Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes

You know when you get that craving to something sweet and chocolatey. Well this cupcake will definintely satisfy that craving. Chocolate and hazelnut coming together is the perfect combination! Just be sure to have a glass of milk handy to wash it all down. These are amazingly rich and delicious!

Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes:

Base:
You can use any chocolate cake recipe you like. I used the chocolate cake recipe from Chef in Training. You'll notice the recipe on the site is for Nutella cupcakes. I used the cake part, but switched up everything else. 

Most cupcakes bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes. Let your cupcakes cool completely. Once cool, make a small hole in the center of each cupcake by removing some of the cake and fill with some nutella. 

Chocolate Hazelnut Buttercream:

1 stick butter, softened
1/2-3/4 cup chocolate hazelnut spread (start by adding 1/2 cup and increase if you would like more flavor)
1-2 TBS milk
1 tsp vanilla
4-5 cups powdered sugar
Chopped hazelnuts for garnishing (optional)

Beat Butter and hazelnut spread. Add 1 TBS milk and vanilla. Slowly add in the powdered sugar until you reach desired consistency. Add more milk if your frosting is too think, a tablespoon at a time. Pipe onto cooled cupcakes and top with chopped hazelnuts. 

Yummy!

Lime Rickey Cupcakes

 One of my most favorite drinks, especially in the summertime is Lime Rickeys. One of my other most favorite things is cupcakes thanks to the Talented Terrace Girl Teresa introducing me. I have really developed a love of cupcakes and baking them! I think my family and friends love my passion for baking cupcakes as well as they are my main test tasters! The best part of baking cupcakes is creating a recipe and having it turn out to be a great success! Well I have wanted to make a Lime Rickey cupcake because I absolutely love lime rickeys and figured hey that would make a good cupcake. Well the other day I did it! This cupcake tastes like a lime rickey. Yum is all I gotta say!

Lime Rickey Cupcakes

Base:

• 1 white cake mix
• 2 TBS oil
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup water
• zest and juice of 1-2 limes (I used 1 1/2 limes)

Mix all ingredients together, fill muffin tins with liners and fill liners 3/4 of the way full. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes. Cool completely on a cooling rack.

Grape Buttercream:

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1 small package grape jello
• 5 cups powdered sugar-give or take

Beat butter and cream cheese together for about two minutes. Add vanilla and grape jello and mix until well combined. Add powdered sugar until you reach desired consistency. Pipe onto cupcakes. Garnish each cupcake with a slice of lime if desired and enjoy!

Makes 3 dozen cupcakes

Sweet Tooth Tuesday: Chocolate Vanilla Swirled Cupcakes

Delicious and surprisingly easy these cupcakes were also made for my sisters bridal shower. The theme was tie dye but I thought that we should get some chocolate in there some how so this was my compromise.

I started out by making two cake batters, one vanilla and one chocolate. (Yes I used a box. I have a hard time bringing myself to make cake from scratch. I blame my Mom. She is an amazing cook and baker but cakes were never her thing.)

Look at my big (scary) helper.

I just used regular spoons to fill the cupcake wrappers. I alternated white and brown and ended up putting four spoonfuls total in each cup. It didn't take as long as it sounds. My pan is a little messy because I had so much "help".

Follow your recipes baking instructions.

They ended up really fun on the inside.

Next was the frosting. I used my families recipe for the vanilla frosting. It is super easy and really yummy.

Vanilla Frosting

1 1/2 lbs powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
pinch salt

Whip it all together for a few min till thick and fluffy looking. You may want to start out with half the milk and add more as you need it.

And for the chocolate we have always loved the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box.

"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Frosting

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup Cocoa

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

Melt butter. Stir in cocoa. Add powdered sugar and milk, beat on medium speed until desired consistency. Add more milk if needed. Stir in vanilla.

I was originally going to just try to dump the frosting in the piping bag, trying to get most of the chocolate on one side and most of the vanilla on the other, then hoping they would swirl together nicely. But while researching something else I came across this technique of filling a piping bag on The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle and thought it would be perfect for this. 

First you lay out a nice long piece of plastic wrap on your counter. Then you spoon one color of frosting in a line across the middle of the plastic wrap with the other color on top. (You could do as many colors or flavors as you want.) 

 Then you carefully wrap the sides of plastic over your frosting so it looks like a tube and twirl the ends till they are wrapped nice and tight.

Then you "thread" your tube through your piping bag pulling it down as far as it will go.

And cut off the extra plastic. If you have the cool piping bags with the removable tips you will want to do all this before adding your tip. I am not that cool. If you just leave the plastic near the end of your tip it will bunch up and not be pretty coming out. All you have to do is pull your tube of plastic back in your piping bag a bit so that the frosting will squeeze out and the plastic won't get in the way.

Next you swirl to your hearts content. I think they came out lovely. And yummy! My Dad ate three at the bridal shower alone.

Now I have ideas for all kinds of color and flavor mixes I could do with this same technique. Orange and vanilla, lemon and lime, chocolate and caramel. What do you think? 

Wild Card Wednesday: Fishing cupcake

Who's ready for Summer? I know we are at my house.

Here are some fun summer cupcake. We are ready to get out and do all the fun summer things.

Here are some Fishing cupcakes

Make your cupcake with whatever cake you want

Blue frosting

Sweetish Fish

Pretzels with floss tied to the top

So easy and so cute. Hope you all enjoy them and maybe the sun will come out soon so we can go fishing.

You can find this awesome post linked up to the following Fantastic Parties:

Munchkin Monday: Rainbow Bunny cupcakes

I did an Easter kid craft day with my sister and I was in charge of the treat. I wanted something easy and fun for the kids. As I was perusing the Easter isle at Walmart I saw a kit to do bunny cupcakes but it was $5 to only do 6. We were going to.have a bunch more than 6. So I figured I could make my own.  First of all....I wanted bright and fun cupcakes so I made my cupcake mix as usual (I just used white box cake mix, nothing fancy) and.then divided the batter into several cups and mixed in a few drops of food coloring.

Then I just dropped a tablespoon of each color into each cupcake and baked as normal.

You can choose any colors to go with any theme you want. Then I needed to do the ears.  All I did was melt some white chocolate chips and pour it into lines on some wax paper to harden. For the pink in the ears I had some red chips I melted and painted on but you could use white chocolate tinted with color. For the eyes we used jelly beans and the nose was leftover red chips or you could melt it and make dots. We used Twizzler pull-n-peel for the whiskers. The kids had a lot of fun putting them together but I think they enjoyed eating them more because they were already eaten before I could take any pictures of the kids.

Munchkin Monday: Sports Birthday Party

For my sons 4th birthday we did a sports party. Check out the BALL we had!

Treats: cupcakes, gummy bears, peanuts, chocolate crunch balls, popcorn, caramel popcorn, chex mix, red vines

 Games: Baseball with a racket,  

 soccer ball pinata

You can find this awesome post linked up to the following Fantastic Parties: