Archive for: Cakes – Cupcakes
Most muffin and cupcake wrappers are designed to keep your baked goods from sticking to the pan, making them easy to remove and easy to pick up and eat. The design options when it came to these wrappers used to be very limited. These days, you can really get creative with your cupcakes just by using a variety of multi-colored or unusually patterned cupcakes. The only problem is that many of these wrappers still perform in much the same way as their plainer forerunners: they absorb some moisture and fat from the cake batter and lose a lot of their color. This can be a bummer when you’ve been looking forward to using that set of funky leopard-print wrappers and end up with a plain result!
This problem was the inspiration behind Reynolds Baked for You StayBrite Baking Cups. These baking cups feature vibrant designs on the outside and are lined with nonstick foil inside, so no moisture bleeds through the cupcake wrapper and the design on the finished product is just as bold as the design in the package. I’ve used these several times now with great results. The wrappers come in an always-changing variety of patterns and they really make an otherwise plain muffin or cupcake look great. If I had any complaints, it would be that they actually released too easily from the cake in some cases and the wrapper started to peel off when I moved the cakes around! This wasn’t a problem for me, but you might want to handle them with care just in case if you’re bringing these to a party and plan on moving them in and out of cupcake carriers or different serving plates.
The muffins, with the StayBrite wrappers, pictured below are Coffee Cake Muffins.
Most cupcake wrappers are designed to give your cupcakes a cute, seasonal or otherwise dressed-up look. They’re meant to make the cakes easy to pick up and eat without getting your hands sticky. They’re not meant to be interactive, other than in the sense that you need to unwrap them as you eat your cupcakes. These Fossil Food Cupcake Mold from Fred are more interactive, because there is a dinosaur fossil hidden at the bottom of each rectangular that is uncovered as you eat. The food-safe silicone baking cups perform just like regular cupcake molds, but instead of peeling them off of the finished product, you’ll want to serve your cakes straight from the mold.The “fossils” are raised silicone images in the forms of Triceratops, Pteranodon, Hadrosaur, and T-rex skulls.
These molds remind me of mugs I had as a kid that had a little creature – either a small figure or a painted image – at the bottom that was revealed as you drank. I always got a huge kick out of those mugs (and still do, at least from the one that I saved all this time), so it is easy for me to see how kids – and even adults looking for a little novelty – will get a kick out of uncovering the “fossils” as they eat. Cupcakes work well with these molds, though they’re only sold in a set of four and you’ll need to bake off the rest of your cupcake batter in another pan, but they make great serving dishes for other desserts, like trifle and puddings, as well. As with all silicone products, you don’t want to cut the silicone, so it is best to use plastic cutlery instead of metal when serving.
Carrot cake is a crowd-pleasing dessert. Although I admit that chocolate and vanilla will probably always have a slightly bigger fan base than carrot cake does, there is just something about a moist and spicy cake carrot cake that makes it a big hit every time I serve one. Carrot cake will probably win itself even more fans when it shows up in cupcake form.
This Carrot Cake Cupcake recipe is one of my favorite. The batter is very easy to make and the finished cupcakes have a beautiful crumb and a light texture – none of that dense, oily feel that you can get in a bad carrot cake. I used a combination of cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg in these cupcakes and they have a mild spice flavor to them. The small amount of orange juice in the batter compliments the brown sugar and the rest of the spices, but doesn’t add a strong orange flavor to the cake. If you prefer your cupcakes to be spicier, you can double the spices or mix things up by adding some ground ginger or ground cloves into the batter.
I topped my cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and decorated them with little green and orange carrots. I often finish off carrot cakes this way because mini carrots are very easy to make and it takes very little frosting to make them, so I can still be generous when frosting the rest of my cupcakes! These cupcakes will keep well when stored in an airtight container for a couple of days, but I should warn you that once those little carrots are piped on top, they become a lot more difficult to resist and they might not last too long. I know they don’t in my kitchen!
+Continue Reading
A cupcake is supposed to make you want to grab it and scarf it down, enjoying every bit of tender cake and sweet frosting as you eat it. They remind you of treats that your mother made – even when she used a mix – and bake sales you attended as a kid and put all of those memories into one delicious, single-serving treat. Cupcakes are everywhere these days and are both more popular and more widely available than ever before and sometimes it seems like we’re loosing a little bit of the homemade feel of the cupcake as they become more elaborate. It’s not that there is anything wrong with an over-the-top cupcake, but after a while they start to feel inaccessible to home bakers who don’t always want a cupcake recipe that takes hours and needs multiple components. The Big Book of Cupcakes Presented by Southern Living is incredibly accessible. The cupcakes – which are at least as beautifully frosted and decorated as any you’ll see at a bake shop – still have a fantastic homemade feel to them and will inspire you to move cupcakes up to the top of your “To-Bake” list.
The cookbook has more than 150 recipes and is divided up by seasons, offering cupcakes for spring, summer, fall and winter. The flavors suit the seasons, giving you Maple Bacon cupcakes in fall and Carrot Cake Cupcakes in the spring. The recipes, like most Southern Living recipes, are easy to follow and written very clearly. This allows even novice bakers to feel confident trying out new flavor combinations or making more complex desserts, such as Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes filled with homemade banana curd. The book also has a great introduction to not only the ingredients used in cupcake baking, but into the techniques used to make finished cupcakes look great, such as glazing with slick ganache or garnishing with chocolate curls. There are additional tips throughout the book that offer different flavor variations or presentation suggestions.
Compared to many other cupcake cookbooks, this one has a great feel to it. The tone is friendly and excited, and all of the descriptions make the cupcakes sound not just delicious, but easy to make. The pictures are mouthwatering, too. While other cupcake books still have some great recipes, this is one that you’ll probably find yourself reaching for again and again – and using again and again.
Cake pops are popping up everywhere these days. They are on blogs, in bakeries that want to make good use of leftover cake and frosting and are even sold at Starbucks. There are several books available that guide you through the process of making them, too. They are not difficult and most are shaped by hand – but as with all hand-shaped things, the look of the finished product depends on the skill of the user. In other words, if you don’t have the time to practice shaping your pops, you might not get results that look quite as good as the pictures in those lovely books. The solution to this is the My Little Cupcake Cake Pop Mold.
The Cake Pop Mold is a pink plastic mold that is shaped like a small cupcake and is designed to shape your cake pops. To use it, you simply pack the mold full of your cake pop mixture (which is usually cake+frosting or oreo crumbs+cream cheese) and press it closed. Excess pop mixture is pushed out of the mold and you’re left with a perfect looking cupcake in seconds! It is faster than shaping the pops by hand and easy enough that kids can do it, too. The finished cupcake shapes should be refrigerated for a bit to help them firm up before decorating, but they can then be dipped in chocolate and put on a stick to serve.
