22 Pineapple Nut Cupcakes with Spiced Rum Icing

Another Manager In Training has completed his rounds at work and I got wind that his last day was coming up. We all wished he was staying with us instead of being shipped off to another location, but life sucks like that sometimes. So as a goodbye gift, naturally I offered him cupcakes. After he told me he didn't care what kind of cupcakes I made, I asked what his "favorite alcoholic beverage" is. He responded, "anything with Captain Morgan". Done! We all know that the cupcakes with the booze in them go over better than anything. That night when I got home I set off into internet-land and this is what I came up with.

With a lovely baking assistant by my side and all the necessary ingredients purchased, I was going to whip up these cupcakes (despite not feeling the greatest) before work so they could be nice and fresh. This recipe has a boxed cake mix so it's perfect if you're in a hurry and need to bake something quick. The first thing I did was strain the crushed pineapple. I just ripped the pull tab lid off, put it back on top of the pineapple in the can, and pushed it down. Don't forget to save the juice to use in the recipe. When you're buying the pineapple, make sure you get the kind in the juice, not the heavy syrup. The amount of juice that I got out of the pineapple wasn't quite the 1/2 cup that the recipe calls for and I knew that I wanted to put some in the icing as well, so I just added a little water (about 1/4 cup). Just enough to make the pineapple juice go a little further, but not really water it down. I mixed all the ingredients together and spooned the batter into the cupcake pan. It was a little on the thicker side so I expected these to be dense cupcakes and to take a little longer in the oven. The baking time in the recipe is for a tube pan so, based on my extensive cupcake knowledge, I put the cupcakes in the oven for 20 minutes. When I checked them when the timer went off, I wasn't expecting them to be done, but ridiculously enough they were perfect! Sometimes even I still amaze myself.

After the cupcakes cooled for a little, I started the icing. Looking at what the recipe said, I knew something wasn't quite right. So once again, I referenced all the cupcake information in the vast archives of my mind and altered it some. I added a cup of butter and then added all the other ingredients. It still needed something. I threw the rest of the pineapple juice in and a little more sugar. One more taste and we thought it needed more rum. So more booze and even more sugar. By then we had gotten it right. It ended up being about 2 cups powdered sugar, 1 cup butter, 1/4 cup pineapple juice, and 1/4 cup spiced rum. Go easy when adding the liquids though, just to be safe. My helper assisted me in icing the cupcakes, and we were done just in time to get ready for work.

Chunky Walnutty Batter

Seeing that I wasn't feeling too hot, I packed up a cupcake for me to eat later. Based on the reactions I got from work though, I didn't do half bad with these cupcakes. I got a kiss on the forehead. A proposal. And plenty of oh-my-god-those were-sooo-good's. The manager that I made the cupcakes for told me that he ate 4 of them before leaving that night. In my book, that's a success. The next morning, I felt a ton better and I shared my cupcake with my mom for breakfast. They really were that good. You can't even tell they were made with a cake mix. There wasn't a ton of walnuts, so if you're not a big fan of them, you shouldn't turn away from making these just for that reason. The little bits of pineapple were my favorite part. Like a juicy little surprise. And there wasn't a lot of pineapple that it made the cake sticky. I was surprised the most at how fluffy the cake was. I said that I expected it to be dense based on how thick the batter was. It was a cupcake miracle. The icing was a little sweet, but the flavor matched the cupcakes. It didn't take away at all from the overall taste.

Cupcake Ingredients
1 package pudding-included yellow cake mix
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 eggs
1/2 c Captain Morgan
1/2 c water (reserved pineapple juice may be used)
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 (8.25 oz) can crushed pineapple, drained
1/2 c walnuts, chopped as finely as possible

Cupcake How to
1. Preheat oven to 350. Place cupcake liners in 2 pans.
2. Combine first six ingredients; beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in pineapple and walnuts. 3. Divide batter into lined cupcake pan. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool cupcakes.

Icing Ingredients
2 c powdered sugar
1 c butter
1/4 c pineapple juice
1/4 c Captain Morgan

Icing How to
Beat butter until light and fluffy. Slowly add sugar. Add liquid ingredients in equal parts until desired consistency is reached. (You might not use all of the juice or rum). Spread or pipe on cupcakes.

adapted from grouprecipes.com

21 Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes

So, I'll admit it, I forgot to bake these for a birthday on Friday, but I know she'll forgive me with these cupcakes, even if they are 3 days late. I was saving this recipe for another occasion, but since this is what she asked for, this is what she'll get.

These cupcakes are easy-peasy. It's one of those recipes that if you're nervous about straying away from the standard boxed cake mix and pre-made icing, this would be prefect. All you need to do is mix the cake as the instructions on the box tell you to, put them in the oven, and don't forget to smile when they come out perfect.

