Yo Gabba Gabba Cupcakes

 Yo Gabba Gabba Cupcakes

I'm baaaaccckkk.... Sort of. Sleep deprived, exhausted, zombie-fied, but I have been baking and I neeeeed to blog. Oh and I have NO CLUE what happened to my background. I saw that blogger changed its format one day and I was looking at it and I guess I changed it and couldn't figure out how to fix. Hopefully I will soon because it looks goofy. I am not an IT person so for right now that's what you get. ha ha

So my first blog is some cupcakes I made for a good friend for her kiddo's 2nd birthday. I KNOW I said my first blog back from my self appointed baking maternity leave would be killer vanilla cupcakes but those will be soon ( and they weren't as killer as I thought they would be..) any who. My friend's little boy is 6 days older than my first daughter so they are good friends and we do play dates all the time and my gift to him besides a very obnoxious batteries required monster truck that his dad just LOVES was his birthday cupcakes. Jack is a HUGE Yo Gabba Gabba fan so I made cupcakes to match the theme of the party. I TOTALLY didn't take step by step pics. I know. I suck. BUT. They are MY go-to chocolate cupcake recipe and a basic vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, dyed with ameri-colors food colorings to get those nice bright colors. Americolors are a gazillion times better than Wilton's for 2 reasons: 1. squeeze bottle. No digging around in a tub with a toothpick. 2. You use way less to achieve a nice bright color. So no funny dye taste. I made 20 cupcakes and 2 cakes. I used my wilton sports ball cake pans for the two half dome cake pans. It was also Jack's dad, Noah's birthday celebration so I made him a cake too. I am not all that familiar with Yo gabba gabba so I found several online for inspiration as well as the Nickelodeon web site

Okay. Picture time

Jack - the birthday boy patiently waiting for his cake/cupcakes

 I bought this stand just for the party. There are 5 different characters so I made 4 of each one. Aren't the colors great? Americolors baby!!

I laughed when I saw how I had outlined the eyes on some of the characters. They looked like they had glasses on. My friend Kaysie had made a Yo Gabba Gabba quilt and said that the characters looked like members of The Cure with the black around the eyes. We were cracking up.

For the fondant dots I rolled the fondant thin and used a #12 round wilton deco tip. Worked perfectly

Jack's favorite character is this guy, Brobee, so I made him a smash cake. So what if kids usually only get a smash cake on their 1st birthday, I don't think it should stop at age 1, I think everyone should have a smash cake. So I will have one at my "29th" birthday next year... ha ha.  I used the grass tip for the fur and it wasn't that easy to use with swiss meringue buttercream. I have hot hands and when I pipe the frosting started to soften up so the fur would look a little mushy. I kept having to chill the bag a little so it would harden back up enough to show the detail.

This is the cake I made for Jack's dad, Noah. There is a DJ in Yo Gabba Gabba named DJ Lance and he wears this crazy orange hat with a funky star. I figured since Noah is a DJ by hobby that he needed a DJ Lance hat cake.

Here is the whole set up with the Yo Gabba Gabba quilt in the background. My friend Kaysie did a great job with it.

Cake smashing time. Jack was already messy from the finger painting session so why not dive into the cake. And of course he wanted cupcakes too and why not? It was his birthday afterall

My munchkin diving into a cupcake

I was dying laughing she looked like she had lipstick on. I think from now on I will just do frosting shots. That's all kids eat any way...

Swiss Meringue Buttercream Frosting Recipe

Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Makes about 5 cups

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 

6egg whites
1/8 tsp salt
3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Put sugar, egg whites and salt into the top of a double boiler over a pan of simmering water. Whisking constantly, cook until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm (about 160 degrees). Pour heated egg whites into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat egg white mixture on high speed until it forms stiff (but not dry) peaks. Continue beating until fluffy and cooled, about 7 minutes total.   With mixer on medium-low, add butter two tablespoons at a time, beating well after each addition. Increase speed to medium-high; continue beating until frosting appears thick, about 3 minutes. If it is still runny keep beating it will come together I promise. Add in the vanilla extract and continue beating 1 minute to reduce air bubbles.

