Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

I love coming up with new ways to

make your everyday cake mix different.

I'm not sure where I came up with this idea (maybe Pinterest), but I thought I'd give it a shot.

It's super simple!

All you need is what you see above!!

Cake Mix - I like the Pillsbury cake mixes for cupcakes.  They are thicker so you don't get the batter all over the pan.  I use a very small ice cream scoop for the batter. 

Oil - the amount called for on the box.

Eggs - Once again, the amount called for on the box.

Guinness Beer  - Now here's where I changed it up.  Use the beer to replace the water in the mix.  For the Pillsbury brand, add maybe an extra 1/4 cup.  The chocolate is super thick!

Then follow the directions on the box.  I usually make the mini cupcakes and bake them for about 11 minutes.  Oven temperatures vary, but that is what works in mine.

Here's my finished cupcakes.

I frosted them with my normal salted butter cream recipe minus the salt.

Salted Butter Cream

1 cup room temperature Butter

Vanilla (I just pour in a bit)

4-5 cups Powdered Sugar

Half and Half (because that's what I use in my coffee)

Sea Salt (to taste)

Beat the butter and vanilla till soft and smooth, add in the powdered sugar.  I usually add a cup or two at a time.  I also wrap a towel around my mixture so I don't have powdered sugar dust all over my kitchen.

Beat that bad boy till it's well mixed. Add the half and half a bit at a time until it reaches the correct consistency.  I then beat it for a few more minutes that fluffs it up a bit and makes it really smooth!

I used a 1A round frosting tip and white dragees.

I made these along with Lavender cupcakes for my daughter to take to school (cosmetology school, not high school) for her Birthday.  They devoured these and left quite a few lavender ones.  She graduated this past week so I made more...they disappeared too!!

Even if you don't like beer (ME!!) these are so good!!

They'd be great for St. Patrick's Day!!

Let me know what you think!!

I have not been compensated for mentioning brands in this blog.  These are all my opinions!!

Pink Champagne Cupcakes

Just in time for Valentine's Day!!

I think it's somewhat apparent that I LOVE cupcakes and one of my favorites is Pink Champagne.

 

I'm somewhat lazy so I found a recipe to alter a white cake mix and make it into Pink Champagne.

PINK CHAMPAGNE CUPCAKES

1 box white cake mix

3 egg whites

1 1/4 cup pink champagne

1/3 cup oil

3 or 4 drops red food coloring

Mix together and bake according to the directions on the box.

Before I mixed up the frosting, I took chocolate candy melts, melted them, and put them in an icing bag.  I then piped them into heart shapes and managed to write "love".  One thing I learned was, you need to let the chocolate cool for a bit before you start piping.  Otherwise it will "pour" out the bag and won't make pretty designs.

I frosted them with my favorite Salted Buttercream frosting and added the chocolate hearts.

Super easy!!  I think the hardest part is not eating them all at once.

Happy Valentine's Day!  

Added April 18, 2012:

 My Daughter volunteered my services for one of her friends Birthdays.  She wanted apple green frosting,  I just added Americolor's Electric Green to my Salted Buttercream recipe, sprinkled on some little pink pearls.  Super pretty and springy!

Linked to:

Junk In Their Trunk

 

 Renée

White Chocolate Cupcakes

I adore cupcakes...I think they are the cutest, sweetest, prettiest, yummiest little things around.  I also enjoy making them.  They are so much easier (in my opinion) to make and make to look pretty than cakes.  Each one is a little masterpiece!

I'm also somewhat lazy.  I like to make my cupcakes from a mix, BUT, I like to doctor up the mix!!  I decided to try to make white chocolate cupcakes for Labor Day.  Here's what I did.

White Chocolate Cupcakes

  1 box Betty Crocker Super Moist Vanilla cake mix

6 ounces melted white chocolate chips

1 cup unsweetened almond milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs

I melted my white chocolate in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring between each.  

 Mix all the ingredients together according to the directions on the box.

Filled the cupcake liners 2/3 full and bake for about 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

 Notice the pan on the left??  That was my Mom's, she's had it forever!

White Chocolate Frosting

2 sticks butter, room temperature

6 ounces melted white chocolate

1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste (my personal favorite!)

1 bag powdered sugar

half and half

*Beat the butter till smooth.

*Mix vanilla in with melted chocolate, add to butter.  Mix well.  It will clump up a little but them smooth out again.

*Add half of the powdered sugar (I put a kitchen towel around my Kitchen Aide, otherwise you're going to have a dusting of powdered sugar everywhere!)

 *Mix well, scrape down bowl.

*Add the rest of the powdered sugar.  It will get clumpy...start streaming in half and half until it reaches a good piping consistency.

I tried a new design based loosely on something I'd seen at a local shop.  I used a Wilton 1M tip to make four round swirls with white frosting (the black specks are the vanilla bean).

