Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I know it's a little late for Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes, but in my defense, I did actually make these around St. Patrick's Day and I made two batches!  The first batch was for my cousin's party, a weight-loss competition party.  I'm such a good cousin/friend.

Anyway, I found the recipe off of Smitten Kitchen's site.

To begin, you cook the butter and Guinness together.

Then you do whatever that recipe above says and make delicious Guinness and Chocolate Cupcakes. I didn't really take pictures of the step by step process.  It was pretty straight-forward.

see look at how delicious they are.

Next, you core the cupcakes.  After I cored them, then I made the Jameson Ganache. I added just a touch more whiskey than they suggest, but not too much more.  I just wanted to make sure you could taste it.  Then I poured the ganache into a plastic freezer bag, cup the tip off and filled those suckers up. It makes it just that much neater to use a plastic bag instead of spooning the filling in.

you can tell I went back and forth between cupcakes.

Onto the Bailey's Buttercream, instead of using traditional Bailey's, I used the touch of caramel flavor. I'm pretty glad I did.  It was pretty delicious.  Again, instead of pastry bags, I used freezer bags but fit a tip to the bag before placing the buttercream in it. 

yum

 

 

My favorite part of this entire recipe is definitely the whiskey ganache.  It is absolutely amazing. The cupcake as a whole is amazing and I recommend this recipe.  YOU MUST TRY IT!

Margarita Cupcakes

After making the swiss buttercream a few weekends ago, I thought I would try to make some margarita cupcakes.  Basically it's just a white cake with lime zest and lime juice.  The frosting was similar to the buttercream but with lime and tequila.  I fear I did not use enough tequila and it turned out to be more like a key lime cupcake.
Also, I purchased some pastry bags and tips for decorating.  I also bought super cute cupcake wrappers.  I had just a tiny bit of fun with it.  Next time,  I think I may practice with dyed frosting.  I have some ideas!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Swiss Buttercream

This time I used the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcake Recipe provided by Martha Stewart. I have to say it was pretty amazing.  Light, fluffy, and all around chocolate amazingness. The swiss buttercream was also a recipe in the book and it was delicious.  I topped it with toasted coconut.  I feel like it was a good call on my part. 

Blackberry & Cream Cupcakes

I received Martha Stewart's Cupcakes for Christmas. There are a lot of amazing ideas such as the Blueberry & Cream cupcakes.  However, I've been on this blackberry kick for awhile now and thought I would trade in the blueberries with blackberries.  I can see how blueberries would be the better berry for this recipe, especially if you want to make mini cupcakes.  I made both mini and regular sized cupcakes.  I could only place one blackberry in the mini and two-three in the regular.  Of course they were all topped off with whipped cream and a cute blackberry on top.  They also tasted better after being refrigerated. Eating them warm wasn't so great.

Overall, I would say they were a success.  Unless you talked to my mother. She swore they tasted like olives. They didn't.

They do look pretty! 

Rubber Duck Cupcakes

Yes, Rubber Duck Cupcakes. My friend bought me this amazing book called What's New, Cupcake? by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack.  It's a pretty awesome book and I suggest everyone should buy it. And I do mean everyone. Anyway, I decided I would make the Rubber Duck Cupcakes for a New Year's Eve party I attended. There are definitely a few things I'm going to change for the next time I make these, but I'll get to that later. 

Just so you know, I cheated and use packaged cake mix with the directions that the book provided for a vanilla cupcake.

After purchasing some delicious iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts, I cut marshmallows at a diagonal.

Above are the beaks and tails, I created them out of Starbursts.  Like I said earlier, the book is really neat and gives you so many ideas on how to use candy to decorate.  One such suggestion is to microwave Starbursts for 5 seconds, so I did.  They're much easier to manipulate like that.  As you can tell I did have some problems with the feet. I think next time I should spend a little more time on detail.

After the cupcakes cooled, I began to assemble the cupcakes and let them freeze for a bit.

Now for the frosting, they suggest you do not used whipped frosting.  I have to agree. I had some issues, but I think the end result wasn't too far off.

Eyes are a little different, but to each their own!

Yeah... those beaks are a little ridiculous. 

I had more cupcakes, so I was lazy and used more prepared frosting. 

For some reason the pink ones don't look as good as the yellow ones, but I didn't want to toss them! You should also buy the appropriate amount of frosting and not just wing it - like I did. 

Ahem

First things first, I really have no idea what I'm doing.  Well, I kind of have an idea now.


I suppose I will try to back track to the beginning of my baking adventures. Most of the time I only take pictures of the finished product. I generally make cupcakes but I will stray occasionally just because it's fun, duh.