Cupcakes - The Cake Merchant

Peanut Butter Oreo Cupcakes

03.26.13

I have 3 words for you- peanut butter oreos. These were totally an impulse buy at the grocery store, but since peanut butter and chocolate is the best combination on earth, I knew they were going to be amazing. How did I just now discover these?

Remember these cupcakes I made around Christmas time? These use the same (vegan) chocolate cupcake recipe. In fact, the entire cupcake is vegan. Instead of Oreo’s, I used Newman O’s this time, which is a slightly healthier version of the cookie. Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means health food. Newman O’s still contain a lot of sugar, but it’s organic sugar instead of HFCS. Hey, I’ll take what I can get. They’re also egg and dairy free, so no animals were harmed in the making of these cupcakes.

The cupcake recipe is from one of my go to baking books, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I love this chocolate cupcake recipe. It’s so simple, and you don’t even need a mixer! Just whisk together the ingredients, and you have a perfect one bowl chocolate cupcake. If you don’t have non-dairy milk on hand and you’re not concerned about the cupcakes being vegan, just sub regular milk (I’ve made it with skim, 2%, and whole). This recipe works well with both natural and Dutch process cocoa powder.

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Mint Chocolate Oreo Cupcakes

12.04.12

You know how they say that you should never go to the grocery store when you’re hungry? I don’t know who they are, but apparently, they knew what they were talking about. Chocolate and mint are one of my favorite flavor combinations, so when Christmas time comes around, my will power at the grocery store is almost non-existant. Needless to say, I walked out of there with a package of Cool Mint Oreos. I’m not usually a big fan of pre-packaged cookies, but I’m not going to specify how many of these I ate in the car on the way home. Whatever was left got turned into these cupcakes.

In order to get the frosting to match the Oreo filling, I used a couple of drops of Americolor Leaf Green food coloring. I didn’t want to taint the pretty frosting with cookie pieces, so I mixed pieces of the cookies into the batter.

I used a no fuss one bowl chocolate cupcake recipe. It makes a lighter cupcake, which is a nice contrast to the crunchy cookie pieces. ~~These cupcakes are egg and dairy free.~~ ~~I used organic unrefined sugar in the cupcakes. However, the Oreos contain refined sugar, so depending on your stance on sugar, these can be considered vegan.~~

After all of the comments I have received, I am no longer saying these are vegan. I will say that the cupcakes themselves are vegan (yes, there is such a thing as vegan powdered sugar). As for the oreos, that’s up to you to decide. You could always use Newman O’s instead, or if you wanted to be really sure, just make your own.

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Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

11.20.12

Let’s talk about pumpkin cupcakes. They’ve become a popular flavor, and not just during the holiday season. I googled pumpkin cupcakes and came across pages and pages of recipes, so I don’t plan to add another one into the abyss. My goal was to find the BEST pumpkin cupcake recipe out there. For me, a great pumpkin cupcake meets the following criteria:

1. It should have the texture of a cupcake and not a muffin. Not too airy, not too dense, and definitely not like a bread.
2. It has to be really pumpkiny (is that a word?)
3. The spices should be present without being overpowering

I tested three recipes- Ina Garten’s, Martha Stewart’s, and Stephanie Jaworski’s. Here’s what I thought.

1. Ina Garten’s– this recipe differs from the others in that is uses vegetable oil and not butter. While I’m usually a huge fan of Ina’s recipes, this one didn’t do it for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was still tasty, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for. A little but too much on the muffin side, and not enough pumpkin flavor.

2. Martha Stewart’s– This recipe used melted butter rather than oil. It also makes a larger batch. Other than that, I found it to be very similar to Ina Garten’s recipe. Good, but not the right texture.

3. Stephanie Jaworski’s– I found this on the Joy of Baking website. This recipe differs from the other in that it uses the creaming method. Softened butter is creamed together with the sugar, which cuts little air bubbles into the butter and makes a lighter cupcake. This was the winner in my book. The texture is exactly what I was looking for. I thought that the lack of brown sugar in the cupcakes would leave the flavor somewhat lacking in depth, but it had the most pumpkin flavor out of the three. This will now be my go to pumpkin cupcake recipe. The only thing I changed was substituting nutmeg for cloves. I don’t like cloves and tend to avoid them when baking, but that is just personal preference.

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