For the past six years, I’ve known Christmas is near just by opening my refrigerator. While I’m not looking, my husband will sneak a carton of eggnog into our grocery cart every week. And he’s the only one in our house who drinks it.

Yes, readers, I am a nog hater.

The running joke (which is actually 100% true) is that the very idea of eggnog is enough to engage my gag reflex. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in eggnog? There are uncooked eggs is that stuff! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t like milk either. There are just way too many things going on in eggnog that I do not like.

But baking with it? Count me in! It seems like the perfect baking ingredient. So I knew I’d have to find an eggnog cupcake recipe somewhere…and I found it at How to Eat a Cupcake!

The culprits:

The recipe was pretty straightforward, and included a nice douse of rum (because if you’re going to drink eggnog, it should probably be alcoholic…) and cinnamon. The batter tasted yummy:

And I even found somewhat holiday-ish cupcake papers!

The batter went into the cupcake tins:

And when they came out, I frosted them with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (the same frosting I used for my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at Halloween). I dusted the tops with a little cinnamon:

Very pretty. I had one of these cupcakes right after I baked them, and thought it was okay. Not spectacular. It seemed a little dry. But I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I don’t know what happened in that refrigerator, but the next day these cupcakes were ah-mazing. They looked amazing, they smelled amazing and they tasted amazing. A few of my co-workers said this cupcake edged out the Tarte Tatin with Carmelized Apple Cupcake as their favorite. One of the account executives took a cupcake and sniffed it experimentally, then looked at me in amazement and said, “It smells like a Yankee Candle!”

It’s that frosting, I tell ya’. That frosting could save a burnt-black cookie.

Two more weeks, two more weeks, eek! This week I’m baking a Grasshopper Pie for my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. And I still haven’t made a decision on the final project. I’ve got two ideas in mind, but both could prove to be beyond my budget. I’ll have to put some more thought into it. I feel like it needs to be something spectacular, seeing as how it’s The End!!!

For Halloween, I wanted to bake something that would invoke childhood. Halloween, no matter how old you are, is always about dressing up and candy. And when you’re older, booze. So when I saw the Chocolate Malt Cupcake in Gail Wagman’s cookbook, I knew I had to give it a try.

The recipe started off with an incredibly light cupcake batter that included Ovaltine. (”Be…sure…to…drink…your…Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?”). This batter is so light that it’s scary. It seems more like frosting than batter. Getting it into the cupcake tins was kind of a nightmare:

They baked up fine, if a little fragile. Light cupcakes require a really light hand, which I sometimes don’t have. It’s why I like heartier fare:

The recipe included crushed Whoppers candy in the batter, which I wasn’t a fan of. I feel like the Ovaltine got the malt aspect across just fine. The other weird thing was that the cupcake papers started pulling away from the cupcakes! I think it’s because the batter was so light that it didn’t even stick to the papers. Weird.

The frosting was much easier. And tasty!!! Chocolate malt is actually a pretty good flavor when it’s not on the inside of a Whopper and all crunchy:

To make these the ultimate in Halloween cupcakes, I had to top them with candy! I picked up some miniature candy bars at the grocery store and topped each cupcake with a candy:

These went over very well at work. I carried them around to different offices and forced people to say, “Trick or treat.”

I also made some Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (Danae over at The Busty Baker gave me the recipe for that delicious, delicious frosting) to take to my sister-in-law’s Halloween Party. They were also a success, but I neglected to take photos of the process. This is all I’ve got:

(I ran out of frosting for those last two cupcakes, so they just got some powdered sugar.)

Next up, a Free Form Apple Tart!

I’m sooo behind! Eek! My job’s kept me really busy (I started daytime hours, so while I have a more normal schedule, it also means I have more time to read, watch TV or play video games rather than update my blog). But fear not, I haven’t missed a week of baking.

A few weeks ago, I made Apple Tarte Tatin Cupcakes. This is another cheater post, as I made these earlier this year to take on TV with me when Carmen Owens and I pimped CupcakeCampColumbus on a morning show. But these cupcakes didn’t really get their due, and I think they’re pretty fantastic, so here they are again!

The cake part of this cupcake is a pretty straightforward brown sugar cake:

The cool part comes with the apples:

The apples are sliced into 16 pieces and then fried in butter in a skillet. Tip: Make sure you get firm apples. I think I got Braeburns or something, but they started falling apart as soon as they hit the pan. I managed to salvage enough for the cupcakes, but it was a pain!

Once the apples had caramelized with butter and sugar, they were placed on top of the cooled cupcakes:

Meanwhile, I whipped up some caramel to drizzle over the apples. This caramel never quite thins out the way I think it should…it stays very thick and starts to harden as soon as it’s removed from the heat. But it tastes amazing:

My coworkers really enjoyed these cupcakes. The general opinion is that these are the best thing I’ve brought in so far.

Next up, Chocolate Malt Cupcakes for Halloween (posted just a few weeks too late!)

This is definitely a cheater post. I’ve made these Lemon Meringue Cupcakes three or four times in the course of this year, but I just love them so much. I”ve done double posts in the past, where I’ve made more than one thing in a week, so I think it all balances out. Someday I plan to make the lemon curd and just eat it over vanilla ice cream. Mmm mmm good.

The recipe begins with putting lemon juice, sugar, lemon zest and butter in the top of a double boiler and letting it simmer until the mixture is quite thick. Lemon zest is then mixed in and the mixture is covered with plastic wrap and left to chill in the fridge while the rest of the cupcakes come together.

The cupcakes are a fairly straightforward vanilla cupcake with a little lemon juice thrown in.

Once the cupcakes are cool, a small cone is cut out of each and a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd are used to fill in the cone.

Meanwhile, egg whites and cream of tartar are whipped together until foamy, and then granulated sugar is slowly added and whipped for about ten minutes, until the meringue becomes thick and fluffy.

The cupcakes were then topped with a dollop of meringue and put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for an additional five or six minutes to put a little color on the meringue.

Fantastic.

My co-workers really enjoyed these. And I know that I did. These are my absolute favorite thing to eat that I make. In a couple of weeks, I will be making my absolute favorite thing to make. Mmmmm…

My next post will be about the glazed Pumpkin Cookies I just made this past Thursday, and then I’ll be caught up with the blog!

This post marks just ten more baked goods to make for this year-long project. Next year I plan to start something a little different, but more on that when it develops.

By now, I’ve spoiled my new co-workers something awful. Every Friday around 2 p.m. when I come in, they’re all waiting for me at the door, a hungry look in their eye and a little drool on their lips. I’ve already had a few requests come in, so this week I decided to honor one.

One of the guys at my work whom everyone calls Archives, asked me to bake something with pineapple in it. It’s a running joke at work that Archives is a little bonkers for pineapple (and ketchup, but that’s another story). When he asked, I immediately thought of pineapple upside down. I’ve never made one, but I figured doing a cupcake version couldn’t be that difficult.

I started with a few cans of pineapple chunks, which were drained of their liquid and then left to drain a little more on paper towels:

Next, I mixed up some light brown sugar with melted butter to make a syrup for what would become the tops of the cupcakes:

This syrup was evenly distributed among the cupcake tins:

And then the pineapple chunks were decoratively placed on top of the syrup:

Finally, a pretty straightforward cupcake batter was mixed to be poured on top of the pineapple and syrup. The recipe didn’t even include vanilla, which I added to give it just a bit more flavor. The batter was poured on and the cupcakes were baked. Once they had baked, I cooled them in the tins for a few minutes and then wrestled with a cooling rack to flip the tins upside down and release the cakes. It worked for the most part. A few pineapple chunks stuck to the tins, so I had to pull them out and stick them back on the cakes:

These weren’t my favorite cupcake…they were a little sticky and the cake was just a touch too bland. I had the option of using either milk or reserved pineapple juice for the batter, and I went with the milk. Maybe I should have went with the juice. At any rate, my co-workers gobbled them down and Archives told me that I should divorce my husband and marry him just so I could bake these all the time for him.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to stick with the husband I’ve got, but thanks for the compliment, Archives.

