With Alex celebrating a "big" birthday this month, I knew I wanted to make a flavor I had never tried before. Every year I ask him to come up with a new flavor combo that will make his birthday just that much better, and each year I hope to be able to top the peanut butter and jelly cupcakes that have held the crown as reigning champion in Alex's "best birthday cake of all time" category.

After a lot of flavor idea deliberation and back and forth between the two of us over the last several weeks, I had a lightbulb moment. One of the flavors of our wedding cake was lemon cake with a delicious raspberry filling and decadent vanilla buttercream. Alex loved this cake immensely (he even devoured the top layer after it had been frozen for a year), so I used this inspiration as a jumping off point but wanted to put a twist on it to incorporate blackberries, one of his favorite fruits. So I set out to whip up a delicious lemon cupcake with blackberry buttercream for Alex's birthday celebration.

The thing I like about this recipe is that it has a manageable number of ingredients, isn't difficult to make, and the somewhat tart, dense cake is nicely complemented by the sweet buttercream frosting.

In addition to trying a new recipe, I ordered cupcake wrappers for the first time. Because I was throwing Alex a big party to celebrate his special day, I thought the occasion called for a bit more pizazz. I found these cute polka dot patterned wrappers on Amazon that dressed up the look for the occasion for little effort and little money.

Cake Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups white granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup salted butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups white all purpose flour
• 2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 cup skim milk
• 1 lemon

Frosting Ingredients:

• 1 cup salted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 cups confectioners sugar
• 1/2 cup seedless blackberry jam
• 1 container of fresh blackberries

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Line 24 muffin cups with paper liners.
• To make cake batter, using a stand mixer (preferred) or handheld mixer, cream sugar and butter until well incorporated and fluffy. One at a time, beat in eggs followed by vanilla extract.
• Beat in flour and baking powder until thoroughly combined, followed by milk, lemon zest and lemon juice to make a smooth batter.
• Using an ice cream scoop, equally divide batter among 24 muffin cups. 

• Bake for approximately 20 minutes until cupcake edges are a golden brown and cake is cooked through. Cool completely before frosting.
• Begin making frosting by beating butter and vanilla extract until smooth. 
• Mix in confectioners sugar, 1 cup at a time, to make a smooth and creamy frosting. 
• Mix in blackberry jam until well incorporated and frosting is fluffy.
• Frost cupcakes as desired. (I prefer to use a disposable pastry bag and wilton tip for a professional looking swirl.) 

• Top each cupcake with one fresh blackberry.

Yield:

24 regular size cupcakes

The cupcakes were both a beautiful and delicious addition to the party, and were given two thumbs up by all! And in case you're wondering about the "frosting spoons", we had a few guests attending the party that adhere to a gluten free diet. I didn't want them to miss out on what I think was the real star of the show, the blackberry buttercream, so I piped the leftover frosting onto a few spoons, topped by a blackberry. It was an easy and elegant way to ensure those that couldn't partake in the cake portion of the cupcake didn't go without without dessert.

The only real challenge when it came to the cupcakes was the wind. A huge gust blew in right after I had lit the candles. After a few laughs and several re-lighting attempts, the birthday boy was still able to blow out one lone lit candle to officially get his wish for the coming year.

I would definitely make these cupcakes again, and in the future might try recreating our wedding cake. Hmmm. I'm thinking lemon cupcakes, raspberry filling, and vanilla buttercream might be my next endeavor.

What's your favorite cake recipe? Do you have a favorite flavor cake and frosting to enjoy on your birthday or other special occasion? If so, I'd love to hear about it as I'm always looking for new and interesting recipes to try out.

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It feels like it's been ages since I wrote a baking post! While I haven't been diligent about documenting my various creations, I love surprising my friends and family with a homemade baked good (typically of their choosing) for their birthday.

For example, my parents' cake this past July we nicknamed the earthquake/flux capacitor cake. If the photo doesn't answer any questions you may have as to why we named it that, there was a massive crack/rift that occurred in the top layer. It was a complete and total #pinterestfail and absolutely not "blog worthy", but rest assured it was delicious and was all consumed in short order.

