Italian cream cupcakes

Yet another delicious cupcake! I seem to be on a roll with picking out delicious recipes!

This time, I ventured into a traditional area that I had never tried before. I had originally intended to make an Italian cream cake, but after some persuasion from my mother (who had to bring said dessert into work, and consequentially was all for portability), I decided to go back to my old standby.

One of these days I'm going to actually bake a real cake.



My only other experience with Italian cream cake was a frozen slice from the cafeteria my freshman year of college. Not exactly the most appealing treat. However, I knew that the cake had potential- I lve coconut, I love nuts, and most of all, I love cream cheese frosting.



Boy was I right! These cupcakes were delicious! They had the perfect ratio of nuts to cake, and the coconut was just right. Instead of leaving the frosting as is, I wound up dipping the cupcakes in some of the left over coconut flakes, which gave each cupcake the final touch it needed.

This definitely isn't my prettiest cake. The nuts prohibited me from using a frosting bag, and I didn't want to get too thick with the frosting, as I thought it might be overwhelming. It didn't matter though- between my mom's coworkers and my family, we wolfed down these cupcakes before anyone could take a good look!

50th Anniversary Cupcakes

A very dear couple to me (my adopted grandparents!) just celebrated their 50th anniversary. Could you imagine being married 50 years? They got married when they were both super young, and their still touring the country and kicking it. 

Mema*loves*chocolate, and because of some seriously picky eaters that would also be consuming the chocolate, I figured I would go with a standard chocolate/caramel combination. I used my favorite chocolate doctored cake mix recipe, of course. I seriously need to start investigating something new in the chocolate universe. 

I also used a frosting recipe I had tried before- just a basic caramel frosting. Nothing fancy. It didn't turn out as amazingly delicious as it did the first time, but once I smothered it in chocolate and caramel syrup, it tasted pretty darn good.

As a finishing touch, I decided to make some decorations in the form of chocolate. I basically tempered chocolate over a double boiler, then filled a frosting bag with a fine tip and doodled away! A little time in the freezer hardened them up, and they were ready to go! Unfortunately, I had a ton of chocolate left over, so it's going to be languishing in my fridge for a while. I'll probably wind up breaking off chunks and throwing them in cookies, or something.

All in all, pretty darn good cupcakes to celebrate a pretty darn good marriage!

Cookie Dough Galore

Oh hey, you want to see something delicious? BAM!



I don't like chocolate- I really don't. But I could have eaten about a dozen of these.

I used an assortment of recipes, because, well, I could. And I wanted to make sure these came out utterly delicious because they were for a man who's been like a second dad to me. I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe, and then a new recipe for the cookie dough filling, and finally a recipe I've used before for the oh so amazing and evil cookie dough frosting.

The cookie portion didn't sink in while baking like I expected- instead it merely sat on top. I wound up with tons of little edible cookie dough balls (because there are no eggs!) leftover, and my sister has been making her own cookie dough ice cream sundaes with them. Yum...

Bump! Set! Spike!

 


Last week, I talked about my obsession with lime cupcakes with strawberry icing. Because I can't leave well enough alone, I made strawberry cupcakes as well. Someone talked me out of lime frosting because apparently some people don't like fruity frosting.

Weirdos.

Instead, I opted for my basic buttercream. After debating the idea of green frosting, I decided that since the cupcakes were in honor of one of my parents' volleyball parties, they ought to be thematically linked.

Hence the slightly terrifying volleyball.



I've discovered that it is much, much easier (and prettier) to frost using tips and bags than to try to make a smooth surface. Not to mention, I'm not very good at piping a picture, even if it is a picture made up entirely of curved lines. I got quite a few questions as to what they were suppose to be

. I don't think I could quite get a job at Sprinkle with that skill level. The black was just the vanilla buttercream with black food coloring dumped in, piped through a teeny frosting tip. Eventually, I realized that it would have been a lot easier if I had made chocolate frosting and made that black, rather than go from a white base. Derp. Again, this is why I'm not a professional.

