Chocolate Red Wine Cupcakes

This was a tasty little treat I made for my job's Christmas party. Rich chocolate, sweet red wine... mmm.

Cupcake ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
5 oz chocolate chips
1/2 cup boiling water
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup red wine (I used a shiraz)

In heat-proof bowl, combine cocoa powder and chocolate chips. Pour in the boiling water and stir with a whisk until chocolate is all melted. In larger bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until all mixed. In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add the dry mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture until well combined. Add some of the liquid chocolate, followed by some of the wine, alternating until all of it is blended. Pour into lined muffin tins, a little more full than normal because they don't rise much. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, then let cool before frosting.

For the frosting, I just made a basic cream cheese (8 oz cream cheese, 1/2 cup butter, tablespoon vanilla, and enough powdered sugar to get it to the right consistency). Decorate with some red sprinkles.

These were dense and rich and you could definitely taste the wine. A unique taste, but really good!

Egg Nog Cheesecake

Two of my favorite holiday treats... egg nog and cheesecake (well okay I love cheesecake year round). Why have I never before thought to combine them?!? I found this recipe online around Christmas time and it was delicious!!

Crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

2 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons butter, melted

Cheesecake Filling:

3 packages (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3/4 cup egg nog

1/2 teaspoon rum extract

dash ground nutmeg

Directions:

Grease a 9-inch springform pan and place 2 layers of aluminum foil around the outside base. Combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter and press into the bottom of the pan. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 325 for 10 minutes. Allow to cool on wire rack while you make the filling.

In large bowl beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour until smooth. Add eggs and beat on low speed until just combined. Gradually stir in the egg nog, rum extract, and nutmeg. Pour filling over the crust.

Place the foil-wrapped pan on a deep baking sheet and add 1 inch of hot water to surround it (this prevents it from burning). Bake at 325 for 60 minutes (I had to bake it longer, more like 75 minutes or so because it took awhile to set up). When done, remove from water bath and allow to cool on wire rack for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen, then cool for an hour longer. When no longer warm, stick in the refrigerator to cool overnight.

I sprinkled some leftover crumbs and a little nutmeg on top as a garnish.

I served this at my parents' traditional Christmas Eve lasagna dinner. My brother added caramel and chocolate sauce to his, I liked mine plain with a little whipped cream. Either way - the perfect Christmas Eve dessert!

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream

So I know it's been for-ev-er since I've posted anything, but I have been baking so I have a lot to catch up on. Even though it is now February, I'll start with where I left off back in the fall with these super-rich sweet potato cupcakes that I made for Thanksgiving. I got the inspiration from one of my favorite cupcakes from Sara Sara in OKC. This recipe doesn't quite match theirs, but it was pretty good and a good finish to a wonderful meal.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 can (17 oz) sweet potato puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Combine flour, baking bowder, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Whisk together and set aside.

Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, followed by vanilla and sweet potato puree.

Slowly stir in the dry ingredients. Add to lined muffin tins and bake at 350 for 18 minutes.

Once cooled, add frosting.

Maple buttercream frosting:
8 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
3-4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoon maple extract (this made it really maple-y, so you could cut down on this if you don't want such a strong flavor)

Beat cream cheese and butter until well combined. Add powdered sugar in portions. Stir in vanilla and maple extract.

After frosting, I topped mine with a sprinkling of cinnamon. Yum yummy!

Pumpkin Cookies

Nothing says fall like my favorite fall baking ingredient.... pumpkin!! Love love love. I've made pumpkin breads, pancakes, muffins, cupcakes, but this is the first recipe I've found for cookies so I had to try it out. Credit goes to another blogger at http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2010/09/30/pumpkin-cookies-with-cream-cheese-frosting/ because I only changed one little thing from her recipe. Happy Halloween!

Cookies:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 can pumpkin puree
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix dry ingredients together in small bowl. In separate larger bowl, blend butter and sugars until smooth, then add egg, vanilla, and pumpkin and mix completely. Gradually add dry ingredient mixture to the wet mix. The dough is pretty sticky so this next step can be tricky, but form the dough into small balls and roll in sugar to coat. Place on ungreased cookie sheet, then gently flatten each with a thumb so they're not too thick. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or so.

When cooled, mix up the frosting:
4 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2-1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Blend until smooth, then add to a ziploc baggie. Cut off a tip of the bag and use to pipe frosting on each cookie in desired pattern. Pumpkin-y goodness!! Nice and chewy in the middle with a little bit of a crust from the sugar coating, and the frosting is the perfect little accent.

And although I didn't use it in the cookies, I couldn't resist sipping on a little pumpkin beer while I made these, just to enhance my little pumpkin mood!

