Cupcakes Two Ways - Part Two

Hello again!

We're back with the thrilling conclusion of Cupcakes Two Ways! Our spine-tingling adventure started over here in part one, so be sure you've read that first. There's a lot of character development and drama and such in that first part, and, well, if you go and read this one first it's just going to spoil the whole thing.

So, if you've read part one, you know I'm a great big over-dramatic liar. There's that character development I mentioned.

Oh, and also I baked two kinds of cupcakes, and now it's time to frost and decorate them!

I am sorry this picture is so dark. Sometimes in the passion of baking, I forget where my light source is. Oops.

I am again sort of stealing from Bakerella - so poke this link here for her cream cheese frosting recipe. I only did a half recipe because by the time I was done baking the cupcakes, and my brother came by to visit, 4 un-decorated cupcakes had mysteriously disappeared. (The silver white cake only made 10 cupcakes, by the way, in case you're a stickler for math.)

In any case, I blitzed together the cream cheese and butter, above, then added my vanilla, below.

There's that spoon again! All together now: "D'aaaaaaaw!"

Yes, I'll get over the spoons eventually. Give me time.

Next, sift your icing sugar in a separate bowl to sort out any lumps, and add it bit by bit to your cream cheese mixture, blending all the way.

I must say, I was baffled when I first read this frosting recipe. Never, ever have I made a frosting that didn't include a liquid of any kind. No egg, no water, no milk, just fat, sugar and flavor. Part of me feared it wouldn't turn out well, but a much bigger part of me said to trust Bakerella.

And I'm so glad I did. This frosting, you guys. It is so good!

Next up, decorations! I hit my local bulk foods store and basically brought home anything and everything that I thought even might look decent on Valentine's Day cupcakes.

Clockwise from top left: Wilton sugar pearls, large heart sprinkles, pink sanding sugar, and tiny heart sprinkles. But oh, we're not done.

Clockwise from top left: Cinnamon hearts (oh goodness, my favourite!) sour gummy hearts, Valentine's Day Smarties (the chocolate kind) and regular gummy hearts.

It's fun time.

Friend Shanahan had suggested making a 'cloud' of frosting and popping two heart candies on top, I believe because when you're in love, your heart feels light as air. Or something.

Anyway it looked super cute! Now all I can think of is that Phil Collins song, what was it? "Two hearts, sitting on just one cupcake" or something like that.

But it was still missing something...

Tiny heart sprinkles fix everything.

Now, let me tell you, when I first sat down to sort through my photos for this post, I had over 80 pictures, just for the frosting & decorating step. I think I'm getting a little snap-happy with the camera. I eventually was able to cull all but my very favourite cupcakes to show you. This was very, very difficult to do, they were all so cute!

A simple spiral of cream cheese frosting piped on with a large star tip, with a simple pattern of Smarties over the top. I don't care what day of the year it is, more chocolate = more better!

Just one heart gummy atop a cupcake. It would be lonely if not for all the tiny heart sprinkles. Maybe I went a little sprinkle-happy, too.

On the silver white cake, since I still had quite a bit of frosting left, instead of making a new flavor, I just tinted the existing frosting pink. I do wish I'd had some kind of strawberry extract on hand because that would have been just extra special, but I didn't think of that at the bulk store. Next time.

So uh, there's a cupcake with pink cream cheese frosting and two sour gummy hearts. (See, berry flavor would have gone great with the gummies. Hindsight is 20/20, and all that.)

This one has a thick layer of pink cream cheese frosting with a simple pattern of sugar pearls and white heart sprinkles. I am probably ill-proportionately proud of it, but that's still not as proud as I was of this next one:

Anyone who's a big fan of Amanda over at I am Baker may notice a similarity here to her famous Rose Cake, and I freely admit it certainly took inspiration from her cake, though I hadn't read that post in ages. Reading it over again afterwards did give me some more ideas, though... but I'll be saving those for another day.

It should go without saying, but if you're not already reading I am Baker, Bakerella and Bakingdom, guys, you really should be. Fantastic blogs. Just don't compare mine to them because, well, I tried it and then I got kind of sad.

Know what cheers me up when I get sad?

Looking at pretty cupcakes. Awww, yeah.

I would definitely do this again. I highly recommend the 'buy every candy that looks good and throw it on cupcakes' method of decorating, especially if you have kids who want to help in the kitchen. Would also be super fun at a party, set out your icing and sprinkles and just let people go nuts.

