Mocha Buttercream Cake

If you want a delicious cake, this is it. We made a massive one of these for my sister’s graduation this past week, did 4x the recipe. Enough cake for you? If you’re not a coffee lover, you can leave out the espresso in the cake and the frosting, though you’ll be missing out on one of the best parts of this cake. :)

Mocha Buttercream Cake

Makes 1 9-inch layer cake.

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
dash salt
1/2 cup margarine
2 eggs
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3 1/3 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 oz semisweet chocolate
1 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350ËšF.

Cream together sugar and margarine. Add eggs, cocoa, milk, and flour. Mix baking soda and hot water; add to mixture. Add salt, then vanilla. Grease and flour two 9 inch cake pans. Pour mixture in pans. Bake for 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool on rack for ten minutes then remove from pans.

For filling, sift together powdered sugar, cocoa. Cream butter and add to sugar mixture slowly. Add salt, and coffee. Beat 2 minutes. When cool, add vanilla and mix.

To assemble, split cake layers and spread buttercream filling between layers. Save extra for optional decoration on top of chocolate frosting.

For frosting, melt chocolate in double boiler with whipping cream and vanilla. Whisk until melted and smotth. Remove from heat. Spread over cake.

Pumpkin Chip Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Buttercream

In my recent craving for all things pumpkin (apparent by the recent baking of pumpkin muffins and multiple batches of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies), it was only time before the vivid orange squash made its way into some vegan cupcakes.

These cupcakes began as a vision. I’d lay in bed thinking of just what kind of fluffy frosting should top them. I had wanted to do a brown-sugar buttercream, but was afraid that the inherent differences between heavy cream and soymilk would prevent me from doing so (the recipe I had found, I assume, relied greatly on the ‘fluffing’ powers of cream, powers that, try as I might, I cannot replicate with soymilk). If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know – I’d love to try to make this frosting in a non-dairy version.

Brown sugar buttercream impossible, I moved on to my next idea. Thinking of what spices and spirits would go best with a slice of rich pumpkin pie, I set out to make a buttercream, spiced with cinnamon and spiked with rum. And it was good. Quite good. Since the frosting isn’t cooked, the rum stays put, and you could definitely taste it. Same with the cinnamon. I was worried that one might overpower the other, but the balance was perfect.

A perfect fall cupcake, indeed!

Pumpkin Chip Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Buttercream

Makes 12 cupcakes. Recipe adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.

INGREDIENTS
Cupcakes:
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup soymilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each ground cloves, nutmeg, and ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Frosting:
1/2 cup butter or margarine, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon dark rum
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
soy milk, as needed

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350ËšF. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl, stir together pumpkin, oil, sugar, soymilk, and vanilla. Sift in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and spices. Gently whisk by hand until just combined, don’t use an electric mixer or overmix the batter as it may become too gummy. Once combined, fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill liners with 1/4 cup batter (cups should be approximately 2/3 full). Bake for 22 to 24 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely before frosting.

To make frosting, cream butter. Add 1/2 cup confectioners sugar and mix until smooth. Add rum and cinnamon, and slowly mix (careful not to splatter). Continue adding sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well between additions. Continue to beat until light and fluffy. If frosting is too thick, add a bit of soymilk to thin it out. If too thin, add more sugar and continue to beat until it is the right consistency. Spoon into a piping bag or just slather it right onto the cupcakes. Dust with cinnamon and enjoy!

I broke my buttercream.

Hi, my name is Lindsay, and I have a fear of cooked sugar.

This time, the results were disastrous.

Take 1: Cooking the sugar syrup, as per the instructions for this White Chocolate Mousseline Buttercream. Darn pan seizes up on me, goes rock hard before I can even get it out the pan. I’m sure I had a stray sugar crystal in there somewhere, but geez! Does it have to be so hard?

Take 2: Trying Alton Brown’s trick, and added a bit of corn syrup to the sugar mixture to keep it from crystallizing. However, our candy thermometer was too slow and the sugar syrup was too shallow in the pan to get an accurate read on it. I let it boil for a little while, but to stir? Not to stir? I stirred it. And probably took it off too early. But after my first attempt, I didn’t want to chance it doing that again.

Take 2 seemed to be going well. My egg whites whipped up beautifully with the sugar syrup, and most of butter went in without a hitch. But then, all of a sudden, well, you see what happened. It was a downhill slope from there, the more I mixed it to try to fix it the worse it got. I whipped that stuff for a good 5 minutes after it curdled, to no avail. Hopeless. Into the trash it went.

