Sasha's Kitchen: Pink Lingerie Cupcakes

I was feeling inspired the night before the Super Bowl last weekend to make some new cupcakes.  As a big Giants fan, one would assume it would be to make Giants cupcakes to cheer on my team.  But alas, it was not.  I've wanted for some time to make pink lingerie cupcakes, a nice girly theme for some cute cupcakes. So along with some chocolate stout brownies, this was my dessert for the Super Bowl party that we went to last weekend. I used gum paste, which is similar to fondant to make the decorations - corsets (or bustiers) and pink string bikinis.  I dyed the gum paste bright pink and rolled it out using a rolling pin.  Then I cut out the shapes for the corsets and bikinis and added that to the frosted cupcakes.  I made a small batch of black icing and piped on the detail using a thin tip.  This would of course be perfect for a girl's night out, or a bridal shower, or just some plain old cupcake creativity on a Saturday night!  See the fun pictures below. If you are looking to make the chocolate cupcakes, the recipe can be found on my blog here or here on the Shoprite blog.

Sasha's Kitchen: Pink Lingerie Cupcakes

Sasha's Kitchen: Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

I've been on a bit of a kick recently making pies (with the start of pie season), which had led me to try and create some pie themed cupcakes. Recently, I baked an apple pie and a strawberry rhubarb pie, followed by some fabulous key lime pie cupcakes, complete with a graham cracker crust. The key lime pie cupcakes were just like a bite of the real thing, packed into a cute cupcake. So I decided that I could also recreate a Boston Cream Pie in cupcake form. These were just as good too! There are four components - a shortbread crust, a vanilla cupcake, a basic pastry cream filling and a fabulous light whipped chocolate frosting. Its really hard to say, but these are pretty high up there on my list of cupcakes I've made in terms of taste. Another trick - when most people fill cupcakes, they cut off the top, add the filling and reattach the top. Yet, this often makes the cupcake a bit messier to eat. Instead, I used a fairly thin fitted pastry tip and poked it into the top of the cupcake and "injected" the pastry cream into the cupcake. This works just fun and as you can see from the cross section photo, distributed the filling well inside the cupcake.

Sasha's Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

Crust:

3/4 cup pulverized shortbread cookies

2 T sugar

3 T melted butter

Vanilla Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 stick of butter

3 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup of  milk

Pastry Cream Filling:

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

4 egg yolks

1/3 cups sugar

pinch salt

4 tsp cornstarch

Chocolate Fudge Frosting: (adopted from this recipe as inspiration only to do it with melted chocolate rather than cocoa powder)

6 T butter

4 cups confectioner's sugar

1/3 cup to 1/2 cup milk

3 oz melted semisweet chocolate

First make the crusts. Melt the butter and combine with the sugar and pulverized shortbread cookies. Line paper liners for cupcakes with about a teaspoon and press to form a crust. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes until it sets only.

To make the cupcake batter, combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat the butter and sugar in a mixer until fairly smooth, for about two minutes. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Then alternate beating in the milk and the dry ingredients until smooth and well combined. Fill the cupcakes 3/4 of the way to the top, and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (the time depends on your oven) until a toothpick comes out clean, but take out before you see any browning action on the cupcake tops, as you don't want to burn them.

Allow the cupcakes to cool while preparing the pastry cream filling. Warm the heavy cream in a sauce pan. Combine the sugar, egg yolks, salt and cornstarch in a separate bowl. Combine over heat until it thickens into a custard, and stir in the vanilla towards the end. Chill for about 30 minutes before using.

Using a fairly thin tip (but not a micro thin tip) pastry tip attached to a pastry bag, pierce the top of each cupcake and squeeze the filling into the center of the cupcakes, using my "injection" technique. Don't worry if some oozes out the top as you will be covering that with frosting.

