Apple Cider Cupcakes

Apple Cider Spiced Cupcakes Filled with Chunky Apple Butter and Topped with a Brown Butter Swiss Meringue Buttercream. 

Fall is here!  I think that my biggest motivation for making these cupcakes was that I wanted to be able to eat apple butter by the spoonful, an then some.  Plus, I've had these fall colored sprinkles for a while now and I have been dying to use them!  (You know, the whole "when life gives you sprinkles" thing...) Most of my creations are inspired by the sprinkles that I find. 

When Jamie and I were in college we used to take regular trips to the nearby apple farm, eat at the yummy diner, shop in the country stores, and taste and buy as many apple flavored things that we could.  After the apple season was over, we would still visit to play in the snow in the winter time. 

 

These cupcakes are spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and truly give you the nice warm feeling you get from sipping hot apple cider from a mug.  You know by now that I love me some Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but when I figured out that I could use BROWN BUTTER to make it, my mouth began to water just thinking about it.  This is the best SMBC you will ever make.  And remember, Swiss Meringue Buttercreams can seem intimidating at first, but it is worth the extra effort, and really isn't difficult. 

  

Tiramisu Cupcakes

Tiramisu Cupcakes with Mascarpone Whipped Cream Frosting

 

What would I do without cupcakes?  What would the world do without cupcakes?  We would be forced to create full sized desserts, of course... and where's the fun in that?  Cupcakes are portable, sharable, customizable, easy to decorate and there are no utensils needed to eat them!  If I had to create full sized layer cakes for all of my baking adventures I would be stuck with a giant cake that would sit in my fridge with three slices taken out of it and then be thrown away.  With cupcakes, I can bring some to work, share with friends and keep just as many as I want to keep at home. 

Think about it... if I make a batch of 24 cupcakes, the decorating possibilities are ENDLESS!  I can put filling in some, I can top them with different frostings, different swirling or decorating techniques, and I could even top each of the two dozen cupcakes with a different variety of sprinkle!!  And yes, I do have that many sprinkles...

Don't even get me started on cupcake liners either.... I'm sort of obsessed.  Does anyone else have this problem?  I'm at the store, planning to make a batch of cupcakes, and even though I have a bazillion liners at home already, if I see a pattern that I don't have yet, I HAVE to buy them.  Yes, I HAVE TO.  Sometimes I will even plan a new cupcake flavor or decorating style based on the new liners that I found.  Please tell me I'm not the only one that does this!

These Tiramisu cupcakes are definitely making it onto my permanent rotation of cupcakes creations.  Everyone at the event told me they loved them and the classic Tiramisu dessert translates perfectly into cupcake form, minus the lady fingers, which I don't think anyone missed. 

This cupcake is your basic white cupcake.  The center is removed, soaked in coffee liqueur syrup and stuffed back in with a little bit of frosting inside.  The topping is a Mascarpone Whipped Cream flavored with a little Kahlua as well.  In my recipe I've added an additional option for making a stabilized whipped cream in case you want to make these ahead of time. 

Roasted Strawberry Cornmeal Muffins

A Light Cornmeal Muffin Loaded with Sweet, Roasted Strawberries

 

 

I'm so sorry that I have abandoned the blog for the last few weeks, but to be honest, I have abandoned my kitchen a little bit too.  Our old house does not have air conditioning, and although we've had a relatively mild summer so far, heating up the oven to 350, means the house feels about that temperature too.  It's a great excuse to grill outside most nights, but I have yet to develop any baking recipes for the grill... Hmmm... that gets the wheels spinning...

 

 

The times that I have been able to suck it up and do some baking, I've really enjoyed using the fresh fruits of summer, and Fresh Strawberry Muffins can only be made better with ROASTED STRAWBERRIES.  I saw roasted strawberries all over the blogs and Instagram a few months ago and I thought I would try my hand at it.  And, man 'o man, these little suckers are good!  I had to resist snaking on all of them before they landed in my batter. 

 



Churro Cupcakes for Cinco de Mayo

Cinnamon Cupcakes Filled with Salted Dulce de Leche and Topped with a Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting and a Churro Tortilla Crisp.

Let me begin this post with saying that these cupcakes are sooo good!  You don't need to make them for Cinco de Mayo only, they are a big hit all year round!  The description of these treats may seem a little complicated, but I've created lots of shortcuts with disguises so that no one will ever know! Really the hardest part is trying not to eat all of the cupcake centers before you are done filling the batch with dulce de leche!





Chocolate Raspberry Cupakes

Chocolate Cupcakes filled with Raspberry and Chocolate Ganache Topped with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream. 

So my real true love in the kitchen is baking cupcakes. I love to come up with different flavor combinations of cakes, fillings and frostings.  For Valentine's Day this year I created my Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes. This is a simple cupcake recipe, using my gussied up boxed cake mix, filled with a raspberry ganache and a fresh raspberry and topped with a raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream.  

I do make cupcakes from scratch, but when I'm feeling a little lazy, or if I'm going to spend a lot of time on fillings and a more complicated frosting, I will take a quick shortcut and use a cake mix.  But I have doctored up the recipe so that it takes like a made from scratch cake!