Take 3: Screw cooked sugar. These cupcakes need frosting, and frosting they will get. But there will be no cooking of anything involved. In goes the butter and tofutti cream cheese. In goes the powdered sugar. White chocolate. Vanilla. Voila. Buttercream.

So, somebody please tell me what went wrong? Was it the corn syrup? Did I take the syrup off the heat too soon? Did I not let the egg/sugar mixture cool completely? Am I just a dunce? While the American Buttercream is easy, these cupcakes I made last night would taste so much better without the sickeningly sweet frosting, I’m just not sure that perfect frosting is worth this amount of trouble.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Buttercream

Whoops, another sugar craving. I needed to bake something. But what? Flipping through some of my old recipes usually helps. I came across a recipe for my mom’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake, something that sounded scrumptious but honestly I could never remember actually eating, let alone baking. Since cake takes far too much effort, a quick conversion to cupcakes sounded like a good idea.

These were the first cupcakes I’ve baked with eggs & butter since the whole love of cupcakes began. And honestly, they were too dense for me. I like my cupcakes light and airy – the kind of cupcakes that you eat one and wonder where it went. These, you definitely know where it went. That doesn’t mean they weren’t delicious – the taste made me feel like I was eating a cookie and a cupcake and a cake all at the same time. If I made them again though, I might try modifying one of my vegan cupcake recipes to mimic the same flavors, but without the density. That and I’d use mini chocolate chips. The big ones might be fine for a full cake, but they tend to take over the cupcake.

I topped these with a brown sugar variation on Swiss Meringue buttercream, and it was delicious. The rich flavors of the brown sugar pair perfectly with the toasty notes of the oatmeal and cinnamon. It’s more rustic with the brown sugar, and couldn’t have been more perfect.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Buttercream

Makes 12 cupcakes.

INGREDIENTS
7/8 cup boiling water
1/2 cup quick oatmeal
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg (slightly beaten)
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 cup chocolate chips (mini would work best)

Frosting:
2 large egg whites
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into tablespoons

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350?F. Line muffin tin with cupcake papers.

Pour boiling water over oatmeal. Let stand for 10 minutes until absorbed. Add margarine and stir until melted. Add brown sugar, white sugar, and eggs. Mix well.

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and cocoa powder. Add to sugar mixture and mix well. Stir in most of chocolate chips, saving approximately 1/4 cup.

Distribute 1/4 cup batter into each muffin cup. Sprinkle a few remaining chocolate chips on top. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool 2 minutes, then remove from pan and allow to cool completely on rack.

For frosting, in a heatproof bowl set over (not in) a pan of simmering water, whisk together egg whites, sugar, and salt. Cook, whisking constantly, until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is warm to the touch. Transfer to the clean bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium speed until fluffy and cooled, about 15 minutes. Raise speed to high; beat until stiff peaks form. Reduce speed to medium-low; add butter, 2 to 3 tablespoons at a time, until fully incorporated. Spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes.

Fruit-Filled Lemony Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream

I’ve been meaning to try another variation on the Strawberry Lemonade cupcakes for some time now. You see, those cupcakes are unbelievable. But the pink frosting? Well, it kind of clashes with our wedding color combo. So I’ve been pondering how to get the same delicious flavors without all the pastel color.

The end result of that pondering was a dozen seemingly color-less cupcakes, discreetly filled with homemade fruit preserves. I made two fillings, half strawberry, half blackberry, both of which I thought went excellently with the moist lemon cake and frosting. Ultimately we’ll probably go with the strawberry, as the blackberries presented a peculiar problem of too many seeds, another step in the process that we don’t really want to deal with. So strawberry it is, I guess?

Never filled a cupcake before? No problem. Simply cut out a ‘cone-shaped’ piece from the top of each cupcake. Resist the urge to snack on these bite sized bits (I had to stop Taylor from nabbing a few), as you’ll need them again later. Spoon the filling into the gaping holes, and then replace the bits where they belong. They’ll look a little funny and stick up a bit, but that’s what frosting is for, right? Once you’ve got a gorgeous swirl of lemony fluff piped on top, no one will be the wiser as to what’s hidden inside.

Disclaimer: I am not a lemon lover. So these are on the light side of the lemon spectrum. Both the cake and the frosting have an ever so slightly lemon tang, apparent but not so sour that it overwhelms the sweetness. True lemonhead? Add some more juice and zest to both the cake and the frosting (where you might need a bit more sugar to compensate for the extra liquid). Don’t like lemon at all? Omit it completely and call it a perfectly tasty vanilla cupcake.

Yum.

