Olive Oil, Lemon, & Orange Cupcakes

It's late winter, and I've been craving something tangy, sweet, and above all, colorful.  These cupcakes fit the bill on all three counts.  The cupcakes themselves are olive oil and orange.  They're filled with a deliciously tart lemon curd, and crowned with a whipped orange cream cheese frosting.  Bam!  The cure for winter in a tasty little cupcake-shaped package.

Baking Experiment! Cupcakes with Varying Sweeteners

I've been neglecting my studies.  Last year, I got How Baking Works by Paula Figoni as a gift and have been slowly (very slowly) working my way through it.  At the end of each section, there are experiments that demonstrate the concept being taught.  I learned about different flours in a previous experiment, but I hadn't done a single experiment since then.  It's time to change that - this weekend I did an experiment to determine the effect of the amount and type of sweetener used in pound cupcakes.

Pumpkin Spice Latte Cupcakes

Starbucks is serving Pumpkin Spice Lattes (ermahgerd!).  I guess that means it's officially fall.  In the spirit of the season, and because I had a serious craving for latte cupcakes, I decided to create a cupcake version of this tasty autumn beverage.  The cupcakes are filled with a delicious from-scratch pumpkin spice butter, which is also featured in the buttercream alongside dark brown sugar.

White Chocolate Cheesecake Mini Cupcakes with Raspberry & Blueberry Whipped Cream

Happy Fourth of July!  What an excellent day!  I woke up this morning to a star-spangled Space Needle, and ended the day with grilled shish-kebabs and corn-on-the-cob for dinner.  Because I had no work today (yay!), I decided to revisit cheesecake cupcakes - this time, with some patriotic red (raspberry) and blue (blueberry) whipped cream.

Cinnamon Latte Cupcakes

Every morning, I walk to work, go to my favorite coffee place, and nod my head in affirmation to the barista's question, "You want your regular?".  My regular is a double tall latte with lots of cinnamon.  The coffee house that I go to has a special name for this - it's called a Caffé Viennese.

Whenever I make coffee at home, I'll also dust some cinnamon on top.  I got a craving for coffee cupcakes the other morning, and decided to make some - topped with cinnamon frosting of course.

Margarita Mini Cupcakes

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  I'm going to a friend's house later tonight, and thought I'd bring these little boozy cupcakes along.  Luckily, I had all the margarita essentials in my liquor cabinet (from my bachelorette party, which was over eight months ago - I don't get into my liquor cabinet very often), so no trip to the liquor store necessary!

Vanilla "Companion Cube" Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream

I don't usually like video games.  In fact, the only games I've played for longer than an hour are Minesweeper, The Sims, and Portal.  In Portal, you must solve puzzles using your "handheld portal device", which you really need to see to understand.  Throughout, you are prodded onward by an increasingly malicious AI named GLaDOS.  Your only friend (for a brief time) is the Weighted Companion Cube, which is, as the name implies, an inanimate cube.

Strawberry and Blueberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcake

Laura: I visited my friend Justine in Berkeley last weekend!  She had been eyeing cheesecake cupcakes as a baking project for a while, so we made them.  And then decided to jointly post about them!

Black & White Sesame Cupcakes with Sweet Bean Filling

Last week, I saw a blog post about a cupcake with black sesame buttercream.  Immediately, I began to plot my next cupcake.  I love sesame.  I sometimes have weird cravings for it.  I started to envision a lightly sesame cupcake with sweet bean filling and sesame buttercream.  At this point, I realized I was scheming to create a cupcake version of my favorite dim sum treat: Jin Deui.

Grapefruit Daisy Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

I miss the sun.  Wintertime in Seattle is gray, rainy, dreary, gray, wet, and gray.  Honestly, Seattleites really should come up with a bunch of words for different types of gray...like the Eskimos have with snow (which is not true according to Wikipedia).  When I saw a recipe on Whisk-Kid for Grapefruit Poppy Seed Cupcakes with Strawberry Rhubarb Jam and Cream Cheese Swiss Meringue Buttercream, I began craving them immediately because they seemed summery and delicious.