S'mores Cupcakes

The first annual Cochran family get-together was this year in the Arbuckle wilderness area in nowhere Oklahoma. All 20 something of us lived in one big lodge for the weekend. Being all campy-feeling, I though s'mores would be appropriate, but there was a burn ban in Oklahoma so that meant no camp fires. So.... I came up with s'mores cupcakes! I googled a few recipes, and turns out there are lots of different ways of doing this. So, I combined a few recipes and my own ideas. They turned out okay, but I think I'll try a few things different if I make them again.

For the cake:
Mix up a yellow cake mix per the package directions. Separately, crush up graham crackers until you have about 1 cup of crumbs. Fold these into the cake batter for a graham cracker cake, put into cups, and bake according to the mix directions. When cooled, dig out a little hole in the center of each cupcake.

For the chocolate middle:
Melt down some Hershey chocolate bars in the microwave, and fill up the holes in the cupcakes with the melted chocolate, letting it run out the top so you can spread a layer over the top of the cupcake. This is something that needs some work because while it turned out great right afterwards to have a gooey chocolate center, the next day the chocolate hardened in the center and left a little chocolate turd in the middle of the cupcakes. Good, but not quite what I was going for.

For the marshmallow frosting:
Blend a jar of marshmallow fluff with a stick of softened butter. Then gradually add in about 2-3 cups powdered sugar and mix until smooth. Dollop a spoonful onto the tops of each chocolate-filled cupcake. This frosting was a little thin, so it ended up running down the side instead of staying nice and perky. And, it tasted a little to sugary sweet instead of marshmallow-y, but not sure what I could have done about it other than using more fluff and less powdered sugar?

Finally, a garnish of a graham cracker! I wanted to toast these in the broiler to give the marshmallow a toasty look, but the oven at this lodge didn't have a broiler.

Have one, then have s'more!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Balls

I think the title is pretty self-explanatory of what these are. Balls of chocolatey peanut buttery goodness!

I made just a regular ol' box of chocolate cake (which by the way smelled so so so good. I think I want a candle called "warm chocolate cake"). After it cools, crumble it up. Looks like dirt. 

Instead of using frosting, I used straight creamy peanut butter. I stirred in almost a whole jar because it required that much to get to the right consistency. Unfortunately, I think this resulted in too much peanut butter and not enough chocolate, but for some that's okay. Me, I prefer more chocolate, but I guess I can't always have my way.

Ball it up, then let them chill (freeze) for a few hours. Melt down some vanilla candy chips or almond bark. Dip each ball into the coating and set on wax paper to cool.

For the finishing touches, melt down a Hershey chocolate bar and scrape it into a plastic baggie. Cut off a small tip and use it to drizzle chocolate over the tops of the balls. This really made the balls look a lot nicer!

Yum yummy!

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Yes you read the title right... two of the best things in the world, cookie dough, in a cupcake! This is an idea I've been wanting to try for a long time, so here it goes!

I used just a regular box cupcake mix, but picked out one that sounded extra rich, a golden butter mix. I'm so used to adding eggs and oil to a mix that I was taken aback when it said to add solid butter. The batter tasted pretty yummy but the cake was a lot denser than normal and, I thought, it turned out a little dry. If these had been plain cupcakes I would have called them a failure, but the cookie dough made up for it!

Next, make your favorite cookie dough, or just do what I did and buy the pre-made Nestle stuff. I even got the kind that was pre-separated into balls, but I ended up having to reshape them all smaller because they were a little large for my small cupcake cups. No big deal - I just ate the leftovers :-) And, I discovered that cookie dough dipped in cake batter is awfully yummy as well! Mmmmm.

Fill cupcake cups with cake batter, but not quite as full as a normal since the cookie dough will cause some volume displacement (what's the name of that physics principle?). Then just set a ball of dough on the top of each. Here is where I was glad that the mix was dense because they didn't immediately sink, but as you bake them they will sink to the bottom. Bake according to the cake mix directions. I found that the cookies baked throughout, I was kind of hoping there would be a little raw cookie dough in the very center, but nope. Oh well, still yummy!

And now here's the fabulous top-off for these little babies.... the cookie dough frosting. Yes yes yes. It basically is the recipe for cookie dough from scratch, minus the eggs and flour. Blend 3 sticks of butter (hellooo calories) and 3/4 cup brown sugar. Add in 3.5 cups powdered sugar to make it frosting-y. Then, top off the flavor with 1/2 tsp salt, 2 Tbsp milk, and 1 tsp vanilla. Spread on the cupcakes, and sprinkle on some chocolate chips!

Nice enough on the outside....

Yummy little treasure on the inside!!

