White Russian Cupcakes

White Russian cupcakes? Yes, I went there. I've made treats with booze in them in the past (cupcakes with kahlua cream cheese frosting, creme de menthe bars, beer bread, etc.). But these White Russian cupcakes really stepped it up to a whole new level. This recipe called for not one liquor - but two! Kahlua AND Vodka. The coworker for whom I made these cupcakes requested a dessert with alcohol in it. Simple request. Done and done. 

The recipe is adapted from Baked Perfection. I doubled the recipe (with a couple minor changes) and made about 18 large cupcakes and 8 mini ones.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

-2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

-2 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1 and 1/2 cups sugar

-12 Tbsp. butter, softened

-2 large eggs and 2 large egg whites

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup milk

-1/4 cup vodka (I used vanilla flavored)

-1/4 cup kahlua (this was also vanilla flavored for me)

For the kahlua buttercream frosting:

-1 stick butter, softened

-3 cups powdered sugar

-pinch of salt

-3 to 4 Tbsp. kahlua

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pan with cupcake liners. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a separate bowl or stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter until well combined. Add the eggs and egg whites, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add the vanilla, vodka, and kahlua. Gradually add the flour mixture, in three additions, each time alternating with the milk and ending with the flour mixture.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cupcakes comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool completely on cooling rack.

For the frosting, beat butter until creamy, then add the salt. Add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time, and beat well. Add kahlua one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency of frosting is reached. If you'd like, sprinkle cocoa powder or chocolate shavings on top of the frosting (I added chocolate shavings).

You'll have to forgive my poorer than usual quality of the photos. I finished frosting these in the evening and was kind of running around/doing a million things at once, in general, so I didn't take a ton of time with my pictures. And as you know, I don't have a fancy camera or a nice lamp to improve my food photos...

The cupcakes were a total success at work! The flavor of the alcohol was definitely there but it wasn't overpowering in any way. It really just enhanced the overall flavor of these cupcakes, I think. I'm thinking I should bake cupcakes with liquor more often! Ha.

And the kahlua frosting? Awesome. Definitely a keeper of a recipe. As you know, I also used some leftover frosting to make a few to-die-for chocolate chip sandwich cookies...

Again, I apologize for the poor photo quality. But I hope you get the gist that these cupcakes were awesome. They come highly recommended by my coworkers and me!!

De. Li. Cious.

Ooooh, and what are these cupcakes, might you ask??! Well, these are the seven (yes, seven!) cupcakes that Mike and I tasted a couple weeks ago when we had the tasting for our wedding food. Oh my goodness. They were all soooo good! Our reception venue has the same idea I did with these White Russian cupcakes, as several of the cupcakes they made for us involved alcohol! No kidding. The cupcakes involving liquor included a cabernet chocolate frosting, a Creme de Menthe frosting (with crushed Oreos on top!), a Bailey's chocolate frosting, and a Grand Marnier frosting. 

Heavenly.

I won't reveal which ones we chose for the wedding though. Sorry. ;)

Banana Cupcakes with Honey Cinnamon Frosting

Hi there! I made these cupcakes last week for a get-together with my fiancé's coworkers (I'm still getting used to saying fiancé!). The recipe is from my new Martha Stewart cupcake book, so I was quite excited to try it! Ya gotta love when a new recipe is a success. Read on to the end to see my full impressions! :)

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:

-3 ripe bananas (roughly 1.5 cups of mashed banana)

-2 cups cake flour*

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/2 tsp. baking powder

-3/4 tsp. salt

-3/4 tsp. cinnamon (I added this; it wasn't in the original recipe)

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-3/4 cup sugar

-3 large eggs, separated

-1/2 cup sour cream (I used banana flavored yogurt instead)

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

*If you do not have cake flour, I recently discovered an awesome substitute for it! You just need all-purpose flour and cornstarch. Check it out here. ;-)

Frosting:

-2 and 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

-1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-2 Tbsp. honey

-1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon (I probably added closer to 1/2 tsp.)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add the bananas, and beat to combine. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of the sour cream (or yogurt), and beating until just combined after each. Beat in vanilla.

In another mixing bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, whisk egg whites to soft peaks; fold one-third of the whites into batter to lighten. Gently fold in remaining whites in two batches.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full. Bake until a cake tester inserted comes out clean, about 15 - 20 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored up to 3 days at room temperature, or frozen up to 2 months, in airtight containers.

This recipe made 12 cupcakes and 3 mini bundt cakes for me.

For the frosting, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat all ingredients until smooth. Use immediately, or refrigerate up to 5 days in an airtight container. Before using, bring to room temperature and beat until smooth.

So as I said, this recipe was definitely a success. I would make it again! However, I have a couple points to share... 1) The cupcake itself was very yummy but it was rather muffin-like at the same time. The frosting is really what made these cupcakes, if you ask me. ;-) 2) I did not follow the cupcake recipe exactly... As you may have read earlier, I added cinnamon (which was a great choice, I think!) and I used banana yogurt instead of sour cream (also a good choice!).

