies that I cut a small slit in and slid on the edge of the cup.

I made these "Gingerbread Boys" cupcakes in January this year. They were from the "Hello, Cupcake!" book. They were pretty easy just dipping the cupcakes into melted canned chocolate frosting, letting that dry, a few gum drops, and then outline. I used Wilton Cookie Icing to pipe on the outline. I was in a bit of a rush so didn't get the outline piped as well as I had hoped.

So far these are the only of the "Hello,Cupcake"/"What's New Cupcake" designs that I have re-created, but there are definately more in the plans!

A few months back I looked at a blog (before I knew about blogging really) where a girl works her way though this book...does anyone know the name of this blog? I would like to find it again.

"Hello,Cupcake"/"What's New Cupcake" has a monthly email newsletter on there blog to sign up for too with a new idea delivered right into your email box every month!

Irish Coffee Brownie Cupcakes

Cupcake Project: Irish Coffee Brownie Cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day...: "Irish coffee cupcakes are coffee-flavored cupcakes spiked with whiskey and topped with chocolate whiskey cream cheese frosting.  Irish..."

They sound great right? Well I am up for the challenge!

Yes! I made them!

My first "adult" cupcake ever!

I first saw this recipe on Paula Deen's Facebook! Cute and with whiskey...that peaked my interest, so I went to Paula Deen's Page to get the recipe. There I found out a genius named Stefani from The Cupcake Project actually created the recipe.

You can get the FULL RECIPE HERE, I would copy the recipe here, but not sure of the legalities and stuff so just follow the link and make these things!

I already had pretty much off the the ingredients on hand other than the cream cheese.

You start by making the brownie center. 

Once mixed that just fits in a small bowl!

Next came the fun part to me. I love coffee, so bring the milk to a boil with 1 cup of coffee beans...the aroma was wonderful! I used a dark roast coffee bean.

This did just turn out to be 3/4 of a cup, which is all you need, so no extra for sampling. Anyway this had to sit for 15 minutes afterwards. While that was sitting, I started mixing together the dry ingredients for the cupcakes.  

That was the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Sugar, butter, and eggs were mixed in another bowl waiting for the star of the show as well. Then time to mix the whiskey and the milk (which had been strained and beans removed)

Now this recipe was really getting fun, despite being on like the 5th bowl! I am not really an experienced baker and like as little mess as possible, but I was trying to clean things up along the way so it wasn't soooooo bad. 

Finally the batter was mixed, taking turns with the dry and wet ingredients. At this point the whiskey aroma was pretty strong.

After everything was mixed and ready, you were supposed to fill each cupcake liner 3/4 full with a heaping tablespoon of the brownie mix in the center. The recipe said it would make 16. This is where I don't know what happened. I started filling the liners and had a lot of batter left, ended up filling 19, but that isn't all. If I put 1 Tablespoon of brownie mix in each cupcake they would have flowed over immediately, so one heaping teaspoon was what I used (yes I know they are more like blobs....I wasn't very neat at this part) Anyway there was just enough brownie mix to make 19 and they were super FULL. So again, I don't know where I went wrong, but things seemed to be heading that way.

I nervously watched them in the oven as they began going over the edge of the liners. Maybe I should have made 24? Where did I go wrong? Was I creating a disaster?

They did need to bake the full 25 minutes to be done. They didn't look too bad after the baking. I did have to let them cool in the pan until I could handle the pan. Usually I pop my cupcakes out immediately and put on a rack, but I was going to need to use a butter knife to loosen a few of these. They did come out of the pan easier than I thought though.

After they were cooled, I mixed the Chocolate Cream Cheese Whiskey spiked frosting. I thought I had a picture of that, but guess that I didn't. Anyway, I started using Wilton Tip 106 as Stefani did when creating these cupcakes. However, I have never used this tip and they weren't looking like hers did, so I ended up switching to a bigger tip that was easier for me, Wilton Tip 32. I think I have gotten in a comfort zone with all my cupcakes and I am stuck in that zone. Anyway here is what they looked like.

So they don't quite look like the original cupcakes from Cupcake Project, but I think they look pretty neat still!

Now lets check on the inside....

Yay! There is a brownie center!! Well not exactly center, but considering what they looked like when they went into the oven...they look pretty darn good...Like I said I am not really an experienced baker and am just a wife and mom that loves to bake!

So question of the day...How did they taste? Well, the whiskey was not overpowering, but you could taste it in the cupcake, not as much in the frosting. These cupcakes actually tasted really good! The cupcakes were not hard to make, and the ingredients were stuff I already had on hand, they just took a lot of bowls, And in the end...Would I make them again?

 YES!

I am storing them in the refrigerator since there is cream cheese and they are maybe even better cold! In fact, I just had one of these for breakfast with my coffee...YUM!

By the way...I am super excited. Over the weekend I enrolled in Wilton Course One: Decorating Basics Class! I have been wanting to do this for awhile and the time is finally right! I start next month! I can't wait! I have had a couple friends take the class that loved it! Any class takers have any suggestions? Maybe now I will learn how to use that Tip 106...lol