I wanted to use the strawberry cake recipe from my mom's birthday, but Apron of Grace website seems to have gone defunct. Instead, I googled and found an "adaptation". Because I had never saved the recipe, I don't know how different it is from the original Apron of Grace. The cupcakes were deliciously moist and properly strawberry flavored, though I do still wish I had tried it with lime frosting!

You put the lime in the strawberry and bake it all up

You may now commence the drooling.


A few weeks ago, I was rather, well "inspired" by the idea of lime cupcakes with strawberry icing and strawberry cupcakes with lime frosting. I'm not sure what exactly brought that thought on, but I knew it had to be done. I had queued up this recipe for key lime cupcakes ages ago, but I wasn't about to go out and bother trying to find key lime juice, or heaven forbid, juice the lime myself. Especially because the last time I was sent on an emergency Kroger run, I was told we needed  four ounces of lime juice which I somehow managed to mangle to four containers for the margarita machine.

I don't think we're ever going to run out of lime juice. You know what that means? It means I should make more guacamole, that's what.

Anyways, so I used regular old lime juice for these cupcakes, and used my favorite strawberry frosting recipe for the adorable cupcakes. To top it off, because I can't leave anything well enough alone, I dumped some lime zest on top, and then proceeded to have to tell all of the little kids who came for cupcakes that no, I didn't put vegetables on their cupcakes and they wouldn't be able to taste it.

The verdict? Apart from the mistake when it came to kid-friendly lime zest? Meh. I'm not a huge lime fan (don't ask me why I keep making desserts I'm not in love with), but I still gobbled up a fair amount of cupcakes. The recipe made a ridiculous amount, and they were sufficiently moist and delicious. Paired with the strawberry frosting, they were amazing!

 Still, I think I'll keep looking for my perfect lime cupcake recipe. That, or I'll stick to lime-bars. Either way. I really, really wish I had used some neon green food coloring. I know it wouldn't have affected the taste, but I think I would have enjoyed these cupcakes more then!

And since I can't mention the word "lime" without the Muppets getting stuck in my head... I seriously wish this was my ringtone for my phone. I might actually remember to answer it if it were!

Chocolate Oranges!

So last week, I talked about the big oops that happened with my orange cake and orange frosting. I mentioned that I did manage to save the butter and orange flavoring. After some fast thinking, I decided that rather than toss the butter, I would go ahead and make icing. A family friend's birthday was in a week, and the icing could chill out in the freezer until then.



Since the family friend loves chocolate, a plain orange frosting just wouldn't do. After doing the requisite powdered sugar/orange flavor/butter/milk combo, I added some cocoa until I deemed it chocolatey enough. I was hoping to find some of Terry's Chocolate Oranges but a quick Walmart  trip yielded no results. Instead, I bought some gummy oranges for toppers and deemed it good enough.



I used my favorite doctored chocolate cake mix recipe for the cake, and was good to go! These were amazing- not your average chocolate cake at all!

---

Chocolate Orange Buttercream Frosting

---

• 1 cup softened butter


• 4 cups powdered sugar


• 1 tablespoon orange extract


• 2-3 tablespoons milk


• 1/3-1/2 cup cocoa

Beat butter and orange extract until pale and fluffy, then slowly add in powdered sugar and cocoa. Add milk one tablespoon at a time, until you achieve desired consistency.

How the cake crumbles...

I have already mentioned my delicious orange cupcakes in all of their splendor, so I'm not going to go into detail about that today. We had a impromptu cookout for Memorial Weekend, and I decided to do something a bit different. I didn't want to worry about a new (or complicated, for that matter) recipe, so I opted to try the orange cupcakes in the form of a cake this time. I was going to make an orange buttercream and frost the hell out of it. I've never actually made a decent looking cake (they've all turned out, well, rather terrifying), so I wanted to try my hand out on it. Plus I thought it might be quicker than dealing with ten million cupcakes.

