Search Results halloween cupcakes « a whisk and a spoon

Vanilla Cupcakes with Vanilla Frosting

October 30, 2009 at 11:52 am | Posted in cupcakes, sweet things | 14 Comments

In order to keep myself from unloading a bag of fun size KIT KATs straight into my mouth, it’s time I bake up my annual Halloween cupcakes…annually featuring these black and orange sprinkles. What?? I only get one chance a year to use them! I just hope they never go bad, because I’ve still barely made a dent in the jar (so expect to see them for years to come!).

This is a recipe that I came across in Everyday Food, so not only are they easy cupcakes to eat, they are also ridiculously easy to make! And the flavor’s just a simple vanilla on vanilla, so they’d be good anytime of year. The cakes had a good texture– they were nice and moist, even on day three (stored in the fridge, and brought to room temp before eating). I don’t often whip up this type of powdered sugar and butter frosting. While it may not have the refined, melt-in-your-mouthiness that my favorite Swiss meringue buttercreams have, it’s homey and familiar, and I like it a lot.

Vanilla Cupcakes- makes 12
from Everyday Food (October 2005)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup reduced-fat sour cream

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard (12-cup) muffin tin with paper liners. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

-With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined. Beat in vanilla.

-With the mixer on low speed, gradually beat in flour mixture and sour cream in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour. Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups.

-Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before spreading with frosting.

Vanilla Frosting- makes 1 cup
from Everyday Food (October 2005)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt

-In a small bowl, beat together butter, sugar, milk, vanilla, and salt until light and fluffy. Use immediately, or cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate up to 3 days. Before using, bring to room temperature.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes

October 28, 2008 at 4:56 am | Posted in cupcakes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 38 Comments

Growing up, Halloween was totally my favorite holiday (or sort-of holiday, really). I was like Linus, waiting all year for the Great Pumpkin to appear. I went trick-or-treating long after I really should have stopped…until I was 16! Every year, when I would get home with my loot, I’d go immediately to my bedroom, tip the contents of my plastic pumpkin onto the floor and form a sort of crude candy hierarchy out of it. Things like raisins, Raisinets, Chunky Bars and Good ‘N Plenty went immediately to my parents. Then the chocolate bars were divided into order of preference– Kit Kats, Twix, Charleston Chew and Reese’s were at the top of the heap. From the ”other” category, I was a special fan of rootbeer Dum Dums and Now and Laters. I wouldn’t gorge on the candy, but it eat it slowly and methodically over the month of November…the whole process seems quite demented now that I think about it.

When Clara of I Heart Food4Thought asked us to put a costume on the Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes she’d chosen for TWD, I was happy to get in the spirit of things, so to speak. I was chin-deep in packing materials when I made these, however, so I didn’t have too much time for creativity– thank goodness for colored sprinkles!

If you have Dorie’s book, you may notice that my cupcakes don’t look quite the same as hers, and it’s not just that mine are crawling with spiders! I finally polished off a bag of white chocolate pistoles, that had been my life’s mission to use up before I left Sydney, by making white chocolate frosting instead of dark. (That accomplished, I’ll now have to find a new, and hopefully less frivolous, life’s mission.) I didn’t actually measure the powdered sugar in the frosting recipe…just kept adding until it was spreadable.

These were good…nothing life-altering, buy hey, they’re just simple chocolate cupcakes after all. I’d make them again, though, for sure. Do test them early, as there were several reports of dry cupcakes in the TWD group…I pulled mine from the oven about two minutes before the recommended time, and they were just fine. For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, or read CB’s post. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll to see what over 250 other people had to say! Happy Halloween!!

Leftover Bostini Cream Cupcakes

October 31, 2007 at 6:58 am | Posted in cupcakes, sweet things | 12 Comments

Boy, even though I scaled back that Bostini cream pie recipe I made along with the Daring Bakers, I still had a ton of stuff leftover! Enough to make Bositini cream cupcakes! I had baked my chiffon cakes in a muffin tin, so they were in cupcake form already. I just cut a bit out from the center of each, filled them with leftover custard and topped them with glaze that had cooled to frosting consistency.