This week I baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Sandwich Cookies, which I will be posting about soon. I’m trying to get back on track and post things the weekend after I bake, but we’re still unpacking and getting settled, so my schedule is still wonky.

More cupcakes up this week! I’ve been dying to make a pink lemonade cupcake for quite some time, so I decided it was finally time to do it. The recipe I found online seemed fairly simple and the pink color was extra cute. My co-workers seemed skeptical of a pink lemonade cupcake when I told them about it, so I knew I had to do it up right.

The recipe started with a batter that combined flour, sugar, vegetable oil, egg whites, buttermilk, red food coloring and thawed frozen pink lemonade concentrate (as well as a few other staples). The pink lemonade concentrate added a great lemony touch to the finished product, but lost a little of its tartness in the baking process:

The cupcakes baked up beautifully, although they weren’t as pink as I’d hoped. I added a few more drops of red food coloring to the remaining batter for the next round:

Second batch:

I felt like the frosting was the real star of this cupcake. The original recipe called for just a buttercream frosting, with powdered sugar, salt, vanilla and butter, but I felt like it was too bland. So I added a few tablespoons of the pink lemonade concentrate until it achieved a slightly tart flavor, and then a few drops of red food coloring to make it pink. Perfect:

The frosted cupcakes turned out quite cute:

My co-workers enjoyed them and became pink lemonade cupcake believers. These ones were gone within twenty minutes.

This week I also whipped up some Lemon Cupcakes for my husband’s cousin’s 40th birthday party. The cupcakes themselves turned out great, but my frosting was really weird. It never achieved the smoothness I was looking for, but stayed slightly curdled and spread on the cupcakes more like butter than frosting. It tasted great, but just looked a little weird:

Last week I baked Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes, which I will be posting soon.

After taking in last week’s S’mores Cupcakes to my coworkers, one of them, Colleen, requested something with caramel. So I came home and started doing some research to find a good caramel-y dessert. I didn’t want to just make the Salted Caramel cupcakes again, so I found a recipe for these Caramel Apple cupcakes and it looks awesome.

The recipe used applesauce rather than chopped apples. If I ever make these again, I might consider using applesauce and some chopped apples just to amp up the apple flavor:

The wet ingredients were added to a flour mixture that included a heavenly mix of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Mmm mmm!

The batter was scooped into cupcake tins:

Once the cupcakes had cooled, I melted down some caramel candy cubes in a saucepan. Once they were melting, I added in some heavy cream to get a smooth, buttery caramel sauce, which was spread over the tops of my cooled cupcakes:

As soon as the caramel went down, I dipped the tops of several of them in chopped Reese’s Pieces or M&Ms, to mimic the chopped peanuts or chocolate that you might find on a fair-style caramel apple:

They were so beautiful! I was so proud of myself:

And then the next day happened. The recipe instructs the baker to store the cupcakes at room temperature. Which I did. The next morning when I got up and checked on them, the caramel had melted and oozed down the cupcakes. The toppings went with them. They weren’t ruined; there was still caramel on the cupcakes, but it was melty and no longer that shiny veneer of caramel. I was so disappointed.

My coworkers, however, loved them. Colleen was thrilled that I’d brought in something caramel, as she much prefers it over chocolate.

This past Friday, I baked Pink Lemonade cupcakes, which I will be posting about sometime mid-next week. Tomorrow I will be baking some more cupcakes and on Monday we are finally (finally!) moving into our new apartment in Brooklyn. That will take up some of my time, but I promise to post before I bake my birthday cupcakes on Friday!

So last week’s cookies went over pretty well with my coworkers, but I decided this time around, I needed to step it up a bit and do something a little more dramatic. So I decided cupcakes would be the way to go. I trolled around on the Internet for a while, looking for an exciting cupcake recipe when I found the S’mores Cupcakes at How to Eat a Cupcake. They looked pretty simple to bake, but were showstoppers once decorated. Winner!