Fruit-Filled Lemony Cupcakes with Sweet Lemon Buttercream

Makes 12 cupcakes.

INGREDIENTS
Cupcakes:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup oil
1 cup full fat coconut milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Fruit Preserves:
1 pint fruit (strawberries, blackberries, or other berry)
2/3 cup sugar
1/8 – 1/4 cup lemon juice, to taste
1 teaspoon lemon zest

Lemon Buttercream:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon soy creamer or heavy cream

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350?F.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add sugar and brown sugar and mix. Whisk together oil, coconut milk, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix until relatively smooth. Fill cupcake liners with a scant 1/4 cup of batter (should be just under 2/3 of the way full). Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden, and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

To make fruit preserves, add berries to medium heavy saucepan along with sugar, lemon juice, and zest. Lightly mash berries and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes or until preserves coat the back of a spoon. They will seem a bit runny. Remove from heat, transfer to a heat-safe container, and allow to cool at room temperature for 15 minutes. Move to refrigerator and chill for 1 hour or until set.

For frosting, cream butter in electric mixer for 1-2 minutes until fluffy. Slowly add confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, until mixture is smooth. Add lemon juice and zest and mix until combined. Add creamer and mix at medium-high speed until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes).

To assemble, cut a cone-shaped piece out of the tops of cooled cupcakes, approximately 3/4″ in diameter and set aside. Fill cavities with chilled preserves, and replace tops of cupcakes. Pipe on frosting, being sure to cover the seams.

Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Blackberry Buttercream

I was feeling fruity the other day. Feeling fruity and vanilla-y and almond-y. Normally I’d either do vanilla cupcakes or almond cupcakes, but not this time. No, I wanted both. And this light and delicate cake provided just that. Flecks of almond meal and vanilla bean, spiked with almond extract, and topped with a bright blackberry buttercream, well, I don’t have to tell you that these were delicious.

A perfect choice for a dinner with friends – perfect because, well, our friend’s daughter joined us for dinner, and her favorite color just happens to be purple. Let’s just say that she wouldn’t give in until she got her purple cupcake BEFORE dinner, where she proceeded to dive in and lick every bit of the purple frosting off of the cupcake before she was satisfied.

And unlike some cupcakes I’ve made, these beauties are naturally purple… or purply-pink, to be precise.

They almost became a post for the failed-cupcake-hall-of-fame. See, I first added a bit of tofutti cream cheese to the frosting as I didn’t want it too sweet. I’ve done it before with chocolate buttercream, and the other flavors in the frosting always overpowered any weirdness lingering from the tofutti (I admit, it is not a substitute for the real thing). But in this case, I took a lick and realized something was horribly wrong. Took a finger-full to Taylor too just to confirm my suspicions. He nailed it – the frosting tasted like berry flavored yogurt, a few too many days past it’s sell-by date. Funny how non-dairy cream cheese can give an overpoweringly dairy-like taste to an otherwise good frosting. In to the trash it went.

Take 2: much better. No cream cheese. Fresh blackberries, pureed and strained. Half a vanilla bean, scraped off the pod and beautifully speckling the violet fluff. Just a hint of fragrant almond. And to top it all off – proof that my spiffy new flower molds DO work with marzipan (not quite as well, marzipan is extremely fragile and doesn’t hold the delicate shape as well), but it was the perfect topping on the perfect cupcake.

I don’t think I am the only one to think that the timing of these couldn’t be any better – can you say, perfect mothers’ day treat? I know my mom in particular would swoon over these (or anything almond for that matter – like mother like daughter!). If only I could figure out how to ship cupcakes to her, I would send her a box of these in an instant.

Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Blackberry Buttercream

Makes 12 cupcakes.

INGREDIENTS
Cupcakes:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 vanilla bean (seeds only)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Blackberry Buttercream:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, room temperature
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 tablespoons fresh blackberry puree, strained
1/2 vanilla bean (seeds only)
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, almond meal, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add sugar and mix. Whisk together oil, coconut milk, vanilla bean, and almond extract. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ingredients. Mix until relatively smooth. Fill cupcake liners with a scant 1/4 cup of batter (should be just under 2/3 of the way full). Bake for 20-22 minutes or until golden, and toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

For frosting, cream butter in electric mixer for 1-2 minutes until fluffy. Slowly add 1 cup sugar and beat until smooth. Add blackberry puree and mix until combined. Add remaining confectioners’ sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, and beat until well incorporated. Add vanilla bean and extract and mix at medium-high speed until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Pipe or spread onto cooled cupcakes. Top with a marzipan flower, if desired.