Brownie chocolate Halloween cupcakes

Finally a some new baking! I had a busy few weeks with my internship at the hospital, internal medicine. All very interesting, but I have less free time. So now I had a free week and I was so inspired by the other cupcakes I made, that I decided to make more! This time I made halloween themed cupcakes, with some cute pumkins made with fondant and black and (poisened) green buttercream icing. Last year I made decorated halloween cookies, which were nice as well.

These were so totally delicious in everyway! I wanted something different than chocolate cupcakes cakes, so I made brownie cupcakes. Which were very delicous but I do not recommend them if you want to keep them the day after. They are perfect after baking, but a day later they became quite hard. My friends however didn't mind and ate them anyway, awesome friends right?
I made chocolate frosting for half of the cupcakes, which I also colored red. I made the other half vanilla frosting, and colored those (poisoned) green. I decorated some with fondant pumkins, and decorated others with sparkles and drizzled white chocolate. Spoooky!

Brownie cupcakes

Ingredients

Yields: 24 cupcakes

1.6 Cups (200gr) all purpouse flour

1.3 Cups (300gr) butter, room temperature

1.5 Cups (300gr) white sugar

4 ounces (120gr) unsweetened chocoalte

4 eggs (medium)

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Method

Preheat oven to 170C (340F) and place the rack in the middle of the oven. Line the wells of two cupcake pans with 24 paper liners. Combine salt and flour in a bowl, set aside.

Melt the chocolate and butter au bain marie, or in the micro oven. Keep steering until combined well. Take the mixture off the heat and mix in the sugar.

Beat the eggs one by one. Then add the vanilla extract. At the end add the flour and salt mixture too it until smooth. You can add some pecans or walnuts if wanted.

Fill the liners with either a spoon or a ice scoop (what I did) by 2/3. They rise a little in the oven, but not that much. 

Bake the cupcaqkes for about 20-25 minutes in the oven. Check after 20 minutes if cupcakes are done, if not keep checking every 5 minutes.

Adapted from: Cupcakerecepten.nl

Classic Chocolate & Vanilla Frosting

Ingredients

Yields: 12-24 cupcakes (depending on how much frosting you use)

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

3 1/2 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar

1/2 cup cocoa (for chocolate frosting)

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 tablespoons whole milk or heavy cream

Method

Cream butter for a few minutes in a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. If you don't have a paddle attachment you can use the regular mixer, but paddle attachment is better. Turn off the mixer.

Mix dry ingredients in a separate mixing bowl.

Sift 3 cups powdered sugar and cocoa into the mixing bowl. 

Turn your mixer on the lowest speed (if you use a higher speed the dry ingredients will fly everywhere) until the sugar and cocoa are absorbed by the butter.

Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, and milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes

(You can add sugar/Milk to get the correct thickness/thinness needed).

Adapted from: Cupcakes and Bleach

Enjoy some spooky evenings!

Cookies & cream cupcakes

I have been wanting to make cupcakes in a while now. And what is better than some great Cookies & Cream cupcakes? The icing is super sweet but it combines very well with the oreo pieces in it. Also the oreo placed on the bottom of the cupcakes stays very crunchy, which I love in a cupcake.

Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cupcakes:

24 Oreo halves, with cream filling attached

2¼ cups (142gram) all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

8 tbsp. (115gram) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 2/3 cup (375gram) sugar

3 large egg whites, at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup (235ml)milk

20 Oreo cookies, coarsely chopped

Method
Preheat the oven to 350˚ F (150C).  

Line the wells of two cupcake pans with 24 paper liners.  Place an Oreo halve in the bottom of each liner, cream side up.  
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir together with a fork to blend and set aside. 
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar and beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Blend in the egg whites one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Blend in the vanilla extract.  With the mixer on low speed, beat in half of the dry ingredients just until incorporated.  

Add the milk and beat just until combined, then mix in the remaining dry ingredients.  Gently fold in the chopped Oreos with a rubber spatula until evenly incorporated, being careful not to over-mix.

Evenly divide the batter between the prepared cupcake liners.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pans 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Adapted from Annies Eats

Cookies & Cream frosting

Yield: 12 cupcakes (!!)

