Strawberry Cupcakes

Want the taste of summer in a cupcake? This is it! Martha's Strawberry Cupcakes with strawberry Meringue Buttercream frosting!

The recipe is pretty easy, the most time consuming part is chopping the strawberries for the cake, the buttercream and the garnish!! I even went a step further and picked my own strawberries! But Martha does give alternatives such as using jam for the frosting or even using a simple sweetened whipped cream instead ( strawberries and whipped cream...yum! )

I really found this recipe was like eating fresh strawberries...it's definitely a keeper!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: **

Taste: *****

Appearance: ***** (classic cupcake swirl topped with chopped strawberry)

Occasions: Picnics, summer get-together, showers,it's even kid-friendly!

Blondie Cupcakes

This is another winner folks! I like to describe this cupcake as a "Blonde Brownie". It's chewie, light, nutty, filled with butterscotch and toffee bits! No icing required! Need I say more??

Now i accidentally overcooked these cupcakes ( when the timer went off, I was watching 'Law and Order", and thought: " oh I'll just take them out at the commercial, and forgot about them!!" but they were STILL delicious! I"ll definitely be making these again!

My husband described these cupcakes as: " More flavour then you would expect from a cupcake" :)

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: *

Taste: *****

Appearance: **** simple but sooo good!

Occasions: since there is no frosting, and don't need to be refrigerated, they are great to bring anywhere!

Who ate them: My husband brought them camping with the boys!

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes

What's in a name? Everything with this cupcake! It's as easy as a Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines boxed cake mix!

The recipe does however ask for buttermilk, which I don't like buying because you can only buy it in a 1 litre carton, and so much goes to waste. This time, I used a trick one of my readers recommended, which was spiking regular milk with vinegar. And it worked just fine!

This cupcake was light and airy, I even made them into mini bite-size cupcakes!

Martha recommended using Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but I used Martha's Fluffy Vanilla Frosting ( my favorite)...YUM!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty:*

Taste: ****

Appearance: ****

Occasions: This is one of Martha's 'Go-To' cupcakes and mine to!

Who ate them: I made them for my sister's graduation!

White Cupcakes with Pastel Buttercream Peaks

This recipe is fairly simple to make and the ingredients are as basic as they can come ( Every baker has them on-hand in their pantry). SShhh The secret to the 'white' cupcake is Martha only uses egg whites, (instead of the whole egg).

The best part of these cupcakes were the way they were decorated! The peaks turned out great! I would suggest filling the piping bag with frosting and let it cool in the fridge for a few minutes before you start piping so the peaks come out and stay strong.

I have to say these weren't my favorite cupcakes, but I will definitely be decorating cupcakes like this again! Simple yet impressive...An amateur baker's dream!!!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: *

Taste: *

Appearance: *****

Occasions: Since the peaks remind me of fireworks, anything worth celebrating!

Who ate them: I was testing these out for a wedding, so I passed them out to my neighbours!

Mint-Filled Brownie Cupcakes

Ladies and Gentlemen...I have found Martha's best cupcake yet! It's chocolaty, fudgy, minty, creamy and chewy, and the best part is, it is so simple to make! The only downside is this recipe only makes 12 cupcakes!!!

While I was making these cupcakes I was worried the batter was too granular (on account of the sugar), but it turned out great!

I used silver metallic liners to play on the chocolate covered peppermint treat that is hiding inside! These cupcakes are so good, no frosting is needed!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: *

Taste: ***** the best!

Appearence: **** simple, but who doesn't love a yummy surpirse filling!

Occasions: the perfect desert cupcake, chocolatly, rich and mint! Perfect after a meal!

Who ate them: I was having a few people over to watch the hockey game (we won!)

Roasted Banana Cupcakes with Honey-Cinnamon Frosting

A friend of mine (L.H!) raved about these cupcakes, so I just had to try them for myself! The ingredients were few and simple so I thought it would easy to make at my mom's while I was visiting her for the weekend. I probably should have read all the steps first because between roasting the bananas, let them cool, sifting the dry ingredients, mixing the wet, blending them, whisking the egg whites and folding them in the batter...an hour later i was finally ready to put them in the oven!
I used silicon pans (that's all my mom had) and it worked pretty well, except i didn't use paper liners...i made both regular sized and experimented with mini cupcakes and they were delish!
the honey cinnamon frosting was AMAZING! Alternatively you could leave them naked (without frosting) and have roasted banana muffins!

