Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups

Have you ever felt like making cupcakes, just because?  Felt like making them not for a birthday, or a paid order, or an event, just make them because you want to make them?  I know - it's crazy!  I just really, really wanted to make them tonight.  I was completely planning on going to the gym, but the storms prevented me from getting in the pool, my normal Monday night work out.  Also, lil' sis' Stephanie is in the Harry Potter Hood this week, so I knew she'd be good for helping (and eating) these tasty little delights!

My great friend Joe (who used to own 3 bakeries and he was on Oprah and lots of other things) lent me some silicone baking cups.  Once, I saw a blog where someone made cookie dough and put the cookie dough into these cups, and created cookie cup cakes!  Since I've been craving some chocolate chip cookies, I felt this was the perfect solution to my "I need cupcake" blues.

First, a drop of dough.

Then, a scoop of chocolate chips (mini ones were the only ones we had in the house)!

Then, another drop of dough.

You gotta mush it down, too!  (Or let Stephanie do it.)

Then another scoop of chocolate chips on the top.  We also put some pecans into 6 of the cookies - because I love nuts!!

Look how pretty they baked:

Hmmmm - I am thinking they are a little naked though, don't you?

Ah, much better!  Pretty little buttercream stars!

Love how they look once you take off the silicone, too:

These are just truly, fantastically, tasty.  Yum, yum, yum yum yum!!!!!

Elmo

I squeezed this batch of cupcakes (for my wonderful friend Melanie, who was planning her 2-year-old son, Caleb's birthday party) into a very busy week at my "day" job.  So, there aren't a lot of photos but I hope you enjoy these few!

Elmo is kind of hard to make on a cupcake - his actual head is more oval shaped.  But I think these are cute anyway.

Black & White Cake Pops

A wonderful friend ordered some cake pops for an Avon party she was holding, but left the coloring and styling choices up to me!  I went into my local supply store and wandered and wandered and wandered.  What to do when I can do anything I want?  Luckily I found some awesome black and white mini cupcake liners and some black and white sprinkles/sugar so I had found my inspiration!

My best co-baker, Marlo Baker, came over to help me.  Fun, fun!  What would I do without her?  We started with some melted white chocolate. 

 We also started with some dark chocolate candy melts, and added a lot of black food coloring.  Note to self: you don't really need to add that much black food coloring gel.  Your chocolate won't look black melted, but once cooled it will be that perfect shade of black.

 We always dip the sticks into the chocolate and then into the balls first, and then let that harden a bit.  We then dip the pops into the chocolate, sprinkle the sprinkles, and turn them upside down to dry.

 Here are a few of our first ones:

 Nice and black, right?  LOL.

Thanks to Marlo's super creativity, and her super amazing patience, we made this awesome box that I used to transport the cake pops.  We went up to my scrapbooking room (oh, yeah - haven't done much scrapbooking lately, have I?) and found a perfect box, some white paper, and some beautiful black ribbon.  I think this batch of cake pops turned out super great, don't you?

Shortly thereafter, hubby walked by and said, "aren't you going to make the red velvet cake pops, too?"  Yes, I had some pre-made cake balls frozen from the Fourth of July cake push ups that I had made.  Couldn't stand to waste all of those scraps!  So Marlo and I called HER hubby to head over, ordered some pizza, and went to town making some cake pops just for fun!

Carrot Cake Cup Cakes!

For anyone who knows me, they know that my most favorite thing in the whole world is carrot cake.  Okay, maybe not my most favorite thing in the whole world, but it is my favorite kind of cake.  I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to turn my great friend Scott's carrot cake recipe into cupcakes.  Lucky for him, his birthday came up at the perfect time.  My other great friend (and fellow carrot cake lover) Don celebrates his birthday a day after Scott, so I was set to make a double batch.

When turning a cake recipe into cupcakes, you just never really know how many cupcakes it's going to make.  I needed about 24 cupcakes for Scott's birthday party and about 36 cupcakes for Don's birthday so I made a double batch.