Ingredients
2/3 cup (150 grams) unsalted butter at room temperature 
2 1/3 cups (300 grams) powdered sugar, sifted 
2 tbsp whipping cream 
1 tsp pure vanilla extract 
1 heaping tbsp Oreo cookie crumbs (I used more)

Method

In bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with paddle attachment. 

Beat butter until very soft and fluffy - approx. 4 minutes on high speed.

Add sifted powdered sugar. 
Beat on slow speed until mixture starts to combine then increase to medium speed for 1 minute.

Then increase speed to to and beat for another 5 minutes .
Scrape down sides of bowl. Add heavy crean, vanilla extract and cookie crumbs. 
Beat 2 minutes on medium speed.

Pipe into the cupcakes, top with an oreo cookie if wanted. 

Adapted from Lemon Drop

Voilà! The result! Delicous and so so very sweet!

Cupcake decorating attempt

So I did my first time cupcake decorating! It was so much fun to do, but sadly I didn't have the right tips for it.And I'm not that happy with the results either, but hey! But first time for everything right?
I did love to make them, and I am going to do it more often from now on.
These were chocolate cupcakes and the topping was just plain butter cream. The taste was great well, next time I will post a recipe!
Don't mind the brown tips of the cupcake wrappers, I have no idea why those changed color.

Any tips for me to improve my decorating?

Cupcake and fondant decoration .2

Here are a few more pictures from the workshop I did the other day.
I love the mushrooms, I will be making these more often!

I thought I had a lot more pictures about how I made these mushrooms! Sadly they weren't as I thought they would be, but I guess it gives beginners like me an idea about how to make them. Or I hope so! But they are cute anyways, right?

The white parts are made with fondant, an the red and green are made with marzipan, yumyum!

First we rolled out the marzipan and cut out a circle the exact size of the cupcake.

(sorry for the blurry picture) Next you make two balls with white fondant, then press your thumb and indexfinger on two sides of the ball. Next you start rolling the ball between your fingers. If you do it correctly it will look like the picture. You can make one side thinner than the other.

 Then with red marzipan you make two red balls. Then you press your thumb in it and fold the marzipan over your thumb, like a little cap. Then with a little white piece you make the lower part of the mushroom cap, by filling it with white fondant. The lower part can be flat, or hollow.

Next put the cap on the stump and put little white dots on them, and voila!

The grass is made with a garlic press. Just make a ball and press it through the holes, then slowly take it off the press with a toothpick and put it on the cupcake.

Note: everything is glued together with pipingel, mixed with just a little bit of water. You can put it on a plate and use it with a little brush (like in the pictures)

Cupcakes and fondant decoration .1

Today I went to a cupcake (fondant) decoration workshop with a friend. The workshop was organised by pipoos, a craft and hobby shop here in Holland. Recently they have started selling baking decoration supplies, with brands like Wiltons (which is still pretty rare here) and other brands. So this time in their hobby workshop week they did a cupcake decoration theme, with fondant.
We had so much fun! We subscribed for one hour, but stayed an hour extra because it was so much fun! And it was 3 euro's per hour anyway.

The cupcakes were already baked the day before, and we were allowed to do anything we wanted with them. They had several colors of fondant, embossers, cutters and icing. They also had several examples which we could copy, and they would show us the steps we had to take.

These were a few examples, I love those mushrooms!
First we started rolling the fondant and cut out circles which were slightly bigger than the cupcake itself. It gave a nice effect this way.

I decided to make a little tower with one normal cupcake, and one tiny cupcake. So cute!

I cut out little flowers with embossers, and one big flower for the tiny cupcake. Then decorated them with white balls and some leafs. Aahhw!

Next I made a pink cupcake (I just had to use more of that pink fondant). This time I did the same as before, and made the fondant slightly bigger than the cupcake.

Cute, right?

I will post some more pictures soon, I made those mushrooms and I really have to show them!

I had to use a high ISO with my camera to make these pictures come out clear and sharp. Unfortunately the sensor in my camera isn't so good as I'd want it to be, so most of these pictures have noise in them (besides the top picture, which I made in my lightbox I recently made). Oh well, better next time!