Next, you fill the cupcakes with the jelly. Really, you could use whatever flavor of jelly you want. My friend and the recipe both said strawberry so that's what I went for. I used a long piping tip made for filling cupcakes, but a regular one would work just fine. If you don't have tips at all, you could core the cupcakes and spoon the jelly in. All you do is put the tip into the cupcake and squeeze, slowly pull out the tip, and that's that. Be careful though: the jelly is thinner than icing, so it will drip out. I didn't use 2 cups of jelly. I just put all the extra back in the jelly container.

 

Finally, the icing. An easy icing from scratch. A little bit of butter, some peanut butter, a dash of vanilla, powdered sugar, and a touch of milk. I didn't used all the milk the recipe called for. If you add it slowly, like the recipe suggest, just stop when you get to the consistency that you like.


Crumbly Icing before You Add
the Milk

This cupcake was yummy. You're pretty much guaranteed that everything will be perfect. I probably could have squeezed some more jelly into the cupcakes. The peanut butter icing masks the flavor of the strawberry. But otherwise these are simple to make and delicious to eat. Perfect for packing into your kid's lunch or bringing with on a picnic... or even for a belated birthday.

Lily Loves Licking the Peanut
Butter out of the Empty Container

Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes Ingredients
1 package (about 18 oz) yellow cake mix, plus ingredients to prepare mix
2 c strawberry jelly
3/4 c creamy peanut butter
1/2 c (I stick) butter, softened
2 c powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 c milk

Every Doggie Gets to
Lick the Spoon!

How to
1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 22 standard (2 1/2-inch) muffin cups with paper baking cups. Prepare cake mix according to package directions. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling two-thirds full.
2. Bake 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes. Remove to wire racks; cool completely.
3.  Fill pastry bag fitted with small round tip with jelly. Insert tip into top of cupcake; squeeze bag gently to fill center of cupcake with jelly. (Stop squeezing when you feel resistance or jelly comes out of top of cupcake.) Repeat with remaining cupcakes and jelly.
4. Beat peanut butter and butter in medium bowl with electric mixer at medium speed 2 minutes or until smooth. Add powdered sugar and vanilla; beat at low speed 1 minute or until crumbly. Slowly add milk, beating until creamy. Pipe or spread onto cupcakes.

from The Cupcake Bible

30 Chocolate Covered Pretzel Cupcakes

So it isn't any one's birthday, and I wasn't baking for no reason, so I was baking for the only other reason, someone is leaving work. I'm sad to see her go, but she's off to greener pastures. When I found out, I offered cupcakes, as always. I asked if she wanted alcohol and I got a no. The only request I got was for ganache. I can handle that.

The idea for these cupcakes has been sitting in my head for a while now (just without the ganache). These are kind of a Frankenstein cupcakes you could say. I knew exactly every element of these cupcakes that I wanted. I wanted a pretzel crust on the bottom, a chocolate cupcake, and chocolate icing to roll in pretzel crumbs... All to be topped off with an actual chocolate covered pretzel. The Internet is a beautiful resource. I looked up recipes for all the stuff plus the chocolate ganache and mathed the amounts in the recipes to where they needed to be.

For the various steps of baking these cupcakes I enlisted the help of some very lovely, very beautiful, and if you ask my mother, very loud assistants. It made for quick work, especially for the end steps. It's so much more fun baking with company, it might be my new thing.

The first thing you need to do is make the ganache. It needs time to cool. The few recipes that I read suggested letting it cool overnight. I made mine first thing in the morning. I made the recipe as I found in on the website. I obviously didn't know how much I would need until the end. To save you some ingredients, you can make half of what the recipe calls for. For how intimidating making something fancy sounding can be, this was simple. One of my magnificent assistants and I chopped up all the chocolate. I used semisweet baking chocolate. The kind that comes in individually wrapped squares. We poured the heated heavy cream over the chocolate and it melted instantly. We whisked it, and whisked it, and whisked it. At first it just looked like milk with brown specks in it and melty chocolate settled in the bottom of the bowl, and then, all of a sudden, like magic, it turned into gorgeously smooth liquid chocolate. The ganache got poured into a 9x13 cake pan so it would cool faster, since I failed to do it overnight.

The next element of my chocolate covered pretzel cupcakes was the pretzel crust. The recipe I found for this was enough to make a dozen cupcakes. I was expecting to make 2 dozen cupcakes so I initially doubled the measurements. Initially the mixture was a little buttery so I added extra pretzel crumbs until there wasn't a lot of excess butter.

