Baby Blue Velvet Cupcakes

Along with the pea pod cookie pop favors, my friend Jen and I also volunteered to make the cake.  We toyed with several ideas but eventually settled on a cupcake tower.  We decided the best way to represent the boy/girl twins our friend Kelly is expecting was to have 1/2 pink and 1/2 blue cupcakes.  

  

I knew at once I wanted to make baby blue velvet cupcakes, so I started with my favorite red (or green) velvet recipe and figured I'd just use the same Wilton Cornflower Blue gel food coloring I'd used on the cookies.  Easy right? WRONG! But we'll get to that.  

Start with two eggs

Add 1 cup of buttermilk (or 1 tablespoon vinegar and the remaining amount to achieve a cup of skim milk)

To this, add 1 cup of vegetable oil.  The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups oil but I found them to be too greasy.  I also had the "opportunity" on this day to make a second batch but only had 1/2 cup of oil.  They came out ok that way but they were a bit dryer than what I wanted.  When I made the 3rd batch (yep... 3rd batch) I went back to using a full cup of oil.  Its worth it.  Why'd I make 3 batches to net 22 cupcakes?  We'll get to that.  Back to the oil.  Add it. 

Next, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

And 1 tablespoon of white vinegar

Now its time to add the food coloring.  If you are doing red velvet, you'd add 1 teaspoon of red gel food coloring.  For the baby blue velvet, I decided to start with a 1/2 teaspoon of the baby blue gel coloring.  

Way too dark! D'oh! Don't worry, I didn't waste this, I decided to finish up the recipe and bake them off.  But for the Baby Blue Velvet, these wouldn't work.  

So I started over again, and when it came time to add the food coloring, I started with 1/8 of a teaspoon of cornflower blue.

 

All right, that'll work.  Now on to the dry ingredients.  

I combined the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt and cocoa in another bowl and whisked them together. 

Once it is thoroughly whisked, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. 

And this is where I ran into my next problem.  When I whisked the baby blue wet ingredients into the tan colored dry ingredients, I got GRAY batter.  I didn't take a picture of it because it was GRAY and I was grossed out.  I still baked them.  But the gray got worse. 

Which means.... yep... batch #3.  For Batch #3, I decided to omit the cocoa since I figured that had to be the culprit.  So I did everything the same with the wet ingredients and poured them into the dry ingredients minus the cocoa powder. 

Finally! Success!

I filled each lined cupcake hole with 1/4 cup batter and cooked them at 350 degrees for 18 - 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  You want to really watch these closely because if they start to brown you lose that cute blue cupcake. 

While the cupcakes cooled on the counter, I went to work making the cream cheese frosting.  

Start by creaming 1 stick of butter in your mixer

Add 8oz of cream cheese.  Do not use low fat or fat free cream cheese.  

Next I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste.  You can of course use vanilla extract but if you have the opportunity, I highly suggest using the paste. 

Slowly add in the powdered sugar

And then 1 - 3 teaspoons of milk, depending on how thick you want your frosting.  For a pretty piped swirl, I use 1 teaspoon. 

Turn the mixer up to medium high and let it whip up for about 5 minutes. 

Yummy! I resisted the urge to eat this whole bowl with a spoon and instead swirled the frosting onto my cupcakes using a Wilton 2A tip. 

When I got to the party, we topped the cupcakes with these cute little pea pods that Jen made out of fondant

We topped the tower with a little layer cake covered in fondant that Jen made and we were all set for our boy/girl twin baby shower. 

Shopping List for Blue Velvet Cupcakes - Yields 20 - 24

• 2 Eggs
• 1 Cup Buttermilk
• 1 Cup Vegetable Oil
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tablespoon White Vinegar
• 1/8 Teaspoon Cornflower Blue Gel Food Coloring
• 2 1/2 Cups Flour
• 2 Cups Sugar
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Salt

Shopping List for Cream Cheese Frosting - Covers 30 cupcakes

• 1/2 Cup Butter (I always use salted)
• 8 oz Cream Cheese (full fat only!)
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Bean Paste
• 4 Cups Powdered Sugar
• 1 - 3 Teaspoons Milk

Mason Jar Cakes

Every year my whole family gets together in August for a picnic to celebrate my grandmother's birthday.  This year, my aunt sent out an email list of all the food items for everyone to volunteer something.  I of course jumped on dessert.  But then I started to panic.  I'd be driving the 6 hours to the picnic that morning, it was outdoors, and there are 20 of us who all have varying tastes in desserts. What was I going to do?

And then I remembered these little cuties from Amanda at Iambaker.  I could get away with making a single cake batter but provide lots of options for our clan, they'd be great little travelers and their lids and mason jar houses would make them perfect for a picnic environment.