Alex's birthday in November brought about a labor intensive but crowd pleasing sea salt caramel cupcake. These little goodies consisted of a caramel cake, filled with gooey caramel, and topped with a swirl of sea salt caramel buttercream. Personally I found them a little too sweet, but the birthday boy gave them two thumbs up.

Which brings me to this holiday season's latest birthday treat. A good friend of ours has a December birthday, and when I asked her what kind of cake I could make her this year she was brave enough to leave it up to the baker. I poked around online for some inspiration, but no matter what I looked at I ultimately kept coming back to her favorite childhood cake, red velvet with candy cane frosting. I made this for her a few years back and wanted to put a new twist on it this time around. 

The last time I put the candy canes in the frosting I crushed them almost to dust and wasn't thrilled with the slightly gritty texture. In order to solve this issue this time around, I ultimately landed on the idea of baking a chocolate cake with a mint frosting, decorated with candy canes. 

The chocolate cake was a simple Ina Garten recipe I found online, but any recipe for your favorite chocolate cake will work well. The thing I liked about this particular recipe is that it was very moist but wasn't overly sweet which works well when paired with such a sugar rich frosting. I baked the cakes according to the recipe and then gave them ample time to cool. (They also needed a bit of extra encouragement to get them out of the pan.)

While they were cooling, I started on the mint buttercream.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (two sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 4 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoon mint extract
• 2 tablespoons fat free half and half (optional/as needed -- you can also use milk or heavy cream)
• pinch kosher salt

Directions

Using an electric mixer, cream butter on medium speed until smooth. The real key here is to use room temperature butter. 

Slowly sift powdered sugar into the mixing bowl, combining with butter at low speed. As it combines the butter and sugar mixture will begin form somewhat fluffy concoction.

Once fully combined, scrape down sides and add the salt, vanilla, mint extract, and half and half. Mix again at medium speed until well combined and the frosting reaches a smooth, creamy consistency. I make sure I continually taste the frosting to determine if I need a little more salt, a little more extract, or need to loosen it up a little with more half and half. It's a rough job to be the taste tester, but I couldn't risk serving improperly flavored buttercream to the birthday girl and her guests, after all! 

Once the buttercream was given the stamp of approval, I got to work frosting the cooled chocolate cake. Since I wanted the presentation to look nice, I slid small slips of parchment paper under perimeter of the bottom layer. This way I can frost away to my heart's content, and simply pull away the paper when I'm done, leaving a clean cake pedestal behind.

With such a moist cake, you have to be careful not to apply too much pressure or go over frosted areas more than is necessary. Otherwise you'll start to see chocolate crumbs make their way to the surface of the frosting.

Like in the photo below.

While I was able to keep the top relatively crumb free, the sides were a challenge. Professional bakers would tell you to apply a crumb coat, which is a thin layer of frosting that seals in the crumbs before you apply a final later of frosting. But I'm not a professional and I was worried I might run out of icing, so that's where my peppermint accents come in.

I took two bags of peppermint disks, placed them into a ziplock bag, and then proceeded to take out any pent up aggression with a rolling pin. This quickly and effectively crushes the candy into smaller pieces while leaving some decent sized chunks.

Once the candy was crushed, I applied it using a wooden spoon, gently pressing it into the icing around the lower 1/3 of the cake as well as a small pile on top in the middle of the cake.

To get just a little fancy (and cover up the less than perfect top edge), I piped beads of frosting around the top using a small round Wilton tip.

The final step was to insert large and small candy canes into the center pile of crushed candy to add a whimsical and three dimensional element to the cake.

While not perfect by any stretch (ugh, I just couldn't get those sides perfectly smooth!), all who partook deemed the cake to be rather delicious. But most importantly, the birthday girl loved this take on her childhood favorite. While it works well for December birthdays, it would also be a fun addition to a Christmas party or as a surprise left for Santa. 

Do you have a favorite cake recipe that you like to make? And if you had your choice of any homemade birthday cake, what flavor would you choose?

