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.

Lucky Week Thirteen brought another cupcake – the Mint Meltaway. This cupcake started with a sour cream chocolate cupcake, the same that were used in the Chocolate Covered Hi-Hats from a couple of weeks back:

After the cupcakes were baked and while they were cooling, I mixed up the mint chocolate filling that would go in the cupcakes. This was made up of heavy cream and butter that was heated over the stove. Once the butter melted, semi-sweet chocolate chips, peppermint extract and vanilla extract were added. This was refrigerated until it thickened up and reached a spreadable consistency. I refrigerated mine a little too long. It was tearing up the cupcakes, so I ended up heating it back up a little over a pot of boiling water until it thinned out a little bit:

At the same time, I made a double batch of chocolate glaze. This was made up of heavy cream, butter and light corn syrup heated over the stove. Once the butter melted, semi-sweet chocolate chips and vanilla extract were added, and the mixture was refrigerated until it thickened up.

Once the cupcakes were cooled, the papers were pulled off and the cupcakes were turned upside down. I used a paring knife to cut the cupcakes in half horizontally:

I then spread about a tablespoon of the filling on the bottom (former top) of the cupcake:

The cupcakes then received an initial ‘crumb coat’ of the chocolate glaze:

The crumb coat was allowed to firm up for 15 minutes, and then the second coat of chocolate glaze was applied. This was quite possibly the messiest thing I’ve ever made. I had to wash my hands after every cupcake because I was covered in chocolate. I finally figured out it was easier to suspend the cupcake over the bowl of chocolate glaze with my spatula, and use my offset spatula to cover the cupcake:

I packed the cupcakes up in my carrier on some wax paper and popped them into the fridge to firm up completely:

Rob and I devoured a few of them this evening during “Lost”. These are definitely a plate-and-fork kind of cupcake. Even with hours of chilling in the fridge, the fudge glaze is still a little sticky:

I should have just used the glaze I used for the Hi-Hats. That glaze firmed up like the chocolate dip they use at Dairy Queen.

Next week I’m breaking my rules a little and making something that I’ve previously made. We’re doing another cupcake decorating event at my work and I’m going to be making vanilla and chocolate cupcakes from “More from Magnolia”. I know I’ve made the vanilla cupcakes before, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever made the chocolate. So maybe I’m only half breaking my rules.

This week I found myself playing bachelor girl while my husband Rob is a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. This also explains why all my photos in this post were taken with my iPhone – Rob has my real camera in the Lone Star State.

I always get lonely when he’s gone and I find that having a project to do helps to alleviate some of the loneliness. So this time around, I decided to bake.

It began last night with Orange Chiffon Cupcakes with Orange Butter Icing. This was the only recipe of the three that I wasn’t thrilled with. The recipe basically consisted of two batters – one with egg yolks and the other with egg whites. The egg yolk batter turned out fine, but the egg white batter was lacking. I think the problem stemmed from using my KitchenAid stand mixer to beat the egg whites, when I should have used my hand held mixer. They didn’t quite get as fluffy as they were supposed to:

The egg white batter was folded into the egg yolk batter and baked for 35 minutes. They seemed to bake up okay:

When they were finished, I rigged up a soup can/wire rack cooling device, onto which the cupcake pan was flipped upside down:

(Yeah, that one cupcake fell out when I flipped the pan upside down.)

The cupcakes hung upside down for 45 minutes to cool, at which point they were frosted. There was no picture of these cupcakes in the cookbook, so I’m not sure exactly what the icing was supposed to look like. It turned out to be more of a glaze than an icing, but it still tasted pretty good:

Aside from not being quite fluffy enough, my problem with this recipe was that the author said it would make 12 big cupcakes. I was supposed to pour the batter into muffin pans to get a big ‘ol cupcake. I thought I was using a muffin pan, but when I compared it with my cupcake pan, they were the same size…and the recipe still only made seven cupcakes. I’m guessing the egg white batter should have been a lot fluffier and that would have increased the volume of batter. Oh well, lessons learned.

