Mai Tai, Monkey LaLa and Mudslides...

I've been experimenting with Mai Tai's...been through 3 different trials, and I think I like these....They are "rum runner" cupcakes from Warren Brown, topped with a 50-50 mix of Swiss Meringue and American Buttercream thats flavored with an actual Mai Tai drink, topped with a drizzle of grenadine.

The mudslides are a chocolate, coffee, Kahlua and "Green and Blacks" expresso chocolate chunk cupcake, dipped in a Kahlua/Baileys ganache and frosted with a chocolate Bailey's buttercream....OMG, died and gone to chocolate heaven.

The monkey La La's are my usual...some I dipped in the above ganache, some left plain.

If your interested in any recipes, let me know, and I'll post it.

Cupcake Hero, Peanut Butter

The theme of this months Cupcake Hero is Peanut Butter. I, being of dysfunctional mind and body, don't think things like peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and banana, peanut butter cookie....NO, I think Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.....

Soooo, I decided to do my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ganache on top of some chocolate cupcakes, of course I had to mix in some PB cups in the batter and sprinkle them on top too....actually put some snack size ones on the bottom of a few too, as you can see from the pic, tho I don't recommend that.....doesn't cook up nice...

I asked my kids....do you think it's too much PB cup, to which they replied (in unison, I kid you not)..."There's no such thing as too much Reese's PB cup". sigh. I love those kids.

I used my go to chocolate cupcake recipe, listed numerous times throughout this blog, with about 10 chopped up mini PB cups folded in at the end.

I've posted this recipe before too, but here it is again...

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Ganache Buttercream

24 oz chopped up mini PB cups

1 1/2 cups cream

2 sticks room temp unsalted butter

1 - 2 cups powdered sugar sifted.

Night before, or earlier in day, put chopped up candy in heatproof bowl. Heat cream to simmer, pour over candy. let sit for a few minutes, then stir until chocolate is incoroporated. You will have peanut butter lumps...that is a desirable trait! Put in fridge and let firm up (it won't get as thick as regular ganache)

Cream butter and 2 cups ganache in mixer until well blended, add 1 cup of sugar and blend well. If frosting is too soft, add some more sugar...remember it's sweet tho. careful not to overbeat or it will get grainy...but hey, it still tastes good tho.

This frosting is soft and silky....

If you don't want to add the butter and sugar, you can actually just whip up the ganache itself...be really careful not to overbeat! This stuff is good too...a bit grainier than the buttercream version, but delicious...I use this alot for fillings inside of cakes.

Check out Cupcake hero here.

My Daughter, The Baker.

My daughter, Taylor, chose "baker" for career pathways, and decided to make and decorate a cake for her project. She made a devils food cake with a halloween oreo filling and decorated with candy....the pumpkin she made from fondant.

Goodbye Earl Recipe

Brown-Sugar Pound Cupcakes ( adapted from Martha Stewart)

3 cups sifted AP flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

21/4 cups packed light brown sugar

4 large eggs, room temp

3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Line muffin tin (recipe made 22 cupcakes for me). whisk dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs one a time, beating after each addition.Reduce speed to low. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk and ending with the dry. fill each cup approx 3/4 full, and bake for 25 minutes.

Carmalized Strawberry Jam

This is a recipe I found on http://www.smittenkitchen.com/

11/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups jam, raspberry, apricot, strawberry or peach are suggested (I used no sugar added strawberry)
Half of a vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped
Salt
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Place 1/4 cup of the sugar in a small saucepan. Cook over high heat, without stirring, until all the sugar turns caramel. Tilt pan to distribute caramel. Lower the heat and carefully whisk in the jam, the scraped vanilla bean and seeds, 1 tablespoon of water, a pinch of salt and the lemon juice. (The caramel will bubble violently.) Simmer, stirring, until the caramel dissolves into the jam. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. (This can be done a day in advance.)

I put a teaspoon of jam into each cupcake and swirled it into batter, but I think you could probably swirl it into batter before panning also.

When I piped on the cream cheese icing, I painted two sides of the bag with the jam before adding the frosting, and that made a nice swirl in the frosting for me!

Inside the Halloween Cake

Brought it to work and shared it with my co-workers!

Halloween Cake

For fun, and to enter a couple of blog contests, including the Star Tribune contest. The bottom tier is chocolate with Halloween oreo filling, covered in ganache the middle layer is vanilla with whipped milk chocolate ganache and covered in ganache and the witches hat is made out of rice krispy treats. Everything is covered in MMF and candy clay....lots of fun to make...especially the ssssssnakesssss. LOL!

The ghosts are made out of sugar cookies and topped with fondant.

The Cake Slice Bakers Presents...Cinnamon-Pecan Coffee Cake

Yeah!!! My first posting for the Cake Slice Bakers......soooooo excited to be a part of the group. We are baking from Nancie McDermott's "Southern Cakes", and for our first project we chose this coffee cake....which is incredible on days 1, 2 and 3.....so light and fluffy and cinnamonny (is that a word?).

The batter is super thick and hard to spread in a pan, so I ended up 1 1/2 x the cake recipe just to have more to spread.....so lot's of cake....and omitted raisons (cuz they're just humilated grapes after all...).

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post the recipe, so I won't....if you're interested check out the cookbook, check some of the other cake slice bakers blogs here or comment me....