49er Faithful – Black Forest Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

It has finally happened – the San Francisco 49ers have prevailed and will be playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday!  My father has claimed that his children have always brought the 49ers luck.  A month after my brother was born, our boys won their first national championship.  Just 15 days after I was born, they won their second.  They have been undefeated since then in their five Super Bowl games.  I am just hoping with all hope that this Sunday they can make it six!

To celebrate, I have developed a deep, rich, and tangy cupcake to show my love for my team.  I am borrowing my all-time favorite chocolate cupcake recipe (developed for a Super Bowl party three years ago), filling it with tangy and boozey cherries, with a topping of red and gold pride in the form of a rich cream cheese frosting.  Start the cherry filling a few days ahead so the cherries can reach full re-hydration and flavor.

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The Sadie Cupcake – Vegan Chocolate Cupcake with Salted Caramel Frosting

Mels goes vegan baker! Thanks to Sadie for her comment, flavor inspiration, and push into baking, vegan style :)  These cupcakes were really fun to make, and I especially enjoyed the frosting/caramel combo with the sea salt!  Have fun with these and try out different decorating techniques.

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Happy 4th of July! Vanilla Cupcakes with Strawberries, Blueberries, and Buttercream Frosting

Patriotic Cupcake!

Hello, all!  Long time, no post.  It’s another holiday, which means cupcakes.  It is also my Danish family’s first time celebrating the 4th of July, so these are for them :)

My creativity went soaring with these, and I pretty much used tried and true recipes from Gibbs and I.  The cupcakes is Gibbs’s Brown Sugar Cupcake recipes (also seen in the Peanut Butter and Jelly cupcakes and perhaps a few others) and the frosting is a basic buttercream.  I did make them  festive with the stripes of strawberries and blueberries, both fortified with a little light rum :)

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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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Hot Buttered Rum Cupcakes: Totally a Keeper

The cupcake! Look at the fancy baking cup!

My fair/damp/slightly mildewed city has reached the time of year before it’s cloudy for basically three months running, but the lack of cloud cover makes for really chilly nights.  The days have this absurdly beautiful crisp fall weather with a few wisps of clouds floating overhead; a cool, bright light; and a gorgeous blue sky I can’t remember ever seeing when I lived in the Inland Empire.  I’m sorry for making you read through an overly-descriptive paragraph that has nothing to do with the actual cupcakes, but only partially because it is beautiful in the Willamette Valley right now.

I’ve never actually had hot buttered rum, but they were the request, so I did research.  And by “research,” I mean I googled “hot buttered rum cupcakes” so I could see if anyone has done it before and with what success.  The takeaway from that link was the browned butter frosting.  It tastes fantastically like toffee and even if it doesn’t really taste like what buttered rum would taste like IT IS SO DELICIOUS. Ye vegans, please note that earth balance has some browning possibilities, so these are still a possibility for you.

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Old Fashioned’s: Vegan Bitters and Bourbon Cupcakes

 

Old-Fashioneds

 

A little while ago, my friend from the first red velvet attempt texted me, saying she thought that Old Fashioneds would be delicious cupcakes, and that we should make them.  As it turns out, she’s been watching Mad Men, and not checking out the To Do List.

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Dark and Stormy: Vegan Rum & Ginger Cupcakes

cupcakes, complete and covered in rum syrup.

I have an enormous bottle of rum.  I guess it’s really not that enormous, but rum isn’t something I drink with any great frequency.  Thus, the only use this rum has seen has been in cupcakes.  Upon deciding (I really have been hitting the 19th century literature hard the last few weeks) I was well enough to bake again, I decided on rum cupcakes.  With ginger.  Some preliminary research on the subject brought me to the idea of a Dark and Stormy, which fits very well into my theory that cocktails make fine inspiration for baked goods.

(Note to the purists:  I did not buy Goslings.  I have a budget for my cupcake and drinking forays, I already have rum, and it’s a pain to get to the liquor store.)

Anyways.

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Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cocoa Nibs and an Old-Fashioned Cooked Frosting

These are cocoa nibs. They are bitter in a deliciously chocolatey kind of way.

They don’t look like much, do they?  Cocoa nibs look like gravel, or peanuts, or…I really just lost track of that thought.

Regardless, they’re delicious, grown-up chocolate chips.  Well, maybe not grown up, but definitely a little fancier.

I made red velvet, again, but this time, I did it with an old-fashioned cooked frosting, which I liked a LOT better than most of the buttercream frosting I’ve had.  I also understand why cream cheese frosting is usually paired with the cake; the textures are similar (though the cream cheese is tangier).

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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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