Birthday cupcakes

A few weeks ago, one of my favorite coworkers asked me to do him a favor, and it was a favor I could not refuse. His son works in our office, too, and was turning 18 the next day, so the coworker asked if I would mind making something for Ben's birthday. After a few semi-teasing exchanges demanding that this coworker make deadline or stop filing long stories, I agreed to make cupcakes. (Don't hate - I'm a sucker for baking!) I didn't have a ton of time, but I thought I had enough basic ingredients so that I could avoid a trip to the store.

I wanted to try a new recipe, so I searched the internet and found a basic cupcake recipe. I usually make the Wilton buttercream recipe but wanted to try something a bit different without the Wilton meringue powder, too (because I *knew* was out of that).

To me, the cupcakes themselves seemed to lack much of a sweet flavor, but the frosting helped bring that balance back. I might try substituting a different flavor for the vanilla or adding a bit more vanilla next time I try these to give them more of a cake flavor.

Ben loved having a baked surprise at work - he thought no one would even know it was his birthday - and he got a lot of attention once people knew the cupcakes were to celebrate his big day. (He did annoy a few of us with his "I'm so old! I'm working on my birthday" comments - cuz c'mon, kid, you're EIGHTEEN.) Ben shared his birthday treats and left me a super sweet note thanking me for them.

Easy Cupcake

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 large eggs

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add shortening, milk, and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape side of bowl with a spatula.

Add eggs to the mixture. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape bowl again. Beat on high speed for 1 minute 30 seconds until well mixed.

Spoon cupcake batter into paper liners until 1/2 to 2/3 full.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool 5 minutes in pans then remove and place on wire racks to cool completely.

Once cupcakes are completely cooled, frost with your favorite frosting recipe or decorate as you desire.

Buttercream frosting

Ingredients

* 1 cup unsalted butter or margarine, room temperature (use vegetable shortening when pure white icing is needed)
* 1/2 cup milk, room temperature
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons vanilla or other desired flavoring
* 2 pounds confectioners' sugar

Directions

Combine all the ingredients in large mixing bowl and mix at slow speed until smooth. If stiffer icing is needed, or if the weather is very warm, add a little extra sugar. This recipe is enough to cover and fill a 9 by 13-inch sheet cake or 2 (9-inch) layers.

Sources: cupcakerecipes.com (cupcakes), Food Network (buttercream)

Another baby shower cake

A few weeks ago one of my husband's coworkers asked me to make a cake for another coworker, Erica, who is expecting a little baby girl any minute now. I agreed because I heart baking. Kelly told me the shower's theme would be either polka dots, daisies or birds/nesting. I had several ideas for the first two themes and one rather lackluster idea for the birds/nesting theme.

Alas, birds/nesting won. The color of the shower, Kelly told me, was Tiffany Blue (I had several moments of enjoyment while trying to explain to Tim, my husband, what Tiffany Blue is exactly). I started brainstorming and finally came up with the idea to have a two-tiered cake (my first tiered adventure!) and frost it with Tiffany Blue (or as close as I could get) buttercream. To bring in the birds/nesting theme, I used a rather poor hodge-podge Haystack recipe to make a nest. I molded the nest by keeping in a regular ceramic bowl, and when the morning of the shower arrived, I put the nest on top of the cake and placed Jordan Almond "eggs" inside.


For my first tiered cake, I think it turned out pretty well (mostly meaning "Hey, it didn't collapse!"). Everyone at the shower seemed to like it, and while it was not my best work, I was happy with the challenges it presented.

Oreo cupcakes with Oreo buttercream

Full disclosure: I am not a big cupcake person. I am realllly not a big chocolate person. Give me vanilla any day, but chocolate is usually not something I crave/request/desire.

This being said, I have no idea how I arrived at wanting so desperately to make the Oreo cupcakes I've seen on Heather's blog.

Tim went to a Guitar Hero party this weekend, so I volunteered (OK, demanded that I be allowed) to make something. A girl has got to blog, after all.

