Cherry-Almond Vanilla Mini Cupcakes

Written on May 20, 2013 at 8:30 am , by Lauren Brennan

Sometimes you just need a sweet treat! My four year old caught me browsing bhg.com for dessert recipes and one look that these Cherry-Almond Vanilla Cupcakes and she was a goner! At that point, I knew I had these in my future so I made an afternoon of it! I baked these up with my daughter and turned them into mini cupcakes. We actually made these to eat as part of a little tea party! Since the weather in my neck of the woods is gorgeous, I thought it only fitting to eat these out in the garden.

Whether you’re a Mom with a little girl you’re trying to please or just have a big sweet tooth, these cupcakes will not disappoint! Cute, sweet and really easy to make! Here’s how you do it:

Cream some butter and sugar together, and then add in some vanilla extract,

almond extract,

and egg whites. You use only the whites because stirring in the yolk would discolor the batter.

Once that’s all stirred in, alternate adding in your dry ingredients {flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt} with your wet ingredients {buttermilk, maraschino cherry juice} until you have a smooth light pink batter.

Spoon this into prepared mini muffin tins and bake!

These were done in my convection oven after 12 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling, whip some butter, powdered sugar, maraschino cherry juice, almond extract and milk together to create your frosting. Spread or pipe this onto your mini cupcakes and top with a cherry!

How cute are these little guys? Almost too cute to eat…almost!

If you’d like to make these, be sure to print the recipe here. Your friends and family will thank you!

Mother’s Day Pink Lemonade Cupcakes

Written on May 9, 2013 at 9:00 am , by Michael Wurm, Jr.

In my family, I’m the one who brings the dessert to get-togethers. To be honest, I’m perfectly okay with that. I’d like to think that desserts, and sometimes appetizers, are my specialty. I love bringing desserts because they remind me of celebrations and joy. Desserts seem to have a special power to make people smile. Desserts also seem to crave having a candle put in them for someone to make a wish. Who knows, maybe there’s a tiny bit of magic in sugar. I’m not going to be the one to question it.

This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, and of course, I will be providing the dessert. When I found a recipe for Pink Lemonade Cake, I knew that’s what I wanted to make! I decided to give it my own little twist by making cupcakes instead of cake. For me there’s only one thing better than cake and that’s cupcakes. The results were as cute as ever!

I made 24 cupcakes by following the recipe exactly with just a few simple changes. I placed a scoop of the lighter color batter in a paper lined cupcake pan first. Then I went back and added a scoop of the darker batter. I baked the cupcakes at 350 degrees F for about 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center came out clean.

I’m pretty sure these will be the perfect treat for Mother’s Day. These lemony cupcakes have just the right amount of sweetness and freshness.

To make the cupcakes extra special, I added a few embellishments, including a pink striped paper straw, a slice of lemon, and a pendant flag. The pendant is simply a piece of washi tape folded in half, sticky sides together, with a v-cut in the end. The word, “Mom” written with a gold marker, finishes it off.

So, this Sunday celebrate mom, grandma, or any other special mother in your life with these Pink Lemonade Cupcakes made with heart.  And to my own mom, Happy Mother’s Day!

Get the full recipe here.

Cheers,

Michael Wurm, Jr. – Inspired by Charm

All-In-One Birthday Dessert

Written on April 2, 2013 at 8:30 am , by Delish Dish Editor

Hi all, Lisa here, associate editor with BHG special food publications. Ask anyone in my family and they’ll all tell you, when I was little I always went for rainbow sherbet over any ice cream flavors. The bright colors drew me in, and the refreshing fruity flavors kept me coming back. That’s why when I saw the Layered Sherbet Cake from Cakes! magazine, I knew I had to make it for my birthday this past weekend.

As if the idea of this cake couldn’t be better, it’s an all in one dessert; cake, sherbet, and cream cheese frosting. You don’t have to mess with scooping hard ice cream when it’s already included in the cake you’re slicing. Feel free to make the cake your own by mixing up sherbet flavors. When I went shopping, the grocery store was out of lime sherbet. No problem! I added another layer of orange sherbet since it’s my favorite flavor.