After the cake got to the desired doneness, I pulled it out of the oven and BAM. Disaster. Even though I waited until they were cool, greased the hell out of the pan, and was super careful to boot, the cake absolutely dissolved when I tried to get them out of the two pans. Honestly, it pissed me off more than anything else. I've never had this problem before!

Okay, once, last year for my Dad's birthday. But it was because I was using a pan for mini bundt cakes and my mom had already deemed the pan unusable. And in that case, the cake didn't crumble, it just wouldn't come out in one piece. And it was totally the pan's fault.

Instead of crying over crumbled cake, my mom and I improvised. I sent her off to the store to get some cool whip (it solves all problems), while I pulled out the parfait glasses and began to shove cake in them. The actual dinner wasn't going to be for a few hours, so they got to chill, looking rather terrifying in the meantime. I popped in a batch of Oatmeal Craisin Cookies to  make up for my culinary failure, and then I turned to the frosting.



I had already plopped the butter and orange extract into the mixer (I let the butter sit in the mixer until the cupcakes are cool, otherwise I wind up having to nuke it in the microwave and wind up melting three sticks of butter before I finally get one properly softened), so I was afraid it was a lost cause. I knew that frosting would be too heavy for a parfait, so I resigned myself to just making the frosting and freezing it- until I had a fabulous idea.

PSYCH. I'm leaving this on cliffhanger. I'll tell you how I managed to save the frosting next week.

Orange Cupcakes? Yes please!

I've had this photo waiting since, oh, Easter. Uh oh.

When I'm at my apartment, I generally don't do that much baking. For one thing, I don't have a lot of space to store baking supplies, which means I don't have that many pans... Which means what normally would take me two hours takes me four because I'm constantly waiting for a pan to be finished. Consequentially, I usually try to choose easy recipes to at least minimize the amount of time it's going to take. I don't do the intensely complicated recipes, and often take short cuts with cake mixes.

I've never been an anti-cake mix kind of girl. Like with yarn, everything has it's purpose. As far as I'm concerned, if someone wants chocolate cupcakes with a special frosting, they're going to get a chocolate cake mix. Hey, I don't taste a difference!

I don't taste a difference because I don't actually eat chocolate cake, but whatever.

These cupcakes are a result of a doctored cake mix and let me just say: they're fabulous.



I found these Orange Sherbet Cake recipe on pinterest originally and I'm so glad I did. Holy crap were these good!

I'd first heard about the whole cake mix and soda recipe when searching for a vegan cupcake recipe for Monkey's step-mother back when she was "vegan". Those cupcakes didn't turn out too well because unfortunately, while vegan cupcakes are nommy, vegan frosting is really hard to make!

Since I wasn't worried about eliminated dairy products, I opted for a cream cheese frosting to top these cupcakes- more because whenever I buy cool whip, it winds up being eaten before it's supposed to. Most recently, I bought some for a Mother's Day dessert. It was supposed to sit on top of the strawberries on a cream cheese cake, but wound up being scarfed in the kitchen before dinner. The strawberries alone were totally fine!

Ahem.

The cream cheese frosting was delicious of course, how could anything involving cream cheese not be! It was a tad heavy for these cupcakes, but still yummy. I wound up adding a few teaspoons of orange extract to the cupcake and the frosting just to really cement that fake orange flavor. I think the perfect addition would have been those chocolate covered oranges, but that's just because I can't leave well enough alone.

Man were these good. So good, I may have accidentally eaten 18 out of the 24 cupcakes on my own. In one weekend.

Oops.

I don't know why anyone trusts me around sugar. Clearly, I can't control myself. The more artificial, the faster it seems to go.

Beer Bomb

I suppose three out of four winning recipe is pretty good odds. Unfortunately, that means one was a dud. Thaaaat would be this one.



I first read the recipe for chocolate cupcakes with a brown sugar beer buttercream, I was instantly intrigued. This, I thought, would be absolutely perfect for my beer connoisseur father! I happily saved it and set it aside for a more appropriate time.

