Recipe // Banana and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Creamy Chocolate Frosting

Hello there and happy Saturday morning. Last night while Chris was at work I was baking up a new cupcake recipe and let me tell you, O M G. There cupcakes turned out so good and scrumptious, I can't stop eating them. I used a yellow cake box mix for this recipe instead of making them from scratch like usual, mainly because it was faster and easier. But if you are against that, go right ahead and use a from scratch recipe. They even work as a quick breakfast, minus the frosting. The banana and chocolate chips make it almost like a muffin, then you ad the frosting and BAM it's dessert. Definitely a recipe to try out!

Banana and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Creamy Chocolate Frosting

1 box yellow cake mix
2-3 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1 bag mini chocolate chips
1 1/2 TBL flour
1 box banana runt cadies

In a large bowl, mix together cake mix, bananas, water, butter and eggs until smooth. Add chocolate chips and flour until combined into batter. Divide batter into cupcake tins and bake at 325 degrees for 18-22 minutes.

Creamy Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter, softened
3 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
3 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3-4 TBL milk

In a small pot, melt baking chocolate over low heat. Let cool and then mix with butter until smooth. Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. Add vanilla and milk and mix until the frosting becomes creamy. If the frosting gets to thick, add more milk. If it gets to thin, add more powdered sugar.

Recipe // Easter Bunny Cupcakes (Happy Easter!!)

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you'll having a great day and eating lots of food. Usually I just do simple posts for holidays, but today I actually wanted to give you all a little something. Yesterday was a very rainy day, which means there will always be something baking in my house. On this occasion, it was Easter bunny cupcakes. I got my inspiration from this Taste of Home recipe I found while working. I brought it up to my momma dear and of course she helped out in creating them (mostly all of it). We didn't follow the recipe very precisely, but I loved how they turned out! 

 These little bunnies are cuteness overload! Enjoy :)

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

-spice cake box mix

-eggs

-water

-vegetable oil

Frosting:

-8 oz cream cheese 

-1 bag powdered sugar 

-4 Tbl butter, softened

-splash of milk (add as needed)

Cookie Ears:

-1 package sugar cookie mix

Face:

-Black icing gel

-Pink and red jelly beans

1. Make cupcakes according to the package and fill up your tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-23 minutes. When done, set aside and let cool. 

2. Time for frosting! In a bowl, beat together cream cheese, butter, and milk. Gradually add in powdered sugar until creamy and smooth. If you add to much sugar splash some more milk in there and it'll pop right back to normal. Frost cupcakes and set aside....again.

3. Make cookies according to package. My mom actually made the cookies from scratch, but to make this recipe even easier, use the tube stuff. Roll out and cut out bunny shaped ears. If you have a bunny cookie cutter, yay you! If not, it's not that difficult, no worries! Bake, set aside and let cool. Once cooled, stick the ears into the cupcakes. 

4. Make your face! You can do this anyway you like. We went through a few different looks before deciding on this one. It's all up to you! 

<3

Recipe // Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Guess what I did yesterday!? 

I made (and ate) some delicious cupcakes. Remember that awesome cupcake book the equally awesome boyfriend got me for my birthday a couple months ago? I finally got to use it and the cupcakes turned out so great, I had to share the recipe with you all. Just disregard the birthday wrappers. All my cupboard had was those or Easter ones and I didn't want to confuse anyone with the change of holidays. :) 

Cupcakes:

2 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup shortening or butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

5 egg whites

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups milk

Cinnamon Frosting:

6 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

2/3 cup butter, softened

1 Tbl vanilla 

2-4 Tbl milk

Topping:

2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Cupcakes:

1. In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. 

2. In large bowl, beat shortening for 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time. Beat 2 minutes longer. Add egg whites, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in vanilla. Alternately add flour mix and milk, beating after each addition until well blended. 

3. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Divide batter evenly among each cup (about 2/3 full). 

4. Bake 18-20 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pans and frost! 

Frosting:

1. In large bowl, mix powdered sugar, cinnamon, and butter on low speed. Stir in vanilla then gradually star beating in milk until frosting has become smooth. 

2. Frost cupcakes. Mix together topping ingredients and sprinkle over each cupcake.

Memorial Day Cupcakes

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone! I hope all the barbecuing and camping festivities are treating you well. I'm staying inside this weekend getting chores and errands done and doing some cat sitting for Bria later tonight. I work at The Home Depot and it gets pretty crazy there during Memorial Day weekend. To try and keep everyone in good spirits, my supervisor and I decided to hold a Cupcake War between the cashiers. So after working this morning, I continued to practice in becoming the next cupcake master. My first batch went so well I was really excited to make some red, white, and blue inspired cupcakes!

I colored the batter with blue and red and put a scoop of each into each tin. I used a whipped marshmellow frosting (my favorite!). I also took it to the next level by melting some white chocolate and molding them into little stars.They looked so good and as always its very difficult not to eat something that I make. This little guy was the lucky one chosen to be devoured by me...

...and it was delicious.

Have a great weekend!!!

my first cupcakes

 

So the other day I ranted about how I wanted to become a cupcake master and today was the beginning of that journey. I had the afternoon off so I decided to make some and I must say what a great start I had to becoming the next greatest cupcake baker. I made a simple vanilla cupcake with a butter frosting that I dyed with some pink food coloring. Now I know that these could probably be a million times better, but for a girl who only ever made cupcakes out of a box, this is pretty darn good.

I had some troubles at first with the frosting curdling and I had no idea why it was doing that. I thought that was the end of it, but I told myself I needed to finish these. I added more powdered sugar and gave it a good whipping :) and that really helped it thicken up and the curdling went away. I just used a plastic bag to put my frosting in and cut the tip off (since I don't have any frosting tips at the moment) and it worked great.

Since I was so happy with how they turned out I decided I'd try and do what all the professional bakers do and photograph them all artsy fartsy. My mom wasn't happy with the fact that I plucked off some of her fake flowers to help with these pictures. Overall, I feel like a complete bad ass cupcake maker right now. Hopefully that doesn't go to my head.....too late.

If you guys are interested in the recipes I used for these cupcakes, let me know. I'll do another post with both the cupcake recipe and the frosting recipe. Thanks for stopping by today!! 

Have a fabulous day everyone!

cupcakes

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I wanna be able to make cupcakes like this one day. Work was very slow the other day, so I did what I always do on slow days and grabbed a stack of the cooking magazines. I grabbed one that was all about cupcakes and instantly got the urge to make some. While flipping through the pages and seeing all the gorgeously made cupcakes, I was imagining myself sitting in my bakery frosting each cupcake making it a work of art and being the best damn cupcake baker out there.

I then remembered the last time I tried to make cupcakes from scratch and that image vanished quite quickly. Brown stone like cake really isn't that appetizing. I have a long way to go until  I get to my dream....