[BLUE] Raspberry Buttermilk Cupcakes

So like I've been talking about for almost all of my posts, I'm in this club - Circle K. Recently, we were allowed to be Family Heads. It's sort of like in the greek system where you have a big bro and a big sis and what not, but in Circle K, it's like a Mom and a Dad. Dmitriy and I decided to be family heads together. We are known as the Blue Shapangs (Shaprio + Yang = Shapang).

Tuesday was our first meeting, and we were supposed to wear our family colors - blue. EASY! I wanted to bring something extra along with me in the form of cupcakes. I had looked at my recipes, and quite a few of them were blue - as in blueberries, but going to the grocery store, the raspberries were only 99 cents but blueberries were 4.99. Guess which one I bought.

Dont these look like alien creatures wanting food?
Maybe I just try to entertain myself while baking and laughing at random things I think about.

So with these raspberries, I remembered this beautiful recipe made by Smitten Kitchen, but I still needed something blue.

I decided to dye the batter itself blue. Food coloring will be my best friend. I expect that I'll be using it a lot to get that unnatural color of blue. Even blueberries aren't blue. *sigh* I guess I'll have to see how well the blue lasts me. I'll probably give up after a month. As a surprise too, I added one chocolate chip in the little cup that the raspberry created. I wondered how many of the family members actually noticed.

Recipe for the raspberry buttermilk cupcakes
[found here]

Banana Pecan Cupcakes [bonus msc]

When I had gotten the post on my google reader about a BONUS ROUND for the cupcake club, I knew that I wanted to participate. I had to think what the perfect occasion to actually make these cupcakes, and my friend's housewarming party was it. I had made the root beer float cupcakes, but there just weren't enough for the 50 people expected at the party. I decided to make more cupcakes. That's how I tend to solve all problems. Cupcakes are the answer.

So I decided to mix all the ingredients together, but I ran into a problem - minor of course. I know that I was supposed to put the pecans in the batter itself, but I didn't feel like mixing anymore and I had already started to fill the cupcake liners up, so I ended up just adding the pecans in afterwards towards the middle of the cupcake hoping that it'll somehow end up in the center of the cupcake.

That, of course, didn't exactly work out as planned, but the pecans were there.

For the frosting, I decided to halve the caramel buttercream recipe because that would have been quite a lot of butter and eggs to work with, but it was the right amount for me. I somehow ended up with 50something cupcakes and I just piped a little bit of frosting on each cupcake and I used it all up.

This was quite a fun recipe to do and I really enjoyed it. They tasted super good too. It was like creamy frosting with some nuts and some good banana cupcakes. It was just a really good recipe and I enjoyed it.

The recipe for this month's bonus round is found on pages 40-41 of Martha Stewart's Cupcake book.

Caramelized Onions, Sage, and Cheddar Muffins [sms]

This week's SMS, Caramelized Onion, Sage and Cheddar Muffins, was chosen by Hanaa of Hanaa's Kitchen. Hanaa always has her final thoughts and tips that always help.

I decided to change the recipe up a little bit. I have yet to go to store in a long while, so I decided to skip the cayanne peppers. I halved the recipe because I kind of don't know how to caramelize onions and burnt them. I also used dried sage instead of regular fresh sage.

More exciting than the muffins (sorry Hanaa) was the walk out that occured on the UC Berkeley campus on Thursday. I guess I never really supported it because my parents are paying for my education albeit, a lot cheaper than the out of states students are paying, but still around $30 per lecture I go to. So today, I had two classes that were not canceled. The only one that was canceled was due to the teacher being in London for a conference and not for the walkout itself.


I know quite a few people did not go to class due to this walkout. Although I feel like it is important that we bring to the forefront that we are getting fee hikes and that there will be cuts, but we should see if from the government's perspective too. The state cannot print money like the Fed does so whatever money and taxes they have is all they can spend. I cannot expect the state government to go into deeper recession due to the outside recession going on. I understand that the education for the future is important, but I also understand the reason why they're doing these cuts and fee hikes. We cannot expect to get the same education if we do not have the money.


