A Cup of Flour

Enabling fellow baking addicts since 2013

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My Contribution to the Overly Popular Cookie Monster Cookies

     I had to. Everyone who knows I bake said I should make Cookie Monster decorated cupcakes made popular by Pinterest and this hilarious expectation vs reality meme. Even though everyone's already made them, I had to give it a try. 

   I chose to make these chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes to go along with the Cookie Monster theme. For this recipe, you divide a typical chocolate cupcake batter between your pans. Then, you drop a teaspoon of cookie dough into the center. The cookie dough bakes along with the cupcake batter, so you have a cookie within a cupcake. Insert "Inception" joke here.

     I followed the recipe for the icing but added food coloring to make it Cookie Monster blue. The eyes are cut in half marshmallows and chocolate chips. I wasn't going for authenticity, so I tried to decorate each cupcake differently (my personal favorite is the cyclops). I think they came out looking hilarious, and everyone was surprised by the cookie in their cupcake.  

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           In one of the recipes I linked in my last post, the Mega Strawberry Summer Cake, the recipe says to "whip cream until soft peaks form." This got me thinking about one of my greatest baking fears: beating egg whites. Beating cream? I can do. Beating egg whites? Not so much.

     I don't really know what qualifies as soft or stiff peaks, I hear they take forever to whip up and you have to worry about humidity inhibiting the peaks from forming. Why must I worry about the weather when baking?!

     I decided it'd be best to face my fears, so I scoured YouTube to find a good how to tutorial on beating egg whites. Although this video is really a slideshow, it gives tons of information on each step of the process. It shows the proper kitchen utensils needed, distinguishes between soft and stiff peaks, and describes what the eggs look like if they become over beaten. 

     With this video's instruction, I may just have built up the courage to make a meringue.

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Tomorrow is the first day of May, which has always been the beginning of summer in my mind. School is almost out and the weather is starting to stay warm. During this time of year, I tend to always bake with fruit, and I've pulled together three recipes that I want to try this season.  

These Lemon Angel Food Cupcakes seem so easy to make. They have a simple lemon glaze that will be faster to make than a typical frosting. Plus angel food cupcakes are a nice and light treat, which is perfect for summer when you want to eat sweets and still hang out at the pool. 

This Mega Strawberry Summer Cake is too pretty not to try. The recipe is metric, but you can use the conversion chart I posted a few weeks ago to help you out. The recipe is straight forward, and you don't have to be a professional cake froster to make the final product look beautiful. Since it's fairy simple and is sure to be a crowd pleaser, I'm saving this recipe for Mother's Day. 

  Finally, what would summer be without cherry pie? These Cherry Pie Bars will last longer than a pie (the recipe makes 16 bars rather than 8 slices of pie), and you can eat them for breakfast or dessert! 

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     I decided to make sombrero cupcakes for a friend's Mexican themed birthday party. Party City didn't have sombrero toppers, and there wasn't enough time for an online purchase to be possible, so I decided to be adventurous and make them myself. 

     Much to my surprise, I quickly found a DIY Sombrero Cupcake Topper Tutorial. The steps seemed easy enough, but the execution turned out to be problematic. 

     The recipe calls for jumbo and regular white marshmallows. My local store only had the regular size. I hoped I could finagle the regular sized marshmallows to work in place of the jumbo ones. Spoiler alert: I couldn't. 

    The jumbo marshmallows were suppose to be the base of the hat. I tried to flatten the regular marshmallows, so they would become bigger. I quickly learned that marshmallows are quite opposed to being formed into new shapes. The once cylindrical marshmallow was now a sticky perforated mess. Then, I decided to go rouge.  

     I made the icing of my cupcake the base of the hat and then pushed the cone shaped marshmallow (I cut the top sides of the marshmallow so it was more hat-shaped) into the center of the icing.

     I then decorated where the frosting and marshmallow met with gel icing to cover up the obvious crease. The tutorial says to use royal icing to decorate the toppers, but I'm a broke college student and finding gel icing was cheaper and easier. 

     My sombreros aren't as intricate as the tutorial's, but I still like how they turned out. Everyone could tell that they were suppose to be sombreros, and I'm happy I could combine the website's instructions with my own creativity. 

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         I'm not sure when or how I found Bake It Pretty, but it's a gem. I like to call it an online store for all of your baking accessory needs. What's that you say? You didn't think there was such a thing as baking accessories? Bake It Pretty proves that there is. 

     One of the site's most popular items is the Best Ever Cupcake Icing Kit, and it's exactly what it sounds like. You get 5 essential icing tips and a reusable pastry bag. It's perfect if you're just starting out and want to have a variety of icing techniques at your disposal. The kit is also at a reasonable price and of good quality.  

    Bake It Pretty also sells chocolate molds (You could make your own peanut butter cups!), cookies cutters (They have them in the shape of dinosaurs. Yes, you could eat a T-Rex), and even straws (Not really sure why they're necessary in baking, but they're cute, so I'll let it slide.)     

     My favorite category to peruse is the cupcake liners. They are adorable and exist in every color and pattern imaginable. The best part is that they keep their color after they've been in the oven. I know you can get super cute cupcake liners for 99 cents at the store, but that super cute print is always faded and dull after it's exposed to heat. These stay vibrant and lovely. Click here for my favorite, and happy accessory shopping! 

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     I wanted to try something new this weekend so I made Salted Caramel Stuffed Chocolate Crinkle Cookies. The name is a bit of a mouthful, but they were delicious. 

     I got the recipe off the site Cooking Classy, which I had never tried before. Like I said before, the cookies turned out well, but the instructions did not hint at how much of a challenge these cookies were to make. 

     I've made crinkle cookies before, so I knew to expect the dough to be extremely sticky. When I added the caramel to the dough, the stick factor only got worse. I then used what seemed like half a can of PAM on my palms to keep the dough from sticking to my hands as I rolled the caramel into the cookie's center. 

     After rolling the caramel into the dough, the recipe suggests to roll the balled cookies in powdered sugar before placing them in the oven. This was a great idea that made it easier to handle the unbaked cookies.

     However, they were a bit of a mess coming out of the oven. Some of the caramel melted out onto the pan and made it a goopy sticky mess. Since the recipe calls for an entire caramel, some of the cookies crumbled around the weight of the caramel when I tried to transfer them to the cooling rack.

     These problems only accounted for a few tragic looking cookies. They still tasted great! I just wish I knew how time consuming and labor intensive they would be. 

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I don't know why these exist, but I am so happy that they do. I'm fairly certain that no baking was involved in the making of these Reese's-Cup-Oreo-Sandwich-Hybrids, but I had to share them anyway.  

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I am not a math person. I am not a metric system person. I am not a kitchen scale owning person. I know these things about myself. Luckily, Dessertfirstgirl has a conversion cheat sheet. The list includes all your baking staples in cups, ounces, and grams. 

If you're not familiar with Desserfirstgirl, you should be. Her recipes are so original and have me constantly learning new techniques. There are easy recipes like Blackberry Lemon Cupcakes for beginners. But overall, her recipe index is on the challenging side. She has "Daring Bakers Challenges" like Eclairs with Flair for more experiences bakers. My advice: read everything before you start, take it slow and impress the heck out of you friends with what you make. 

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St. Patrick's Day is less than a week away, so it's time to dye everything green and drink copious amount of Baileys. I'm mostly Italian, but I'll take any excuse to bake (the whiskey's not bad either). Below I've included three recipes that will get anyone feeling a little Irish. 

    Homemade Mint Oreos : You probably already have most of the ingredients for this easy recipe in your kitchen, which means it'll be inexpensive and delicious. 

  Shamrock Ice Cream Sandwiches: This recipe combines my two great loves: baking and mint chocolate chip ice cream. You'll need a shamrock-shaped cookie cutter, but after that it's super simple. 

  Irish Coffee Cupcakes: I saved the best for last. The hardest part about these cupcakes is whipping the frosting to the correct consistency, but the recipe helps you out. The best part? There is espresso in the cupcakes and whiskey in the frosting. Happy St. Patrick's Day to us all. 

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I bake a lot of cupcakes – a lot. In my baking arsenal, I have four cupcake pans, two cupcake travel carries (yes, that's a thing), and enough cupcake liners to fill the trunk of my Civic. I don't mess around. 

Taste is most important and all, but we eat with our eyes first. I like to make sure my cupcakes are as pretty to look at as they are delicious to eat. This site is one of the most thorough "frosting how to" I've seen. 

You want to know what size tip to use? It's got it. 

You want to know what different style of tips look like? Got it. 

You want to know how to create two-toned frosting? Got it.

You want to see videos of different icing techniques? Got it. 

You want me to stop talking, so you can start frosting? Got it. 

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I thought this would be the most appropriate place to start. When I started baking, I thought a cup of flour was a universal measurement – not so. This is a straightforward guide of how to accurately measure this baking staple from one of my favorite baking bloggers. Never again will your cakes be tough or your cookies dry!