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Turning back the clock over a year, last June I co-hosted a major baby shower event at our home. The event was designed to honor two of our best friends as well as their impending arrival. Part of the celebration was the creation of a raspberry filled vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting. If this doesn't make your mouth water, you might want to stop reading now.

The shower, cupcakes, and eventual birth were all a wonderful success, and then time continued to fly.

Here's the bundle of Joy at just a couple days old, modeling an outfit we gave him, when he visited our home for the first time. And as hard as it is to believe, little Liam turned one back on August 1st.

Itching to dust off my Wilton tips, I quickly volunteered to take on the cake duties for his first birthday celebration, and sprung to action dreaming about cupcakes for the party guests as well as a smash cake for the little guy. His mom and I traded ideas on cake flavors until I had a lightbulb moment. Why not recreate the cake we had all enjoyed at the baby shower a year earlier? The incredients were all natural, no artificial coloring or other chemicals, so it would be great for he adults and birthday boy alike.

The day of the party I got to work, baking up homemade vanilla cupcakes as well as whipping up a gorgeous vanilla buttercream frosting. I cheated a bit on the filling, and ended up using an all natural jam as the fruit filling so I could reserve my time for the smash cake.

In addition to baking up cupcakes for the invitees, I made two small mini-cakes sans filling to serve as the smash cake for the little guy. You can see them in the background of the photo above and below. 

My first thought was to treat them as a big cupcake (with a spare in case of disaster), but after I stared at them for a while I thought they might work perfectly as individual rounds. While there are miniature pans you can buy, living in a small house makes me more apt to use what I have in different ways. So after trimming the tops of the "big cupcakes" a bit, I simply stacked the two mini-cakes with a layer of buttercream in the middle in order to create his smash cake, and applied a thin layer of buttercream to act as the crumb coat before popping it in the refrigerator to cool off.

Applying a crumb coat is like priming a wall before you paint it. It's an important step to ensure your base doesn't peek through. With cakes, it's a layer that in essence glues down any cake crumbs. Refrigerating the cake after applying this layer of buttercream gives you a sturdier surface onto which you apply your final coat of frosting.  

I'm by no means a true "cake decorator" and in fact, haven't ever taken a cake decorating class -- that's on my list of to dos before the end of the year -- so most of the tips in my Wilton master set are anyone's guess as far as I'm concerned. But I really like experimenting, and with a "client" that's at just one year old, I figure it's more about how the cake tastes than looks. And isn't the point of a smash cake to...well...smash it to bits with little baby fingers?

Inspired by my own wedding cake, I decided to start playing around with different shaped and sized tips to get an effect I was happy with. I placed the cake on a small pedestal and got to work. I created a small dotted border where the cake met the pedestal in order to mask the unevenness of the cake's bottom, and repeated the design for symmetry along the top. I then added a few swirls to help hide some of the imperfections.

After arriving at the party, I added these adorable cake toppers made by the birthday boy's mom, who downloaded the designs from The Tom Kat Studio's website.

They really topped off both the cake as well as the cupcakes.

His parents, and honorary aunts and uncle, had just about as much fun as the guest of honor. 

But if the face to frosting ratio is any indication, I'd say Liam's first birthday celebration was a smashing success.

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Baking and decorating cupcakes is a true passion of mine. In fact, I think I might enjoy making them more than I enjoy eating them! Most of the time I keep it simple, dressing up a recipe using boxed cake mixes. But boxed cake mix and canned frosting wouldn't cut it for this elegant and memorable affair for 50.

While my contribution was a relatively small part of the event, I knew I wanted to do my best to make it a real show stopper. With a theme of red and white check to follow, I took to searching Pinterest for inspiration. A few months back I pinned a recipe for beautiful vanilla cupcakes, made more special with a vanilla and cherry twist. Not only did they sound delicious, but the look and flavor would work well with the red and white theme that had been selected.

With the recipe in hand, as well as several borrowed cupcake tins from very accommodating neighbors (50 is a lot of cupcakes!), I got to work for a whole lot of baking on the morning of the party. If you'd like to give this a whirl, here's a step by step on making your own pink and delicious cupcakes.