To start I had to decide on what varieties I'd create.  To do this I held a focus group with my crack team of analysts.  (Read: I had a couple IM conversations with my friend Jen and two of my cousins.)  Together we settled on the following cake combinations:

1. Birthday Cake
2. Strawberry Shortcake
3. Raspberry Lemoncake
4. Chocolate Chip Sundae
5. Death by Chocolate

For each cake, I started with my favorite yellow cake and my favorite cooked frosting from Tasty Kitchen and made the following alterations.  With the exception of the strawberry shortcake, I added 1/2 cup of batter to each greased mason jar.  I baked them at 325 for 35-45 minutes.  I found testing the done-ness to be a little hard since I couldn't reach the cake with a toothpick.  I'd recommend using one of those long wooden skewers or just guesstimating based on the way the batter pulls away from the sides of the jar.  40 minutes seemed to be a good average, but I was very worried about the strawberry shortcakes since they had less batter baking and the chocolate cake since I couldn't tell if it was burning from the color.

For this batch, I used a pint size wide mouth mason jar.  But for future iterations, I plan on using the 8oz size.  The pint was a little too big and made it hard to get a perfect bite of frosting and cake. It easily was enough for two people to share. 

Birthday Cake

This was the simplest cake of the bunch since I used unaltered yellow cake batter.  Once the baking was complete and it had fully cooled, I topped it with chocolate icing and sprinkles. 

To make the chocolate icing, I started with 1 stick of butter and two heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder.  Beware, this will make a mess.  Even using my largest mixing bowl, the cocoa still puffed up and settled on every surface, including my cheeks.  I blame my hand mixer for not having a slow setting.  But you may want to mash the butter into the cocoa with a fork to start.

Once the butter and cocoa powder have combined, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon of milk and mix again.

Now alternately add 2 cups of powdered sugar and 2 more tablespoons of milk, mixing until incorporated each time. 

Once the icing is complete, I piped it into the jar using a large star tip and added sprinkles. 

Strawberry Shortcake

For these, I used only a 1/4 cup of yellow cake batter poured into a greased mason jar to start since I'd be layering more cake on top of it.

While it was cooling, I assembled my toppings: Diced strawberries, plain cooked frosting and some yellow cake cupcakes from my freezer I had leftover from last week's birthday bakingpalooza.  If you don't have any leftover cupcakes in your freezer, you could just spoon 1/4 cup of the batter you just made into a lined cupcake tin, bake for 20 minutes and let cool with the jar cakes. 

Once the cake jar cooled, I added a layer of frosting and then about 1/2 a cup of strawberries.  I topped these with the cut up pieces of cupcake (the pint size jar was too wide for just a cupcake top, so I cut up the bottoms of the cupcake to make sure you could see the top cake layer from the outside of the jar.  When I do these again in the 8oz jar, I will probably just use the cupcake top).  Finally I topped this with a little more frosting and then a sliced strawberry. 

Raspberry Lemonade

This cake required alterations to both the batter and the frosting. 

I started out by separating 2 cups of batter into a mixing bowl.  I then added the zest of 2 lemons and 2 teaspoons of lemon extract.  You don't want to add the juice of the lemons because the acidity will activate the baking powder (or soda... I always get them mixed up) and change the way the cake rises. 

For the frosting, I added 1/2 a cup of fresh raspberries to 2 cups of the cooked frosting and whipped them together for about 30 seconds.  You want to make sure you don't over whip the frosting because it can separate, but you want to make sure the raspberries are fully mixed in. 

Once the cake was fully cooled, I piped in the raspberry frosting with a star tip and topped it with a single raspberry. 

Chocolate Chip Sundae

This was the one I was looking most forward to.  My favorite treat is a chocolate chip cookie sundae.  With whipped cream or ice cream on top of a chewy, warm, chocolate chip cookie. 

Once they were cooled, I topped them with a bit of the plain cooked frosting, a drizzle of the chocolate ganache I had made for the Death by Chocolate cake and some chocolate morsels. 

Death by Chocolate

I wasn't originally going to make a chocolate cake out of these since I didn't know how the chocolate would be added to the yellow cake batter and I didn't want to make a 2nd batter.  But my mother asked me to please try since she really wanted something nice a chocolatey to end the meal.  So in her honor I decided Death By Chocolate... make it two* was in order.

*Does anyone else remember that commercial.  You hear a woman ordering her meal of garden salad with dressing on the side, grilled chicken and steamed broccoli with no butter, and for dessert: Death by Chocolate make it two.  I have no idea what that commercial was for, but I still to this day quote it whenever I feel like I can treat myself to a particularly decadent dessert because I had eaten well all day.

Anyways, I digress. 

So I decided if I was going to do a chocolate cake, it was going to be one helluva chocolate cake.  To my 2 cups of yellow cake batter, I added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. 

While that was baking and cooling I went to work on my filling and topping for this cake:

Chocolate Ganache

3/4 cup of light cream

2 Tbsp of butter

1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels

In a small saucepan, heat the cream and butter until the butter melts and the mixture is steaming.  Don't let it boil.  Remove it from the heat and add in the chocolate chips.  Stir until the chocolate is completely melted and mixed together.  Let it cool.  I then added it to a squeeze bottle and put it in the fridge.  This recipe (and the drizzle on the chocolate chip cake) didn't use the entire bottle so it is still in my fridge, waiting for the perfect opportunity to be drizzle over something else. 