The recipe started with crushing up graham crackers. My food processor unfortunately is in storage right now, so instead I filled up plastic zip-top bags with crackers and rolled them with my rolling pin:

The graham cracker crumbs were mixed with flour, baking powder and salt. Butter and sugar were creamed together in the mixer and four eggs were added one at a time, followed by some vanilla. The graham cracker crumb/flour mixture was added, alternating with milk. Finally, mini chocolate chips were added to the mixture:

The batter was doled out into cupcake tins and baked for roughly 18 minutes until they were nicely browned:

Once the cupcakes were cooled, I went to work mixing eight egg whites with sugar over a double boiler. Once this had reached a temperature of 160 degrees F, it was transferred to my stand mixer which was fitted with the whisk attachment, and whisked for about ten minutes until it was light and fluffy and spreadable:

I put the marshmallow-y mixture into plastic bags and cut off the tip to form a makeshift piping bag. Each cupcake got a generous swirl of meringue, a dusting of crushed graham cracker crumbs and a square of Hershey’s chocolate:

I think they came out quite cute:

I had a ton of the meringue left over, so I thought I’d make myself a little snack:

These cupcakes went over very well at my work. One of my coworkers remarked that they were better than Crumbs, which is a highly regarded bakery in the city. Quite the compliment!

It was quite an adventure getting them there. I take a bus from where we are temporarily staying in New Jersey into Port Authority in New York City. From there, I walk about three blocks to my job. On the walk, as I was stopped at a crosswalk, a guy leaned over my cupcake carrier (which is clear plastic and see-through) and said, “Are those cupcakes? Is that chocolate in there?” to which I replied in the affirmative.
“Are they for a party?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m taking them to work, just because.”
“I wish I was at your job!”
This prompted the guy on the other side of me to ask, “Can I have one?” I probably would have given him one if I could have gotten that carrier open with one hand, which I couldn’t. So I told him that unfortunately, I needed them all for my coworkers.
“Let’s just follow her to her job!” the first guy said.
Further up the street, where people lurk, waiting to hand you a flyer or ask you, “Hey, do you like comedy?” I was confronted by yet another person.
“Hey! Do you like come…whoah! Cupcakes! Those look awesome! Enjoy!”
So, word to the wise. If you don’t want people to hand you flyers, carry cupcakes.

This week one of my coworkers requested a baked good with caramel, so I found something that looks pretty awesome. More next weekend.

Once again, I got sidetracked from posting by an illness.

Just as I was getting over my allergic reaction from last week, I woke up Thursday with a raging earache. I ended up going to Urgent Care (again) and finding out that it was Swimmer’s Ear. I got some ear drops and Vicodin (!) and went home. The next morning I woke up to a small fire burning in the other ear as well. Yup. Swimmer’s Ears. I’m doing much better now. Between the drops and the Vicodin, I’m feeling much happier.

My plan last week was to bake two cupcakes for a friend’s birthday that were inspired by flavors of ice cream available at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. I wasn’t planning to bake the cupcakes until Thursday morning and then I was going to frost them Friday night before the party.

On Sunday, I got a real urge to do some baking. I started flipping through the “Martha Stewart Baking Handbook” at work and stumbled on the strawberry shortcake-variation baking powder biscuits. They looked amazing and pretty easy. So I decided I would make those for dessert that night.

The biscuits were super simple and consisted of sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and butter. Once the dough came together, it was rolled out and I cut out my biscuits. While they baked, the strawberries were mascerated in lemon juice and sugar:

I also whipped up some Vanilla Whipped Cream:

In just a few minutes, the biscuits were ready:

The biscuits were cut in half and the shortcakes were assembled:

Delicious. Oh man, I could eat this every night! The strawberries were very sweet, which was good because the biscuits and the whipped cream were not overly so. Mmmm mmm.

On to the cupcakes!

A few years ago at Comfest, Jeni’s unveiled their Root Beer Float. It is quite possibly the most amazing thing ever. It’s a deceptively simple combination of Frostop Root Beer and Honey Vanilla Bean ice cream. So good. When I thought about what cupcakes I wanted to make that would capture the essence of Jeni’s, I knew I wanted to make a root beer cupcake. Jeni’s most popular flavor is the Salty Caramel, which I actually don’t like. For some reason, I can only taste the salt and not the caramel. But who am I to question the tastes of the masses? I had to make a Salty Caramel cupcake as well.