4th of July Cupcakes

These were the fun fun fun cupcakes I made for, well obviously, July 4th. My aunt Anita gave me these cool little things to make two-color/flavor cupcakes (called Batter Babies) and I've been dying to try them out, so I thought a holiday that focuses on a set of specific colors would be appropriate :-)

I just made a box french vanilla cake mix, but added to it a package of dry french vanilla pudding mix for extra moisture. Then, I divided the batter into two separate bowls and dyed one red and one blue. It took quite a bit of food coloring (though not nearly as much as the green velvet balls!).

Popped in the batter babies, which struggled a bit to stand upright, but I finally got them to balance. It was a little tedious and time consuming, but had to add each color separately, being careful not to knock over the dividers or spill a color into the wrong half. And, I only had 6 dividers, so I could only do a half of a pan at a time.

Bake according to the box mix directions, let cool, and frost. I didn't have time or energy to do homemade frosting, so I cheated and used a tub of pre-made cream cheese frosting. I still loaded it into my frosting piper thingamajig and did my best to apply the frosting in the shape of white stars on the tops of the red and blue cupcakes. 

Finally, sprinkled the tops with both red (strawberry) and blue (blue raspberry) Pop Rocks, which by the way took forever to find - I went to 5 different grocery/convenience stores with no luck and finally had to get them at the over-priced candy store in the mall. 

It's a fireworks party in your mouth!! Happy Independence Day!!

Dr. Pepper Cupcakes

Happy birthday daddy! In trying to think what to make him for dessert, I knew he liked chocolate cake, but I wanted to do something a little more exciting. As I was craving some diet dr pepper to drink for a caffeine fix, I put the two together and...... Dr Pepper Cupcakes!

After a google recipe search (because I'm not yet brave enough to make up my own recipe from the ground up), I found one and made a few small modifications to make this:

1 German chocolate cake mix
1 small instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
12 oz Dr. Pepper (not diet)
8 oz cream cheese
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
1 tsp vanilla
splash Dr. Pepper
about 2-3 cups powdered sugar
about 1/2 tsp cocoa powder

Mix together the German chocolate cake mix and vanilla pudding mix. Then, using a mixer on low-medium speed, slowly add in the eggs and vegetable oil. Yes 1 cup is a lot of oil, and these cakes were pretty darn moist, so you could probably decrease this a little if you want. Then, add 12 ounces (one can, or 1.5 cups) of Dr. Pepper - add in portions since it fizzes when you pour it into the mix. Also, pour another glass of dr pepper to sip on while you finish up :-) Once blended, pour into cupcake cups and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

For the frosting, blend the softened cream cheese and butter on low speed. Gradually add in powdered sugar in portions, blending each time. Add a little cocoa powder, more or less depending on whether you want a more chocolate or vanilla flavored frosting. Add the vanilla and a splash of DP, mixing well. Add more powdered sugar as needed, but don't get too much because it'll get too sweet.

(I have yet to perfect this whole frosting thing - for some reason it is always pretty thin. Maybe I mix it too much and it gets warm? Any suggestions anyone on how to keep it thick without adding gobs and gobs of powdered sugar?)

And now for the fun part - frost the cupcakes (once cooled of course), then top with multicolored sprinkles. I had an inspiration of an ice cream float, so just for kicks and giggles I cut off the tips of bendy straws and stuck them in for decoration. Then a little marachino cherry on top!

Enjoy with a glass of milk. Or Dr. Pepper. Or both :-)

Fun-Fetti Cake Balls!

There are lots of dessert-worthy events in the months of April through July: my parent's anniversary, my  birthday, mother's day, Memorial day, mom's birthday, father's day, our anniversary, dad's birthday, 4th of July, Chris's birthday... And so despite me trying to lose the 6 pounds I've put on since living at home, I had to make mom some Birthday Cake Balls.

Make a box mix of confetti cake then, once cooled, crumble up into fine multi-colored crumbs. Then, stir in most of a can of funfetti frosting to make a "glue" for the cake crumbs. Once it's a nice doughy consistency, stick in the fridge overnight. The next evening, make the dough into balls, about ping-pong sized, then stick them in the freezer for awhile.

In the meantime, melt down the candy coating - this time I used 3/4 package white vanilla candy coating and 3/4 bag white chocolate chips. And (another benefit of living at my parents' house) is that I had a real double-boiler to use, which was very handy.

Take only 4-6 balls out of the freezer at a time because you don't want them to get too warm. This is something I learned since my last cake ball attempt, and it worked much better. I thought I'd try to cake pops this time and found some skewers in a random drawer. Stick a skewer in the ball, then dip it in the melted coating. Another benefit of the sticks is that I could let the excess drip off and get a more even coating than just dipping with a spoon. Set on wax paper to cool, adding sprinkles if you'd like before the coating hardens.

Bite-sized yumminess! And happy birthday mommy!!!