While selecting the cupcakes for Monkey's birthday, I remembered this and put it on my list of treats to make.

I really shouldn't have. I made these after the chocolate and Kahlua ones, so of course I made comparisons. They... sucked. Both used simple chocolate cake recipes- the Kahlua a doctored up cake mix, and this one from scratch. The difference was astonishing. The cake was dry and bitter- not appealing in the least bit.

The frosting wasn't any better. While the syrup I made was actually surprisingly good (not great, but again, I'm not a beer fan), the minute it hit the butter, I knew it was going to be a problem. Despite the fact that I had let it cool significant amounts, and then stored the mixture in the fridge to try to get it to a workable texture, and then drowned the whole thing in powdered sugar, I just could not get the frosting into a workable texture. It was simply too much syrup. Perhaps I should have gone with my gut and only used a few tablespoons of the syrup. In any case, the frosting was a disaster, and tasted absolutely horrible with the cupcakes. You can tell just how liquid the frosting was, because that cupcake had been stored in the fridge for a considerable length of time before I took the photo. I couldn't even frost them properly. When it came time for the taste test, I think I managed all of two bite before tossing it.

Yuck!

Lime, Rum, and Mint

Yet another alcoholic cupcake for Monkey' birthday! I picked a rather easy theme. Thee cupcakes are Mojito flavored cupcakes, and gave me all sorts of worry while making them. They involved some funky flavors for a cupcake, and made me wonder how well they were going to turn out.



Oooh blurry photo. My bad, I'm sorry.

Despite the photos and my apprehension, these cupcakes were not only delicious, but absolutely gorgeous as well. It was definitely a differenttasting cupcake, but really, really yummy. I wound up having to add 4 cups of powdered sugar to get the consistency I wanted, but it wasn't too sugary sweet.



A few years ago, Monkey and I went on vacation with one of his sisters and her husband. The whole time, they were sipping on Mojitos- they even made a few virgin ones for Monkey and I. Not quite my cup of tea, but the cupcakes? Yum yum.

Camo Corona

These are another winner from Monkey's birthday. He turned 21, so I decided to be thematically appropriate. Thus the slew of boozey cakes. This one is a Corona and lime cupcake, which gave me pause when I first came across the recipe.

I'm not a fan of beer- I associate the smell with urine and from what I've tasted, that isn't great either. I was a little apprehensive about these cupcakes consequentially. The fact that there was no alcohol in the icing helped alleviate my fears a bit. I told myself that the alcohol wouldn't provide much flavor- it would just be a moisture vessel.

I was wrong.



You could taste the beer, but it wasn't bad at all. The taste was subtle enough, and the lime frosting was strong enough to make it an absolutely delicious cupcake. I had mine a few days later after it had been chilling in the fridge, so it wasn't at its prime moisture level, but it was still really, really good. Like, so good I wanted to gobble every single one of them. Since Monkey is all

The real winner for me was the frosting, which I just wanted to gobble up. I'm going to substitute in lemon next time and pair it with a nice creamy lemon cake for a treat. I'm sure it will be more than delicious.

I tried something new with my frosting (again!). I'm not sure how well it turned out, as I have difficulty achieving dark enough colors with the food coloring I use (either stuff from the bottle or Wiltons); it's a trial and error deal I think. I'm always afraid I'm going to wind up with the taste affected if I use too much! I tried to make the frosting match the camo colored wrappers, and I think I did a pretty good job. I was rather disappointed that I couldn't find "proper" army camo liners, but I think these did the job perfectly fine. After all, cupcakes are for stuffing your face with, not for staring at!

Everything sounds better in Spanish...

Are you prepared to salivate? If not, get ready. I've got a Pavlovian trigger for you.

Chocolate cupcakes with a Kahlua buttercream frosting baby.



I know this isn't the greatest photo in the world. After the absolutely exhausting previous few days I had, I was just too tired to put much effort into taking photos. It doesn't matter anyway- I don't think any photo could do these cupcakes justice.