I chose the yellow cake option, and after I baked the cake, the assembly was actually pretty easy. I didn’t want to go out and buy 8-inch cake pans, so I used my 9-inch pans and a spring form pan to put the cake together. It worked, but I will say my layers were all thinner so my overall cake wasn’t stacked quite as high as an 8-inch would have been. Layering couldn’t have been easier. I cut the two round cakes in half horizontally and alternated layers from cake to sherbet ending in cake. After freezing for 3 hours, the cake was solid and ready to be iced.

I didn’t have a big party, but this was the perfect cake for a small get together with some friends and family. Combining the sherbet and cake was just as tasty as I hoped it would be! Making this layered cake is definitely going to be my new birthday tradition.

Some tips to success with this cake:

• When cutting the cakes in half, try to keep your knife as straight as possible.
• When assembling, you do want to work quickly. The sherbet melts fast since it’s already softened. I placed a cookie sheet under my spring form pan to catch some of the melt.
• After I had frozen my assembled layers, the sherbet stuck to the sides of my spring form pan. To avoid tearing the cake, run a knife around the edges to make sure the sherbet detaches easily.
• I’m not a huge fan of sprinkles, so I didn’t include any. But, this cake can be made for any occasion, so add any color of decorative candies or sprinkles.
• I had about a cup of extra cream cheese frosting, but it’s great over fresh fruit like strawberries, so don’t throw it away!

Get the recipe here!

Springtime Petits Fours

Written on March 25, 2013 at 9:18 am , by Lauren Brennan

As some of you may know {or not} I am hugely pregnant with a little boy! Things are getting all round up in here, let me tell you. Something else you may or may not know about me: I’m addicted to mini food. Everything is so much cuter small! So, in honor to my addiction and pending baby bump, I decided to make some cute little Springtime Petits Fours that would be perfect for a spring tea party or baby shower! Here’s how you make them:

Start by defrosting one of those store bought pound cakes. You know the ones I’m talking about! Once it’s ready to cut, slice it into 1-inch cubes and cut those cubes in half again to make these 1/2-inch slices. The recipe says to stack these 3 high, but I just did two.

Now you can fill these little baby cakes with any sort of filling your little heart desires. Jam, nutella or lemon curd {which is what I used}.

Once your cakes are filled, make the glaze/coating to go over these Petits Fours. Basically, this is just powdered sugar, milk, lemon flavoring and blue food coloring. Feel free to switch up the flavorings and colors. Strawberry flavoring with pink food coloring would be extra cute for a little girl baby shower! Or color it yellow for a spring-themed dinner party.

Spoon the glaze over each individual cake and top with decorations. After 20 minutes or so the glaze should be set and you can get these on your table! OR, make these in advance and store them in airtight containers until your party. The coating on these will keep the cake inside really moist, so it’s a perfect make ahead treat!

If you’d like to try to make these, check out the written BHG recipe here.

Baby’s First Birthday Cake from Cakes! Magazine

Written on March 19, 2013 at 8:42 am , by Delish Dish Editor

Greetings! Jessica Christensen, editor with BHG special food publications, here. I’ve had two big events in my life this month that I want to share. First, my little baby boy had his first big birthday! Second, my newest magazine, Cakes!, just hit the newsstands (for a special sneak peek, check out this exclusive slideshow with my absolute favorite recipes from the magazine). Now, I wouldn’t be a true food editor if I couldn’t figure out a way to capitalize on both of these events and wrap them into a blog.

Find Cakes magazine on newsstands from March 15–June 6, 2013 or purchase it online at Zinio.com.

