Sasha's Kitchen: Tie Dye Grateful Dead Cupcakes

My first concert that I went to was in the eighth grade and it was a Grateful Dead concert at the old Rich Stadium in Buffalo, NY, only a couple years before Jerry Garcia died. I've always been a fan of both 60-/70s music, and also 90s music (which was kind of a throwback in many ways), so I'm still a big fan of the Dead. I am now digressing quite a bit from cooking, you are probably thinking. But, it was the Grateful Dead that inspired my latest cupcake design. These aren't  dancing bear cupcakes, but they are tie dye vanilla cupcakes, that were inspired by the psychedelic look of the Dead. I added a peace sign on some of them for good measure. The recipe makes a dozen, and I probably should add, that they are Grateful Dead cupcakes in look only, as they are really just vanilla cupcakes.

Sasha's Tie Dye Grateful Dead Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup skim milk
4 gel food coloring colors in pink, green blue and yellow

Sasha's Vanilla Buttercream
1 1/2 sticks of butter
1 small box confectioner's sugar
2 T of heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
drop of pink food coloring

To make the cupcakes, beat the butter and sugar in the basin of the mixer on high until blended, about three minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and alternate adding the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder) with the milk. Divide the batter into four bowls and color each deeply with the food coloring. Fill each cupcake liner with a little under a tablespoon of each color, layered on top, and swirl gently using a toothpick. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes (this varies from oven to oven) until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

To frost the cupcakes, beat the butter and confectioners sugar, with the cream until smooth (you really can't beat it too long). Then add food coloring and vanilla. Frost using a frosting bag with a flared tip. The peace sign, I drew on top using a tube of sparkly Wilton food coloring.

I leave you with the music to one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs, China Cat Sunflower.

Sasha's Kitchen: Tie Dye Grateful Dead Cupcakes

Sasha's Kitchen: Vanilla-Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and Dr Seuss Cupcakes

More cute cupcakes? But of course! A couple of weeks ago, I visited Brooklyn's Mast Brothers Chocolate factory and tasting room where they make delicious, vegan bean to bar craft dark chocolate.  I bought some dark chocolate chips (really pellets) for use in making vanilla dark chocolate chip cupcakes because I liked the chocolate there so much. You can read my post about my visit and tour of Mast Brothers here.

At any rate, I was initially intending on making a series of Dr Seuss cupcakes with these but my vision on creating the designs I wanted wasn't well thought out enough. I am sure I will get back to doing that series one of these days soon. I did do one Cat In The Hat cupcake design which is featured below, before simply making some pretty and delicious teal cupcakes with the vanilla and dark chocolate flavors. I still plan on doing Thing One and Thing Two and a better cat in the hat, as well as green eggs and ham for a future cupcake series that is all-Seuss.

Sasha's Vanilla Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour plus 1 tsp
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 stick butter
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup milk
2/3 of a cup Mast Brothers' chocolate chips, chopped in a nut chopper

Frosting
1 1/2 stick of butter
4 oz lowfat cream cheese
1 small box (about four cups) confectioner's sugar
drop of teal colored gel food coloring
Fondant and red gel food coloring (if you wish to make Dr Seuss hats)

To make the cupcakes, beat together the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes at high speed in a stand mixer until smooth. Then, beat in the eggs, one by one, followed by the vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients (minus the extra teaspoon of flour) in a bowl and then add the dry ingredients to the mixer, alternating with the mix, and mix until combined and smooth. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 of the way full (this makes about 15-16 cupcakes). Chop the chocolate in a nut chopper and mix with the tsp of flour to coat. The flour keeps them suspended and from all sinking to the bottom of the cupcakes. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees until a toothpick comes out clean (the cupcakes should not brown or the bottoms will be burnt).

Beat the ingredients for the frosting in a stand mixer until smooth. Add a drop of teal food coloring and beat until combined and fluffy. Pipe with a frosting bag.

Sasha's Kitchen: Vanilla-Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and Dr Seuss Cupcakes

Sasha's Kitchen: A Rainbow Of Honey Vanilla Cupcakes!

Vanilla cupcakes are the simplest of cupcake recipes, in that it's similar to forget about them and get caught up making all the fun and unusual flavors of cupcakes.  However, it's actually harder to get vanilla cupcakes just right than any other type of cupcake.  They're less forgiving than chocolate, for sure.

Today's vanilla cupcake recipe is a modification using honey as the primary sweetener, based on Bill Yosses' (The White House pastry chef's) cupcake recipe for honey-vanilla cupcakes found on the Obama Foodorama Website.  My recipe is a bit different for a couple of reasons:  first I doubled the recipe for 24 cupcakes, instead of 12, but also made some ingredient adjustments to get the cupcakes just the way I like them.  However, I was certainly inspired to use organic honey in preparing them, just as the chefs at the White House have been, using their own on-site beehive.  Let's clarify though - I simply bought a large container of organic honey - no beekeeping for me!

I did not use Yosses' frosting recipe at all, but used the very same frosting recipe that I developed for my Chocolate Stout Cupcakes.  Then I divided the frosting into six bowls and prepared six different icing colors, and used the cupcakes to make a rainbow of colors. 

Here's my recipe for the Honey-Vanilla Cupcakes, adapted from the original Yosses recipe:

1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
2/3 cups of sugar
1 1/4 cup of honey
4 eggs
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
2 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

My Almost-Famous Honey-Vanilla Frosting

4 cups of confectioners sugar
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
1/3 cup of heavy cream
1 stick of butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 T of honey

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  To make the cupcakes, mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.  Then beat the butter and sugar in the mixer.  Add the honey.  Here's a trick for adding the honey so you don't have it all sticking to the inside of the measuring cup.  Coat the measuring cup with a T of Canola oil and then pour out the oil.  When you add the honey to the cup, it will slide right off and into the basin of your mixer, without leaving any residual honey in the cup.  Add the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla to the mixer, beating at low-medium speed.  Then add the dry ingrediants and mix well.  You can add a tad of additional buttermilk if its a bit too thick (that's how I wound up using 1 1/4 cup rather than 1 cup of buttermilk). 

Fill two cupcake trays with 24 liners.  Fill 3/4 of the way to the top.  Bake the cupcakes for about 25-30 minutes at 350 F, until very lightly browned and cooked through.  You can test with a fork or a toothpick to make sure the inside is done.  My husband usually does the test, and he just seems to know when they are ready to come out.  Allow the cupcakes to cool fully before you frost them.

To make the froasting, follow the instructions for my Chocolate Stout cupcakes, since its the same frosting.  Beat the butter, confectioner's sugar and cream cheese well.  Then add the heavy cream and the vanilla.  I then divided the frosting into 6 bowls.  To color the frosting, use gel frostings, and not the conventional frostings at the grocery store, which would make the cream curdle.  I used the same gel frostings that I used in making Royal Icing for my purse and shoe cookies, from NY Cake.  You could do pretty much any color that makes you happy.

Cupcakes make terrific birthday party cakes, in a less traditional sense.  So, for a child's birthday party, you could make a lot more cupcakes, frost in many colors, and then arrange the cupcakes to spell out your kid's name, a picture, animal or whatever would make your little one smile.  The creative options here are endless!  In this case, my goal was simply to create a rainbow of cupcakes, so I selected the colors that are in a rainbow.



Cupcake
Obama

Sasha's Kitchen: A Rainbow Of Honey Vanilla Cupcakes!