Pie Cupcakes

Hello again! I feel a little more active on this blog now that I finally decided to share it on my Facebook page. I've been apprecaiting all the love I've received and couldn't be happier with how everything turned out!

Some of my favorite clients ordered again! The same lovely people who ordered my Spiderweb Cupcakes and my Ombre Cupcakes placed another order for their 'Friendsgiving' that they were holding the day before Thanksgiving. They wanted one dozen cupcakes made to look like pies, but made with Stevia instead of sugar. 

I have never baked with Stevia before, so I knew this was going to be a challenge. I found a Stevia bag that measured just like sugar! Cup for cup! Finding this was a life saver!

Below, you'll find pictures of how everything was decorated, but no recipe. The recipe was just a plain vanilla with the Stevia replacement. The photos demonstrate how to decorate cupcakes so they look like pies, but with a twist because my clients wanted pie filling, too! Enjoy!!

The Finished Product

Baking, baking, baking

The pie filling was added by cutting a cone-shaped chunk out of the top of the cupcake. PLEASE make sure to keep the top matched with the cupcake it came from. Trust me- it'll make things a LOT easier!

Here's a shot with the filling added in. Just enough cherries for each cupcake!

I bought a bag of m&m's, and satisfied my OCD by separating the colors. You can use any color, but since I wanted to keep a pie-theme, I chose red and blue only.

I recommend frosting your cupcake before you start decorating. The frosting will help the candies stay on the cupcake while you continue to decorate.

I recommend starting with 1 candy in the center, 5 candies around the center, and however many candies that can fit on it after the center is done.

Do the candies first before you pipe everything! 

Ta-Dah!

Perfect Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

This post is a day late, but I still think I'm good. This is one of my favorite recipes to make around Thanksgiving, it makes your whole house smell like pumpkin and they just taste AMAZING! I love this recipe. 
Now, if you make this recipe, just know that my pictures show a tripled batch, meaning I made three times the amount the recipe called for. So, don't worry if your bowl doesn't look like it's about to overflow with batter (that was definitely a scary moment!! Haha!). I also did this recipe with some slight variations because I had some issues with the size of the bowl on my stand mixer. The bowl was not big enough to be able to handle such a huge recipe. But that's what Black Friday is for, right? A chance to find a new bowl!

The finished product!

Yields: 12 Cupcakes
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Bake Time: 18-20 minutes
Total Time: Roughly 1 hour


Ingredients

For the Cupcakes:

• 4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 sticks of butter
• 2, 1/2 cups dark brown sugar, packed
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cup water
• 1, 1/2 cups canned pumpkin

For the Frosting:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 12 oz. cream cheese
• 1 pound (4 cups) powdered sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Make the Cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves; set aside.

3. In an electric stand mixer, start mixing the butter, about 1-2 minutes until smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar, half a cup at a time, making sure to break up any chunks of brown sugar so no lumps remain. Add the eggs, one at a time. Add the flour mixture in two additions, folding with a rubber spatula until no flour pockets remain. Add the pumpkin and water to the batter, slowly and making sure to not spill any out of the bowl. Mix for an additional minute.

4. Divide the batter between the baking cups, filling each about two-thirds full. Bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes. Allow to cool in the pan for 5 to 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before frosting.

5. Make the Frosting: With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the butter until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cream cheese, and vanilla and continue to beat for an additional 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the powdered sugar gradually and mix until smooth and combined, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Increase the mixer speed to medium-high and beat until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes.

6. Using a decorating bag (I use a Ziploc Bag, I personally believe it's stronger) and tip or an offset spatula, frost the tops of the cupcakes. The cupcakes can stay at room temperature for a few hours, but should be refrigerated for longer-term storage up to 4 days.

Enjoy!

I like to make sure I have all my ingredients before I start baking. You don't want to start baking and realize you need more butter! That would be terrible!

Mix all of your dry ingredients together. The flour, spices, salt...

Mix your butter for a few minutes

Then add your sugar and eggs

This is my huge bowl! Since I tripled the batter, I needed to use this huge bowl to combine my 12 cups of flour and my 12 eggs+ 6 sticks of butter. Plus my canned pumpkin! I went through three whole cans! That's a lot of batter I ended up with!

I use an ice cream scooper to divide my batter evenly

B. E. A. Utiful!

All done! Don't mind the cupcake liners, I didn't have any Thanksgiving Themed ones! Haha!

Butter and Powdered Sugar for the frosting

Adding a little more Powdered Sugar..

There we go! Nice and smooth

This is the ideal peak you want for frosting, something that isn't too runny, and not too firm. 

If you get frosting that is too runny, just add more powdered sugar!

Pretty Peak!

And my finished product!

Catching Up!

This is not for anything specific, but these are other things I have worked on before starting this blog. Enjoy!

For a friend's birthday, this is a glimpse of what I made her (2011)

And the final product of that cake, sugar flower was hand-painted (2011)

This was a "Belly Cake" I made for a dear friend's sister (2012)

And these are the cupcakes that went with the belly cake above (2012)

This was my VERY first order and my VERY first baby shower cake. What do you think? (2011)

This was for a coworker, my very first "Belly Cake" (2011)

These were Margarita Lime Cupcakes for Cinco de Drinko (2013)

Halloween Cupcakes

I received an order for Halloween and I decided to try something new for it. I used Wilton Candy Melts® in white to make spiderwebs for the toppings. This was most certainly frustrating because I've never worked with chocolate like this. 

Let me be the first to tell you that chocolate is NOT the same as frosting. Haha! Once I got used to the consistency of which this was pouring out of the piping bag, everything was smooth sailling, and here's how they turned out. 

Devil's Food (so appropriate for Halloween!) with white chocolate spiderwebs.

Here they are air drying before I stuck them in the freezer

AMN Cupcakes

In October 2014, a dear family friend asked for a last minute order for a business meeting she was holding. These were pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream frosting. The goal was to go off of the logo's colors, and here is how they turned out!

The Logo for the company

A terrible photo with a finger in the way, but the flash was on

A better photo with no flash

Wedding Cupcakes

Back in June 2014, an acquaintance of mine approached me to see if I would do his wedding cupcakes. It was a small wedding with only a few witnesses, so I accepted my first wedding order! SO EXCITING!!

I've been just a tad too busy to be able to post the photos from the baking I've done recently (life is just crazy sometimes!) but I finally have the chance. Here are just a few photos so I can show what I've done. Enjoy!

Here are the purple marbled vanilla cupcakes, per the order's request

Rosebud frosting

And the decorations

This is one of the lovely boxes they were delivered in