So I used the recipe that Heather found/adapted and had great success. I even purchased a teeny-tiny food chopper for the Oreos. (This was the highlight of my week.) The only issue I had was that I made 24 cupcakes, like Heather did, but I had a little bit of batter left over and put it in a pie pan. But the cupcakes still overflowed. I think I could easily have made 30 cupcakes and still had batter left over. Next time I make these I will not fill the cupcake tins so full, and I will make more of them. I think I also need a new decorating tip for the frosting, but that was a minor detail for this time around. Half of the cupcakes were delivered to Tim's party and half went to my coworkers.

I'm not going to kid you. The Oreo buttercream? DE-LIC-IOUS. I didn't have any vanilla, though (I ran out the day before, I swear!), so I used 1/2 teaspoon of Wilton butter flavoring and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract.

A good tip from Heather that I didn't see until after I made my cupcakes: Cut your Oreos in half to garnish the cupcakes FIRST. Some will crack or break and not split in to perfect halves, so you can use the cracked/broken ones to grind up for your cake batter and buttercream instead of wasting them. (I found it handy to pop 'em in my mouth if they were broken, but I think Heather's approach is better for my waistline.)

I'm also going to use the cake recipe for a baby shower I'm co-hosting early next month. (I'm doing a chocolate cake and a vanilla cake, and I have some leads on some mighty promising vanilla cakes.) And I'm making another recipe from Heather's blog for the craft party I'm hosting next weekend. Get. Excited. And that's just what I have PLANNED, not including spontaneous baking that might appear in the blog!

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

(Source: Hersheys.com)

Ingredients:
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup boiling water
- 8-10 Oreo cookies, crushed or put through food processor (optional) - Heather's addition

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans (For cupcakes or other pan sizes, see variations listed below.)


2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, Oreo crumbs and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.

3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely.

VARIATIONS:
ONE-PAN CAKE: Grease and flour 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Heat oven to 350° F. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Cool completely. Frost.

THREE LAYER CAKE: Grease and flour three 8-inch round baking pans. Heat oven to 350°F. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks. Cool completely. Frost.

BUNDT CAKE: Grease and flour 12-cup Bundt pan. Heat oven to 350°F. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 50 to 55 minutes. Cool 15 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely. Frost.

CUPCAKES: Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups. Heat oven to 350°F. Fill cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool completely. Frost. About 30 cupcakes. (Note from Heather: I filled my muffin cups about 3/4 full to get bigger cupcakes, so I only got 24 out of the recipe.)

Oreo Buttercream

Ingredients:
- 1 cup shortening or butter (I use shortening so it doesn't have to be refrigerated)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp. water
- 1 lb. confectioner's sugar (if you don't have a scale, it's approximately 4 cups)
- 1 tbsp. meringue powder
- 12-14 Oreos, finely crushed in food processor

Directions:
1. In bowl of stand mixer, cream shortening, vanilla, and water.

2. Add confectioner's sugar, meringue powder, and crushed Oreos. Mix until well combined.


3. At this point, your frosting will be very thick. To top cupcakes, it's better to have medium to thin consistency icing, so you'll have to add more water. I probably added another 2-3 tbsp. to get the desired consistency, but you'll want to add the water little by little to make sure you don't add too much. When it's the right consistency, it should be pretty easy to stir by hand (think about whether you'd be able to easily squeeze it out of a piping bag). If you accidentally make it too thin (runny), add more confectioner's sugar.

Once cupcakes were completely cool, use a piping bag to add a decorative swirl on top of each one. Then push one half of an Oreo cookie into the frosting for garnish.

A Signing Day cake and buttercream icing

A lot of journalists have been leaving the profession lately. Many are finding related careers, others are going back to school.

One of my dear work friends, Julia, has been on the journey to law school for the last few months. She took the LSAT, scored extremely well and proceeded to apply to about a dozen or so prestigious schools. At work, we've followed her journey - the financial aid applications, the acceptance letters, the visits to several campuses.