Sayks Rating

Difficulty: **** (thought not 'difficult', there were a lot of steps)

Taste: ***** ( the honey-cinnamon frosting makes for a sophisticated cupcake)

Appearance: *** (I didn't have my icing tips with me)

Suggestions:( fresh bananas will turn black pretty quickly, so next time I'll use dried bananas for decoration)

Occasions: Luncheons, ladies card games ( my mom recommended that), on the go breakfast (specially without the frosting)

Who ate them: My family ate some and brought the rest to my granny-in law :) the mini's were a hit!

Carrot Cupcake

If I see carrot cake with cream cheese frosting on a restaurant menu, there is no doubt about it...I'm ordering it! So I was really excited to finally make my own in a cupcake! Martha's recipe was generally easy... but the most tedious part ( and i mean TEDIOUS!) was grating the carrots. It took me about 30 minutes to grate 3 carrots...(maybe I need a new grater...or stronger arms lol)

I found this cake light, (both in texture and colour) as some carrot cakes can be pretty heavy! But I found this blended well with the richness of the cream cheese frosting.
I even left half of them naked (without frosting) and ate them as muffins in the morning!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: *** (mostly due to the carrot grating!lol)

Taste: **** (with and without frosting!)

Appearance: ** (loved the light colour, but simple)

Occasions: with icing; desert, brunch. Naked; breakfast!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I've always heard of red velvet cake (specially for wedding cakes!), but I've never actually tried it...until now! I made these cupcakes with a friend...and it's a good thing I did because she was paying attention to how many cups of buttermilk I was adding in! She saved the cupcakes !!! Other than that, this recipe calls for distilled white vinegar, but I just used regular white vinegar and they turned out just fine :) Martha suggests icing these cupcakes with her recipe for cream-cheese frosting...YUM!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: **

Taste: *** I loved the airy texture and tangy frosting

Appearance: **** (red cupcake...you can't go wrong!)

Occasions: any classy occasion to bring cupcakes, like weddings or dinner parties!

Who ate them: I brought them to a house warming party and added the house number on the candy chips!

Peanut Butter-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

Oh Martha, where did I go wrong?

As I was making these 'peanut butter cup'-like cupcake, I thought to myself, wow...this is the most intricate cupcake recipe yet! Between the 'bain mari', whisking, stirring and layering of the batters...Well you can image my horror when opened up the oven to the peanut butter filling spilled right out of the tins! Thank goodness this recipe only makes 12 cupcakes! I might try this recipe again but without trying the marble effect

on the top.

SAYKS RATING:

Difficulty: ****

Taste: *** (even if alot of the peanut butter spilled out)

Appearance: *

Occasions: Desert! (these cupcakes are pretty rich)

Who I made them for: To celebrate the end of 'March Madness' at Greg's office.

Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes

Martha says :"you will likely make these cupcakes again and again" .... and I agree! I decided to make these my next cupcake because I wanted to use up the rest of the LITRE of buttermilk I bought to make the brown sugar pound cake, and I'm so glad I did! PS- the buttermilk people should really consider packaging the buttermilk in 500ml instead of a litre...who's with me?!? LOL

These cupcakes were a breeze to make; I even ran out of unsalted butter so I just used salted instead and omitted the salt, and they turned out just fine (phew!) I topped these cupcakes with Martha's "Fluffy Vanilla Frosting" ...Literally the simplest and easiest frosting EVER!!!! and topped the whole thing off with classic sprinkles!!YUM!

SAYKS RATING:

Difficulty: *

Taste: **** (you can add ANY frosting to these classics)

Appearance: ****

Occasions: these are so versatile..so Anytime!!!!

Who ate them: I made them for my colleagues, but forgot them at home :( But my dad made an impromptu visit, and I was ready!!! ( the cupcakes were 3 days old and STILL delicious!)

St. Patricks Day Cupcakes

What better way to celebrate the Luck of the Irish than with Cupcakes! Martha has themed cupcakes for almost every holiday, which she shares in chronological order in the Chapter called "holidays" (how convenient!)

