Between being pregnant and feeling like crap and managing to miss two stairs while walking down them and breaking my ankle (which the ER said was just a sprain so I walked on a broken ankle for 6ish weeks) I haven’t felt much like baking. I recently took my son and went to Vermont for a vacation. We were with my parents at their cabin on a lake and at their house. While we were at their house I requested zucchini chocolate cupcakes and my Mom asked if she  made them if I’d post them. Sure I said!! Win win situation. I get one of my favorite cakes, get to finally post something on here and don’t have to do ANY of the work! Thanks Mom!!

We have no idea where this recipes comes from. It was my Grandma’s who may have possibly gotten it out of a magazine, or maybe from a friend. A lot of our family recipes are like that. As you can see from the picture my Mom’s hand written copy is well loved!

I decided to try some of the Reyonlds StayBrite cupcake liners. Mostly because I had been looking at them and while I was in Vermont we went shopping in New Hampshire (closest grocery store) and I could get them tax free PLUS they were a dollar cheaper than at my grocery store here in New York. FYI, in case you don’t, say, read the packaging like me, these are aluminum liners on the inside with paper on the outside. I was surprised. No idea why as these are made by aluminum foil company. I guess I’m not too bright.

My parents have a nice garden where the zucchini was grown. My family has always used the huge zucchinis for baking. Because they’re seeder and tougher than the little zucchinis and why just throw them away when you can shred them to make breads or cakes. Shredding them is really easy with a Cuisinart. I don’t have one of those in my tiny kitchen so I’m very happy these were made my Mom’s house who does have a Cuisinart.

Of course my Mom actually sifts ingredients…

The recipe says to add all the dry ingredients and then the vanilla, zucchini and milk. My Mom found that she needed to alternate milk and dry otherwise it was a dry mess that was impossible to combined.

The smell of these cupcakes baking smelled like Grandma’s house. Yes my Mom has made the recipe many times, but I spent a lot of my summers as a child at my Grandparent’s house playing and just hanging out. So this is just one thing that smells like Grandma, like Grandma’s house. Very nostalgic and made me miss her a lot.

I don’t have a picture of the baked cupcakes minus frosting. My nieces came down to play with my son and things got busy. Also the making of the frosting isn’t really picture worthy. You’re basically just standing over the double boiler with your hand mixer until it suddenly comes to together and then you’ve got to work quick before it starts to get crystally and really stiff. Those words probably don’t make this frosting sound good but oh man. It is soooooo good, especially on this cake. I’m not sure I’ve ever had it on any cake but chocolate zucchini.

Ingredients

Zucchini Chocolate Cupcakes:

• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cup flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups shredded raw zucchini
• 1/2 cup milk

Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs. Sift together and add flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, salt and cocoa. Mix well. Add vanilla, zucchini and milk. Stir until well blended. Spoon into cupcake tins. Bake at 350 degrees. Makes about 25 cupcakes.

Seven Minute Frosting:

In the top of a double boiler mix

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1/8 teaspoon cream of tarter or 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
• few grains salt
• 1 egg white

Beat one minute with rotery beater set over boiling water and beat until stiff enough to stand up in the peaks. With electric beater the frosting may be stiff enough in four minutes. Remove from the heat and continue beating until thick enough to spread, add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.

Source: Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

This week I went for more looks than trying a different cupcake. The cupcakes are just plain Jane chocolate with butter cream frosting. I found these cute cupcakes on flickr and decided to do them. I wanted something easy but fun. As you can see from the above picture a cake decorator I am NOT.

I didn’t do any pictures of the chocolate cupcakes because I’ve done that before!

What you will need:

• cupcakes
• frosting dyed green
• a small amount of brown frosting
• coconut dyed green
• some sort of brown, round/oval shaped candies. (Recipe said chocolate covered almonds but the almonds I found were HUGE and there’s no way I could have fit three on top of a cupcake. I used chocolate covered raisins. I bet brown peanut M&Ms would word well too)
• watermelon candies. My grocery store is fancy has a large section of bulk candies, watermelon ones included.