Chocolate Mousse

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels

1/3 cup skim milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup heavy whipping cream

Start by putting a metal mixing bowl and your beater(s) in the freezer.  In a small microwave safe bowl, combine the chocolate, milk and vanilla.  Microwave for 30 seconds - 1 minute until the chocolate is all melted.  Stir the mixture well to combine and set it aside to cool.  Stir it occasionally to make sure a film doesn't form on top. Once the chocolate mixture is fully cooled, remove your metal bowl and beaters from the freezer and whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form.  Add the chocolate to the cream by gently folding it in batches.  You don't want the cream to deflate by stirring it quickly. 

To assemble, take the fully cooled chocolate cake, and core out the center with an apple corer.  If you don't have an apple corer, you could use a paring knife.  

Into the center, pour the chocolate ganache until it reaches the top.  By the time you have finished pouring into all the centers, you will notice the first ones have sunk down a bit as the ganache absorbs into the cake.  Just top them off before adding the mousse.  

Next, pipe the mousse on top with your large round tip.  By pressing on the bag hard, the mousse will come out big and fluffy.  Finally I topped the mouse with some dark chocolate shavings. 

I added labels to each jar so that people would know what each one contained.  I don't know that I would do the labels the same way next time.  I really liked being able to see the layers of each cake through the glass, and the labels hindered that.  Maybe next time I'll create labels to be tied around the neck of the jar instead. 

When it came time for cake at the birthday picnic, I put a candle into the birthday cake one (of course) and we sung happy birthday using that.  The rest of the jars were set out on the table for people to select their own.  Judging by the left overs, the chocolate chip sundae was the clear favorite with the strawberry shortcake a close second. 

Any way you slice it, I would call these little mason jar cakes, a clear winner.

Melly's Moist Yellow Cake

I've always been a fan of yellow cake.  I love the vanilla-ey, buttery goodness of the cake and I think it is a perfect blank canvas for any frosting/filling/flavor combination.

Now that I have committed to making my cakes from scratch, I went on a hunt for a perfect yellow cake recipe.  After the success of my red velvet cake and Pioneer Woman's chocolate cake, I knew I wanted to use buttermilk in my recipe.  And I knew it couldn't call for cake flour or a lot of expensive ingredients.

After a day or two of heavy searching, I found this recipe and it was an instant hit.  What I really appreciated about it was that - short of the buttermilk- I typically have all of the ingredients in my house. And the buttermilk isn't really an issue since I can make buttermilk in a pinch out of milk and vinegar.  In fact, on this particular day, I had to do just that.  I am not the best list maker/food shopper and when I got home to discover the bottle of buttermilk I thought was nearly full to be almost empty, I cried a little and then reached for the milk to make sure I had enough of it to make myself buttermilk for this recipe.  Score!

Start with low-fat milk and white vinegar.

In a measuring cup, add 1 tablespoon for every cup of buttermilk you need.  For today's recipe, I had 1/2 cup of buttermilk left over, so I needed to make 2 cups and would need to start with 2 tablespoons.

Next, add milk to the measuring cup to bring the volume to 2 cups.

Stir the mixture together and set it aside for a few minutes while you get the rest of the ingredients working.

Melly's Favorite Yellow Cake Recipe - yields 36 cupcakes or two rounds cakes
2 sticks of butter at room temperature 
2 cups of sugar 
3 eggs 
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
3 3/4 cups all purpose flour 
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 
2 1/2 cups buttermilk 


Start by heating your oven to 350 degrees and lining your cupcake tin or greasing your cake pan. 

With the paddle attachment on your mixer, cream together the butter and sugar.  

While that is working, sift together the rest of the dry ingredients.  I am not one to advocate for extra steps or tools, so sifting is something I have been known to skip.  But in this case, I've noticed a difference in the results when I don't sift.  So, if you can, do it.  But if not, it'll still be tasty, just maybe not as evenly fluffy.  

Add in the eggs one at a time and the vanilla.  Again, I try not to use extra dishes but if you've ever added one rotten egg into a batter when you are running low on time and ingredients, you will completely understand the need to crack your eggs into a separate little bowl before adding it to the mixture.  

Once the eggs and the vanilla are all incorporated, it is time to add the flour mixture and the buttermilk.  I usually set up a little assembly line king of thing so that I can easily alternate the two.  Beginning with a cup full of the flour mixture, alternate adding the flour mix and the buttermilk.  I usually do 4 batches of flour mix and 3 batches of buttermilk.  Wait until the most recent addition is fully mixed in before adding the next. 
Before adding the last batch of flour, scrape down the bowl and add in the remaining bits.  

Stir the batter only until it is all combined.  You don't want to over mix. 


For cupcakes you will bake this for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  
For round cakes, it'll bake for 25-35 minutes.  


Enjoy!