This morning I got up early to take our dog Scout in for her vet appointment, so I used the morning to get started on my second recipe – Chocolate Covered Hi Hat cupcakes. This was a fairly ambitious recipe, as the finished product was supposed to look like this:

The recipe started with a fairly simple sour cream chocolate cupcake recipe (and man are these cupcakes good), which was easy enough until I tried to remove the cupcakes from the pans:

(Yup, that’s my thumbprint in the upper right hand cupcake. Whoopsie!)

While the cupcakes cooled (during which time I had to make a grocery store run for more sugar), I started making the topping. The topping consisted of sugar, water, egg whites and cream of tartar. This was combined in a bowl and placed over a pot of simmering water and mixed with a hand held mixer for 12 minutes. Twelve minutes doesn’t sound like such a long time, until you get to about minute six. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome sets in pretty quickly:

After the 12 minutes were up, vanilla and almond extracts were mixed in, the topping was spooned into a pastry bag/freezer bag and piped onto the cupcakes:

I didn’t pipe quite as much topping onto the cupcakes as the author of the cookbook did, just because I was scared that I would mess something up. I went a little more conservative. The topped cupcakes were then refrigerated while I melted the chocolate for the coating:

Then the messy part began. I turned each cupcake upside down and dunked it in the melted chocolate. I then spooned more chocolate over the cupcakes until all the topping was covered with a layer of chocolate:

The coated cupcakes were then tucked back in the fridge for two and a half hours to firm up:

I decided to eat the mutated cupcake (like a good baker does) so I could take the pretty ones to work. I cut it in half too see if the cross section looked anything like the photo in the cookbook. Surprisingly, it did!

The cake part of this concoction is fantastic. I’m not the biggest fan of the topping. The sugar didn’t completely dissolve, so it’s slightly gritty (although not nasty or anything). I’m not sure what else I could have done to dissolve the sugar, because if mixing it for 12 minutes doesn’t do it, I’m not sure what does. Also, I’m apparently not an almond fan. I really could have done with the almond extract.

I finished up with the recipe that I originally thought was going to be the only thing I made today: Orange White Chocolate Chip Cookies. This was a pretty straightforward chocolate chip cookie dough with orange zest and white chocolate chips added:

The dough was dropped by rounded teaspoonful on a baking sheet and baked for 11 minutes. It turned out the cutest little bite-sized cookies!

Whew! This was a marathon baking experience! I just hope my co-workers enjoy all the goodies coming in tomorrow!

Things learned today: I need a wire rack with the wires going in both directions. My current rack has only horizontal wires and they sometimes leave indentations on the undersides of my baked goods. Also, I need a microplane. My box grater is a nightmare to use to zest fruit.

Depending on my mood, I may bake some Alphabet Cookies for an event at work on Friday for the Week Twelve project. But they won’t be cut in alphabet shapes!

Things were going so well. I was getting a little cocky. I guess the time had to come.

This week, I experienced my first baking failure.

To preface this project, let me explain the dual purpose I hinted at before. I suggested that the bookstore where I work should have a cupcake decorating day, as a store in another city did this around Christmas. My store decided to do it as a Valentine’s project, so I and one of my managers each baked some cupcakes and then we went out and bought fun pink and red decorations.

I decided to bake vegan cupcakes, not only to fulfill my week’s project, but also to provide such cupcakes to any vegans who might show up (and to expose children to the idea). So I thought I would bake vanilla and chocolate for a little variety:

The chocolate ones turned out fantastic:

The vanilla ones, however, were a different story. The recipe gave me the option of using either margarine or canola oil. I had the canola oil on hand, so I went with it. The recipe instructed me to use 1/4 teaspoon of salt, but to increase it to 1/2 teaspoon if I was using the oil. The chocolate ones did not include these instructions.

Biting into those vanilla cupcakes was like biting into a salt lick…WHOA! I don’t know what happened, but 1/2 teaspoon was just way too much salt for 12 little cupcakes:

There was only one place for these salty dogs to go:

Anyway, the chocolate ones went over great. The kids (and adults) at work had a great time dumping conversation hearts and cinnamon bears all over their cupcakes. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any photos at work.)

So if anyone else has run into this problem, let me know. Or has everyone else just used margarine?

Tune in next week when I’ll be making Milk-Chocolate Cookies with Malted Cream!