Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

The love of my life has another love, besides me... its Chocolate Chip Cookies... I'm always trying to find ways to make them different and better... adding peanut butter cups... making a huge giant cookie... making them into little peanut butter "cups"... so with all my cupcake ideas lately, I decided, why not bake a chocolate chip cookie INSIDE a cupcake??? and then while i'm at it, make the buttercream, a cookie dough buttercream?!?!?!

Ok!

So I started with cookie dough... and then vanilla cake batter... stuck the cookie dough in the middle of the batter and baked...

Then I made my classic vanilla buttercream, but whipped it for a very long time, making it extremely fluffy and delicate... then I added chunks of cookie dough, and stirred.

Topped with a few mini chocolate chips, and Viola!

Cookie inside a cupcake...

The boy was in love... all over again... and I had a new cupcake under my belt... :-)

Caramel Apple Pie Cupcakes

I keep coming up with cupcake ideas randomly... and luckily with all these snow days I have to take, I have plenty of time to try some of them out. So what did I have in the cabinet... a box of cake mix, a can of seltzer, everything for icing (always), caramel and apples... hmm OK.. Got it!

The Caramel Apple Pie Cupcake

SO first I made the apple filling... I diced up the apples really tiny, added some butter, brown sugar and cinnamon... put it all in a frying pan and sauteed until I felt they were the perfect consistency.  Then I made the cake.  Very simple.. a box of Spice Cake and a can of seltzer (mix and done... its my favorite way to make cake when I am just trying things out... and tastes so good, why not!) When the cupcakes were cooled, I put a little hole in the middle and filled it with caramel... then I made a caramel and sea salt buttercream and topped the cupcake, leaving a well for the apples... spooned some apples in the center, drizzled with caramel and decided to throw some salted peanuts on top.

Tough to eat because its so top heavy, so we ate the second one with a spoon.  They were super sweet, but the salty peanuts and the slight hints of salt in the buttercream set it off, just enough!

I have other apple ideas... so keep looking for more!

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I know its been awhile... I've been pretty busy... not as busy with cakes... but dabbling in cupcakes!! and regular crazy life stuff!!

Sharffenberger was having an Adventure Cupcake contest... so i entered.  They gave you a list of "adventure ingredients" to choose from, and when I saw stout beer on the list, I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to make...

An Irish Car Bomb... a half pint of Guinness... a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream and some Jameson's Irish Whiskey on top... you have to work fast or the Whiskey will curdle the Cream... unless you pour it as perfectly as this...

So how do I make this favorite, into a cupcake... EASY!!!

Take chocolate cake mix, add a bottle of Guinness Stout... mix and bake!!!  Guinness part DONE.  Then take some creamy chocolate and mix in some cream to make it into ganache... then add 2 TBSP's of Jameson's.... mix well!!! let set! Whiskey DONE... then, take your classic whipped cream recipe... make it, and stir in 1-2 TBSP's of Bailey's Irish Cream (depending on preference)... Bailey's DONE... and you have the Chocolate Irish Car Bomb Cupcake...

I, of course, drizzled on some more Whiskey ganache on top.  When I cut the cupcake open, the ganache had seeped into the chocolate guinness cake making it TO DIE FOR!!! and making me pretty tipsy!

Definitely not a cupcake for the kids!!!

More to come!