Another Recipe Update

I recently made some caramel apple oatmeal cookies ( shhhhh I know I said I was on break from baking BUT I made cookies not cupcakes and I didn't take any pics ha) and a friend asked me for my recipe. I  THOUGHT I had posted the recipe on my blog when I made these before but I didn't. So I just typed it up off my recipe I have in my files and added it to the original post. Here is the post

Best Ever Oatmeal Cookies with Recipe

Enjoy!!

Father's Day "Death by Oreo Cupcakes"

I wasn't planning on baking cupcakes this weekend considering I am due any day now with our second daughter, but I realized it was fathers day or as I like to call it "baby daddy day" and I just HAD to make something. I have an ever growing list of cupcakes to make and I have been wanting to make oreo cupcakes for a while now. I have seen oreo cakes and cupcakes recently in ads and blogs so maybe this is a popular recipe for fathers day. Either way I wanted to make them. I took my chocolate cupcake recipe, used dark cocoa powder instead of regular, put an oreo at the bottom of the cupcake and frosting with quite possibly the yummiest frosting ever, swiss meringue butter cream with oreo cookie crumbs mixed in. Topped off with a few mini oreos and Voila! "death by Oreos cupcakes" .  I was going to fill them with the frosting too but decided to just top each one with a GIANT swirl of the buttercream. I got a little carried away and had to scrape some off the ones that had a little too much and try to redo so they all got frosted equally. I still had 4 left over and not much frosting left so they got blobs instead of swirls. Still tasted JUST as good. I think next time I would put some batter down then the oreo because as we took the liners off the oreo wasn't stuck to the bottom of the cupcake it fell away. All in all though these were really really yummy and I will make again!!

I went with a two bowl method for these instead of using my stand mixer. I was being lazy and sometimes I really hate washing my mixer bowl and beater blades. 

Using the dark chocolate cocoa powder instead of regular gave these cupcakes a richer flavor and a darker chocolatey color. hmmm yummy

I couldn't get it in the picture very well but I LOVE the oreo package says how many POUNDS of cookies it contains not the actual number of cookies inside. Gotta love Nabisco 

 I carefully twisted the cookies so I placed one half down with the filling inside each liner and saved the other half for the frosting. Okay so maybe I wasn't that careful and a few broke and I ate them - but most made it in. ha ha

Mixing the eggs til they are slightly thickened and more pale in color

Adding in the dry ingredients

So yummy. LOVE this recipe!

Filling the tins. With the oreo at the bottom one scoop of batter seemed to be a little TOO much but I still filled them all the same any way. I ended up with 30 cupcakes this time instead of 27-28. I made 6 without oreos on the bottom to save for another time. Always great to have a few cupcakes stashed in the freezer for an impromptu dessert or practice a decorating style on.

You can see these are pretty full. The batter is super dark. Yes I spray my tins with cooking spray because I have had the cupcakes spill out during baking and stick to the pans and then when I tried to remove the  tops tore off. So better safe than sorry I guess

This time they just puffed up pretty high, didn't spill over.

Yummy chocolaty goodness

I pureed about 12 whole oreos and a few of the tops for the crumbs to be mixed into the frosting

I started with a basic vanilla swiss meringue buttercream and added in the oreo crumbs once it was all mixed together 

Love the little flecks of cookie crumbs

Giant swirls of frosting

I used my massive ateco tip that I call my wilton 1m on steroids piping tip

Yummy

Here is one with the blob of frosting since I didn't have enough left to swirl

And of COURSE one cut in half to see the oreo. These cupcakes are super moist so I was OK with not filling them. Normally I fill them to break up ALL that cake with just the blob of frosting on top and in case they are a little dry the filling helps. But these didn't really need the filling. 