Then, I made the cupcakes. I also doubled this recipe. It was a lot of ingredients to fit into the stand mixer. To avoid a huge mess, put a hand towel over the head of the mixer and the mixing bowl to prevent the dry ingredients from flying everywhere. A little will still find its' way out of the sides, but at least the mess is more concentrated and not all over you. I had enough batter to fill the anticipated 24 already pretzel-crust-filled liners and then some. I could have easily whipped up some more crust, but I just decided to do a few without it. No harm, no foul. The cupcakes with the crust were in the oven for about 10 more minutes than the ones without it. Those were okay to come out around 20 minutes. I think all that butter in the crust and the cupcakes made everything super moist, that's my cupcake hypothesis at least.

This is where I thoroughly take advantage of having assistants. Assistant Task #1: Core the cupcakes. I got her to use the apple corer and make a divot in the top of the cupcakes, instead of using the cupcake corer and taking the whole middle out. The ganache was really rich so I didn't want it to be too much. Then each little cupcake got handed off to the next step. Assistant Task #2: Fill the cupcakes. With a melon baller to scoop the ganache and a second spoon to help get it into the cupcake, my lovely helper filled every cupcake. In the meantime... Assistant Task #3: Help make the icing. While the first 2 steps were being taken care of, my third aide and I whipped up the icing. It was fairly easy, yet a little different than what I'm used to. I normally just use all butter instead of butter and solid shortening, and I usually use water instead of milk, because if you use milk, they need to stay in the fridge. Since I knew that these cupcakes were only going to be around for a few more hours, I strayed away from what I know and tried something different.

After 2 out of my 3 assistants left to get ready for work later that night, my remaining loyal helper was still there to help me finish up these cupcakes. She crushed up some more pretzels and I piped on the chocolate icing. It doesn't have to look pretty since you're not going to see it. As I finished icing the cupcakes, she took them and plopped the tops into a bowl of the pretzel crumbs. When that was accomplished, we topped each yummy Frankenstein-ed treat off with a chocolate covered pretzel.

These mash-up cupcakes appeal to chocolate lovers for sure. It's like the three Musketeers of chocolate. The cake: moist and sweet. The ganache: smooth and rich. And the icing: creamy and delicious. A chocolate trifecta. The pretzel crust was a little crumbly. It might have been the butter, or it might have been too pretzel. I'll have to mess with that and figure that one out. The bits of pretzels on top were helpful in trying to offset the chocolate with some saltiness, but I don't think it got the job done. Possibly without a chocolate element the pretzels could have balanced out alright. Still, these cupcakes were awesome. This is definitely a better, sweeter way to think about Frankenstein.

I made my ganache according to this recipe and had a ton left over, half of this would be enough for 2 dozen cupcakes.
from easy-cake-ideas.com
Chocolate Ganache Ingredients
2 c heavy cream
16 oz chocolate, finely chopped

Chocolate Ganache How to
1. Put cream in a microwave safe bowl and heat on high for 2-3 minutes, until just about to boil.
2. Put chocolate in a medium sized glass bowl and put hot cream over.
3. Let sit for a minute or two then stir with wooden spoon until completely smooth.
4. Chill the ganache to a thick spreading consistency. This takes several hour (Chill overnight and stir right before using)


Double the ingredients listed
from howsweeteats.com
Pretzel Crust Ingredients
1 1/4 c crushed, salted pretzels
1/4 c unsalted butter, melted

Pretzel Crust How to
1. Combine pretzels and butter in a bowl and stir until entire mixture is moistened.
2. Line a muffin tin with liners and using a tablespoon measuring spoon, scoop pretzels into the bottom of each liner. Use the back of the spoon to flatten and press the pretzels together.

Double the recipe for 2 dozen cupcakes
from marthastewart.com
Chocolate Cupcake Ingredients
3/4 c cocoa powder
3/4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c unsalted butter
1 c sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c sour cream

Chocolate Cupcake How to
1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 12-cup standard muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Into a medium bowl, sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each, then beat in vanilla. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with sour cream and beginning and ending with flour.
3. Pour batter into cup, filling each 3/4 full. Bake until toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. 20-25 minutes.
4. Cool in pan for 5 minutes; transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

Leave recipe as is! It's the perfect amount of icing.
from wilton.com
Dark Chocolate Icing Ingredients
1/2 c solid vegetable shortening
1/2 c butter
1 c cocoa
1 tsp vanilla
4 c powdered sugar
4-5  Tbsp milk
3-4 Tbsp light corn syrup (optional)

Icing How to
1. Cream shortening and butter with mixer. Add cocoa and vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium. Scrape sides and bottom often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium until light and fluffy.
2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of corn syrup per recipe to thin icing if desired.