I sprinkled glitter dust on the white and colored the remaining frosting with Americolor Orange Soft Gel Paste, ( I should have used a little more color like my daughter said.) and used a Bakery Crafts 3B to fill in the centers!!

These are amazing, they are light and fluffy and super tasty!!

Just a side note.  I used almond milk to make the cake a little richer.  We don't use regular milk, that's what I had and was pleased with the results!!

I was in no way compensated for any product mentions.

Renee'

My Weekend

This past weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to help out one of my BFF's, Lisa, at her very first show for her skin care line, Lily & Co., at The Sealed Conference in Tucson, Arizona.  She was kind enough to let me bring along some of my jewelry and hair creations.

I just love the logo they created!

Lisa developed this line because she is passionate about women breaking free from Human Trafficking and wanting to provide a quality product without harmful ingrediants and chemicals.  25% of the proceeds go directly to the support of Human Trafficking victims. 

A few of the organizations Lisa supports are, Streetlight - Phoenix, Destiny's House - Las Vegas, Treasures - LA, Cakes of Love - Phoenix and Call + Response, Fair Trades Pics.

Lisa asked me to make some cupcakes since one of the groups she is involved in takes cupcakes into some of the places they serve. We were able to raise a bit more money and give the ladies a little sweet treat with their lunches.

Now mind you, we live in the Phoenix area and were staying in Tucson.  That's about two hours from my house, and we have temperatures over 100 degrees. We didn't want them to melt or get messed up while traveling.  I came up with this fantastic idea of baking them ahead of time, freezing them and making the frosting ahead of time too.  You may not know that it works to make frosting a couple of days before you need it but then you have to use a mixer and rebeat it to make it nice and fluffy again. Since were were staying in a hotel, I had to bring my Kitchen Aide mixer, you should have seen the bellman's face.  I was able to fluff the frosting up before we left the hotel and frost them at the church we were at.

One of the highlights was meeting Kalin Hemphill, model winner of Project Runway Season 6. What a sweet, beautiful, committed Christian young woman!!  She was so kind and patient as we tried to get a good picture of all three of us.

On Saturday afternoon, Kalyn spoke.  She's moved to L.A. and is pursuing her dream of acting but is holding fast to her Christian standards and will only take parts that are honoring to God.

I came away with a renewed passion to be the person God created me to be.

So how was your weekend??

My Favorite Frostings

Frosting...amazing, creamy, sugary sweet, the icing on the cake (or cupcake)....

These are my favorite frosting recipes and a few things I do a little differently from the original recipes. First of all, I always use Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Bean Paste - 4 oz., and I always use half and half.  It's amazing how much richer the flavor is, you really must try it!

The recipes for the cupcakes in this post can be found at Cupcakes - Yum.

Both of the cupcakes above have cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz butter

8 oz cream cheese

2 tsp vanilla bean paste

4 cups powder sugar

 A splash of half and half

Beat room temperature cream cheese, butter and vanilla bean paste together with electric mixer until well blended and smooth.  I have a  KitchenAid KSM75WH Classic Plus Tilt-Head 4-1/2-Quart Stand Mixer, White and love it...I'm able to put the butter and cream cheese in and have it mixing while I work on something else. Gradually add powder sugar mix super well, if you're using a big mixer, be sure and put a dish towel over the mixer or you'll have sugar dust all over.  Add half and half until it's a good piping consistency.

Just add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to the powder sugar to make Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting...this is so GOOD on the Pumpkin Spice cupcakes.

 

The Pink Champagne cupcakes are frosted with Salted Buttercream and the Vanilla cupcakes are frosted with Billy's Bakery NYC Buttercream. Once again I used the Madagascar Vanilla Bean Paste and half and half.

 

Cupcakes - Yum

My beautiful daughter, Colette, graduated from high this past spring, yay Colette!!

We are BIG cupcake lovers at our house.  So for her Graduation party we decided to have a cupcake buffet, call me crazy!!

  I began baking mini cupcakes about two and a half weeks before the party.  I started with Pink Champagne and used this frosting recipe.  I baked about 160 of them and within a couple of hours, the wrappers started pulling away from the cupcakes.  Not pretty!!

After sending out a distress signal on Facebook, I was given a few suggestions to keep my cupcakes "dressed". Here's what happened, my oven is either too hot or too cold (kind of like Goldilocks).  It's really hard to find the sweet spot.  My friend Asia suggested the temperature was probably too low so they weren't getting fully baked.  Solution: bump up the heat a bit.

So here are how they turned out!!



Pink Champagne with Salted Buttercream Frosting





 

Pumpkin Spice  with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting





Red Velvet (from a box)
Cream Cheese Frosting



Brownies with White Chocolate Drizzle





 

Vanilla (from a box) with
Billy's Bakery NYC Buttercream


I think it was a toss up between the Pumpkin Spice and Red Velvet as the favorite flavors...Pink Champagne came in right up there.

After all was said and done, they turned out fabulously and were a big hit!!

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