Shirley Temple Cupcakes!

Today I was just checking my Blogger Dashboard to see if there were any new posts on any of the blogs I follow and something caught my eye:  Shirley Temple Cupcakes! I clicked and clicked and finally got to the recipe and saw that I had the majority of the ingredients already in my kitchen! Yay! There were just a couple more things that I needed to pick up since I wasn't quite sure my mom would be too happy if I used up the rest of hers.

A little while ago the first batch came out of the oven, I tossed one in the freezer to cool so I could eat it, slapped some frosting on it and TA-DA!!! Of course, they're totally not as pretty as the ones that were on the site I got the recipe from but they taste super yummy! (And yes, I do say that about most cupcakes. XD) The only problem I had was that they didn't taste enough like cherries. *sigh* Oh well.

You can find the recipe for these cute cupcakes here. Hope you give them a try!

See you soon!!

~Jeni

Red Velvet Cupcakes!

I've been searching for a good red velvet cupcake recipe for a while now and happened to come across this recipe on a blog called Cupcakes. At first I thought it was too good to be true because the comments below the post made the cake sound super yummy, but then I decided to try it. Of course, I don't have buttermilk at my house, or even butter for that matter, so I headed to Safeway (even if I knew the price was going to more than likely be more expensive than other places...) and picked up the necessary additional ingredients.  Stuff like cocoa powder and red food coloring (I mean, come on! Two bottles of food coloring?!) are stuff I really do need to start keeping around.
Anyway, after putting out everything that needed to be brought to room temperature, I went to go watch the end of Rachael Ray and the whole hour of Jeopardy and then I went to bake. The recipe was super simple, but a little time consuming. By the time I took the last pan of cupcakes out it was almost 7 o'clock! And Glee was going to come on at 7! I needed to clean up fast!! The humbug part was getting all the red off of everything. Let's face it, I'm not the neatest person when I bake...or when I do anything for that matter...and I ended up getting batter everywhere. Don't ask me how.
I did, however, sneak a cupcake with me into my room when I finally went to go watch Glee. The cake was super soft and fluffy. Much better than some of the other recipes I had tried. It wasn't an overwhelming cocoa flavor. And, the best part, was that it wasn't oily!
Because I'm giving some of the cupcakes away, I didn't want to use cream cheese frosting because you're supposed to refrigerate it, so I decided to use buttercream instead. I got the recipe from the same site and made it this morning. It was really good! Made way more than  I thought it was going to, but since I'm going to make another batch of cupcakes probably this week or next week, I figure I may be able to use it.

Just a couple of last things about this recipe:
*You don't need to use 2 bottles of food coloring like it calls for. I used about one and 1/3 because that's how much was left in the open bottle in the cabinet and it made the cake a super pretty red color. (Although it showed up darker in the pictures...)
*Use a rounded teaspoon of baking powder instead of a level one. This may have made all the difference.

If you're looking for a great red velvet cake recipe, check this one out. I think it's one of my new go-to recipes. <3

See you later!!