Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Lately I have become pretty obsessed with the baking blog, Brown Eyed Baker. A few weeks ago I tried out her recipe for vanilla cupcakes and while I found the cakes themselves to be a bit on the heavy side, I thought the flavor was out of this world.

This week I decided to test my hand at the Snickerdoodle cupcake recipe posted there I knew I just had to try my hand at it, because I love snickerdoodles and I adore cupcakes, so it was a perfect match for me.



Unlike the vanilla cupcakes, the cake part was just right for me. Very light and fluffy and tasted just like the cookie. My only complaint would be that while the cupcakes weren't dry, they also weren't moist enough for my tastes.

Now I have a confession to make: I haven't been making frosting from scratch for a while now. I've basically been scared away from it because the last few times I've whipped up a batch of frosting, the results were very runny and loose. After a while, I came to the conclusion that nothing I was doing had caused this and the problem was simply that the kitchen was too hot, but since then I have been buying canned frosting and adding little things to make it taste less chemically.

This week I added a bit of homemade dulce de leche to a vanilla frosting can and the results were... alright. the main flaw was that there wasn't enough dulce de leche to add, because my family had picked away at the batch over the week until there was very little left.




The main thing that I walked away from this experience was that I am now ready to go back to making frosting from scratch. I have one last can which I will use next week, but after that, I will be done.

Red Velvet in July

I’m ashamed to admit that I have fallen far behind in updating this blog, but there have been a lot of things that have been taking up my time. First of all, I recently got a new job. Yep, after two whole years of being unemployed, I’ve finally rejoined the working world. I’m currently working at this little business that’s objective is to help instill healthy eating habits in kids by teaching them to cook at home. In a lot of ways you can say that this place is a natural fit for me since it’s all about baking. It also helps that things are slow at the moment, so it’s not a big shock for me, going from hang around the house all day to being bombarded with customers. It is still early though. I’m sure by the holidays roll around, we’ll be quite busy.

And if working again weren’t distracting enough, there was a cold that was running its course through my family and I caught it. It wasn’t a bad bug, but since I had literally just started my job at the time, I was quite annoyed. (Note: I was not working with any food or children while sick.) So my drippy nose and constant sneezing kept me even further away from the kitchen. Such a sad state, isn’t it?

The good news is that after being under the weather for almost a week I’m feeling much better and a few days ago I found out my cousin was coming to town and she wanted me to bake something for her. Of course I agreed and decided to bake her some red velvet cupcakes.


As you can see, these babies are very red

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Red velvet? Isn’t that a holiday treat?” Well, yeah it’s definitely not as summery as, say, a blueberry pie, but I asked my cousin what she wanted me to make and she said anything except a pie and since I’m the one who is going to be doing the baking (and because I’ve been absolutely craving it) I decided to just do it.

The recipe I used was one adapted from Paula Deen, who is my go to girl for all things red velvet, because how can you go wrong with Paula Deen?

I will admit to one thing though: I committed something of a red velvet sin with these cupcakes. As many bakers will tell you, a red velvet cake does not equal a chocolate cake. That being said, the cocoa powder should be used sparingly, but since my mother (who is one of my biggest critics as well as my “mentor”) always wants “more cocoa” in her red velvet, I used much more than was necessary, but I’ll go ahead and repost the recipe as listed on Food Network.com.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Ingredients
2 ½ cups flour
1 ½ cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 ½ cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk (room temperature)
2 large eggs (room temperature)
2 Tbsp red food coloring
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. In a medium mixing bowl, sift flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, and cocoa and then set aside. In a large bowl gently beat vegetable oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla. Add dry ingredient mixture to the wet mix until smooth and combined.

Divide batter evenly among cupcake tins about 2/3 filled. Bake in oven for 20 – 22 minutes, turning pan once half way through. Let cool completely before frosting. Makes ~24 cupcakes.