This cupcake combines the Brown Sugar Pound Cake with a Baileys Irish Cream Frosting. Let me start off by saying that this batter was the best I've ever tasted! brown sugar and butter, mmmm! The batter also calls for buttermilk, which is not something most of us have 'on hand', but all together it was pretty simple. Being a pound cake, it was obviously pretty dense, but the winner in this cupcake was definitely the icing! who new only 3 tablespoons of Bailey would give so much flavour!

Martha suggests decorating these sweet treats with crystallized three leaf clover springs...Since St-Pattys day is in March, and my living in Canada, this was not a possible task, however, I used tinted piping gel to 'draw' a three leaf clover on about 1/3 of the cupcakes.

SAYKS RATING:

Difficulty: *

Taste: *** (I'll definitely use the icing again)

Appearance: ** (probably would have been nicer if I had the crystallized clovers)

Occasions: St-Patrick's day!

Who ate them: I wanted to bring them to work but didn't think it was a good idea to serve booze flavoured icing to pilots and Flight attendants! So Greg brought them to work :)

Jumbo Cream-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes

My husband was going through Martha's cupcake book and insisted that I make these! They were very easy to make, and decorate! I just had to go out and buy a jumbo muffin tin ( a good investment, I thought!) and marshmallow fluff (which took me forever to find in the grocery store!) You can't go wrong with these folks! But maybe I'll try making 'regular' sized ones next time, so that there are more to go around....

SAYKS RATING:

Difficulty: *

Taste: *****

Appearance: *****

Occasions: Desert, or any time you want to show off!

Who ate them: My husband's family came to town for a weekend visit...there are only 2 left!

Triple-Citrus Cupcakes

I love everything citrus, so I was really looking forward to making these scurvy fighting cupcakes! The recipe itself is pretty easy, but the one thing that jumped out at me was the 9 , that's right NINE eggs needed to complete the recipe! This made one dense batch of cupcakes!

Martha suggests dividing the glaze in 3 and flavouring them with each citrus used in the cupcake; lime, lemon and orange, so that's what I did. I think it was a good idea because A) it gave a little variety to the cupcakes, and B) it gave everyone an excuse to eat 3 cupcakes instead of just one!

SAYKS RATING:

Difficulty: *

Taste: ** (loved the flavour, but very dense, however the glaze did complement it)

Appearance: * (might have looked better if I had a real zester, but otherwise plain...)

Occasions: Brunch, showers, and afternoon tea

Who ate them: Brought some over as a house warming present to friends, and the rest we had for desert!

Mocha Cupcakes

I'm not going to follow any particular order when choosing which cupcake I want to try...If I'm in the mood to make it, or if I have an occasion to make a certain cupcake, that's what I'll make!

So the first cupcake I tried from "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes" was the Mocha Cupcake. It seemed pretty basic and I already had most of the ingredients. Everything went pretty smoothly until I got to making the icing. I made sure I had all the ingredients before I started, but what I didn't do was read HOW to make it. Martha suggests making a coffee-flavoured seven minute frosting, which she frosts in peaks and tops with a coffee bean. It makes for a really simple yet dramatic effect that I was really looking forward to trying and showing off... The problem was I didn't read the recipe to see what TOOLS I needed...and for seven minute frosting, you need a candy thermometer, which I don't have :(

Luckily, Martha had my back, as she offers alternatives to the icing in this recipe. So my cupcakes were saved by Martha's coffee variation of Swiss meringue buttercream! I didn't have enough unsalted butter, so I substituted for Crisco, and it worked out just fine! I topped it off with a mocha flavoured coffee bean and Voila!

Sayks Rating:

Difficulty: *** (because you have to make so much espresso)

Taste: ****

Appearance: ****

Occasions: morning office meetings, brunch, coffee-tea parties.

Suggestions: make the icing ahead of time so the coffee flavour has time to develop.

Who ate them: My husband brought them to the office where they were devoured in 30 minutes (at 9 am)!

"Martha Stewart's Cupcakes" Challenge

Hello All, Let me start off my saying that I'm not a Chef...I just LOVE to BAKE. And after seeing the movie 'Julie and Julia', I got inspired. Last year, I received the book "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes" for my birthday. I love everything Martha does ( yes, we're on a first name basis here)... So why don't I bake through the "175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's favorite Treat"! So if anyone wants to follow along, I'm using "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes", from the editors of Martha Stewart Living, Clarkson Potter/Publishers, New York, 2009. Here I Go!!!!