Oreo Cupcake Recipe

MY chocolate cupcake recipe with a few changes

Best Chocolate Cupcakes Ever

Makes 28 -30

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (dark chocolate cocoa powder like Hersheys)

2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup whole milk

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate melted and cooled (cooled for about 15 min make sure its still melted though don’t want it to harden back up)
½ cup plus 1 tbsp water, heated to boiling ( have a kettle of water on the stove boiling ready to go)
3/4 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs room temp
2 tablespoons vinegar (not wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon vanilla

1 package of regular sized Oreo cookies and one package of mini Oreo cookies

 Instructions

This can be done with a stand mixer or by hand with a hand mixer or whisk but it is more of a 2 bowl method than one if going the hand mixing route

1. Preheat oven to 350F with rack in the center.
2. Place paper baking cups in regular sized muffin tins, spray edges around 

cups lightly with cooking spray. If you have a small 6 cup muffin tin and you only

get 27 or 28 cupcakes fill the rest of the wells halfway with water and no baking

cup

3. Carefully twist off one side of the oreo and place the half with the cream filling down, filling side up in the bottom of each liner
4. Whisk together the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt)

in a large bowl.
5. In a large bowl or bowl of stand mixer whisk eggs till slightly thickened and a pale

color

6. Add in the milk, vanilla, oil and vinegar and whisk/beat well

7. Add in the melted and cooled chocolate and whisk/beat until combined well
8. Either add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients OR the wet into the flour and mix

just to combine. Add in the boiling water and mix again just to combine. Scrape

down the sides of the bowl with a spatula to make sure all the dry ingredients are

incorporated
9. Fill each cupcake liner 3/4 of the way with batter. You will have more than 24 cupcakes this way so if you don't have another tin or even a 6 cup tin, keep the remaining batter set aside and bake  the rest after the first batch comes out of the oven

10. Bake 15-18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and free

 of crumbs or the cupcake tops bounce back when lightly pressed. Mine baked for

18 minutes.

11. Let cool for 5 min in pans and then remove carefully to a wire cooling rack. Cool completely before frosting

Oreo Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Ingredients

Makes 5 cups

• 5 large egg whites
• 1 cup plus 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into tablespoon sized pieces
• 1 1/2  tsp teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• oreo cookie crumbs ( 12-14 whole oreos, pulse in food processor until you get very fine crumbs, no big pieces left)

Directions

1. Place sugar and egg whites in the heat-proof bowl of an electric mixer. Set bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, and whisk until sugar has dissolved and egg whites are hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. Test by rubbing the mixture between your fingers; it should feel completely smooth.
2. Transfer bowl to mixer stand. Using the whisk attachment, beat on high speed until mixture has cooled completely and formed stiff and glossy peaks, about 10 minutes.
3. Add the butter, one piece at a time, and beat until incorporated after each addition. Don't worry if the butter cream appears curdled after all the butter has been added; it will become smooth again with continued beating. Add vanilla, and beat just until combined.
4. Switch to the paddle attachment, and beat on the low speed to eliminate any air pockets, about 5 minutes. 
5. Add in the oreo cookie crumbs and beat to incorporate
6. If using buttercream within several hours, cover bowl with plastic wrap, and set aside at room temperature in a cool environment. Or transfer to an airtight container, and store in the refrigerator, up to 3 days. Before using, bring buttercream to room temperature, and beat on the lowest speed with the paddle attachment until smooth, about 5 minutes.
7. I personally DON'T switch to the paddle attachment, I keep it on the whisk. Never noticed any difference and then its less attachments to clean up. ha ha 
8.  This makes enough to GENEROUSLY pipe frosting on to 24 cupcakes or maybe a little more less on 30. It will probably spread onto 40 cupcakes if going the spatula route. 

The BEST Chocolate Cupcakes EVER - Recipe

The BEST Chocolate Cupcakes EVER!!!

Don't they look amazingly perfectly chocolatey??

Like I promised here is my recipe that I have FINALLY perfected to be my GO-TO chocolate cupcake recipe. I will never use another one again for just chocolate. If I am looking for a chocolate coconut, chocolate chipotle, chocolate cinnamon well that is a different story but these are hands down the best I have ever made according to, well, me and my #1 taste tester, my hubby. I adapted these from the Chocolate Pomegranate Cupcakes that I made that I had originally adapted from How To Eat A Cupcakes, POM Wonderful chocolate cupcakes.

Took me a while to find my "one and only" chocolate cupcake recipe but this is totally IT!! Now to find that Vanilla one....

