A great foundational recipe to build your cupcakes on!

I think it's a good idea to have a simple 'foundational' recipe for your own cupcake emporium. I found a great yellow cupcake recipe in the 'The New Best Recipe' book. I played around with this recipe adding different flavours and spices, orange zest, p.b. and j, chocolate chips, you can add about anything you want to! So here it is:

Yellow Cupcakes

1 1/2 c. unbleached, all purpose flour

1 c. sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

8 tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 c. sour cream

1 large egg, plus 2 large egg yolks at room temperature

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper or foil liners.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer. Add the butter, sour cream, egg, yolks, and vanilla and beat the wet ingredients into the dry at medium speed until smooth and satiny, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and stir by hand until smooth and no flour pockets remain.

Divide the batter evenly among the cups of the prepared tin using a 2 ounce ice cream scoop or a spoon. Bake until the cupcake tops are pale gold and a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 20 to 24 minutes. Use a skewer or paring knife to lift the cupcakes from the tin and transfer to a wire rack; cool the cupcakes to room temperature, about 45 minutes. Yield: 12

taken from 'The New Best Recipe; All New Edition.' By the editors of Cook's Illustrated.

it's almost time for some pumpkin pie...

Pumpkin is sooooo yummy. Autumn is probably my favourite season just because all the pumpkin, squash and gourdness comes out. For my pumpkin cupcakes I used a vanilla batter and just added some pumpkin pie spice which gave it a nice subtle flavour of everyone's fav pie. I topped it off with some buttercream icing - using meringue, sugar and butter - and made it look like a dollop of creme fouette! A few pumpkin seeds finished this little cake off. Now, for flavour and texture, the cake was nice, but I wanted to experiment with using actual pumpkin - I tried this and found that the cake was a lot more moist, a lot more pumpkin-y but I still liked the taste of the other cake maybe slightly better. The use of real pumpkin made the cake a little too fragile and moist, but still yummy...hmmm it's a toss up.

mmm toasted coconut!

What is yummier than a creamy coconut cupcake? A creamy coconut cupcake with buttercream icing, toasted coconut and cashews on top! YUM! I took a standard vanilla cupcake recipe, added some coconut to the batter and then topped it off with more coconut goodness. This time 'round I experimented with a different buttercream icing recipe which definitely uses a LOT more butter than my other recipe which used mostly vegetable shortening (for a stiffer icing). This icing combines meringue, butter and vanilla seeds which makes for a very decadent cupcake topper. First I used a double boiler and dissolved the sugar in the egg whites. Then I meringued them up with an electric mixer and added some butter pieces one by one until the consistency was smooth and creamy. However, the icing does get soft quickly so I popped the cakes into the fridge after icing each one - this set the icing nicely. I made a variety of cupcakes using this standard vanilla cupcake recipe by simply adding different ingredients to set them apart. Coming soon...orange creamsicle cupcakes. Double yum :P

Experimental Time!

I've got a bit of time before the Caribbean cakes are baked so I've decided to devote my time to finding a few stellar recipes - light and fluffy cakes. I wanted to find a good mocha cupcake recipe, so, following a chocolate recipe, I simply added a couple tsp. of finely ground Costa Rica Peet's coffee. Upon tasting these mini mochas I found them to be very rich and bold! However, the coffee dried them out too much and after a day or two they were hard, dry and gross! Mind you, you probably shouldn't keep cupcakes after a day or two on the counter and expect them to retain their freshness. So I'm off to find another recipe or alter the one I tried by adding less coffee and maybe whip up some egg whites instead of using the yolks to make them lighter. It was fun to decorate my mocha cups! Chocolate and vanilla buttercream icing topped my cakes along with some marshmallows, caffe latte jelly belly's and just a sprinkle of cinnamon. yummm!