Amazing is an understatement when it came to the recipe. Ignoring the frosting (since I don't drink, I don't have a frame of reference when it comes to how accurate the taste is), the cake itself was perfect. As I've mentioned numerous times before, I'm just not a chocolate person. I like brownie edges every once in a while, but if you give me a choice, I'll choose almost any other sweet over chocolate any day of the week (and any time of the month). So for me to say this cake was good means it's was pretty darn good. The most shocking part?

It's just a doctored up cake mix. Seriously. The frosting was delicious- but like I said I have no idea how much it tasted Kahlua. Almost every buttercream is amazing in my opinion.

Monkey certainly appreciated these. In a few weeks, I'll be home in time for one of my parents' volleyball parties, and I think the cake recipe is going to make a reappearance. I have a metric ton of leftover frosting in their freezer, so it'll be an interesting array of tastes!

Belated Birthday

I am a bad roommate. A very, very bad roommate. I missed by roommate's birthday by a week. Oops. After begging for forgiveness and blaming Monkey, I asked her what kind of cupcakes she wanted. Being the wonderfully agreeable person she was, she told me she didn't care. After the brilliant success of my last caramel frosting, and the impending doom of several chocolate cupcakes for Monkey's birthday, I decided to make some caramel cupcakes. Unfortunately, I didn't have any satisfactory recipes bookmarked already, so after a quick google search, I came up with a recipe for brown sugar cupcakes with salted caramel filling and frosting.



Hellloooo delicious.

Unlike the last recipe, this one didn't go the lazy way out and use caramel straight from the squeezey bottle. This one used real caramel. And made a horrible mess in my pot, but it was definitely worth it. The frosting was amazing. The filling was amazing. I had a great deal of fun using the leftover caramel filling in my coffee.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my skinny tips, so I had to scoop out the top and fill it that way... which meant I ate the tops of approximately 20 cupcakes. Yummm.



I think the most exciting part about these cupcakes is that I got to use some of my thousand cupcake liners that I went overboard with. A few weeks ago, somebody let me loose in Michael's and I went a bit overboard. I now have a giant bag of cupcake liners- a good thing too, since I devoted an entire day of the week to them! Though, I think when I run out of cupcake mojo, I may change the title to "Sweet Sunday" or something similar.



Anyways, this recipe was delicious. A lot of work for sure, but the result was worth it. I think I prefer the lazy caramel frosting to this one, even though this was extremely delicious. The cake was heavenly- just interesting enough to not be boring, and not overwhelming with the frosting and filling. Yummy all around!

Dr Pepper... Or not

I made this cupcake for Monkey for Valentine's day. Since he wouldn't specify what kind of cupcake he wanted, I decided to make him something I would like. I've been intrigued by the idea of a Dr Pepper cupcake for ages now, but I greatly dislike chocolate. I searched for a recipe for a while before finally settling on one that required a cake mix.



These were delicious and buttery and yummy- but tasted nothing like Dr Pepper. I was incredibly disappointed. They tasted like a plain yellow cake. Nothing really outstanding about them. I know that most of the time, when a dark soda is added to a cake, it's more for moisture than taste, but this recipe purported to give me that Dr Pepper taste as well!

So didn't happen. I mean, it wasn't a bad cake, it just wasn't what I was looking for. The icing tasted like a normal buttercream. Overall, it was just very meh. I've eaten better vanilla cupcakes- heck I've made better vanilla cupcakes!



I did try a new technique for the frosting! I pinned this video on pinterest not long before it was cupcake making time, and foolishly ran out to buy the frosting tip, not realize that I already owned that size.

Not only did I own that size, I own four sets of that size.

What can I say, I like big tips and I cannot lie. (Or something).

Source: youtube.com via Lizz on Pinterest

Frosting was super easy, though I was less impressed with my own technique, I definitely need practice on that one. What I really want is a huuuuge round tip to make some fat swirls, but I have yet to come across a wide enough tip, and I don't like how it turns out without one.

