Halloween – Graveyard Cupcakes

October 14, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

Okay, this has to be one of my favorite cupcakes so far.   It’s a long story, but I REALLY get into Halloween.  I used to have an old wooden fence, broken and everything, that I would set up for Halloween.  I would carve my own gravestones, and I had a fog machine and tiki torches and I would hide in my graveyard and scare the daylights out of trick-or-treaters and I just had the time of my life!

So when I saw this cupcake I had to make it.  Welcome to my cupcake graveyard!

Again, I totally went cheatercake on these for simplicity.  So it’s a chocolate cake mix, with one box of chocolate pudding mix.  Easy.

I made chocolate buttercream.

1 sick salted butter (room temp)

1/2 cup unsweetened coco powder

3 cups powdered sugar (sifted)

3-6 tbsp milk

1tsp pure vanilla extract.

-With the wisk attachment, wisk the butter until really creamy, then add the coco powder and wisk until blended and creamy.  Add the powdered sugar, 3 tbsp milk and the vanilla.  Mix on slow until the sugar is incorperated, then go ahead and whip it.  If it’s too thick, add 1 tbsp milk at a time util it’s the consistancy you like.

 

After the cupcakes were frosted, I dipped them in crushed oreos for the “dirt”.  For the headstone, (I made these cookies before I made the frosting) I used gingerbread cookies.   I was totally going the easy rout and looked in the grocery store for ready made dough, but I guess that doesn’t come out until Christmas.  Thankfully I found a box mix, which had the “hard cookie” adaption on the side of the box.  I rolled it out to 1/8 inch and used a pizza cutter to cut long strips, then cut them into rectangles, and some I left like that, but the rest I carved into rounded tops.

After they baked I used more of my leftover vanilla cream cheese frosting, and a tiny tip, to write on the stones.

I pressed the “gravestones” into the cakes and that was it!   So much fun!  I love these and will probably have to make them every year now.

Posted in Cheatercakes, Chocolate, Cupcakes, Frosting, Halloween, Holiday, Uncategorized

Halloween – Mummy Cakes

October 14, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

Yes, I am baking!  School portraits are over, I am back from Spain, and I have time on my hands.   But seriously, it’s totally cheatercake season.  So that’s what these are.

A friend recommended this book:

Which I was all over!  I love Halloween.  The ideas were fun, but most were too gruesome for my young lot, maybe in a couple of years.  There are cake and frosting recipes as well as other recipes to pull off all the fun tricks, but I decided to keep it simple and go the cheatercake rout.  I picked two cakes that I thought were fun and suitable for kids.

The first one is the mummy cake.  It’s a chocolate cheatercake (with pudding added) then I used a thin long tip for my vanilla cream cheese frosting.  I went around the edge of the cupcake first, then just layered the rest, to look like wrapped bandages, and for the eyes, I got a small tube of red wilton food gel.  It was so easy!

 

 

 

 

Posted in Cheatercakes, Chocolate, Cream Cheese Frosting, Cupcakes, Frosting, Halloween, Holiday, Uncategorized

E’s Nuts About Nuts Cupcakes

October 14, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

So my daughter, my oldest, is nine.  She has her own e-mail account which she uses to write her Grandma, her pen pal in Korea, and me.   The other day, as we were exchanging e-mails (three each this particular day) I get this e-mail from her (exactly as written):

“Hey mom I lteraly just thought of something I was thinking that you should try making a multi nut cupcake I was thinking of a vanilla cupcake with mackadamia nuts and wal nuts inside and crushed up pistachios ontop with a cocounut frosting.
 -E”
My reply:
“Emily, that sounds fantastic!  Lets make it together this weekend!  Except, lets do pecans instead of walnuts because daddy is allergic to walnuts.  Deal?“
 

I got the requested nuts from the store, but by then she had changed the recipe up a little.  We baked a vanilla cheatercake and added pecans and macadamia nuts which I chopped in the food processor so they were really fine.  She didn’t want to wait for me to make a frosting, and I had peanut butter frosting left in the freezer, so lets add one more nut to the cake via the frosting.  Then not as finely chopped hazelnuts went on top.   She was pretty proud (though picky eater that she is, she didn’t want to taste them).

They actually tasted quite yummy, but I took a couple of the cupcakes and used leftover pecan frosting instead of peanut butter for a triple nut cupcake.

 

Simple and fun and she was delighted that we did her “recipe” and that they were a success.

Posted in Butter Cream Frosting, Cheatercakes, Cupcakes, Frosting, Nuts, Pecan, Vanilla

Chocolate Cinnamon Horchata Cheatercake

September 30, 2011 by Brekke | 1 Comment

Tomorrow is a big day.  I will be leaving the country for the first time in my life.  Destination: Spain.  Barcelona to be exact.  Hubby is going for work and I get to tag along.