I didn’t take many photos of this process, as my ear was killing me while I was baking them. But I do have some photos of the completed cupcakes:

The Root Beer Float Cupcakes were frosted with a Honey Vanilla Bean Buttercream frosting (delicious!). The Salty Caramel Cupcakes were topped with a caramel frosting that never quite thickened up the way I wanted it to. It turned out tasting pretty good, but I wish it had had a little more height to it. To make up for the lackluster presentation, I drizzled some caramel over the tops, put a caramel candy on each one and then added just a pinch of fleur de sal. That salt was amazing. It provided just the right amount of salt to a really sweet cupcake.

They were a big hit at the party. The guests seemed to be evenly split between which was their favorite:

I definitely want to make the Root Beer Float Cupcakes again. The Salty Caramel Cupcakes were awesome, but they were a lot of work. The Root Beer cupcakes were much easier. Yum!

This week I’m working on two different things. Tonight I made my first pizza from scratch. On Wednesday, I plan to make French Almond Macaroons. More on both of these later this week.

Twenty-one weeks! Now that I think about it, I should have baked something with alcohol in it, seeing as how my blog is now legally allowed to drink. Instead, I went with Cinnamon Rolls.

I love cinnamon something fierce. A friend of ours got us the Baker’s Assortment gift box from Penzey’s Spices for our wedding, and it contains a jar of Chinese Cassia Cinnamon, which has a nice bite to it. I understand that it’s a little stronger than your typical McCormick’s Cinnamon, so I was all for it.

My day started off with a drive to Penzey’s to redeem a gift card a friend had given me for Christmas. The Baker’s Assortment box had contained a bottle of strong vanilla extract that I LOVED and had used up, so I wanted to go and buy another bottle. What should have been a fifteen minute trip because about an hour trip, as the main road I needed to use was closed. As someone on Facebook said, “Henderson Road Fail”.

I finally managed to procure my bottle of vanilla and start baking.

The Cinnamon Rolls started with a dough made with warm buttermilk. I made sure the buttermilk wasn’t too hot so I wouldn’t kill the yeast this time around, like I did with the Chocolate Marbled Brioche Bread. Once the dough was kneaded for about ten minutes, it was turned out onto a floured surface and kneaded by hand into a smooth ball. That ball of dough went into a lightly greased bowl to double in size, which took just about two hours:

Once the dough had doubled in size, it was once again turned out onto a floured surface and pressed into a 16″ by 12″ rectangle:

I brushed some melted butter on top of this, and then sprinkled on a heavenly mixture of cinnamon, brown sugar and cloves. Mmmm mmmm:

Then, starting at the bottom, this rectangle was rolled up into a log. Then seam was pinched together and the log was rolled seam side down. It was then stretched into an 18″ log and cut into 12 equal pieces. These pieces were placed into a greased 9″ by 13″ baking dish:

The rolls were then left to proof for a second time. Before they were to go into the oven to bake, they should double in size and touch each other. When I came back an hour later, this is what I found:

Oh, look at that! They’re touching each other! Scandalous!

They then went into the oven for about 30 minutes. When I checked on them at the 30 minute mark, they still seemed a little pale, so I let them go for about another five minutes. They came out looking a little like this:

I cut them apart and flipped them upside down on a rack to cool while I mixed up the glaze. Check out all that yummy brown sugar/cinnamon goo on the bottom of those rolls. Delicious:

The glaze was a very simple mixture of cream cheese, powdered sugar and buttermilk that was mixed together until smooth:

The rolls were then flipped back over and the glaze was drizzled over the rolls:

I think I ended up baking these for about four minutes too long, as they are slightly dry. I threw them into an air tight container overnight, so I’m hoping that they may have softened up just a bit. They’re still fantastically delicious. Yum.

While I was waiting for the dough and the cut rolls to proof, I whipped up a batch of Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. These are the same ones that I made about two weeks ago. I loved them so much that I needed to make another batch. They came out quite yummy this time as well:

Yummmmmm.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to make next week just yet. I have a co-worker who has requested baklava, and that looks verrrrry interesting. It may be the winner.