Cake Ingredients

• 1 stick butter, room temperature
• 4 egg whites, room temperature
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup maraschino cherry juice
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 24 maraschino cherries with stems

Frosting Ingredients

• 1 stick butter, softened
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons maraschino cherry juice
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Directions

I kicked off the baking event as it seems most good baking recipes tend to start out and I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. 

Next, in a medium bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Once the dry ingredients were adequately combined, I was able to get to the good stuff.

In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, combine buttermilk and cherry juice until mixture resembles the unappetizing color of Pepto Bismal. Don't panic. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the very room temperature butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds. It's very, very important that the butter and eggs have been allowed to acclimate to room temperature without the microwave. Trust me on this. Add the sugar, vanilla, and almond extract to the butter until fully mixed.

Also, be sure to take care when measuring the sugar, or your countertops could look like this.

Once the mixture is fully combined it will have achieved a sandy play-doh look to it. Again, don't worry, it's on the right track.

Next up, add the egg whites to the sandy play-doh mixture very slowly, beating well after each egg white is added. 

When all of your egg whites are fully combined, slowly add flour mixture and buttermilk Pepto looking substance, alternating between each ingredient a little at a time until they're all added. Continue to mix on low speed until the mixture is combined and begins to smooth out.

After the mixture is fully mixed and looking nice and smooth, your cake batter mix is ready to go. It should be a soft pink color that is actually leaning more towards true pink. Alex also wanted me to let you all know that it tastes pretty good at this stage too. 

Line two 12 cup muffin tins with paper bake cups. Tip: To ensure my decorative wrappers kept their crisp color, I baked the cupcakes in plain white cups, and just before the party I nestle the baked cakes in the decorative wrappers.

Next up spoon the pretty pink batter into muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full. Tip: Using an ice cream scoop makes filling the cups evenly a snap.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes in your 350 degree pre-heated oven, or until top springs back when lightly touched. 

When the baking is complete remove the cupcake tins and allow the muffins to cool completely. While muffins cool, start on frosting. 

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter (again, very room temperature) with an electric mixer on medium speed for about 30 seconds or until smooth. Gradually add 1 cup of the powdered sugar, beating well as you add. Slowly beat in the cherry juice and almond extract. While I was adding the juice it began burping a bit, so watch out for the mess that is surely lurking. Slowly continue to add in additional powdered sugar. If necessary, beat in additional cherry juice or leftover buttermilk, one teaspoon at a time, to thin the frosting to the desired consistency. You should be left with a smooth and even mixture that looks a little like taffy.

For a "store bought" look, use a pastry bag and a decorator's tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes. 

I like to use disposable pastry bags and Wilton tips. This is a little something I splurged on years ago, and I've never looked back. If you like to decorate cakes or cupcakes, it's definitely worth it to pick up a set.

If you don't have these supplies on hand, a great substitution is to spoon frosting into a large food storage bag. Snip one of the corners off the bag with scissors, and squeeze frosting through the hole.

As a final touch, adorn the top of each cupcake with one maraschino cherry.

All in all, the cupcakes were a huge hit. When arranged on stacked white cake pedestals, they made quite a statement.

Not only were they beautiful, but they were delicious. All in all the party was a huge success, and I'm so thrilled my small contribution could be part of a fun and memorable event for a friend. 

Next up? A big baby shower celebration at our house. Does anyone have any cupcake recipes they can share, or ideas for the menu and decor? It's been years since I've thrown a baby shower, and am always looking for creative ideas to make the occasion one to remember.

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In recent years I've begun flexing my confectionery muscles in celebration of commemorative events. Most notably, these events are the birthdays of our friends, but I've also baked for baby showers, wedding showers, house warming parties, and St. Patty's Day celebrations.

Of late, I've made a habit of asking friends with upcoming birthdays what their absolute favorite kind of cake happens to be. After they answer, I ask if they'd mind too greatly if I went ahead and made that cake or cupcakes in their favorite flavor and style for them as a special birthday treat. The typical answer is, "Are you kidding? I'd love it if you baked me a cake." Tough crowd, eh?

