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I recently received a copy of Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson and was super excited to try the butterfly cupcakes. Using the stencil in the book, I melted chocolate wafers, then piped it out into butterfly wing patterns on parchment paper.

Then, before the chocolate hardened (!!) I used a toothpick to swirl the two colors together to look like this…

After letting the chocolate cool and harden, I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes using this recipe, iced them with chocolate frosting, using this recipe

I set the butterfly wings on top of the cupcakes using a small piece of chocolate under each wing to prop them up. I also piped some frosting between the wings for the butterfly’s body.
Cute!!! I can’t wait to try some of the other ideas from this book!

View photo on Flickr

Always on the lookout for egg-free, dairy free recipes, I came accross this one http://www.chow.com/recipes/10794 and decided to give it a try. WOW! Delicious! So chocolatey and fudgy!!!

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

(adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World ) 

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with liners ( I made mini ones!) 

2. Whisk together the soy milk and vinegar in a large bowl, and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, and vanilla extract to the soy milk mixture and beat until foamy.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add in two batches to wet ingredients and beat until smooth and no large lumps remain.

3.Pour into liners, filling 3/4 of the way. Bake 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool completely.

And cupcakes need frosting of course! I adapted my vanilla buttercream recipe to create an espresso  flavored buttercream

Espresso Buttercream Icing

•  1 cup butter (at room temperature)
• 3 cups icing sugar
• 2 tsp freshly brewed espresso (or strong coffee) I used freshly roasted and brewed Costa Rican espresso.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine butter and sugar. Add espresso/coffee. Continue beating until smooth and creamy.

The recipe makes enough to ice 48 mini cupcakes or 24 regular size. The icing can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container, but allow it to sit at room temperature before using for the best consistency.

After my last sub-par cream cheese icing experiment, I was determined to create perfect buttercream icing. I wanted something very vanilla-y, not too sweet, and with enough texture to make frosted swirls on top on my mini vanilla cupcakes. After some searching and testing here is what I came up with…

Vanilla Buttercream Icing

1 cup butter

3 cups icing sugar

1-2 Tbsp milk

2 1/2  tsp vanilla

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine butter and sugar. Add vanilla and enough milk to make the icing a spreadable consistency. Continue beating until smooth and creamy.

The recipe makes enough to ice 48 mini cupcakes or 24 regular size. The icing can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container, but allow it to sit at room temperature before using for the best consistency.

Nice and vanilla-y to go along with my vanilla cupcakes. I followed the recipe for the cupcakes pretty much word for word from my fave cookbook so I won’t post it here. These reminded me of the Va-Va-Vanilla cupcakes from Crave Cupcakes in Calgary!!

Pictures to come!

Carrot Cake is probably my most fave dessert ever. I also like mini things.

Here is my mini carrot cupcake pictured with one of my many frogs.

I’m not actually vegan, but you’ll notice that I do use a lot of vegan recipes, only because of Josh’s egg allergy and because I can’t have dairy. Oh well, it forces me to be creative and try new things. I got the recipe from this site.

http://happyherbivore.com/2008/05/the-famous-carrot-cake-cupcakes/

They were fabulous! Of course carrot cake requires cream cheese icing. I actually wasn’t too happy with how the icing turned out. It was super tasty, but lacking in texture, so I won’t post the recipe. New mission=finding a good cream cheese icing!