So here is the recipe!! If you have any questions or any snafu's while making these or don't have the same results and chocolate cupcake epiphany that I did feel free to email me and I can try to help you out so you too can be in chocolate cupcake heaven!!

acupfullofcake@gmail.com

Shanna

Best Chocolate Cupcakes Ever 

By a Cup Full Of Cake

Makes 28 cupcakes

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder ( Dutch process like Droste or another GOOD brand)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup whole milk

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate melted and cooled (cooled for about 15 min make sure its still melted though don’t want it to harden back up)
½ cup plus 1 tbsp water, heated to boiling ( have a kettle of water on the stove boiling ready to go)
3/4 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs room temp
2 tablespoons vinegar (not wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon vanilla

 Instructions

This can be done with a stand mixer or by hand with a hand mixer or whisk but it is more of a 2 bowl method than one if going the hand mixing route

1. Preheat oven to 350F with rack in the center.
2. Place paper baking cups in regular sized muffin tins, spray edges around 

cups lightly with cooking spray. If you have a small 6 cup muffin tin and you only

get 27 or 28 cupcakes fill the rest of the wells halfway with water and no baking

cup
3. Whisk together the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt)

in a large bowl.
4. In a large bowl or bowl of stand mixer whisk eggs till slightly thickened and a pale

color

5. Add in the milk, vanilla, oil and vinegar and whisk/beat well

6. Add in the melted and cooled chocolate and whisk/beat until combined well
7. Either add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients OR the wet into the flour and mix

just to combine. Add in the boiling water and mix again just to combine. Scrape

down the sides of the bowl with a spatula to make sure all the dry ingredients are

incorporated
8. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups
9. Bake 15-18 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and free

 of crumbs or the cupcake tops bounce back when lightly pressed. Mine baked for

18 minutes.

10. Let cool for 5 min in pans and then remove carefully to a wire cooling rack. Cool     completely before frosting

My notes:

Yes there is ONLY baking soda in these but it works. Do not try to add baking powder. I know you will look at this and think, “ don’t baked goods need baking powder or both powder and soda?” well yes, sometimes. It’s the vinegar that reacts with the soda, which helps with the proper leavening of the cake. These totally ROCK. They’re moist, dense, perfect texture and taste. Even 4 days after having been in my fridge, which normally dries them out, but they were still perfect. I have made them a few times now once I got 26 or 27 cupcakes and another time 28. Just depends on how full you fill the cups. I use a #16 ice cream/batter scoop to fill mine. One full scoop works and if I have  batter leftover and some look to be less filled with batter than I try to even out with a spoon and add in more batter that way. I also like SLAM the cupcake pans down on my counter a few times ( just lift evenly and let drop) to help get some of the air bubbles out. I am not sure where I read this technique but it works and well its kind of fun to make the noise. Unless you bake while your baby/kids/husband/significant other is sleeping. They might not like it.

Good luck and trust me you will LOVE this recipe. I do!!

Graduation Cupcakes

This is probably one of my shortest blogs as far as me babbling goes. Maybe. ha! I made graduation cupcakes for one of my husband's co-workers. She had two kids graduating one from college and one from high school. So I had lots of fun colors to work with. I searched "graduation cupcakes" and there really isn't a whole lot of creative differences when it comes to graduation cupcake ideas. So caps, diplomas and some little embossed fondant pieces with  "Congrats Grads" and " Class of 2010" and some starts, sprinkles and glitter. These cupcakes were basic, vanilla and chocolate and all with vanilla butter cream. I am still looking for the ONE that perfect vanilla cupcake recipe. The chocolate I made was the one from my pomegranate chocolate cupcakes but I altered the recipe and it is TO DIE FOR. My best chocolate cupcake I have ever made says me and the husband. This is now my GO-TO recipe. Still searching for that vanilla though.  The buttercream is my basic fluffy vanilla butttercream which I divvied up for all the colors. I had JUST ENOUGH for all of them to do nice Wilton 1m swirls on,  and with the little bit of each color I had left over I channeled my inner kindegartner and mixed all together to see what color I could make. Um. EW. It was like a faux chocolate color. Kinda grey, kinda purpely totally gross. ha ha. So here are the cupcakes, I TOTALLY forgot to take step by step pics so these are all finished ones. Preggo brain strikes again!!

