Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Pecan Cream Cheese Frosting

Happy Thanksgiving!  I thought I’d treat our loyal readers to a taste of the season.  I hope that you and yours enjoy your holidays and have many happy returns.  We are grateful for your dedication to our cupcake experiments, and I wish to you a happy culinary adventure :)

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Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes

Cupcakes as far as the eye can see...

This will be my second alcohol-free cupcake post in a row!  That’s some sort of record, I am sure.  These cupcakes were for the same baby shower as the previous Almond and Vanilla ones.  Frankly, there’s not too much creativity going on here, as I jacked Gibb’s Brown Sugar Cupcake recipe once again, and I’m stealing my own Peanut Butter Mousse.  Add some jelly in the middle, and you have a peanut butter and jelly cupcake :)

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Almond and Vanilla Cupcakes

Almond Vanilla Cupcake

This will be the second baby shower for which I’ve made these cupcakes.  Their delicate flavor and lightness just lend themselves to such an event.  I decided to up my game with this batch (my last batch was made during the cupcake blog hiatus and never made it into a post), and add ground almonds into the cupcakes and vanilla bean seeds into the frosting.  I’m hoping it will intensify and fancy up the results.  Depending on where you live, you can get very reasonably priced vanilla beans at Cost Plus World Market.  They are one of my favorite places to go when I need an obscure spice and don’t want to pay insane grocery store prices.  I wish I had a market near me that offered spices in bulk, cheap.  Well, enough of my spice rant…on to the cupcakes!

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Garam Masala Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

Why, yes, that is a microwave older than me in the background.

There was a sale on bulk spices earlier this week (the same kind of sale that lead me to buy cocoa nibs that lead to these red velvet cupcakes) and I stocked up.  The only really *new* thing I bought during the sale was garam masala.  Garam masala is actually just the name of a sort of style of spice mix–it can be any combination of a number of different spices.  The kind I bought, however, has a combination of cloves, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, cardamom, and pepper, and maybe a few other things I’m not 100% sure on.

Though I know some people have declared that savory flavors in cupcakes is weird, I like it, and I like it as much as I like sour flavors in cupcakes.  I feel like the savory/sweet and sour/sweet combinations work well because of the contrast, playing counterpoint to each other.

Um.  I don’t suspect anyone really cares to hear me ramble about flavor combinations much longer, so into the recipe we go!

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1 year Blogaversary! Vanilla Bourbon Cupcakes with Walnut Cream Cheese Frosting and a Bourbon Vanilla Glaze

The chopped up walnuts don't work too well with my frosting tips, so it got glopped on.

Two things of relative import: I do believe we have reached our one year blogaversay!  Yay!  It has been a very very delicious year, and it is very VERY exciting to go from being excited that we hit 20 hits in a day to averaging about 100 hits every day.  So, thanks!  It is pretty fabulous.

Thing two: Oh sweet sweet merciful weather gods, it is hot here.  Hot and sticky sticky humid.  Thus, no baking, and I’m slowing down posting to stretch out my current queue.

Anyhow, while Mels was visiting a few weeks ago, I made Vanilla Bourbon Cupcakes with the Toasted Walnut Cream Cheese Frosting…and it was every bit as delicious as it sounds.

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Gluten Free Cupcakes: Lemon Almond

Lemon Almond Gluten Free Cupcakes

A friend of mine who recently had a birthday has  a twin sister who is gluten-intolerant, so when the invite for the potluck party was made, it was pretty clear that I was going to make gluten-free cupcakes.

Since it is finally summer in this city, it seemed like a citrus-combo cupcake was a best-fit for the weather and a backyard barbeque.

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Borscht Cupcakes – Beet and Carrot Cupcakes with Goat Cheese and Sour Cream Frosting!

I know, I know, we must all look past the title I’ve given these cupcakes and suspend disbelief!  This specific concoction did not start out as Russian soup-inspired, but through the workings of my brain, it has become so!  I have been wanting to make a beet and goat cheese cupcake for quite some time now. This weekend, while perusing the stalls at the farmer’s market, I found some lovely beets, and fearing they might be the last of the season (they’ve been slowly disappearing from the market), I bought a pound…or three.  Then, fate came my way!  On my door step this morning in my produce delivery (a new venture, thanks to www.farmfreshtoyou.com) was a bunch of fresh carrots.  Looking in the fridge, I realized I needed to use up my sour cream and goat cheese before leaving on an extended camping trip…the combinations started to form in my head, and before I knew it, I had the makings of a borscht cupcake!  Granted, one doesn’t usually find goat cheese in borscht, but it seemed to go so well with everything else!

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Gluten-Free Vegan Chocolate Coconut Cream Cupcakes

BAM. Toasted Coconut.

One of the coolest things about wordpress is the data it gathers.  There is a page that keeps count of page views, links clicked, referrers, other stuff, and one of my favorites: Search Terms.  That is, the phrases and words people google that makes Cupcake Villains appear in their search results page–a hilarious number surround the question of how to use alcohol in cupcakes–and one popped up after Mels last post that immediately seemed like a good idea: Gluten-Free Chocolate Coconut Cream Cupcakes.

I think these might be on the cupcake menu for my friend’s wedding; Gluten-Free, Vegan, and actually really really awesome.

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Monkey Love! Coconut Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

 

This weekend, I made monkey love!  Yes.  I know.  Let’s move on the from obvious sexual jokes (trust me, I’ve already made all of them) and move onto these delicious delicious cupcakes.

I’m usually really really not a fan of banana in baked goods; it always seems so overpoweringly strong in baked goods that I’m super reluctant to ever use it.

But.

These seemed like a good idea.  Coconut!  Banana! Chocolate!

All good things when mushed together.

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The Handsomest Cupcake in the World: Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with Toasted Black Walnut Cream Cheese Filling and a Dark Chocolate Ganache Topping

you're the prettiest cupcake in the room, the whole wide room

These are really really handsome cupcakes.  They look fancy, I know, and deep on the inside, they are even fancier.

That is, these are the long-promised Heart Attack Cupcakes, which are incredibly chocolatey in 2.5 ways, and have a cream cheese frosting filling.  And by “have a cream cheese frosting filling,” I mean they have a fancy fancy toasted organic black walnut vegan cream cheese filling, because I am just that gosh-darn awesome.

The “frosting” is actually the thick concoction of chocolate, soy milk, a wee bit of margarine, and patience that is sometimes called “ganache.”

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