Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes

At last year's holiday dinner for work we did a gift exchange. I didn't like my original gift (it was two kitchen tools I knew I wouldn't use) so I asked to switch. My new gift was a tin of 4 dozen Kirkland Signature-brand chocolate-hazelnut candies (AKA Ferrero Rocher). I took them to Christmas Eve dinner to put them out as one of many offerings for dessert but we only ended up using 1 dozen. The rest sat in their original tin on the floor beneath my kitchen table for almost a year.

Which is why I finally decided to bake with them recently. I focused on cupcakes because I rarely make them (and I randomly bought a cupcake carrier/holder with a coupon at Michael's a while back and had yet to use it). Most of the recipes I found had the candy inside the cupcake but I wasn't sure about doing that (my overthinking brain kept going back to the idea that they'd be too hard to bite into). I finally settled on a recipe from Dixie Crystals (a cane sugar company) that sets the candy on top of the frosting. And since the frosting is Nutella (to go with the chocolate and hazelnut flavors of the candy), I decided to add some Nutella to the cupcake as well, using an idea I found on a food site from the UK.

Surprise Pumpkin Cupcakes

This year at work we had a potluck on Halloween (along with a costume contest. I went as a baker - original, right?). It didn't take me long to narrow down my choices as I already knew the flavor and type: pumpkin (duh!) and cupcakes. For the cupcakes I had gotten two Halloween-themed cupcake liners at Target just in case the opportunity came up.

I decided to show some love to my hard copy recipes this time. I finally decided on a pumpkin cupcake recipe in one of the Taste of Home special issues. They have a surprise cheesecake layer of cheesecake in them. Other than top them with powdered sugar, as the recipe suggests, I decided to use store-bought frosting (these are, after all, cupcakes. Plus, it was a school night and my track record with frosting is ... not great) and sprinkles.

Double Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

Remember those chocolate oranges that were also flavored orange? I vaguely remember seeing them a lot when I was a kid (apparently this was because Anthony was a big fan so Mom would always get him one for his Christmas stocking).

Like most fruit, orange just goes great with chocolate. So I've wanted to make something chocolate-orange for a while. I decided that the Labor Day BBQ at my parents' house (side note: it's been 4 years and I'm still not used to not calling it my house) would be the perfect time to make something chocolate-orange. Since I hadn't made cupcakes in a while, I decided on those. I chose a recipe from one of the Simply Sweet magazine, a dessert magazine from the same publishers as Southern Living and Cooking Light (among others).

Oh, and if you're wondering where I got that chocolate orange pictured above, I found it partially hidden in a display at a sweet shop I adore called Lolli & Pops. There are several locations in the Seattle-area (two of which I can get to via transit - not exactly a good thing).

Margarita Pinata Cupcakes

A couple Christmases ago my mom got me a cupcake corer (it was on one of my Amazon Wish Lists that I'd given her for inspiration so she didn't buy me more shirts to stuff into my closet). And then I never had a chance to use it. Until Auntie Lisa gave me inspiration. She, my uncle, and my cousins were coming up for an event with my uncle's family and they decided to have a Cinco de Mayo party with our family. My original plan was to make the Sopapilla Cheesecake; however, Auntie Lisa sent me a recipe for pinata cupcakes with the suggestion that I make them for our party. I didn't want to use that specific recipe since it required ingredients that I rarely use so I started looking elsewhere. None of the recipes I found were what I wanted though. Which is when I had an epiphany: I could use any cupcake recipe and just core them and fill them with sprinkles (The Kitchen on Food Network had a segment on how to do this last year). So I started searching for lime cupcakes (it felt like an appropriate flavor for Cinco de Mayo) and found Margarita Cupcakes in one of the Betty Crocker recipe magazines on my bookshelf.

Simple Neapolitan Cupcakes

Over the last few months I've been working on a bit of a project while waiting on the status of a job. You see, I've become a bit of a ... collector ... of those recipe magazines you can get from the magazine rack at stores. So I decided to create a searchable database of the recipes in these magazines that I would bake since there's not always an index and I have way more magazines than I do cookbooks.

I've also been watching a lot of Food Network lately (don't ask why the sudden change - it's a bit complicated, among other reasons). Especially after I noticed that the weekday morning Cupcake Wars episodes were ones I'd never seen before. Which just made me want to make cupcakes. And since I'm not sure how to store them just for me, I decided to make them for whatever Mom wanted to do for Mother's Day. Since I've been pinning a lot of neapolitan desserts lately, I specifically wanted to make neapolitan cupcakes. I ended up finding a recipe in my new database.

I did make one change: I replaced the strawberry with raspberry for the frosting since my dad doesn't like strawberries. I know it was for Mother's Day, but that wouldn't have stopped him from complaining that he couldn't have the dessert.

Lemon Cream Cupcakes

When I was in college my mom threw a tea party for a few years, usually around Valentine's Day. Because I was miles away, I had to miss them. Even though I don't like tea, I was a bit bummed about missing them. So when my mom decided to throw one this year, I decided I had to go. I even offered to bake (though I have a feeling she would have asked me to anyway). I decided on something not chocolate since the party was going to be during Lent and as always, I gave up chocolate. My mom asked me to make something lemony so we'd have a variety of flavors. I set my sights on looking for lemon cupcakes as I was in the mood to make them and I wanted to use one of the skills that Mom and I had learned at a Wilton decorating class we took last summer. I ended up finding the same recipe in two places: Taste of Home's Cupcakes special edition magazine from a couple years ago and my 2012 cupcakes calendar.

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Sometimes you wanna bake just because. Yesterday was one of those times. Earlier this month I got the urge to bake cupcakes while watching Cupcake Wars (honestly, this never really happens). I decided on Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting since it's fall and I kinda prefer pumpkin-flavored things to apple-flavored things (cream cheese frosting just sounded like a good partner for pumpkin). So while I was looking for cupcakes for my grandma's birthday, I kept an eye out for pumpkin ones. I had to wait a few weeks because my parents (although it might just be my mother) fulfilled a long-time wish and got granite countertops in our kitchen (with subway tiled-walls to match), leaving the kitchen unavailable for baking. Finally the kitchen was (somewhat) back to normal by this weekend so after a little searching par deux, I found a unique recipe in Taste of Home's Cupcakes for Every Season (released in spring 2011).

Chocolate Town Syrup Cupcakes

My family is all about birthdays. Sure, we don't go all out and hold big blowout parties for each one, but we do get together to celebrate them. And that includes the only member of my mom's side of the family who lives up here in the Puget Sound: my grandma. Her birthday was last week and as always, we had dinner this weekend to celebrate it. We decided to go to Vince's Italian Restaurant in Renton. Because we were going to a restaurant, my mom suggested it'd be easier for me to bake cupcakes that we could hand out for dessert instead of having a cake to cut. After some searching through all of my cookbooks and recipe magazines (there's at least 3 dozen of them), I finally decided on the Chocolate Town Syrup Cupcakes from the Hershey's 1934 Cookbook (an updated version published in 1971). The recipe didn't include a frosting so I just purchased a can of Duncan Hines Whipped Chocolate at the store (frosting has always been hit and miss for me so this was for the better). I tried to decorate the cupcakes fancily with a pastry bag but, well, that didn't work out. One more try next time and then I'm sticking to my new frosting motto: you can't go wrong with a can and a spreader.