Saturday, November 26, 2011

Raspberry Margarita Rosette Cake

Happy Saturday, Sweets!  I hope everyone had a very happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of National Cake Day, I wanted to share one of my latest cakes with you.  I was inspired by someone else's cake I found on Pinterest, covered in buttercream rosettes, and decided to recreate the masterpiece for myself with leftover raspberry frosting from my Baby Shower Cupcakes.

I had two frozen lime margarita cakes (I had baked these with batter leftover from my mini margarita cupcakes) that paired perfectly with the buttercream to make a Raspberry Margarita cake- YUM!


So how does one achieve such a pretty floral look?  All it takes is one of my favorite icing tips- the Wilton 1M. (You can buy it here or check your local craft store's cake section).


I didn't take enough pictures to give you a full tutorial, but if you are interested in learning how to do this let me know and I will put a step-by-step post together.  It is actually quite easy to take your cake from this...



To this...!




Happy Cake Day, Sweets!

Monday, November 21, 2011

NYC Trip - Molly's Cupcakes!

Happy Monday everyone!  I am home enjoying a day off from work after the hubs and I had an awesome weekend in NYC.  We stayed with my sorority sister and her fiance in Washington Heights and had a blast watching the Bruins play (and WIN!) in Long Island, brunching in Soho, wandering around Union Square, and cupcake hunting in Greenwich Village!!

We stopped into Molly's Cupcakes on Bleecker Street- you may recognize the name as this shop was the WINNER on Food Network's Cupcake Wars!  What a cool shop.  The variety of cupcakes was impressive - these were unique and fun flavor combinations - there was definitely something for everyone.  I loved the artsy flavor labels!



If for some reason the flavors in the case aren't cutting it, Molly's lets you create your own, too!


A big seller for this cupcake shop is that it's not a teeny tiny storefront with a counter and a register; it's a nice sized cafe with plenty of room to sit, stay, eat, and play.  And by play, I really mean play!  There's a huge case of games that you can break into while enjoying your cupcakes with friends.  If Apples to Apple's isn't your thing, you can still get your 'play' on by enjoying your cupcake on one of the swing benches!

Our fabulous hosts, Amy & Zach, and friend Evan!
Swingy benches- so cool!
We had come here straight from brunch at the Corner Shop Cafe (MUST go--- adorable space and really delicious brunch food like truffled eggs or creme brulee french toast!) so Jake and I considered sharing a cupcake...until we saw the flavors.  After taking one glance at the offerings that "sharing" idea was out the window, hah!  Here's what we tried.


Jake - Cookie Dough (I really need to make these at home, maybe today!)

Amy - Pumpkin Spice

Me - Caramel Butterscotch - PERFECT cake & filling but salted caramel buttercream was way too salty for me

Zach - Cake Batter (oh man that looked good!!)

Evan - Peanut Butter Nutella - he said there was tons of gooey Nutella - YUM!
So needless to say, our cupcake hunt was a great success.  Have you been to Molly's?  What did you think? What other cupcake shops do you love in NYC?  I'll be back in a few weeks looking for another great one to try, so let me know what you think!


Sunday, November 13, 2011

Baby Shower Cupcakes


This weekend I had the pleasure of baking up 48 cupcakes for a baby shower!  Did anyone follow my live tweet as I worked on them?  It was a fun project, with one little whoopsy near the end (I dropped my bowl of flour/baking soda mix on the floor.  The bowl shattered into a million pieces and I had no idea how much flour I lost, so I had to eyeball it.  Scary!)  In the end, the cupcakes turned out great!



The order was for 24 chocolate and 24 vanilla cupcakes, all topped with raspberry frosting.  I was so excited for this order because I never tend to bake up the classics, so this was a great opportunity to do it.   I did some research and chose three recipes to follow..links and notes are at the bottom of this post.

Carol, thank you for the order and I hope today's baby shower is filled with love and fun!!!



For the vanilla cupcakes, I followed the Cupcake Project's Ultimate Vanilla Cupcake recipe.  I love this recipe and am keeping it as one of my go-to's.  The batter is super easy to put together.  I was a little nervous that the batter was so liquidy, but it baked up fine.  I had a little issue with crazy tops at first:


but when I filled the cupcake liners a little less and more evenly on the 2nd batch, they were perfect.  This cake is super light, nice and moist, and a strong, delicious vanilla flavor.  LOVE this recipe.

For the chocolate cupcakes, I followed the Magnolia Bakery recipe.  This recipe took a bit longer to make, mostly because you have to melt the chocolate and then wait for it to cool down a bit.  The nice thing about this recipe is that it made enough batter for 2 dozen cupcakes...I ended up getting 30 cupcakes from it.  The batter on this one was to die for.  My husband likes to "taste test" all of my batters, and he thought this one was frosting, not cake batter.  It is thick, moussy, delish.  The finished cake is much denser than the vanilla one, just as intense in flavor.  They baked up perfectly even, probably because I used a cookie scoop and made sure to put the exact same amount of batter in each cup.  LOVE love love this recipe.


Now for the frosting, I found a recipe for raspberry cream cheese frosting and tweaked it a little bit.  The original recipe called for adding a little liquor for taste and that just didn't seem right to do for a baby shower.  Here's the end recipe that I used.  It's sweet (but not TOO sweet!) and has a very intense raspberry flavor.  I know I've used that adjective a few times already-- I'm telling you, these cupcakes are so, SO flavorful.

Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting:
Need:
-1 8oz pack of cream cheese - room temp
-1 stick of unsalted butter - room temp
-1/2 a stick of shortening (4 oz) - room temp
-1/4 cup of seedless raspberry jam
-1 1/2 tablespoons of raspberry flavored jello powder
-2 lbs powdered sugar

Do:
1.  Beat cream cheese, butter and shortening together until light and fluffy.
2.  Add raspberry jam and 1 tablespoon of jello powder, beat to combine.
3.  Add powdered sugar in 4 parts.  Add in the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of jello powder with your third part of sugar.

Note- using the full 2 lbs of sugar will give you a nice thick frosting that is good for acheiving a firm design when decorating like in my pictures above.  You can certainly add less for a more creamy frosting, or even a glaze if you'd like.

Enjoy!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Live Tweeting - Cupcake Mania!

Hello trusty readers- BostonSweetie is BACK!

I am spending my Friday night in, baking up four dozen cupcakes for a baby shower tomorrow.  I've been tasked with 24 vanilla and 24 chocolate cupcakes, all topped with raspberry frosting.

Follow me on Twitter as I go step by step through this process - @BostonSweetie.

Check back early next week for a picturey post, and have a great weekend!