Jan 15 2012

Looking for Guest Posters!

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Hey guys! A friend of mine recently showed interest in writing a guest post for Shane’s Killer Cupcakes and I thought that sounded like a great idea. Why not open it up for everyone?

If you are interested in being a guest poster please read all the important information in my Guest Poster Guidelines, and then send me an email about what you want to post about. I’m open to a lot of different ideas, even things I may not have blogged about before, especially things I haven’t blogged about before, actually.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. Please read the guidelines before asking any questions because your answer may be in them.

 

Jan 13 2012

5-Minute Valentine Mug Cake {Recipe}

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I’ve been intrigued by all of the mug cake recipes I’ve been coming across on Pintrest. And decided to give one a shot today. I know it’s not even February yet, but I wanted to dress this cake up for Valentines Day anyway. Think of it as getting a head start on a romantic dessert for you and your special someone!

A lot of the recipes I came across ultimately had bad reviews in the comments. So I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste my time on those. Then I came to this recipe on Instructables. It had good reviews for once! And solved a problem that a lot of the other recipes couldn’t. How, for such a small portion, do you get the egg amount right? People complained on those other recipes that one egg was too much and the cake tasted eggy; however, his recipe has you whisk the egg first and then only use a portion of the egg mixture! Brilliant.

So without further ado:

{Recipe}

5-Min. Valentine Mug Cake

INGREDIENTS:

  • 4 tablespoons flour
  • 4 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
  • 2 tablespoons whisked egg
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • 3 tablespoons oil
  • 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)
  • splash of vanilla
  • cooking spray for mug
Optional
  • powdered sugar for garnish

EQUIPMENT

  • a regular sized mug
  • a bowl
  • spatula
  • a whisk

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix the flour, sugar, and cocoa in a bowl and then add the whisked egg, milk, oil, and vanilla.

2. Combine ingredients with a spatula until everything is thoroughly mixed together. I stirred in my chocolate chips at this point but they floated to the bottom while it cooked and got a little crispy, so maybe putting the chocolate chips on top of the batter after you pour it into the mug without stirring them in is a better idea.

3. Spray the mug with cooking spray and then pour the batter into the mug. It should only fill it a little more than halfway.

4. Stick the mug in the microwave for about 2 minutes and 15 seconds on high. The recipe I followed said to do it for 3 minutes but I could smell the chocolate starting to cook too much so I took it out early. It’s better to check it early before you over cook the cake. If you stick a toothpick in and it’s still runny or uncooked after 2 minutes and 15 seconds throw it back into the microwave for a few more seconds. Use your best judgement.

Also, the batter should rise up out of the mug a little while it cooks. This is normal. Even if the batter falls over the side, it might be a little messy, but the cake should still be good.

5. Let it cool for a few minutes and then sprinkle with powdered sugar or dollop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

The trick to making this cake taste good comes down to using chocolate chips. I can’t say it’s the best cake I’ve ever made, but it didn’t taste terrible and the chocolate chips definitely upped the richness and chocolaty taste.

The top of the cake was almost a little overcooked but the middle was great, especially when the chocolate chips were still melted. Unfortunately the chocolate chips settled on the bottom while it cooked and the very bottom of the cake was a little crunchy because the chips started to overcook. I don’t know if there is a way to make this cake cook more evenly but for a quick and simple, single serving cake it wasn’t bad.

If you didn’t want so much cake to yourself, you could split the batter between two mugs and make smaller portions. You might not want to cook the cake as long though. If you do it this way, I’d suggest cooking it only for a minute and checking it before you heated it any longer.

Jan 5 2012

Following Up On My Resolutions

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The other day I listed some goals I planned to do or work on this year for the blog. One of them was learning to become a better photographer so that my blog pictures would show my creations at their best. Today I came across a photo challenge from last year called Project 365. Although I don’t plan to take a picture everyday, I do plan to use some of their theme inspirations as a guide to keep me on track and learn some photography techniques in the process.

The lovely Canon PowerShot A3000IS point-and-shoot camera I'll be using

I also think making a light tent will help for close-up shots of my cupcakes. I found a pretty cool tutorial over on the Digital Photography School’s website.

I’m looking forward to sharing better cupcake photos with you soon!