What I did not do, though, was roast the bananas. You see, this recipe is actually for roasted banana cupcakes. Yep! I think that probably would have enhanced the banana flavor of these even more, which would be great. I did not have enough ripe bananas on hand to roast, however. What I always have on hand though is frozen ripe bananas, and that's what I used in this recipe. Whenever my bananas go ripe and I don't have enough free time to bake with them, I cut them up and freeze them to use later (just let them thaw before using them). So, sadly, I didn't get the full experience of making these cupcakes with roasted bananas. Guess I'll just have to make them again! Or, perhaps you can try making these with roasted bananas and let me know what you think. To roast the bananas, heat the oven to 400 degrees, and roast 3 whole (unpeeled!) bananas on a baking sheet for about 15 minutes. Let them cool before peeling.

Oh, and this honey cinnamon frosting? Amazing. Loved it. It's definitely what makes these cupcakes, in my opinion. The frosting recipe is certainly a keeper to use with other cake flavors! Perhaps with carrot cake instead of a traditional cream cheese frosting? YUM! I can taste it now.

K, friends, that's it! Hope everyone's week is off to a good start so far!

Something Sweet for Someone Sweet: Jenn's Bridal Shower!

Hi friends! Good to have you back here at the Barbershop. You may guess from the title of this post that it's a bit different than my usual posts...and it is! My good friend, Jenn, is getting married this July, and her bridal shower was this past weekend. And I was fortunate enough to be hired to bake for the shower! So fun! Jenn's matron of honor, Meg, asked me if I'd be willing to bake for the occasion, and of course I said yes. If you don't know this by now, I love to bake. ;-)

Warning: this is a rather long post! I've got a lot to say 'bout this one! :)

Okay, back to business... What was on the menu for Jenn's bridal shower? Well, we had three different kinds of cupcakes and sugar cookies. Mmmmm, sweet treats in honor of a very sweet lady! I had so much fun planning for the shower. I knew that I'd be baking for it back in March, so I put my thinking cap on right away as to what I should make. I decided on three kinds of cupcakes: double chocolate cupcakes with chocolate or vanilla frosting, classic golden cupcakes with chocolate or vanilla frosting, and lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting. Phew! And for the sugar cookies, I decided to make some with icing and some with frosting. I have actually previously blogged about three of these four items too...here are the Barbershop links for ya. ;-) Chocolate cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, and sugar cookies.

Chocolate cupcakes!

Lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling!

Sugar cookies!

I'll go into a little more detail about each recipe here too... :) So, for the chocolate cupcakes, this time around I added mini chocolate chips to the batter. Can you ever go wrong with extra chocolate? I think not! For each recipe for Jenn's shower, I made sure to try them out beforehand too...I wouldn't want my first time trying a new recipe to be an important occasion like this one! I had made the chocolate cupcake recipe a couple times before, so I knew it was a winner. And that was confirmed again at the shower!

As for the golden, or vanilla, cupcakes, I cut it close for my trial run of this recipe! I hadn't found a time to make them until about four days before the shower when I made them for a coworker's birthday. They passed the quality control test of my coworkers with flying colors, so I knew I had a "keeper" recipe! This is the one recipe I haven't blogged about yet, but I'll provide you with a link to the recipe I used (which was a recipe of the Food Networks' Barefoot Contessa) here. I did not use her frosting recipe, however. In fact, for both the chocolate and vanilla frostings I made, I used a favorite blog of mine, Our Best Bites.

Golden cupcakes!

Our Best Bites claims that their vanilla frosting is perfect. I would certainly say it's close! I really liked this frosting. It wasn't too sweet, but just sweet enough. And it was light and almost silky in texture. Deeelish! This is totally a recipe I'll make again. It does take a little extra work since you actually cook part of the frosting, but I think it's worth those extra few minutes. I'd say the same about Our Best Bites' chocolate frosting too! It's another super recipe and one that I'll be making again and again, I'm sure. If you've ever been a baker who tends to shy away from making your own frosting, I encourage you not to do that; instead, try either of these frosting recipes. Once you do, I think you'll make your own more often! ;-)

Here are a couple close-up shots of the vanilla and chocolate frostings...soooo good.

Isn't that flower pretty? It's edible and can be found at King Arthur Flour!

Lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting... Do these sound familiar? Perhaps you've seen them at the Barbershop before! These were a favorite item of many gals at the shower, apparently...that's the word on the street anyway. ;-) If you happened to read my earlier post about these cupcakes, you may remember that I made a small blunder with the frosting that time. I used skim milk even though the recipe called for whole milk, and the frosting didn't turn out fluffy. :-( This time I used whole milk, and it was so much better! The strawberry filling in these is reeeeally yummy and makes the cupcakes a bit more special, I think. And it's not just adding strawberry jam either! It's a delicious homemade filling that you can read about here. Here is a picture of the cupcakes before I topped them with frosting.