I know they're not the fanciest cupcakes in the world but they were a tonne of fun to make - and even more fun to eat. Now the question is, how am I going to top these for V-Day itself?

You'll just have to keep an eye out for the next post to find out.

Until next time!

Experiments in Sugar Cookies

Valentine's Day is only 8 days away, people!

And whether you're spending it with your sweetie or revelling in the freedom of singlehood, who doesn't love a cookie? I love a cookie. I love lots of cookies.

I decided to start my Valentine baking with some sugar cookies. I happened to have some dough hanging out in the freezer already so I just let that thaw in the fridge overnight and got rollin'.

You could use store-bought dough or whatever sugar cookie recipe you like here.

I have a ridiculous amount of cookie cutters. Double hearts, big hearts, small hearts, hearts-with-arrows-through-them, triangles, tennis racquets, school buses, and on and on. Not that tennis racquets and school buses have much to do with Valentine's Day, but uh, I have a lot of cookie cutters.

In any case, I wanted to just experiment with simple shapes this time around so I picked out a 3-inch cutter, a 2-inch, and a tiny little 1-inch cutter all in heart shapes, and played around to see what I could do with them.

I overlapped some large and medium cookie shapes to make double hearts. After pulling up the dough of the larger heart, I cut out another smaller one and nestled it into the outline left by the smaller cutter. I kind of wish I'd taken more photos of that because it's hard to put it into words properly.

Darn it, Jim, I'm a baker, not a wordsmith!

Once all my shapes were cut I laid them out on my cookie sheet. It's best to use parchment paper here, if you have it, for easy cookie removal and clean-up. I, however, ran out and forgot to by more, so naked pans it is.

When I was first cutting these out I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them, but as they baked I remembered a conversation I'd had with a coworker, Deon. I was mentioning that I was working on some new cookie recipes and he interjected, "You should make cookies with JAM in them!"

So now you know where this is going.

I got some super-fancy little jars of jam for Christmas and was saving them for just such an occasion. I put a dollop of jam in a little glass bowl and let it sit on the hot oven to warm a bit so I could spread it nice and thin. (You could microwave it if you want but hey, the hot oven was right there.)

Once you've got a nice thin layer of jam - or a bit thicker if you're a big jam fan - simply pop the cookie with the cutout centre on top.

Just for the sake of fanciness I dusted them with a bit of powdered sugar. I have more cookies to show you, that frankly took much more effort, but you know what? These little jam-filled guys are my favourite. So simple, elegant and oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-it's-this-delicious! Hubby and I devoured them straight away.

So, Deon, if you ever read this: awesome idea, dude. Awesome.

Speaking of ideas, I always thought those little message heart candies were so, so cute, but also so, so unpleasant to eat. Chalky texture, you know. So I thought, why not make tiny message heart cookies?

So I did. These are the itty-bitty 1-inch heart cookies. I outlined the hearts with tinted royal icing, then thinned the rest of the icing and pooled it in the center of each cookie, using a toothpick to spread it out to the edges.

I was going to take some cool in-process photos of that so you could all try it, too, but you know what? The camera died and had to recharge. I couldn't leave the icing sitting out while I waited so I had to just go ahead without pictures.

There's always next time.

Just so you can see how tiny these are! It was very difficult to fit the messages on them, let me tell you! I used a #2 round icing tip for the lettering.

The 2-inch cookies were just big enough to fit a short, sweet name on them. These aren't anyone I know, just names I like. A couple of them might be names of characters from things I watch and read. Maybe.

The 3-inch cookies gave ample room for more detailed messages. These are all pretty cliché but I was just kind of playing around and practising my icing penmanship, which as you may notice, can still use some work.

If you want to be snarky, these are also just the right size for messages like "V-Day Sucks" or "I Love Me" or whatever.

Getting back into more romantic messages, when I looked at my baked double heart cookies I suddenly thought of all those cliché movie and TV scenes where they carve their initials into trees or fences with hearts, so after flooding them with classic Valentine's Day colours, I threw on some initials.

I really like these. I think they'd be cute for engagement parties or anniversaries, and not just for V-Day. 

But nothing tops those ones with the jam. It's tempting to go into the kitchen right now and make another batch! I'll resist though, because I promised someone there'd be cupcakes this week. So brace yourselves - cupcakes are coming!

Until next time!