Orange Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

This is birthday cupcake recipe #2.  I thought I ought to make something, well, less boozy.  And I wanted something light and summery, which these certainly turned out to be.

Recipe:

Cupcakes
1 stick Butter, softened
1 cup Sugar
2 Eggs, separated
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 3/4 cups Cake Flour (or 1 2/3 flour and 2 tablespoons cornstarch)
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 cup Orange Juice

Preheat oven to 350°.  Place cupcake papers in cupcake/muffin tin.  This recipe makes about 18 cupcakes.
Cream together butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla.
In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt, and baking powder.  Add dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients, alternating with portions of the orange juice.
Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter.
Spoon batter into cupcake papers, fill about 1/2 full.
Bake 15-18 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.  Cool completely before frosting.

Frosting
2 sticks Butter, softened
1 tablespoon Vanilla
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
1-2 tablespoons Whipping Cream

Cream butter until fluffy.  Add vanilla and mix well.  Gradually add 2 cups of the powdered sugar and mix until smooth.  Gradually add remaining sugar and cream until the frosting is a good consistency for spreading.

These came out well.  Nice and summery!  The flavors are Orange Creamsicle-like, which is what I was going for.  The juice gives the cake a great orange flavor without increasing the sweetness.

Yum!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Whiskey Filling and Bailey's Buttercream

This is birthday cupcake recipe #1.  I was feeling kind of meh about what to make for my birthday this year and then I found this recipe over on Serious Eats and I knew it was The One.

Recipe:

Cake
1 cup Stout (Guinness)
1 cup Butter
3/4 cup Cocoa Powder
2 cups Flour
2 cups Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Salt
2 Eggs
2/3 cup Sour Cream

Pre-heat oven to 350°.  Place cupcake papers in a cupcake/muffin tin.  This recipe makes about 24 cupcakes.
In a medium saucepan, melt butter and add Guinness.  Bring to a simmer and whisk in cocoa powder, stirring until smooth.  Remove from heat.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.
In a mixing bowl, cream together eggs and sour cream.  Add chocolate stout mixture.  On slow speed, gradually mix in the dry ingredients.
Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 full (these don't rise too much).  Bake until tester comes out clean, about 20-22 minutes.  Cool completely.

Filling
8 ounces Bittersweet Chocolate (60-70% cocoa)
2 tablespoons Butter
1/3 cup Heavy Whipping Cream
1/3 cup Bailey's Irish Cream
1 tablespoon Irish Whiskey (Jameson, Bushmills, etc.)

Break chocolate into chunks and place in a heat proof bowl.  Add butter.  Heat cream to a simmer and pour over butter and chocolate.  Let sit for a minute or so, until the cream melts the chocolate (I made the filling while the cupcakes were baking, so I set the bowl on the oven and this helped melt the chocolate).  Stir until smooth.  Add the Irish cream and whiskey and stir until smooth.
Chill the filling until it is firm, but still workable.  It's going into the cupcakes, so you don't want it to be liquid.  I found that kind of a cream cheese firmness was good.  And if it's too firm, let it sit for a few minutes.

Frosting
1 stick Butter, softened
3-4 cups Powdered Sugar
3-4 tablespoons Bailey's Irish Cream

Beat butter until fluffy.  Gradually add about 2 cups of the sugar.  Add some of the Bailey's and beat well.  Add remaining sugar and Bailey's until the frosting is a good consistency for spreading.

Okay, now that all the components are ready, it's time to assemble the cupcakes:

Make a space for the filling in the cupcakes.  I used a small, sharp knife to cut a circle out of the top, and bore a hole in the cake.  Only go about 2/3 of the way down.
Fill the cupcakes.  I used a spoon to scoop out filling and then used a knife to press a glob of filling in, and then make it smooth and level with the top of the cupcake (just like spackling!).  You could also use a pastry bag to pipe filling into the cupcakes.
Frost the cupcakes!

So cute!  And here's a cross section:

The cake is good, not super intense, but a really good chocolate cake, and then the filling is fudgy and delicious, and the icing is buttery and Irish creamy.  They're super good together and this is maybe my favorite cupcake.  Certainly the best cupcake I've made.

Happy birthday to me.

And overall it wasn't a difficult recipe.  There's a lot of steps, but I was expecting to struggle with carving the hole out of the cake and filling it, but it went together pretty quickly, and hassle free.

Oh, and I should add that you don't really taste the alcohol in the cake, filling, or frosting. I mean, you taste it, but I don't think you could get drunk off the cupcakes.

Carrot Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

I found this recipe on Serious Eats.  I love carrot cake, plus I had a bag of beardy looking carrots that I needed to use up, so what better way to do that than with cake?  I modified their recipe a bit, mostly by cutting back on sugar and putting in more carrots and spices.

Recipe:

2 1/2 cups Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
3/4 cup packed Brown Sugar
3/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 (3 sticks) Butter, softened
3 Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
4 cups freshly grated Carrots
1 inch piece fresh Ginger, grated (or 2 teaspoons powdered ginger)
1 cup Golden Raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°, grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, and white sugar.
Beat the butter into the flour mixture until well combined, add eggs one at a time and beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Stir in carrots, ginger, and raisins.
Pour batter into greased baking pan.  Bake 40-50 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 ounces Cream Cheese
1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar
1/4 cup Butter, softened
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese, add powdered sugar and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.

This cake was surprisingly light, considering how dense the batter looked when I was putting it in the pan.  I also had some misgivings about the recipe because I was adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, which is usually the opposite of what one does, but it came out really good.

Instead of using all white flour, I used 2 cups regular flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup flax seed meal.  Also, since I don't have a box grater or a grater attachment for my Kitchenaid, I used the food processor to shred the carrots and fresh ginger and it worked great!

This cake was very flavorful, light, and not too sweet.