Now, the best part of these cupcakes is the frosting. I have made rich chocolate frostings with cocoa powder in the past, which are great, but a bit too intense for my taste. This is just the perfect, light chocolate whipped frosting! Beat the butter with the confectioner's sugar for several minutes on high speed in your mixer. Add 3 oz of the melted chocolate and the milk and beat until a nice frosting forms. Add the milk 1/4 cup at a time until the frosting reaches your desired consistency. I added between 1/3 and 1/2 of a cup of skim milk. Frost the cupcakes using a frosting bag with a fluted tip and devour immediately!

Sasha's Kitchen: Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

Sasha's Kitchen: Eat Me: Alice In Wonderland Themed Cupcakes Series

As most of my readers are probably aware by now, I love making cupcakes.  My passion for cupcakes is two-fold.  First, I love making cupcakes in different delicious flavors and experimenting with lovely frosted cupcakes from key lime to chocolate to vanilla to gingerbread.  In addition, I also love cupcake decorating and turning my cupcakes into miniature works of art.  I have done cupcakes that look like the great modern art masters of the 20th century in my modern art cupcake series, and of course sushi cupcakes.  Today, I introduce my series of Alice In Wonderland Cupcakes, inspired by Lewis Carroll's classic novel.  I made these cupcakes together with my often-sous chef Alicia, who was actually named after the main character, Alice (her mom did her thesis dissertation on the novel).  We had a fabulous time creating an original series of Alice in Wonderland cupcakes inspired by the novel - including the the Mad Hatter's hat, the White Rabbit's watch, the Doormouse, Tweedlededum, the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar.

The cupcakes that we made tasted great too (if you were willing to destroy the beautiful designs to eat them, which is quite hard to do, actually).  They are gingerbread cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.  I promise to share the recipe for the plain cupcakes in a future post that focuses only on the cupcakes, but for today, I wanted to share the Alice In Wonderland inspired designs that we created last weekend.  Please leave a comment on this post and let me know which ones are your favorites!

The cupcakes are all made out of colored fondant that I purchased from NY Cake in a couple of different varieties.  The fondant was very easy to work with - kind of like sculpting out of Play Dough to create beautiful food art.   Without further ado, here are the photographs from my "Eat Me" Alice in Wonderland Series of cupcakes:

The Mad Hatter's Hat Cupcakes:

The eccentric Mad Hatter and his hat are probably one of the most famous characters from the Lewis Carroll novel at the tea party.

The Cheshire Cat and his famous mischievous grin are one of the most recognizable images from Alice in Wonderland.  We did the Cheshire Cat into a cupcake, as well as an offbeat goofy cupcake that simply personifies his grin.

The White Rabbit is one of my favorite characters from Alice in Wonderland.  He is always quite worried about being late, so for him, we created cupcakes that look like his pocket watch.  "I'm Late! I'm Late! For a very important date!"

The Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar is another distinctive character from the Lewis Carroll novel.  We weren't sure how to make him at first, and I used some artistic license in making him blue and yellow rather than simply blue.  In the end, I was quite happy how he turned out, with a small pipe in his hand.

Next up are Tweedlededum and Tweedlededee.  I only made one of these rolly polly guys, since they look the same.  I used some artistic license in simply creating a cupcake that personified their pants, suspenders and striped shirt, and their roundish (cupcake-like) shape.  They actually first appear in Lewis Carroll's sequel, Through The Looking Glass.

Eat Me and Drink Me are one of the two famous quotes from the Lewis Novel where Alice grows, shrinks and changes form based on the potions, elixirs and other things that she ingests.  We created two "Eat Me" cupcakes, and really who wouldn't want to eat them anyhow?

We did not do the Queen of Hearts or her famous croquets with flamingos on the mallets, but in spirit to the Queen, we did do a playing card cupcake.  "Off with their heads!"

The Doormouse is another character from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.  I wasn't as happy with how he came out as the others - we just did a small mouse in a teacup.

Hope you enjoyed my cupcake tribute to Alice in Wonderland.  Leave a comment and let me know which cupcake is your favorite!

Sasha's Kitchen: Eat Me: Alice In Wonderland Themed Cupcakes Series