So last Friday, after work, I set out to create two super cute cakes from our magazine for my son’s birthday party. Now folks, this isn’t my first time at the rodeo. After baking my own wedding cake (not the best plan I’ve ever had) four years ago, I know that baking and freezing the actual cakes ahead of time is important. I had completed that step the week before and almost wept with relief that I didn’t have to start baking at 6:00 the night before the birthday party. With all the decorating ahead of me, even cake mix would be too much to ask at that time of night. I’d let the cakes thaw out during the day, so now all I had to do was cut, frost, and decorate. Easy, right? Here are the two recipes I was trying to create—Race Car Cakes and Tropical Fish Cake:

I started with the Race Car Cakes. This recipe makes two cars, each of which is made from a round cake layer (like you would use for a two-layer cake), cut in half crosswise and sandwiched together with frosting. The car is “shaped” by cutting out a windshield section free hand. I decided to make one green one for the boys at the party and one purple one for the girls. Then I decorated one like the Race Car in the photo above and the other like the Flower Car Cake variation at the bottom of the Race Car Cakes recipe. The decorations included Rips licorice pieces (I think these are available at hobby and crafts stores) for the windows, Fruit by the Foot for the stripes, Tic Tacs for the numbers on the side of the car, Oreos for the tires, and Skittles for the flowers.

Next I worked on my son’s “smash cake,” which was a miniature version of the larger Race Car Cakes above.  I’m new to this parenting thing, but apparently it’s traditional for kids to smash into a small cake on their first birthday and feed it to themselves. (After feeding my son nothing but organic food for 12 months, it took all my strength to allow him to shovel loads of sugar into his mouth in this manner.) This round cake was baked in a 6-inch round cake pan, instead of a 9-inch pan like the larger ones. I then cut it down slightly to make it even smaller. But it was essentially shaped and decorated in the same way as the ones above. Before serving it to him, I took all the candy decorations off. Toddlers and small pieces of candy do not mix.

Finally, because I’m a glutton for punishment,  I made the Tropical Fish Cake. This is not a difficult cake, but by the time I finished the other three cakes, it was nearing 9:30 p.m. I was tired. The kitchen was a disaster and looked like a can of frosting had exploded in it. I had a feeling the whole fish cake decorating experience wasn’t going to end well. Sure enough, despite the fact that I successfully cut the corners from this 13×9-inch cake as directed and got the top and bottom fins placed correctly on the unfrosted version (as seen in picture 2 below), I could not figure out how to place them back on the fish cake once they were frosted (geometry is not my forte). As you’ll see from picture 3, below, my fish almost went to the party looking like he was deformed or swimming backwards. At that point I didn’t even care.

But, for my son’s sake, I summoned my last ounce of strength and spun the fins around (at least a dozen times) until I found the right position. My lack of understanding on how those fins were supposed to go bordered on ridiculous! I even had the photo from the magazine right in front of me. But the end results of the Tropical Fish Cake were worth my profound confusion and the extra hassle.

By the time I finished these four cakes around 10:30, I was exhausted. Luckily I remembered to put them downstairs where the cat wouldn’t get them (she has an unfortunate habit of licking baked goods while we’re all sleeping) before I crashed in bed still covered in frosting. I have a few final thoughts on these cakes. First—and I knew this before I even started—try to do your decorating when you’re fresh and full of energy in the morning. Second, all of the candies and decorations are just suggestions. It’s not always practical to buy 10 to 15 varieties to decorate one cake. Although you can bag up the leftover candy and hand it out as favors when the party is over. Third, the cute decorations and candies can make cutting and serving the cakes more difficult. If it becomes troublesome, do like I did, and remove the extra candies before serving up the cake. In the end, everybody loved the cakes and ate every last crumb. Including my main man…

Browned Butter Frosting + How to Brown Butter

Written on March 11, 2013 at 1:37 pm , by Lauren Brennan

For those of you who have never attempted to brown butter or make anything with browned butter, let me be the first to tell you that you are missing out! Something magical happens when you let butter get all golden and fragrant! And the best part is you only need butter!

So, here’s how you do it. Grab a stick of butter and place it in a small saucepan over low heat. Once it’s completely melted, swirl the pan every 30 seconds or so and let it slowly brown. After a few minutes of babysitting, you’ll notice the milk solids start to brown up and then voila! It’s done! Try not to let it sit on the stove top unattended because it only takes a few seconds from going to perfect to burnt. And burnt butter is not quite the flavor profile we’re going for. Read more