Late Post : Carrot Cupcakes, Halloween Festivites, and My Betrothed's Birthday

I have been MIA as of late, and it's because I've found myself busier than usual! Between Halloween, a hurricane, and cake orders at home, my blog has fallen by the wayside. :(  But no more!

The weekend before Halloween, I threw a Halloween Monster Mash/ Birthday Bash (for Roger's birthday). It was much fun, the food was amazing, and the costumes were awesome! I DIYed my devil costume, and managed to look quite snazzy-- except my corset was KILLING me. I think it was actually shifting my organs around! Eek! My Betrothed was an indie hipster (complete with finger mustache!) Thrifting for his clothes was a lot of hard work!

Anyhoo, for the party, I made carrot cupcakes, which were requested by my Betrothed, the birthday boy! I didn't really like how mixes turned out, so I went with a scratch carrot cake recipe. I obtained it from Taste of Home and the recipe can be found here. It came out tasty, but I wanted it more moist, so I may keep searching for other recipes or try to tweak this one in the future.

I topped my cupcakes with my cream cheese buttercream and Halloween sprinkles and voila!

The party-goers loved them-- and so did my Betrothed. :)

The next day, I made his birthday cake, which was The Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. He is a huge Tolkien fan-- so much so, that I'm pretty sure he's already getting in line for The Hobbit in theaters next month. I made my new trusty chocolate cake recipe and filled it with Dr. Oetker chocolate mousse. It was quite delicious and very moist. It was a hit with Roger and his family. :)

The writing is "Happy Birthday, Roger" in Elvish, I think

Slay that Eye! grrr

Ah, yes, this is my 100th post!!! It seemed like just yesterday that I started rambling about delicious sweet goodies. 2 years and 100 posts later, I am very proud that I've actually kept this up! (she said after a long hiatus)

Brown Sugar Bacon Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream

Good afternoon, all! It's definitely been a while since I posted. It's mainly because I've had a dry spell in cake orders. :( But I've also been busy at work. This past weekend, Roger (my Betrothed) celebrated the completion of his first year at law school! So I wanted to surprise him with a delicious treat made with something he loves. I've done the chocolate, the peanut butter, and even chocolate and peanut butter. So I went a bit more out of the box...

BACON!!

And speaking of "out of the box," I made these cupcakes from scratch! :)

•  1/2 c bacon, cooked and chopped (about 8 pieces)
• 2 Tbsp bacon grease, cooled
• 1 c loosely packed dark brown sugar (you can also use light)
• 1 large egg
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 c milk
• 1/2 c (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

 First, start by frying up the bacon.

Save the grease and let it cool!

Also, melt the butter and let it cool.
Then preheat the oven to 350 and line your cupcake pans. This recipe was intended for 12 cupcakes, but I ended up with 15.

In a bowl the dry ingredients go. Then stir them with a fork to blend.

In a larger bowl, whisk the brown sugar and egg until smooth. Then slowly pour in the melted butter, bacon grease, vanilla,and milk, whisking until all is combined.

Add the dry ingredients and mix with a spoon until smooth.

Then fold in that chopped bacon!

Scoop the batter with a 1/4 c measure and bake for 16-19 minutes.

Check the bacon bits!

Yum!

While the cupcakes are cooling,candy some bacon to go on top. Toss 5 strips of bacon in 1/3 c of brown sugar and 1/2 tsp black pepper. Lay the bacon out on a parchment-line backing sheet and sprinkle the strip with the remaining brown sugar mixture.

Place another piece of parchment on top and another baking sheet on top of that, so that the bacon lays flat while baking. Bake at 325 for 20 minutes, then check the bacon. If it is still soft, place the bacon back in the oven for another 15 - 20 minutes. Remove top pan and parchment and let cool.

To make the maple buttercream, I added some prepared maple icing (found at cake supply stores) to my vanilla buttercream. Another alternative is adding 2 Tbsp of actual maple syrup to the buttercream, or adding maple flavor (although I don't know how authentic the flavor tastes).

 I added a drizzle of the leftover maple icing and some fudge icing (just for a little chocolate kick) and a piece of the candied bacon on top. These turned out amazing! :) I was super-excited that the cupcakes turned out awesome, and these will definitely go on the menu in my future bakery. :)

I also had a fun time making these cuppin' cakes. I felt like I was on Epic Meal Time, bacon-flippin', candying bacon, and a-drippin' that choc-uh-late sawse!

Congrats to Roger for completing his 1L year!

Made with Love

 In recent news, my Beloved has now become my Betrothed! :) I'm very excited and I wanted to celebrate the occasion with a special little cake. One of his favorite things to eat is sour cream (he could probably eat a whole tub in five seconds flat), so I found Paula Deen's Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake. I cut the recipe in half because I wanted to make a small cake:

• 1/4 pound (1 stick) butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 tsp orange extract ( I used vanilla)
• 1/4 tsp almond extract

1) Preheat oven to 350. Then grease two 6-inch round pans
2) Cream butter and sugar together then add sour cream.

3) Sift flour and baking soda together. Add to creamed mixture, alternately with the eggs, one at a time.
4) Add extracts and stir to combine.
5) Pour into pans and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.

Cool the cakes in the pans for 10 minutes then turn them out into cooling racks.

"But wait!" you might interject, "why is there a square cake up there?" Well, during the turning-out step, I lost some cake, so I had to ice between the layers and cut them down (the cake waste was still tasty!) It's all good-- no shame in it. Hmph.

So after the sides were cut down, I iced the cake, smoothed it a bit, then chilled it in the freezer to set the buttercream. Then I used a handy-dandy Wilton spatula to get really straight edges.

The hardened icing made it really easy to shave down any bumpy parts.

ooooh ahhhh

I wanted to keep things simple, so I used some black icing to make a little swirl pattern and a snail trail border. And voila!

My betrothed loved it! The cake was quite moist and I loved how it paired with my Butter-Almond buttercream. Yum!