Now it’s been too long since I have posted, or even had a chance to bake, (It’s the busy season in the world of portrait photography) so this week, with most stuff winding down, I wanted to make something to pay tribute to my trip abroad.  Something… “Spainy”.

I made a chocolate cheater cake but added a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon.  I wanted you to be able to really taste it.  Then I baked it as usual.

For the frosting, I searched for a marzapan buttercream recipe, but could really only find recipes where they make marzapan like fondant and use it to cover and decorate cakes.  So I went to plan B: Horchata.  I found recipes online that called for adding the horchata drink itself, and that was my intent.  I ran to the store to get some other items, then I was going to run to a Mexican shop after and get fresh Horchata.  At the store, however, I found a bag of Klass Horchata drink mix and thought… maybe…

Okay, I took two sticks of butter (room temp) and creamed it.  I then added one tsp of vanilla extract.  I added 3-4 cups of powdered sugar and then I started adding heaping teaspoons of the horchata mix until it tasted right (I think it was 3-4).  The mix made the frosting thick, so I added a little milk to thin it out.  It was perfect.  Then after I piped it on the cupcakes, I sprinkled the top with ground cinnamon straight up (no sugar added).  They turned out beautiful and DELICIOUS!

Posted in Butter Cream Frosting, Cheatercakes, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Cupcakes, Frosting, Horchata

Did You Ever Know That You’re My Hero?

September 6, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

After posting my yummy Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting, I got an instant text from my “Official Taste Tester”, who I have been neglecting as of late, asking if there were any left.  She then read more of the post and texted again under the impression they were all gone and she didn’t get to have any.  I surprised her and let her know I still had my Hero Cakes which I had just photographed and she was welcome to them.

In food photography, the food you intend to photograph is referred to as your “Hero”.  The Hero is generally the most picture perfect in every way.

Whenever I make a batch of cupcakes, the first thing I do is separate my Hero Cakes into a private container for photographing.  Sometimes I find Hero’s walking through the grocery store.  Food that looks so good I have to buy it JUST to photograph it.  There have been times I have been disappointed, after photographing a Hero and tasting it to find it certainly looked better than it tasted, and other times, when I can’t stop eating what I found.

Two recent examples:

These are mini cupcakes from Walmart.  I wanted to do a shoot with a lot of cupcakes, and mini’s are cheaper.  I looked through every package they had and found the ones that looked the most appealing to photograph.  My children were banned from eating them until they had their moment in the spotlight, and then they have slowly been working their way through them. (and they are welcome to them as I can’t stand the taste of store frosting anymore. ;) )

 

 

These cookies are also from Walmart.  I found them yesterday and they looked too good to pass up.  And they really are good.  Soft and chewy and yummy… for not being a cupcake, they’re all right.

 

 

 

The goal of food photography, I believe, is to make YOU hungry.  I want to photograph food so pretty and perfect, you get frustrated that you can’t have one right this moment.

 

Want to learn more about food photography?  I HIGHLY recommend this book by Nicole Young.  I have been following her work for a while and her food photography makes my mouth water.  I have it and it’s worth getting for yourself if you want to improve your food photography.  (If you plan to buy it, please buy it through my link and help support my cupcake addiction.)

 

Posted in Photography Education, Uncategorized

A Reduction Sounds Simple Enough….

September 4, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

Yeah, simple… Right…

 

I was walking through our Maceys Grocery and I found this neat looking citrus soda and thought to myself, “I’ll buy this and make a reduction and use that to make cupcakes.”  After all, a reduction sounded simple enough.

First, a little bit of a history lesson for you.  Did you know that using a soda reduction as a sweetener began during the war when sugar was rationed, but soda was not?  They would use it to sweeten foods or to glaze meats.  I found this out while trying to find directions on how to make a reduction out of soda.  None of the directions were very clear, or worked very well for me, but hey, I learned something I didn’t expect to learn.

Now, back to my regularly unscheduled blog post.

So I put it in the saucepan.  I bring it to a boil.  I let it boil for a bit.  I turn it to simmer and stir, and wait and stir, and wait, and wait… Would this junk ever reduce?  After about an hour, and no obvious reducing, I got bored and read the bottle ingredients….  CAFFEINE!  Crap!  I have a heart condition and caffeine is a “no no”.  Down the drain went the entire bottle.

So I went to the garage to find another soda option and I found two bottles of Lime soda.   Okay, well, knowing a little about sugar I thought to myself, this junk needs to boil longer and it needs more sugar.  So I added about 1/4 cup of sugar (give or take) to one bottle of soda and I boiled it a lot longer.  I have no idea exactly how long it was boiling, I should have been better at keeping track.  Then I reduced it to a simmer and left it alone.  It was probably about an hour, maybe an hour and a half later, it was finally a thick syrup.  I had a reduction!

With the other bottle of soda I used a bottle of white cake mix and substituted the water for the soda to make a lime cake.  The problem… you couldn’t taste the lime!  So I added lime juice, and a little more, and a little more, and a bit of the reduction until I could finally taste the lime in my batter.  I added a little green food coloring and baked them up.

When they were done I had a nice, subtle lime cake.  I made a vanilla cream cheese frosting, and then drizzled the lime reduction on top.  (So in the pictures, that green tint to the frosting is the reduction, not mold… ;) )

In the end, they turned out pretty good, but were more trouble than I had expected.  If anyone really knows how to make a reduction, I’d love a clue, I think I was doing it all wrong.

Posted in Cheatercakes, Cream Cheese Frosting, Lime, Reduction, Vanilla

Chocolate Orange and Almond Cheatercakes

September 4, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

On Monday, there was a birthday gathering for my husbands side of the family, (they have them once a month to cover all the birthdays in one shot), I volunteered to make cupcakes.  (I know, the shock factor, you’ll get over it).  I find a great need to get creative with these, as it’s once a month and I don’t want my cupcakes to get boring.  After the dinner, I was happy to see only four cupcakes left!  It always makes me feel good when the leftover numbers are small, because that means they were yummy.

We got home and while hubby got the kids in bed, I decided to run to my friend Erin’s house to borrow a piece of photography equipment.  Now Erin, is the bomb diggity.  She is a photography rockstar and she was the one who coined the name “Brekkecakes”, all credit goes to her.  So, I grabbed the last four cupcakes and headed to her house.

She wasn’t home.  However, since I was bearing a plate of cupcakes, her husband knew exactly who I was, and didn’t just take the plate but, knowing the treats I bring his wife, asked what kind of cupcakes I had made.   After a good description of the flavors, he took the plate, gave me the photo equipment and I left.

The next day Erin said her family declared them the best cupcakes I had made so far and though she thought they were good, she firmly believes the chocolate peanut butter ones have them beat.

You will have to judge for yourself.

Here are my Chocolate Orange Brekkecakes with Almond Buttercream frosting.

For the cakes:

1 Box Devils Food Cake Mix (and the ingredients called for on the box)

1 small box instant chocolate pudding mix

1/2 Dram Lorann’s Orange Flavoring Oil (half the little bottle)

-Make the cake batter according to directions on the box, mixing the pudding and the flavoring oil.  Half a dram was perfect for letting you taste the chocolate and the orange in the finished cakes.

 

For the frosting:

2 sticks salted butter (room temp)

4-6 cups powedered sugar (sifted)

1/2 dram Lorann’s Almond Flavoring Oil (half the little bottle)

1-4 tbsp Heavy Cream (if needed)

Fresh Pecans for garnish

-Cream the butter in your mixer with the wisk attachment.  Add the flavor oil then the sugar until it’s the consistancy you want.  If it is too thick, add cream 1 tbsp at a time until it’s the right consistancy.  If it’s too thin, add more sugar to stiffen it.

**Garnish options:  After this was done I was thinking a praline pecan or a candied orange peel would also make great garnishes.

 

 

Posted in Butter Cream Frosting, Cheatercakes, Chocolate, Cupcakes, Frosting, Orange, Pecan, Uncategorized

Chocolate SCRATCHCAKES!!!!

August 28, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

Fourth times the charm!  Now I know there are things I will change about this next time I bake them, but I am just so thrilled that they weren’t failcakes.

I found this recipe on JoyOfBaking.com.  I have learned a lot from this site and I am so glad to have stumbled upon it.  It’s from this site that I learned why I had so many scratch failcakes to begin with (the butter and sugar thing…) and it’s pretty educational on baking overall.

The recipe called for Dutch Process Coco.  Um… where do I find that?   I drove to Salt Lake to go to Gygi thinking they would have it.  They did, in a huge bag that was $30 and no way I could use that much chocolate in a year.  So I grabbed another bag of chocolate, not sure what it is really, because all the writing is in another language.  Then, I went to walmart and they had Ghirardelli baking coco which was made with the dutch process.  I used the Ghirardelli for this and next time, will give the other chocolate a try and see how it tastes.

Here are a couple things I learned as I was in the process of baking these cupcakes:

Lesson #1- Mix your chocolate and water about an hour ahead of time so it has time to come to room temp.  You don’t want boiling chocolate in your cake batter.  I stuck mine in the freezer to hurry the process along because I didn’t think ahead, but next time, I’ll do the chocolate in advance and not risk it.