The UC system was not the education system that got cut the most. As I was talking to my boyfriend, the CSU system got cut a lot as well. Their teachers decided to take a pay cut by not having 2 classes a month rather than cutting teachers. Although I agree that none of these seem like the best solution, its the best thing we have right now. We cannot expect the economy to pull us out of this and if we want to government to pay for it now, we should expect that our taxes when I become older to increase.


It's just a complete mess right now. I actually did not walk out, but I was debating it. I mean it is a serious issue, but is walking out the best way to do this? I did catch part of the rally next to campus, and it was a huge amount of people, but I just don't find it the best idea. The rally seemed really successful. It's because of this that Berkeley is well known. Protests and what not.


I had added along with these muffins while eating this drink. It's like fizzy soda made by the Japanese. It's so good and interesting. You push the ball into the drink and it fizzes up. I bought it at Ranch 99 a couple weeks ago and it's still fizzy as ever. It has these really good fruit flavors. I had drank the peach on with the muffins.

Personally, I thought the muffins were a little too dry for me, but my roommate had heated them up and it was better that way. It was still really good.

Recipe for the muffins here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

ps. the pictures of the rally were taken by my friend Dmitriy Shaprio. The other pictures were taken by yours truly.

Root Beer [Float] Cupcakes

So these were made for a housewarming party along with the Banana Pecan Cupcakes. Originally, I planned on actually adding ice cream on top of the root beer cupcakes so that they would actually be root beer float cupcakes like in the post that these are inspired from, but alas, being cheap, I decided not to get ice cream. I did get whipped cream though and I topped them with that. In addition, I had found these cool jellybeans that tasted like root beer and had topped the cupcakes with them. It was pretty awesome.

The cupcake itself was really dense and didn't really taste like root beer, but that might be because I had added in chocolate chips and so it tasted more chocolate-y. The denseness of the cake was definitely set off by the whipped cream. It was just so good together. The lightness of the whipped cream and the dense cake was just heavenly.

I really enjoyed making these and it was fun making these on a random Thursday night because I was done with homework. It's just college life I suppose.

Recipe for the cupcakes:
[adapted from here]
2 cups root beer (do not use diet root beer)
1 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Line your cupcake pan with liners.
In a small saucepan, heat the root beer, cocoa powder, and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted.
Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved.
Remove from the heat and let cool.
While cooling, add in the vanilla extract.
In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.
In a small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beaten, then whisk them into the cooled cocoa mixture until combined.
Gently fold the flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. The batter will be slightly lumpy--do not overbeat, as it could cause the cake to be tough.
Add in half of the chocolate chips and start filling your cupcake liners.
Add in some chocolate chips to the middle of the cupcake after filling.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

So I was experimenting and I found a great way to take cupcakes out of the pan without burning yourself and letting it cool in the pan. You can take two toothpicks and stick them on each side of the cupcake liners and just squeeze a little at the bottom part and you can pull them right out.

Orange Scented Scones [sms]

This week's SMS, Orange Scented Scones, was chosen by Robin of Lady Craddock's Bakery. I didn't know that Robin lived in Orange - I actually live 2-ish cities down, Brea. Well, I guess that's where my parents live since I currently reside in Berkeley. I guess it's only right that she chose the orange scented scones. Orange, located in Orange County, was once in the center of orange production. Well at least Orange County was, not really anymore though - it's all industrialized.

As for me getting better, I have no idea if I'm better or not. The cough is still there, but emotionally and what not, I'm feeling LOTS better. I don't think that I have the swine flu, but I know that there has been lots of cases of the swine flu in the local area - mainly in the dorms.

Anyways back to the scones, they were yummy! it was CHOCOLATE and ORANGE so it was good. It was really yummy to eat it right of out the oven. I also topped them with cinnamon sugar because that makes everything yummy.

So in this recipe, we were supposed to use oat flour, but I decided to just use regular flour and some rolled oats. I added actual orange pieces in it and it was really good. It was a good idea to decrease the heavy cream as in suggested.

