And she bakes again

So I mentioned before that the lovely people from POM Wonderful sent me some juice to bake with so here is my first venture, which turned out awfully well!

I made Pomegranate Orange Cupcakes!

First off, I made the Pomegranate Orange Curd for the filling. I modified a recipe from allrecipes.com but will admit to not cooking it long enough the first time but, luckily, it was easy enough to reheat, add a tablespoon of cornstarch, and cook a few more minutes and it sat up just fine. I also added a bit of red food coloring so it wasn't all brown and yucky. So here's my recipe!

Pomegranate Orange Curd

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup white sugar 5 egg yolks 1 cup POM Wonderful juice

1 orange, zested 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted Some red food coloring (if desired)

DIRECTIONS:

1.

In a microwave-safe bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs until smooth. Stir in pomegranate juice, orange zest and butter. Cook in the microwave for one minute intervals, stirring after each minute until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from the microwave, and pour into small sterile jars. Store for up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

For the cupcakes, I wanted a light pomegranate cupcake so I went with my favorite base recipe and added juice. In the end, there was a light fruit flavor but I'm not sure I would easily identify it as pomegranate. But it was good anyway. So here it is...

Pomegranate Cupcakes
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8oz package cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 egg whites
1/4 cup POM Wonderful juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Begin by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and lightly flour 14 muffin cups. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter and sugar until smooth, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the dry ingredients in two parts, alternating with the pomegranate juice and vanilla.

For the frosting, I again turned to an old favorite and went with a cream cheese base with a bit of juice. I also added about a tablespoon of the leftover Pomegranate Orange curd, just cause it was there. But I'm not gonna list that in the recipe.

Pomegranate Frosting

INGREDIENTS:

4 ounces cream cheese 1/4 cup butter, softened 1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 tablespoons POM Wonderful juice 2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar Some red food coloring if needed

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Beat cream cheese and butter in a bowl until combined. Beat in powdered sugar and pomegranate juice.
2.	Beat in 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 cups more of powdered sugar till frosting is of spreading consistency. Stir in a few drops of red food coloring (if desired).

So, to put it all together, fill the pomegranate cupcakes with the curd (around a tablespoon or as much as you can squeeze in there) and then frost them! Awesome!

Cupcakes not Football

Apparently it's football time again... woo hoo (dripping sarcasm)...

I'm not a sports person but I am just about to marry one and we bred one too. So, on an evening like tonight, it appears that, despite all the movies Not-So-Ex rented, I'm stuck listening to them yell and holler. Oy.

It's been a weird kinda day so, to try to improve my mood, I did some baking. And I have a way to get rid of the cupcakes too since we're having a "you're not going anywhere" party for a coworker (he was planning on quitting with tomorrow as his last day and changed his mind... today... LOL).

Anyway, I had one request for Chocolate/Chocolate Chip cupcakes and one for Strawberry. So that's what I made. The strawberry frosting made a ton so I topped some of the chocolate/chocolate chip cupcakes with it and it was really tasty. So I figure these are mix and match recipes, since the frostings will taste good on either cupcake.

So for the cupcake recipes:

Strawberry Cupcakes:

1 3/4 c self-rising flour

8 oz cream cheese (softened)

1 stick butter (softened)

1 1/2 c sugar

3 egg whites

1/4 c pureed strawberries (I put them through a strainer to remove part of the seeds but not all)

1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 and put cupcake liners in the cupcake pans.

Mix the cream cheese and butter then add sugar and beat till fluffy. Add egg whites. Add a third of the flour, then half the strawberry puree, then another third of the flour, the other half of the strawberries, and then the rest of the flour. Mix in vanilla.

Fill cupcake liners about 1/2 to 3/4 full and bake for 22 minutes.

Chocolate/Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

1 1/2 c flour

3/4 c cocoa

1 1/2 c sugar

2 eggs

3/4 c buttermilk

3 Tsp oil

vanilla

3/4 c warm water

1 bag mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 and put cupcake liners in the cupcake pans.

Mix the flour, cocoa, and sugar together. Then add everything except the hot water and mix till blended. Add the warm water and mix. Then add chocolate chips.

Fill cupcake liners about 1/2 to 3/4 full and bake for 20 minutes.

Strawberry Frosting

1/4 c butter

8 oz cream cheese

3 Tsp strawberry puree

5 c confectioners sugar

Mix em together and put on cooled cupcakes.

Chocolate Frosting

1/2 c butter

1/4 c cocoa

vanilla

3 c confectioners sugar

2 Tsp milk

Melt the butter and add cocoa and vanilla. Then add sugar (gets really thick here) and add milk. Put on cooled cupcakes.

My very first Cupcake Hero!!!

So there's this awesome contest called Cupcake Hero! It's kinda like Iron Chef cause you're given a special ingredient each month and you see what you can come up with. This month's ingredient was Bananas!

I've always loved Banana Pudding (you know the stuff with the bananas and pudding and vanilla wafers) so I wanted to try try to make it in cupcake form!

I started with a vanilla wafer banana cupcake base. I got the recipe idea from a graham cracker cupcake I found on Vanilla Garlic and then modified it to fit. So here's the recipe:

Vanilla Wafer Banana Cupcakes
Makes 12-14 cupcakes / 350 F oven

What You’ll Need...
1/2 cup of butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup of milk

1/2 cup banana puree
1 cup of flour
1 1/2 cups of vanilla wafer crumbs
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt

What You’ll Do...
1) Beat the butter for about 30 seconds until well creamed. Add the sugar and mix for 3 minutes using a paddle attachment until light and fluffy.
2) Add the eggs, one at a time, being sure to beat for 30 seconds for each egg.
3) Place vanilla wafers in a food processor or in a plastic bag and crush into small crumbs and powder.
4) Mix together the flour, vanilla wafer crumbs, baking soda and powder, and salt. Mix the 1/2 c of banana puree and 1/2 c milk. Add about 1/3 of the flour/wafer mixture to the butter mixture, then add some of the milk/banana. Continue to add the ingrdients in a dry-wet-dry method, ending with the dry. Continue to mix until just combined.
5) Scoop into cupcake papers and bake for 15-18 minutes in a 350 F oven or until a cake tester comes out clean.

I wanted to fill the cupcakes with the banana pudding mixture but, once I made it and filled them, the pudding stuff was thick enough to make an awesome frosting as well! So here's that recipe (modified from allrecipes.com):

Banana Pudding Frosting

• 1/2 package cream cheese
• 1/2 of a 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 small package instant vanilla pudding mix (for mine I mixed half a pack of banana cream pie pudding and half a pack of vanilla)
• 1 1/2 cups cold milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 of an 8 oz container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 
  

• DIRECTIONS

  1. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in condensed milk, pudding mix, cold milk and vanilla until smooth. Fold in the whipped topping.
  Once the cupcakes were filled and frosted, I stuck a vanilla wafer on top to look all pretty and voila! All done!