The green and yellows are for the college graduation and the blue and reds are for the high school. I had some white with each to break them up and to give a few people the option to eat non dyed frosting. But not many. Ha!

I will post the chocolate cupcake recipe in its own post because it is THAT GOOD it deserves its own post.

Brownie cupcakes

I was having a hankering, craving, urge, whatever you want to call it, the other day for brownies. Normally I am anti box mix for baked goods I am all about scratch but brownies is the one thing that I think sometimes are better from a box mix - depending on the box. But unfortunately my craving for brownies came right when I put my toddler down for a nap and I had no box mixes in the house. So scratch it was. I had been holding on to a recipe I found called "the best fudge brownie recipe ever" and it says its from King Arthur Flour. Not sure if its from them or not, I got the recipe from recipezaar.com, but the recipe calls for using King Arthur Flour. I happen to be a HUGE fan of King Arthur Flour ( and no I am not sponsored by them) I think they have a quality product for baking, so I gave this a try. Totally worth it and honestly the best scratch brownie I've made so far. I am a fudgy brownie girl not a cake brownie so if you like fudgy brownies this is for you. Oh and you know I had to make like cupcakes not just in a pan and cut into squares. Which this works for those that like the crunchier edge and the ooey gooey middles, its the best of both worlds.

All my ingredients set out

Melting the butter with the chocolate pistoles. Now this took SO LONG because my butter was still cold, and I was thinking " by now I would have had BOX MIX brownies out of the oven and cooling. Well maybe just  baking, but still, I wasn't having much patience making these. I wanted a brownie NOW!!  But this step was worth the final result. This was an added step not in the original recipe. I had read some reviews of other's who had made this and said this was an awesome addition and made it THAT MUCH MORE chocolaty. Totally worth it

Still waiting for the butter to melt.....

FINALLY!!

I decided to mix in my mixer instead of stir by hand. Either way works fine

yummy fudgy goodness already

Adding the flour in and mixing just a few turns to combine til just moistened

I just don't think one can ever have too many chocolate chips in brownies. I opted to not put nuts of any kind in this batch this time

The batter was really thick so I was having a hard time using my normal scooper I use for cupcakes so I ended up spooning the batter in the tins

Perfect sized brownies!! Can I eat one yet???

Yummy, ooey gooey fudgy brownie goodness in a cupcake form. LOADED with chocolate chips

I was being a dork with the camera. I always see pics of baked goodies on other sites where the pic was taken sideways so why not have tilted brownies? ha ha

They didn't really stick to the liners. I sprayed them with a little bit of cooking spray to make sure they wouldn't stick

You can see the chocolate chips still all melty

This is the BEST. Warm homemade brownie with homemade ice cream. Yeah I make homemade ice cream too on occasion. This one is cake batter flavor. Yummy

That's a little better. ha ha. Time to go enjoy!!

Brownie Recipe adapted from

Recipezaar

King Arthur Flour : the best fudge brownie ever

 

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, unsalted at room temp
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 4 ounces chopped chocolate ( any kind, semi sweet, milk, dark)
• 1 1/4 cups Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups king arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chocolate chips ( any kind, semi sweet, milk, dark)
• 1/2-3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (or favorite) (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan. ( or line 2 muffin tins with cupcake liners and lightly spray with cooking spray

3. In a medium sized microwave-safe bowl or in a saucepan, melt the butter with chopped chocolate on low heat, then add the sugar and stir to combine.

4. Return the mixture to the heat or microwave briefly, just until it's hot but not bubbling. It will become shiny looking as you stir it. Heating the butter and sugar a second time will dissolve more of the sugar, which will yield a shiny top crust on your brownies.

5. Transfer the mix to a mixing bowl.

6. Stir in the cocoa, salt, baking powder, and vanilla.

7. Add the eggs, beating till smooth; then add teh flour and chips and nuts if using. Beat until well combined.

8. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan.

9. Bake the brownies for 28-30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs clinging to it.

10. The brownies should feel set both around the edges and in the center.

11. Remove from the oven, and after 5 minutes loosen the edges with a table knife, this will help preven the brownies from sinking in the center as they cool.

12. Cool completely before cutting and serving.