Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Hey everyone! Today was my last day of school until next Tuesday! I got home and looked at a cookbook to try to find a cupcake recipe that looked good. I found a recipe for cupcakes that you could either flavor chocolate, vanilla or lemon. I decided to go with the lemon and found a recipe for a cream cheese frosting that took lemon too, from the same book. I died the cupcake batter orange because of Halloween, as I did with my marble cake. More proof that I am obsessed with Halloween. LOLz. If you wanna make the recipe, here it is:

Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temp

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs 

1 cup self-rising flour

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, grated zest of 1 lemon or 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (optional) (I used lemon)

a 12-cup muffin pan

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F, then line the muffin pan with paper liners. 

Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. You can do this either by hand, or using an electric mixer. Then beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Sift over the flour, then fold in by hand. Stir in the milk and flavoring (if using) to make a creamy, spoonable mixture.

Spoon heaped tablespoons of the mixture into each muffin cup, then bake for about 17 minutes until risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

Transfer the cupcakes to a wire rack and let cool completely before decorating. 

Cream Cheese Frosting 

Beat 6 oz. cream cheese, 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar, and 2 teaspoons lemon juice together until smooth and creamy. (add more sugar if needed. I needed to.) Swirl on top of the cupcakes.

Peace and Dee Love,

Sophia

P.S.

As you can probably tell, I used my halloween cupcake cups again :)

Chocolate Chip Blondies

HI! HI! HI! Ok, so today I got home from school and wanted to bake (whoa, so unusual. lolz.). I decided to make choco chip blondies. Quote from my dad after eating his second one "If there was only 1 of these left on Earth, and I had to kill my mother to get it, I'd say "Mom, I love you, but you're toast."" Creeeeeeepy. LOLz!!! Here's the recipe

Chocolate chip blondies

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon table salt

6 tablespoons light butter

1 1/2 cups unpacked brown sugar

2 large egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup mini choc. chips

1/3 cup water

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. 

In small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

In large bowl, beat brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add egg whites and vanilla. Gradually beat in flour mixture, alternating with water. Stir in choc. chips.

Spread into a foil-lined (or greased) 9x13" baking pan. Bake until golden, about 20-25 min. (it took 20 for moi)

Cool on wire rack. 

Remove foil and cut into 24 2-inch squares.

Popovers!

This morning I woke up and my parents and I went upstairs to have breakfast. They were both eating fruit and yogurt, but I thought, I want a freshly baked pastry. I pulled out a cookbook to make some blueberry muffins and stumbled across a recipe for popovers. I had never made these before, so stupidly I used paper muffin tin liners and filled up the cups to the top because I had leftover batter. Well, they spilled over but didn't look bad. Once we got the muffin cups off, we were left with popover tops. We ate them with jelly and they were good anyway :-)

             Popovers (from The Everything Kids Cookbook)

     Makes 6 Popovers

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1 cup milk

3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup flour

Dash of salt

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spray the muffin tin pan, popover pan or individual custard cups with cooking spray. (DO NOT line with cupcake papers)

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk.

Add the milk, melted butter, flour, and salt, and stir until the mixture is smooth.

Pour the egg mixture into the prepared pan so each cup is about 2/3 full.

Bake 25-35 minutes, or until your popovers are puffed up and golden brown.

Remove popovers from pan. Serve warm or cold, with butter or jam. 

Button Cupcakes

Last Friday, I got home from school and felt like doing some baking. I was looking through a cookbook that I got for my birthday and I found a recipe for some cute cupcakes. They are basic vanilla cupcake batter with a hershey kiss pressed into the middle. My friend was coming over and we both love "Wicked," so I decided to add some green colored sugar on the top. When my friend got to my house, the first thing we did was eat cupcakes. The picture below shows them before they went into the oven.

Button Cupcakes (from Honest Pretzels)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 stick butter

12 Hershey's Kisses

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl. Add the sugar. Mix and make a dent in the center.

Put the eggs, milk, and vanilla to a bowl. 

Melt the butter and add it to the milk mixture. Whisk to combine. Pour this mixture into the dent in the flour mixture.

Beat with electric mixer on low speed for 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl in the middle.

Divide the batter evenly into the 12 muffin cups.

Put a Hershey's Kiss, pointing down, into the center of each cupcake. Push it down, but not so far that you can't see the top anymore. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool 15 minutes before eating.

Tropical Dulce de Leche Cake

Two weeks ago, my parents and I were invited to go have dinner at some friends' house. My mom, as always, volunteered to bring dessert. Then she came to me, saying that she had thought of a cake recipe based on a Brazilian dessert. 

Here's the recipe:

1 9x13" white sheet cake

1 recipe buttercream frosting

1 jar dulce de leche

1 can crushed pineapple

sweetened coconut shavings (the kind you get in bags at the grocery store)

First, cut the cake into two layers and then in half. Put one quarter of the cake on your cake board. Put one layer of dulce de leche on. Put another quarter of the cake on top, then a layer of crushed pineapple. Then the third quarter and another layer of dulce de leche. Put on the final layer and cover the entire cake with buttercream. Before the buttercream hardens, pat the coconut all over. Makes 20 servings.