I also added coconut on one of them to see how different it'll be. It was good, but I think I enjoy the Chocolate Orange one better.

Recipe for the scones here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

More parties means more baking to do!

These chocolate chip cookie cupcakes are for two of my friends. They decided to do a joint birthday party this weekend at a hotel in South Bay. Last night, my friend told me that he was going, so I decided to go which means that I needed to bake. Perfect since I was pretty bored last night.

See this is how my week typically goes. I start out really stressed out because I don't know if I'll be able to finish all my work and what not, but I do all my work by Wednesday and then relax Thursday and Friday by watching TV shows and what not online. I also bake when there's nothing online to watch. The Fall season has just started and hopefully I'll have enough time to do everything - watch TV and study and bake.

Anyways back to the cupcake, it was really good. It really tasted like a chocolate chip cookie. Hopefully my friends will like them tonight at the party. Alcohol plus cupcakes - seems like a great combo!

Recipe for the cupcakes
[doubled and adjusted from here]
2 cups of self-rising flour
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips [I had added a little bit milk chocolate chips]
2 eggs
1 cup of milk [I used 2/3c of evaporated and 1/3 water]
6 Tablespoons of melted butter
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat oven at 350 degrees.
Mix the flour, sugar and chocolate chips together in a large bowl.
Mix the eggs, milk, butter, and extract together in a small bowl.
Incorporate the wet into the dry until just mixed. DONT OVER MIX!
Bake for about 20 mins or until the toothpick comes out clean.

I topped these with a little bit of chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top. It was nice and fun.

Zucchini Spiced Cupcakes [msc]

I made these about a week ago for a party that my roommates had thrown. Although I was not a hostess of the party, I thought I should put something into it. I decided not to help host the party because:
1 - I would bring like 50 friends from the organization that I'm a part of and there would not be enough room. A lot less room
2 - I dont want to pay for the alcohol. Especially because I dont drink.
3 - I dont want to clean the next morning. Basically.

But, I did decide to bake.

I intended only to do half the recipe by just grating one zucchini, but after I grated my one zucchini, it turned out to be 3 cups of zucchini so I decided to do the full recipe since I had all that zucchini. I decided to sub in hazelnuts instead of walnuts since that's basically all I had in the house. In addition, I only made 2/3 of the recipe of the cream cheese and it was PERFECT! I had finished with the frosting after frosting the last cupcake.

These were pretty good. I think everyone enjoyed them. During the party, I think most people were too drunk or too busy playing beer pong to care, but I'm glad that my roommates appreciated it - that's all that really counts. I think they tasted like carrot cake, but not. It was different and I liked it. I love the opportunity to bake and make it all work.

Make sure to check out the other bloggers too!

The recipe for this month's Cupcake Club is found on pages 44-45 of Martha Stewart's Cupcake book. Thanks to Tracey from Tracey's Culinary Adventures for choosing this.

Perfect Pound (Cup)Cake [sms]

This week's SMS, the Perfect Pound Cake, was chosen by Michelle of Veggie Num Nums. She always tries to make veggies fun and that's always great for me. As a college student, I need my veggies since I always eat out - well almost always!

Anyways, this was made for the first major Circle K social that Berkeley CKI has put on. I know that most of you don't know what this is. Basically, Circle K is a collegiate community service organization. These are my friends who are becoming fat from my cupcakes/other desserts.

These were really easy to put together and I whipped these up in addition with some vanilla cupcakes to make enough. I topped them with different items - chocolate chips, sprinkles, fruit, cinnamon sugar, and plain.

I'm sure many of the new members were thinking free pizza and free cupcakes? This is definitely the club to JOIN! =]

In the past, I think I might have gotten sick. I know that the swine flu virus has been going around and it's especially bad at schools because of the vast number of people in the same area like hundred people in a classroom. I hope I get well soon - I dont have the time to be sick. =[

Recipe for the cake here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.