Last weekend we celebrated the birthdays of two of our close friends and I gladly volunteered my cupcake skills. Coincidentally, both of them requested red velvet cake, but one request was a bit of a departure from the normal red velvet you might think of. But more on that in a minute.

A bit of a warning. Alex just got a new 50mm lens for the camera, and the day we made these cupcakes was the very first day he was using the lens. So his, and my, apologies if you are annoyed by the excessive "bokeh" (quality blur) in the shots and the questionable lighting/exposure. We're trying to learn as we go.

With this particular request, I set out making a standard red velvet cake batter, and as is my typical style, used my trusty ice cream scoop to properly portion each cupcake.

Beyond this aspect of portioning, baking the red velvet is pretty straightforward process if you follow the recipe or box's directions.

The key to these "special" request cupcakes was actually in the icing. One of our friends has fond childhood memories of enjoying red velvet cake with peppermint cream cheese frosting, a seasonal and favorite cake on her December birthday. When I first heard this I wasn't sure if it meant modification of the cake batter or of the frosting. After checking with the authority on the matter (the birthday girl), we determined only the icing had to be altered.

I purchased a two boxes of candy canes for the task and ended up using all of the candy canes in the process.

After removing the candy canes from their packaging I placed them all into a sandwich bag and retrieved my rolling ping. My goal was to break the candy canes into smaller pieces than the whole or half canes they currently were.

After a few smacks, it seemed to be working, but it also poked a few holes in the bag and started making a mess. Rather than continue making a mess and spreading candy cane dust all over the counter, I emptied the bag of cane pieces into the food processor.

A few pulses later the candy canes were a mixture of fine peppermint sugar powder and smallish sized pieces.

If you ever do this, be aware that the candy cane dust will be coming out of the food processor like smoke. It might be best to wait for a moment or two before removing the top just to let the dust settle a bit, but don't worry, you're food processor probably isn't actually on fire.

Once the candy canes were all chopped up, I then used a mid sized wire basket to further sift the fine particles from the bigger pieces.

This process provided me a very fine powder to use in the frosting, and the larger chunks to use as decoration. I love it when a baking plan comes together!

I poured the finest powder and pieces into the mixing bowl and then scooped the cream cheese frosting into the bowl so that I could mix the whole thing together.

After mixing the peppermint powder and small pieces with the frosting, the normally white cream cheese frosting became a slightly rough textured pink color. This told me the frosting had taken on the peppermint flavor nicely, while still retaining some of the crunchy grittyness from the canes. This was just the effect I was trying to achieve.

I filled the peppermint frosting into an icing bag with my favorite decorating tip...

...and began piping the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes.

It wasn't the easiest icing job I've ever had. The peppermint weighed down the normally fluffy icing and made it a bit harder to create a spiral peak. If I had it to do over again, I'd also use a rounded tip. The jagged edge of the tip I used didn't work well with the bits of candy, and resulted in a less than crisp frosting effect. Luckily, my friends tend not to care about this detail as much as I do.

After working through the first few experimental cupcakes, I started to get the hang of the heavier icing. 

Once all of the cupcakes were iced, I then used the larger chunks of the peppermint candy and sprinkled them on the top of the frosting as additional garnish.

In all, the whole process was slightly more involved than simple cupcakes and frosting, but by no means was it particularly difficult. The end result was delicious, pretty, and perfectly festive baked treats for the holiday season.

If you like red velvet, peppermint, and cupcakes (who doesn't like cupcakes?), this is a recipe you need to try.

In case you're wondering if this creation was a hit, the verdict from the birthday girl was a favorable one. In fact she said, "These are exactly how I remember them tasting before my mom told me they were too difficult and she was going to stop making them!" I think we have a winner, folks.

Do you have a creative spin on a classic recipes? Does this sound like the type of thing you'd like, or are you more of a traditionalist when it comes to your baked goods? I love to hear other people's take on my baking attempts, even if you can't taste them through the screen. 

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