Sugar cookie time!!!! These were a major hit at the party, I must say. As many of the lovely ladies said, what's not to love about sugar and butter, the two main ingredients in these cookies?? My mom gets full credit for this recipe too. I used the recipe she's been using for years!! I had a lot of fun decorating these too! As I mentioned earlier, I used icing on some of the cookies and frosting on the rest. I have a confession to make though... I did NOT make the icing! This was the one item I did not make from scratch for the shower. Instead, I used a handy dandy icing mix from my favorite King Arthur Flour. Sooo easy! You only need to add water to the mix, stir, and voila, you have icing! For the frosting, I used my mom's famous recipe; I tinted half the batch a pretty light pink and the other half a nice, springy green. Fun fun!! I have a lot of sprinkles, as evidenced here. :) And this isn't all of what I have either!

Meg had sent along pictures from a shower she had attended that had "I do" on the cookies. I replicated that, as you can see. Only about 6 more weeks 'til Jenn and Jason are saying those two words! :)

The shower was quite lovely all around. Meg and Jenn's bridesmaids, Lesley and Tiffany, really did a fabulous job! A wonderful time was had by all as we celebrated the beautiful bride to be, Jenn!! Here are some pictures from the special occasion.

Setting up...

Champagne anyone?! ;-)

Enjoying sweet treats!

Now, the shower was lingerie-themed, so I won't post too many pictures of Jenn's gifts, which generally kept with the theme... I'd like to keep this blog G-rated. ;-) But here is one picture of the beautiful bride as she's opening a gift!

I am very glad I was able to be part of Jenn's special day... It was truly a pleasure to bake for the occasion! We are all so happy for Jenn and Jason!! Here is a picture of them from last fall, when Mike and I went apple picking with the lovely couple...

Wishing you two all the best! ♡

Tomato Soup Spice Cake with Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting

Tomato soup in a cake, you ask? Yes, it's true! I made this tomato soup spice cake for our family's Christmas dessert this year. I had never made it though, so it was a gamble! My family loved it, thankfully. :) Or, they pretended that they loved it I suppose! The tomato soup not only gave the cake a nice, slight reddish color, but it also provided a bit of a tang to offset the sweetness of the spice cake and buttercream frosting.

This recipe is from the Cake Mix Doctor, a book I used for an earlier post this month. It was generally pretty easy too; the hardest, or the most time consuming part rather, was just frosting the cake. I chose to make a bundt cake rather than a round cake with two layers, which is what the recipe actually calls for. I also did NOT add the raisins and pecans that are in the original recipe...to me, it seemed best as a plain ol' spice cake without any additions!

Overall, it was a recipe that I'd definitely make again. The only change I might make is to add a bit more of one of the liquids to make it a bit more moist...so either a little more tomato soup or vegetable oil. I personally would have liked a moister cake, although this certainly was not dry. Others felt that it was just fine as is!

Here's the recipe for the cake:

-1 package (18.25 oz.) plain spice cake mix

-1 can (10.75 oz.) condensed tomato soup, undiluted

-3 large eggs

-1/3 cup vegetable oil

-1/4 cup water

-1/2 cup raisins (I did not add these)

-1/2 cup chopped pecans (nor did I add these!)

And here is the frosting recipe for plain Buttercream Frosting:

-8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

-3 and 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

-3 to 4 tablespoons milk

-2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Here is how to make it Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting. This is what I used on this cake, and I have to admit that I loved it. So very tasty!

-Decrease the amount of vanilla extract to 1 teaspoon instead of 2, and add 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

Preheat oven to 350. Liberally grease two 9-inch round cake pans, or 1 bundt pan, with cooking spray or solid vegetable shortening. Then dust with flour and shake out any excess flour. Set the pans aside.

Place the cake mix, undiluted tomato soup, eggs, oil, and water in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 to 3 minutes more, scraping down the sides again as needed. The batter should look well combined and thickened. Fold in the raisins and pecans (if desired). Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pans, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula.

Bake the cakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger and just start to pull away from the sides of the pan, 28 to 31 minutes (a bundt cake will take longer, 40-45 minutes). Remove from oven and place in wire racks to cool for 10-15 minutes; then remove cake from pans to cool completely. Cooling completely is important to make the process of frosting much easier.

Meanwhile, prepare the frosting. Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until fluffy, 30 seconds. Stop the mixer and add the confectioners' sugar, 3 tablespoons milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. Mix on low speed until well incorporated, about 1 minute. Increase the speed to medium and beat until light and fluffy, 1 minute more. Blend in more milk if the frosting seems stiff. I like this picture of the frosting because you can actually see the little specks of cinnamon in it!

If using two cake layers, place one cake layer, right side up, on a serving platter and spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer, right side up, on top of the first layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with clean, smooth strokes. If making a bundt cake, just frost as is! Store this cake in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

As you can see, I decided to decorate the cake a bit too. I discovered some cupcake stencils I've had for a while but never used! I thought they'd be fun to use for the cake. In the first picture at the beginning of this post, you can see the whole cake with three snowflake stencils and three holly stencils... Below is a picture of what a stencil looks like. They're a fun idea for a unique decorating twist! My first couple snowflakes didn't turn out all that great. I probably should have practiced first, but I didn't have any extra cake or cupcake to do that! Oh well...the fam didn't mind my mistakes. :)

And to end the post, a nice pic of sista and me wearing

our Christmas colors!

Merry Christmas, friends!!