How to assemble:

Frost your cupcakes with the green frosting. Add some green coconut to the edges of the cupcakes. Use three chocolate covered raisins – (or whatever you’re using – to make the body of the ant. Add the legs with the brown frosting (and antenna if you want, mine didn’t come out very well). Put a watermelon candy on top, as if the ant is carrying away some of your Memorial Day picnic! Voila, you have cute cupcakes! Hopefully you’re cake decorating is better than mine!

Idea source.

I found these cupcakes on bonappetit.com around St. Patrick’s day. I bookmarked them and ended up making them for just my family on St. Patrick’s day and they quickly became my favorite cupcake. Yes chocolate is good and will probably be a near favorite but these? Superb. Bon Appetit calls them key lime cupcakes, but the recipe just says “limes”, not key limes. I couldn’t find key limes either, so these can’t really be called key lime cupcakes. I’m very late getting this recipe up this will mostly be pictures followed by the recipes. Enjoy!

The four limes gave me just enough lime juice. I wished I’d had another just in case, but it all worked out. The recipe doesn’t call for lime juice in the frosting, but I added some in the first time I made these and the frosting was amazing. So I knew I needed about a tablespoon for the frosting.

The recipe says it will looking may look curdled and my certainly did.

From here on you won’t see any cupcake pictures from THIS time I made the cupcakes. Because I found out the hard way that room temperature (or in this case 80 degree temp) self rising flour rises a heck of a lot more than straight from the freezer self rising flour. I don’t use self rising flour very often so I keep in the freezer. The last time I made these cupcakes I got it from the freezer and made the cupcakes right away. This time I got the flour out the freezer and then realized I didn’t have enough sugar to make the cupcakes. And my son was napping so I couldn’t leave to get any. It wasn’t until the next day where I got the store and made the cupcakes and whoa. I used the same amount of batter as last time and my cupcakes came very close to overflowing in the oven. Many of them overflowed to the point where the liner was pulling away from the cupcake and it was impossible to get them out of the pan. But I feel like you should know what these cupcakes look like, besides the one picture at top, so I’ll use a picture I took back in March. Hope you forgive me.

Ingredients

I am so late on this cupcake. Last Sunday it was Mother’s day so I wasn’t spending the day in the kitchen. I figured I’d do it Monday. Well Monday rolls around and it’s dark and rainy and I thought “well, my dad is coming tomorrow and my dad loves German chocolate cake so I’ll make them Tuesday”. Only Monday night my son got sick. He spent the evening moaning and whining and then the night in our bed tossing and turning. I got no sleep and wasn’t in the mood to bake on Tuesday. Wednesday day I can’t remember why I didn’t bake but Wednesday night my son came down with the worst case of croup he has ever had and he gets it often. Once again he spent the night in our bed, this time gasping for air. Thursday we were at the doctors, my son got steroids and I was a zombie. By that point I had given up on getting cupcakes made for the week and settled on making them the next week. Which I did, but obviously I didn’t get the recipe up on here. It’s been a total fail around here lately.

Like I said my dad loves German chocolate cake. He used to request it every year for his birthday (he now requests deep dark chocolate cake) I must have watched my mom make this cake upwards of 10 times but have never made it myself. I had NO idea it needed buttermilk. I’m so glad I had my container of the powdered stuff.

Instead of melting butter and chocolate together you melt the chocolate in some water. This makes it very liquidy. I knew this, yet still just dumped in it the butter and sugar mixture with the beaters going at medium speed. FYI, DON’T do that. I had chocolate splattered all over my table, the beaters and all over the bowl.

