Saint Cupcake, Portland OR

As a wonderful birthday surprise, a friend sent these tasty cupcakes from a company based out of Portland called Saint Cupcake. I was so impressed with the freshness and clever packaging (kitschy and adorable). The cakes themselves came wrapped in compostable plastic. The icing was separately packaged in compostable plastic. The cupcakes can be purchased online and you can build your own gift set. My friend selected 3 cakes: vegan chocolate, vanilla toffee, and pumpkin spice. She also selected 3 different icings and 3 types of sprinkles. I'm always a fan of colored sprinkles, but the toasted coconut was pretty yummy. The set came with instructions, a candle, a "Happy Birthday" cupcake topper and separate wooden spreaders. Building our own cupcakes was so much fun. As cupcake businesses are taking off all over the country, I think Saint has an excellent idea with their shipping options.

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

A lovely friend and neighbor recently graduated with her Masters.  When I received her evite for a berry themed party, I was very excited about all the wonderful strawberry possibilities.  We have a respectable number of strawberries coming from our little garden.  I started searching for more ways to enjoy.  

This neighbor never lacks for wonderful food at any of her shindigs, but, one of the best ways I know to show some love is to bake.  The cupcakes ended up fitting right in.  When we entered the house, we were served freshly picked beautiful, locally grown strawberries w/ either champagne or powdered sugar.  Beautiful and delicious.  Doesn't that sound like a fabulous greeting?

I'm a baking blog junkie--my little baking blog is small potatoes compared to the many wonderful options out there...have you ever heard of the Daring Kitchen?  Take a look at all the amazing bakers that participate.  Many of them are oh so inspiring.  I'm not a participant.  Just an admirer.

I like to look at blog after blog and see who some of my favorites follow.  Anyway, I stumbled across a new blog:  Love & Olive Oil, from which this ingenious little recipe came.  Doesn't it just sound delicious.  

I've had a lot of baking firsts this past year -- making the buttercream for this recipe was one of them.  I had always thought making a buttercream was a little out of my league.  It wasn't!  The main mistake I made was using my hand mixer.  It would have been so much easier if I had taken the extra effort to use my stand mixer.  A lot of mixing of the egg whites/butter.  

Check out the recipe linked above.  There's lemon juice and zest in the batter; the recipe also calls for full fat coconut milk.  It's so neat that they don't taste very 'coconutty'--it just results in a decadent, dense, moist cupcake.  Lemon, vanilla, and pureed strawberries go in the butter cream.  Yum.  I want to invest in a larger star-tip.  I'd like more practice piping too.  You'll see the Love & Olive Oil iced cupcaked look a bit more professional than mine.

These cupcakes were delicious.  I think I'm going to have to try this recipe again.  Maybe I'll have enough strawberries from my own garden for another batch.  We'll see.

Vegan Chocolate Death Cupcakes

I have a friend who just turned 30 and shares my love of The GRIT Restaurant Cookbook. I decided to make the GRIT's "Chocolate Vegan Death Cake" into cupcakes for the big bash. I was a little worried about how their ultra-moist cake batter would stand up as cupcakes, so I used a variation for the batter I found on the baking Blog Coconut & Lime. I love that Blog. After baking one batch, I realized that we needed more cupcakes. I ended up using whole wheat flour for the second batch because I ran out of all-purpose. I thought it would be weird, but I actually liked it. The folks at the party did too.

The Grit recipe follows:

Cake:

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3 cups sugar

1 cup cocoa powder

1 tablespoon baking soda

2 teaspoons salt

1-1/2 cups vegetable oil

2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups strong brewed coffee

1/4 cup cider vinegar

Icing:

1 (12 oz) package fim silken tofu

3 cups vegan chocolate chips (many semisweet brands contain no dairy)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 3 9-inch round cake pans, dust with flour, and line bottom wiht parchment or wax paper.

Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add oil and vanilla extract. With electric mixer on low speed, blend until fully combined. With mixer on medium speed, gradually blend in coffee. When mixture is smooth, add vinegar and blend on low speed just until combined. Divide batter evenly into prepared pans.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or just until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center of layerscomes out clean. Remove from oven and cool 15-20 minutes on a wire rack. Remove from pans and allow layers to cool completely before icing.

Icing: Drain excess fluid from silken tofu, crush and place in a medium saucepan with chocolate chips. Stir together over medium heat until chocolate is very soft. Transfer to food processor and puree until fully blended. Cool to spreadable consistency and frost between layers, and top and sides of cake.