 

Dec 31 2011

Shane’s Killer Cupcakes 2011 Stats in Review

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WordPress.com put together a little stats compilation for my blog that I thought I’d share with you. I’m sure I’m the only one interested in any of this but since they offered a way to share it with you too, I figured, why not? See you in 2012!

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,300 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

 

Dec 31 2011

Resolutions for the New Year

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Isn't the little decorative cupcake box I got for Christmas cute?

So as this is the time for resolutions, I think it’s a good day to set some goals for myself concerning my baking and this blog. I want to thank you for continuing to read my blog too. I started this blog back in March of this year not really expecting it to be more than just a blog to share my cupcakes with friends, but it has grown to be more than that. I want it to keep growing and hope that you’ll stick around for the ride.

So here are the goals I’m setting for myself:

  1. I am going to post at least once per week. I’ve been really bad at posting regularly on here and I want that to change. Starting in 2012 I will share something with you at least once per week. It might just be a picture, or a project, or maybe even just a random musing but I will post.
  2. I will learn to bake from scratch. I’ve never been much of a baker. I’ve always been more interested in the decorating part, so I’ve taken short cuts and used canned frosting and boxed cake mix often, but the flavor of my cupcakes have always suffered because of this. This year I want my treats to taste as good as they look!
  3. I will learn more about photography. Online your food only looks as good as your camera can make it, and something that looks awesome in person can look terrible in a photo if it’s not taken in the right conditions. I only have an inexpensive Canon point and shoot camera for my food photos, but I want to be able to use it to the best of its ability so that my blog will look more professional and eye catching.

What are some of your resolutions for 2012? I know it’s cliché these days to make resolutions anymore, but it’s never a bad idea to set goals for yourself. And setting them at the beginning of a year just feels like you can push the Reset button and start over.

By the way, my good friend Amber will be a guest blogger on here soon. The post that she’s preparing could be the only one she posts but hopefully she’ll want to do more writing for me here in the future. I look forward to what she has to share with us.

 

Dec 26 2011

Christmas Tree and Reindeer Cupcakes

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Merry Belated Christmas!

I’m sorry I haven’t been as active on the blog lately. I blame my holiday laziness, but I did whip up some cute cupcakes this past week that I want to share with you. I hope your families had wonderful get-togethers for the holidays these past few weeks no matter what you celebrate at this time of the year!

For a Christmas party I went to this past Friday I made two cupcake decorating ideas that I’d seen floating around the internet this past month. The first were these cute reindeer cupcakes:

And the others were these Christmas Tree cupcakes:

Both were fairly easy to make but took a long time to put together. For the less experienced decorator, I’d suggest the reindeer ones. I think even kids could put these together. The supplies you’d need to make these are a cupcake (made from scratch or boxed mix), chocolate frosting, Nila wafers, round candies in white, brown and red (I used peanut butter M&Ms for the brown and red noses and white coconut M&Ms for the eyes), black gel frosting for the eye pupils, and pretzels. If I were to do this one again I’d chose smaller pretzels. It’s probably pretty self explanatory by looking at the pictures how to construct them, but I’ll give a quick run down of how I put them together anyway.

First frost the cupcake and put the Nila wafer on near the bottom of one side of the cupcake, then use some frosting to attach the nose. Next shove the pretzels into the frosting near the top, almost to where they meet with the cookie. It was hard to keep the pretzels from slumping over that’s why I put them so far down on the face. If you use smaller pretzels, this may not be necessary. Then attach the eyes with more frosting near the top of the cookie. Unless you want them to be blind reindeer, add a little black pupil to each eyeball with the gel frosting.

For a little more of a challenge I made these Christmas tree cupcakes as well. These ones require a little bit of frosting technique and frosting tips.  Start with a cupcake frosted with white frosting. For the structure of the tree place an ice cream sugar cone upside-down on the white frosting. Then make some green frosting and pipe it on using a closed star tip. Just rest the tip near the ice cream cone and then pull outward as you push the frosting out to make it look like the branchy peaks on the tree.

For decorating the tree you can do a wide variety of things! Some ideas are chocolate covered sunflower seeds, sprinkles, small candies like mini M&Ms, etc. I used some light blue pearl candy sprinkles I had on hand but the decorations are limitless.  You could even try  to find a star shaped candy as a tree topper.

If you made cupcakes for the holidays this year I’d love to see them! You can either post a link to them in a comment below or post a picture on my Facebook page!

Tip Junkie handmade projects

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