I know, this is a lot of rambling for a rather unsatisfactory cupcake. The next one, I'm sure will be better.

Salted Caramel Bliss

All of you chocolate lovers, be warned. This cupcake will make you cry.


Can I just say, this frosting was the best. Seriously. I could have (and perhaps did) eaten it with a spoon. These are the last cupcakes for my mom's birthday, since she specifically requested that I make something choclatey for the people who don't like strawberry. Whatever. Since my dad likes chocolate and coconut, it made the recipe selection pretty simple. These are Chocolate Coconut Cupcakes with Salted Buttercream.

I can see the tears beginning to fall.




As I've said before, I'm really not a chocolate person, so if I make these again, I'll just be using a chocolate cake mix with some coconut thrown in. I'm lazy that way. But then again, I use cupcakes as mostly a vessel for icing anyway.

This icing? SO FREAKING GOOD. The best part is that it's made with caramel topping. Super simple, super delicious. Since time was of the essence while making these, I wound up skipping the home-made chocolate sauce and just used Hershey's Syrup as a garnish. It worked out fabulously. According to my SO, this was in my top five cupcakes.

Go. Make these today. You won't regret it.

Strawberry Buttercream- Heavy on the Butter

This is another cupcake from my mom's birthday. This one, suprise surprise, was a vanilla cupcake with strawberry frosting.


The vanilla cupcake was delicious! I used Bakerela's yellow cake recipe, and I'm so glad that I did. It was most and buttery. According to my mom, it tasted like a sugar cookie. Considering she managed to demolish an entire cupcake before I had even started frosting, this was a pretty significant compliment.



I had my best friend ever helping me out, so she made the frosting and decorated. Since this was her first time using frosting bags, we opted to use some non parleils and pink sugar to pretty them up even further. She was supposed to use my favorite strawberry frosting recipe ever, but wound up accidentally putting in an extra stick of butter, so they turned out to be "strawberry buttercream- heavy on the butter". Still delicious, just not very strawberry-ish!

Strawberries and Buttercream

Oh dear, I really haven't done this in entirely too long. I made these for my mom's birthday way back in the beginning of January. She specifically requested three types of cupcakes, so here's the first.



For someone who gave birth to such a sugar addict, my mom really isn't huge on sweets. She usually only eats a bite or two of whatever sweet things I make, and leaves the rest. Last year, she requested Creme Brulee: amaaaaazing! Though a plastic bag did wind up lit on fire by a certain someone who was supposedly showing me how professional chefs use the torch.

This year, her first request was for strawberry cupcakes with a vanilla frosting. Why not strawberry frosting? She thought it would be too overpowering. I think she's crazy, but whatever. I originally intended to use the Martha Stewart Strawberry Cupcake recipe in her cupcake book, but quickly realized my copy of the book has disapppeared into the ether. Instead, I trolled pinterest until I stumbled across this recipe from Apron of Grace.

They turned out super moist and delicious! I'll definitely make this recipe again. Even though it was a bit more labor intensive than I usually do for the actual cake portion of cupcakes (I prefer to spend my time eating batter and frosting doing fun fillings and creative flavored frostings), it was definitely worth it.



For the frosting, I wanted to do something special. I wound up using just a basic buttercream recipe (I'll include it in the bottom of this post), but I used Wilton's foodcoloring and normal food coloring to turn it pink and grey. After a giant fiasco with seran wrap, I just shoved gobs of the colors on opposite sides of the frosting back and went from there. About halfway through, I ran out of frosting and was running out of time, so they weren't all this pretty. It was definitely a fun change of pace from my usual frosting technique. I'd love to try this with more than two colors. Maybe next holiday...

---

Basic Buttercream Frosting

---

• 1 cup softened butter


• 4 cups powdered sugar


• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract


• 2-3 tablespoons milk

Beat butter until pale and fluffy, then slowly add in powdered sugar and vanilla. Add milk one tablespoon at a time, until you achieve desired consistency.