First things first, shredding the carrots.  Scott had warned me that I could not use the food processor because then the cake wouldn't be juicy enough.  Seriously!  Ugh!  (I promise next time I make these I am going to use the food processor and just see how "dry" the cupcakes turn out.)

I knew I needed about 6 cups of shredded carrots, but I just wasn't sure how many carrots to buy.  This was too many.  :)

I used our handy-dandy Pampered Chef mandolin slicer, which only worked for like, 1/2 of the time (because carrots are too small) for shredding the carrots.  Never again my friend!

Shred crumbs all over the kitchen!

Luckily, carrot cake is vegetable-oil based so you can easily mix it with a wooden spoon in a large Tupperware thasta bowl.

Look at all of those eggs, holy cow!

My favorite thing about carrot cake is pineapple.

Or maybe the nuts.

Or maybe the cream cheese icing.

In the middle of this crazy huge batter, I accidentally doubled 1 1/2 cups of oil to 4 cups.  Oops!  (Don't worry, I was able to scoop out almost the whole extra cup.)

The ultimate secret to this carrot cake, which is revered by all who know it, is the use of pecans instead of walnuts.  I think the nuts are my favorite part of carrot cake.

What beautiful cupcakes these are going to be!  All 72 of them!  Yep - the doubled batter made 72 cupcakes.  Holy cow.

These petite little things needed some extra "oomph" so one quick search of the Wilton site helped me make some carrot toppings.

 And I also wanted to add some of the pecans and make a prettier swirl, because I love pecans!!!

These cupcakes were a huge hit with both birthday boys and their guests.  My super wonderful coworkers also enjoyed some throughout the week, and I have to admit - I ate more of these cupcakes than any of the other cupcakes I've ever made!  Not a nice thing to admit, but that is how YUMMY they were. 

White cake cupcakes with color!

No food blogger that I know of ever talks about baking disasters.  Is there anyone else out there who doesn't always make a perfect baked good the first time, every time?  Please fess up!  :) You're about to read one of these baking disasters on this very here blog. . . 

I have this crazy wonderful new day job that has kept me incredibly busy over the past 6 weeks.  However, it has REALLY cut into my cupcake making!  As a result, I double booked myself last week.  It was so crazy, because I never do stuff like that.  I told my great friend and photographer extraordinaire that I'd make her some colorful cupcakes for a one-year-old photo shoot, and in exchange, she'd give me some of her beautiful photos to use on my website.  I was going to make them on Thursday night in order to get them done for Saturday morning, but on Thursday night decided I would make them on Friday.  Just kidding!  I got an IM from Marlo around noon on Friday wondering if I wanted to meet her downtown for dinner before our chocolate tour at a local artisan chocolate shop.  Well, of course I had a bit of a freak out, but Marlo being the awesome friend she is, she offered to help me make the cupcakes after the tour.

I wanted to make white cupcakes because I personally love white cake.  Did you know that it is white because you don't use the egg yolks?  Whites only!  And, this particular recipe called for egg whites that were first beaten to a stiff peak.  I had no idea white cake was so persnickety.  Of course I decided to use my Swiss meringue buttercream because it is so beautiful and shiny (also made of egg whites) and I (wrongly) thought it would be super bright when colored. 

Well, let me just tell you, that Swiss meringue buttercream was not meant to be bright blue, bright green OR bright yellow.  We used entire bottles of gel coloring and it just was not making the vibrant colors that we wanted.  I had to make do with these six cupcakes, topped with these slightly less-than-vibrant shades of icing. 

Now that it's a week ago, I can honestly say these are some nice looking cupcakes.  However, they just weren't what I was thinking I was making when I set out to make the vibrant colors.  Interestingly enough, the photo shoot was cancelled and we didn't have to end up using them at all!  I certainly learned a lot about coloring and Swiss meringue and had a great time doing it, so I can't complain one bit!

I also ended up with some super tasty cupcakes that were soon to be shredded and mixed with my basic buttercream for cake pops the next week!