Z as in Zebra

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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Today is my cousin Zoe’s birthday. For my entire life, she’s been one of my very best friends. Since she lives in Seattle and I can’t be there to bake her a birthday cake, this blog post will have to do.

I love you, Stinky!! Happy 28th!!! Try to imagine these cupcakes on the screen are real…just for you!!

Let me say this up front: these cupcakes were WAY fussier than anything I would normally make. But, since we’re pretending these are for Zoe’s birthday, they were well worth the fuss.

The first step was to put a vanilla bean in some milk and boil it just slightly, then let it cool for a while.

While the ‘cooling’ was happening, I got to work creaming the butter and sugar.

Next, the recipe said to split the vanilla bean and scrape out its insides.

That’s vanilla, not pepper.

Dry ingredients were combined with the butter and sugar.

And the vanilla milk was added to make mashed potatoes!! (only kidding).

While the batter was baking inside it’s cute little papers, I was boiling a cocoa/sugar syrup for the icing.

Once it reached the appropriate temperature, the syrup was removed from the heat, placed in a pan of cool water and whipped with a hand-held mixer. (Are you seeing the fussiness yet?)

The result:

So I had these lovely cupcakes with no topping:

And I dressed them up with some cooked chocolate fussy-pants icing and some chopped peanuts.

In all, they were really cute and pretty tasty…but they were sure a lot of work. There has GOT to be an easier way to make chocolate icing!

In September of 2009, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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((I know this is a Christmas post and it’s February. I also know some people who just took down their Christmas tree, so at least I’m not that far behind…))

The first step in making Christmas Peppermint Chocolate Cupcakes is to steep 4 bags of Peppermint tea in hot water for several minutes.

While the tea was ‘brewing’, I mixed together the chocolate chips, butter, and sugar.

I also got my Christmasy cupcake papers ready to be filled.

Then, I poured the hot tea over the chocolate chip mixture (it made the weirdest bubbles!)

The mixture was then stirred together until everything was nice and soupy.

The chocolate/butter/tea mix was then added to the dry ingredients to make the chocolate batter.

Meanwhile, I got the egg whites whipping in the mixer.

From there, they were folded into the liquid chocolate.

Few things are as potent as this stuff right here:

But it’s sooooo good when you add it to a bowl of cream cheese icing.

Since the icing called for crushed up candy canes, I grabbed a dozen…

and experimented with my food processor (note: not the best method–makes them more like dust than nice, yummy chunks.)

So, I switched to the old stand-by method: Ziplock bag and a rolling pin!

Mmm…peppermint cream cheese icing with candy cane chunks.

LOOK at that!

So…I should’ve remembered to divide the batter out to more cups than the recipe called for. If I had, I wouldn’t have experienced this overflow:

But…moving on! I just gently peeled away the part that overflowed. The cupcakes looked a little raw around the edges, but since I wasn’t selling these, their ‘look’ didn’t matter much.

And once a cupcake is iced, who really cares anyway, right?!

As a group, they looked so tempting.

Individually, they were pretty darn tempting, too.

Yummy!!

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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Few combinations thrill the masses as much as chocolate and peanut butter. So why not a cupcake version of the beloved combo?

As an ode to Mr. Reeses, I used dark orange cupcake papers.

Semisweet chocolate was melted down into a puddle of deliciousness.

Butter, sugar, and peanut butter combined to make the beginnings of the batter.

Mmm…can you smell it?!

Do you like chunky or creamy peanut butter?

Next, I added the melted chocolate.

Mmm.

Next, these superstars came onto the scene to lend a hand.

A few PB chips were sprinkled on top of each scoop of batter.

The cupcakes had a yummy cookie-like texture after being baked.

Next, Reeses Pieces were grouped together for decoration.

More melted chocolate.

A yummy chocolate/peanut butter combo…icing this time.

The only thing left to do was take these guys:

And slather them in this stuff:

And top them with Reeses Pieces “flowers”

I happened to have two (very) willing taste-testers on hand. While their mom was in the hospital delivering their baby brother, they were at my house getting their sugar fix. Win-win.

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

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I had no idea how much people love this stuff:

From the moment I mentioned that I was going to be making Chocolate Hazelnut cupcakes, I got several emails from friends and family offering to take them off my hands. Who knew Nutella had such power?!

To make the cupcakes, I first mixed the dry ingredients.

Meanwhile, my electric mixer was in the business of creaming butter and sugar.

Next came the glorious Nutella spread.

Yummy, chocolatey, hazelnutty batter.

Muffin papers were filled 2/3 full.

After being baked, the cupcakes had the most perfect, brownie-like texture…

…though they did expand past their cups a bit.

Nothing a star of Nutella can’t fix!

YUM-O!!