This is the basic recipe I use for most of my frosting- I play around with ratios when adding other flavors. For example, when making the grape soda cupcakes, I used 4 tablespoons grape soda, rather than vanilla and milk. Yum yum yum! For these cupcakes, I just left it as basic vanilla buttercream, as my mom requested.

Blue Velvet

I haven't had one of these in a million years!

Okay, first off, I want you to know that these pictures are from a month ago, and the cupcakes were quite a few days old by the time I took this photo. I promise, they looked *awesome* on the day of.



So what is this disgusting mess I'm looking at? It's a blue velvet cupcake!

I've never eaten, or baked, red velvet before, so I'm not entirely certain that the taste was on. For one thing, the recipe (this recipe) used coffee. I wound up coloring the cupcakes and frosting blue because it is my sister's favorite color- plus I thought it was a really fun change up. I can definitely see myself baking these in all sorts of colors- purple, pink, green, and so on.



The frosting was heavenly, albeit unbelievably rich. However, coupled with the cupcake, it was perfect. I'm just going to put it out there that I'm not a coffee person. I take my coffee the way I take my man- sweet to the point of a diabetic coma. So I wasn't expecting to like these cupcakes. However, they were just perfect with the icing. I also piped the icing in the cupcake as a filling and topped with an M&M.

Again, I apologize for the horrendous picture of the cupcake. I promise, these rocked.

Root Beer Cupcakes Part Deux

Okay, first a warning- the next few sets of cupcake photos aren't going to be as pretty as usual. They were taken quite a few days after I first made the cupcakes.




I made these for my sister's birthday party. She requested an oreo cake. Let's just say she didn't get it. I've made the oreo cake quite a few times before, and it's a pain in the butt, to say the least. It involves three layers cut into two with filling between, whipped cream frosting and mashed oreos pressed all around. Thoroughly messy and time consuming. Instead, I decided to use that recipe and turn it into cupcakes. Since not everyone likes chocolate... Okay, since I don't like chocolate, I wanted to give the girls an alternative.

I've actually talked about the frosting on these before- they're root beer float frosting. Yum.

(Side note, I found the blog of the woman who created most of the recipes I've used on tasty kitchen- How Sweet Eats. Everything looks delicious!)

At any rate, since I sufficiently tweaked the recipe, I feel okay about posting my version of it, especially since now I've read the author's opinion on it. The cake was a just a regular vanilla cake mix (one of those with the pudding in it) and a splash of root beer float extract. Overall, the verdict was that it was so much better with vanilla cake.

Root Beer Float Frosting
Adapted from How Sweet Eats

3 sticks butter, softened
8 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon root beer extract

Cream the butter until smooth. Then slowly add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and try not to make it go all of the kitchen and/or mixer.

I have yet to master that skill.

Add milk, root beer extract, and vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Fill a frosting bag and using the tip, poke into the center of the cupcake and fill each. Finally, frost the whole shebang and try not to eat all of the cupcakes before guests arrive.

I should note, I always double frosting recipes. I *always* run out. Don't ask me why, but I do. I guess I'm just a frosting kind of girl. So if you're not a complete sugar addict like me, you might want to half it.

Bananananana Cupcakes With Strawberry Frosting

It's that time again! I'm lucky I'm going home next weekend, I'm really running out of cupcakes to post. Jen's birthday is coming up, so I might go crazy with the baking and cooking!



These are from a few weeks ago again, but they were definitely worth the mention. I made banana cupcakes with strawberry frosting. Yet again, the frosting was divine. I was really surprised at the natural flavors of it since it actually used strawberry jelly rather than real, fresh strawberries.

The cake portion was good too, although it tasted more like a muffin than a cupcake. I'm still on the quest to find a great banana cupcake recipe, but in terms of strawberry, I definitely think I found a winner. My mom makes a wonderful banana cake every year for my birthday, and I should probably just ask her for that and change it for cupcakes. But that would be going to easy route, right?