Julia worked in sports with me one day a week for several months. (We've lost a few staffers and she helped fill in a gap in our schedules.) She usually works on the news desk. She often wound up with the craziest sports section of the week, but one section really rose above the rest: high school Signing Day. This is the day that most high school athletes announce where they'll play on the collegiate level. There are balloons, banners, letters of intent. Their parents sit next to them in photos as their high school coach and sometimes their future college coach stand behind them. It's highly publicized for football players, but tennis, baseball, softball, golf and track stars often sign on Signing Day, too. It's always the same time of year, and at the Times, we really blow it out because we have a very extensive prep sports audience.

This year's Signing Day fell on a Julia shift. And there was absolutely no pre-planning done for it (in the past, with larger staffs, we've had the time and resources to really prepare for things like this). It also fell right after the Super Bowl, which was in Tampa this year, so any resources we did have had been mostly exhausted on our Super Bowl coverage. So Julia reallllly got the short stick on this one and was thrown in to the fire. She rose like a pro and conquered all of the Signing Day stuff like she'd been doing it every day (although I don't think I saw her get up from her chair once during the shift, not even for a bathroom break). I know it was probably one of the most stressful shifts she's had at the Times to date.

After a few weeks, we were able to joke about it. And some of us decided that after all of the hype over her law school selection, we should stage a Signing Day for Julia. We had fake parents lined up, a coach (the sports editor), photos, video, etc. It was set for April 15. But as the day approached, Julia knew she wouldn't be able to make a well-informed decision because some of her scholarship offers were still not finalized. So we pushed it back to April 23.

On April 23, Julia was comfortable with and excited about her decision. She'd been trying to throw people off track for days, and she was ready to unveil the big choice. We had cupcakes with little pennants representing her narrowed-down choices (Virginia, Columbia, NYU and Duke). We had a poll of where everyone thought she was going to go. We had a mock letter of intent saying she promises to attend the school for one year and won't be recruited or violate NCAA rules.

Julia made hats, too, and that was how she revealed her choice - after wanding over all of the hats, she picked the school where she will be a law student this fall: Duke. (For the record, she'd long ago ruled out schools like UNC, Vanderbilt and Penn. She'd also been wait listed by Harvard and Michigan. I think the only school where she wasn't accepted was Berkeley, and really, who needs Berkeley anyway?)

I had asked her to let me know her choice earlier than the actual Signing Day so I could make a cake with her school of choice. (Then I lied when anyone asked me if I knew where she was going, hehe.) Luckily for me, she chose a school with one of the easier logos. To make the cake, I used a Betty Crocker cake mix and my buttercream icing recipe (below) from my good old days taking Wilton cake decorating classes in Pittsburgh.

Julia went to UNC for her undergrad and is a Tar Heel through and through, but Duke has a very good law school, offered good scholarship money and is close to her family. It's a good place for her husband to look for a new job, too (he's a reporter in Tampa). She vows to never root for the Blue Devils or become one of the Cameron Crazies.

She's going to be at the Times through July, and we're going to miss her more than she'll know. But at least we'll know a good lawyer if we ever need one ...

Buttercream icing (stiff consistency):

Ingredients:
1 cup solid white vegetable shortening
1 teaspoon Wilton Flavor (Vanilla, Almond or Butter)
2 tablespoons milk or water
1 lb. pure cane confectioner's sugar (approximately 4 cups)
1 tablespoon Wilton Meringue Powder
A pinch of salt (optional)

Directions:
Cream shortening, flavoring and water. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. (If you have a hand mixer, be careful to not burn out the motor. This is easiest to make with a stand mixer, but I made it for years with a hand mixer, too.) Blend an additional minute or so, until creamy.

Wilton offers food coloring that is perfect for coloring this buttercream icing - if you tried to use regular food coloring, you'd use a ton of it and get mild change in color. I used a royal blue Wilton color for the blue on Julia's cake.

Source: The Wilton Method of Cake Decorating Course 1

Video of Julia's announcement: