First of all, I must apologize for this week's Friday Favorites being posted on a Monday! Oops. I have been good each week about posting on Friday since I started Friday Favorites... But this past week just got away from me and I didn't have time to post!
I am excited about this week's post though. I'll be highlighting the recent celebration my family had of my grandmother's 85th birthday! My grandma actually turned 85 back in January, but we had a surprise party for her last Saturday, May 21st. That's one way to be sure the guest of honor doesn't suspect anything...have the surprise five months later. ;-) My grandmother (I should say our grandmother too for my siblings and cousins, and mother for my mom, aunt, and uncle!) is amazing at age 85. She is very active and independent and is an inspiration to us all! We all love and respect her so much; the party was only one small way for us to recognize her and all she has done and stands for. We are incredibly lucky to have her! :)
For this special occasion, my mom asked if I'd bake cupcakes. Obviously I agreed! One of my grandmother's favorite flavors is raspberry, so I made lemon cupcakes with a raspberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting. And then for the chocolate lovers out there, I made my favorite darn good chocolate cupcakes with a mocha frosting. The mocha frosting was to-die-for. I had never made it before, but you can be sure that it is a keeper and will be my go-to mocha frosting from now on!
Here are my lemon cupcakes with the centers removed, prepped and ready for the raspberry filling!
I've made this lemon cupcake recipe before; you can read all about it here. And for the raspberry filling, I used the same recipe as with the strawberry filling I've made for these lemon cupcakes....but I substituted raspberries for the strawberries, clearly. :) The frosting recipe is also the same as in my original posting about the lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting.
I love filled cupcakes!
The mocha frosting that I used for the chocolate cupcakes was taken from Annie's Eats. Deeelish. Seriously. If you ever need a mocha frosting recipe, I highly recommend that you try this one! Here it is for you.
-16 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
-3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
-1 Tbsp. instant coffee granules
-2 tsp. hot coffee
-1 tsp. vanilla extract
Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer at medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. Mix in the confectioners' sugar on low speed until just mixed in, then increase the speed to medium-high and continue to beat until smooth and light, about 2 minutes. Mix in the coffee granules, hot coffee, and vanilla until completely incorporated.
I took Annie's suggestion and topped the cupcakes with chocolate-covered (dark chocolate!) espresso beans. Yum yum yum.
By the way, thanks to my mom for allowing me work space in her kitchen last weekend. :) I somewhat took over the kitchen for a few hours... And the rest of my family did ALL my dishes. Amazing! I am going to bake in my mom's kitchen more often!
Now, onto a few pictures from the celebration! Here's our grandmother as she walked into the restaurant and realized that we had something up our sleeves...
Our family loves surprises!
A few shots of the cupcakes... I made some regular-sized as well as some minis! Everyone loves a mini cupcake. It makes you feel like you can eat more than one if you have one big and one small...
Here is my Aunt Cathy, pinning a corsage on the lovely guest of honor!
My Uncle Bob said a few words about my grandmother, and then he passed around the cover of Time magazine's issue when they highlight the world's 100 most influential people. Check out the person in the middle of the magazine cover. Very clever, Uncle Bob!
We, of course, believe that our grandmother deserves to be on that cover!
Happy birthday again, to our wonderful grandmother and mother! We love you so much!!
No comments:
Post a Comment