Lesson #2- Add MORE chocolate.  As good as they were, I felt there could have been more flavor, which a little more chocolate would have fixed.  So next time, I’ll add 1/4-1/2 more coco powder to the mix and see what happens.

Lesson #3- Not sure if I did anything wrong really, I followed the instructions, but the batter was liquid!  Maybe this had to do with the not completely cooled chocolate, but I don’t know.  I do know I had to add more flour until it was a consistancy I was happy with.  This had me worried, but I didn’t want cupcake soup, so I took the chance and thankfully it worked out.

 

For the frosting, I wanted to have a little fun, and happened to have some ripe bananas on my counter.  I mashed them up and made a banana cream cheese frosting.  Now I have to learn how to work banana into frosting, because it was REALLY soft.  I got it to peak and then stuck it in the freezer to keep it from falling off the cake.   I have to figure that one out, so no recipe this time for that.  Though it tasted yummy.

Then I topped it with a chocolate ganache to make it pretty.  If you’ve never made a ganache, it’s surprisingly easy and worth it for a dip or a drizzle.

 

Yeah! Recipe’s!!!

 

Chocolate Scratchcakes adapted from Joy of Baking

1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder (can’t hurt to add about 1/4 cup)

1 cup boiling water

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour (Might need more, maybe a cup or two)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line 16 muffin cups with paper liners.

About an hour in advance- In a small bowl stir until smooth the boiling hot water and the cocoa powder. Let cool to room temperature.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Then in the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat only until incorporated. Then add the cooled cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

Fill each muffin cup about two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 16 – 20 minutes or until risen, springy to the touch, and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. (Do not over bake or the cupcakes will be dry.) Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

Chocolate Ganache

1/2 c Heavy whipping cream

1 c chocolate chips (your choice, basically any kind will make a ganache)

Put your chocolate chips in a glass bowl.  In a saucepan, bring the heavy whipping cream to a boil.  Pour boiling cream over the chocolate chips and wisk, starting in the middle and working your way out until all the chocolate is melted, color is consistant and mix is smooth and creamy.  Allow the ganache to cool.  The longer it cools the more it sets.  You can drizzle it early or wait until you can dip your cakes with little drip.  You can even let it sit a couple of hours and it will become pipeable.

Posted in Banana, Chocolate, Cream Cheese Frosting, Cupcakes, Frosting, Ganache, Scratchcakes, Uncategorized

Chocolate Embelishment Tutorial

August 15, 2011 by Brekke | Leave a comment

I’m guest blogging today at NOTHING BUT COUNTRY!

 

Nothing But Country

Come on over and see my tutorial on how to make simple chocolate embellishments to personalize your cupcakes.

Posted in Uncategorized

Party Time: Dragon Warrior Training

August 14, 2011 by Brekke | 1 Comment

**Just to start, like the previous post, I totally ran out of time and didn’t get really nice pictures taken of the party, I did get a good shot of the cupcakes for this one though.   Please forgive the photographic quality of the others, they were taken with my ipad.

My son this year wanted the theme for his seventh birthday party to be a surprise.   Though he did choose what he wanted to do for his birthday pictures, and being the Kung Fu Panda fan that he is, he chose to do kung fu pictures.  We ordered his costume from China, a replica of what the  monks wear at the Shaolin Temple and we went out and did some super fun images of him in this costume.   That’s when I got the idea… Dragon Warrior Training would be the perfect theme for his party.

I took my favorite image from his session and super imposed Po behind him and this was the front of his birthday invitation.

Okay, so with an invite that cool, the party had to be even better.  I used to take/teach kung fu, and I found a bunch of karate gi tops at the local thrift stores.  We made karate belts out of super wide ribbon and we started with REAL kung fu training.  Then we did some games where they had to eat stuff (We had to include the essence of Po) and use chopsticks and it was just so much fun.

But of course, my favorite part was the food.  We had it all, down to Po’s Bean Buns and Master Shifu’s Dragon Cakes.  The boys got to the food before I could get the shots, but you get the idea.

Here’s a close up of the Dragon Cakes.  Sticking with the Red, White and Black theme, we did a red velvet cheatercake with a vanilla cream cheese frosting.  Tying in the black and the Chinese theme, I made these fun embellishments of the Chinese character for “Dragon” out of chocolate.  So simple and cute and just perfect for this awesome party.

Check back tomorrow.  I’m guest blogging on Nothing But Country sharing the tutorial on how to make those fun chocolate embellishments!

Nothing But Country

Posted in Birthday, Cheatercakes, Cream Cheese Frosting, Cupcakes, Frosting, Vanilla