I’ll admit – after a week of cupcake baking fail I was really hoping for an easy week. I had no idea I needed to beat egg whites and then fold them in. I don’t know why but folding in egg whites causes me stress. I’m always convinced the egg whites are going to fall and the whole thing is going to come out badly. Luckily these came out just fine, although they were fairly light and hard to get out of the cupcake tins without feeling like I was going to crush them.

I had no pictures of the frosting being made. I forgot I couldn’t find chopped pecans at my store, just shelled pecans. And I remembered that mid frosting making when I was supposed to be stirring constantly. I had my husband come in and stir while I starting chopping and measuring. Although at first the frosting seems a bit hard or time consuming the results are amazing. I’ve always loved this frosting, the best part of German chocolate cake in my opinion. And you can find the recipes on any box of Baker’s German chocolate.

Cupcake recipe:

• four egg yolks (I used two whole eggs)
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1.5 sticks butter
• 1 package coconut (I used more like 1.5 bags)
• 1.5 cups pecans

This week I really wanted to do a chocolate-mint combo, pretty much my favorite thing ever. However I didn’t feel like dealing with a frosting so I looked all through my cookbooks and went through various searches on Flickr.com and finally settled on yet another Martha recipe. It seemed easy yet delicious and she hasn’t disappointed me yet.

Another confession from me too: when ever I make brownies I always use a mix. I have tried many times to make home-made brownies but they always come out sub-par and I’ve gone and wasted eggs, oil, and chocolate when I could have just bought a mix for 99 cents and had good brownies. So this recipe was the first time I’ve made home-made brownies and had them come out good. Of course they’re cupcake brownies and that just makes them better anyway!

It always seems like the less ingredients something calls for the better something is. These  brownie cupcakes fit into that category. Butter, eggs, chocolate and sugar, how can you go wrong?

Once again I had to rig a fake double boiler to place my chopped chocolate and butter into. I really should find a bowl that actually fits on top of one of my pans so I stop almost burning myself while trying to make sure the bowl and my precious ingredients don’t fall off.

Once the butter and chocolate are melted you add the sugar and stir until smooth. I had a little trouble with this. I wasn’t sure if Martha meant it should smooth like just the sugar is well stirred in or smooth like you couldn’t see any grains of sugar. I stirred my heart out and I could still see some graininess. I put the bowl back on top of my fake double boiler and stirred some more and that seemed to do the trick. Just as FYI.

If you had small kids that enjoy helping you cook this is the time when you can let them. All the chopping of chocolate and stirring over boiling water is not kid friendly, but putting the mints in is for sure. Although you might lose a few to either hot hands (ie, melting) or the mouth (ie, “I just tasted it!” which apparently is different from eating). Also if you take them out of the wrappers at the beginning chances are your kid will stand in the kitchen with their nose over them “just smelling” them for a good 20 minutes. Again, just another FYI.

The recipe says to check on them at 35 minutes and if they’re done a cake taster will come out with just a few crumbs attached. This might be the first time where my baked goods were done in the time the recipe says they will be. 35 minutes and they were perfect. I loved the way the tops looked with the cracks, they were dense feeling in my hands so I was worried the cupcake liners would stick but they didn’t. Just perfect little brownie cupcakes. With a secret mint center. Mmm!

Recipe:

• 8oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted
• 12 small (1 1/2 inch) chocolate covered peppermint patties, such as York Peppermint Patties

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard muffin pan with paper liners. Place chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally until just melted, 4 to 5 minutes.

2. Remove from the heat. Whisk in the sugar and salt until mixture is smooth, whisk in eggs to combine. Gently whisk in flour and cocoa just until smooth.

3. Spoon 1 heaping tablespoon of batter into each lined cup. Place 1 peppermint patty on top, gently pressing into batter. Top with two tablespoons batter, covering patty completely. Bake, rotating tin halfway through, until a cake tester inserted halfway into centers (above mint patty) comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached, about 35 minutes. Transfer tin to a wire rack to cool completely before removing cupcakes.

Source: Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes