Valentines Day Cupcakes!

So, I was off work all weekend and decided that it would  be a “me” weekend….which included me reading, watching movies, and of course…baking! I knew all the restaurants around town would be slammed, and I also knew that almost all of my fellow co-workers would be working doubles. What doesn’t relieve stress like cupcakes? Plus, I found a new recipe I wanted to use.

Once again, I made my icing first. I don’t have a name for it. I’ve just been calling it “Weird Icing.” You’ll see why once you see the ingredients. I found this recipe from The Pioneer Woman.

5 tbsp flour
1 c milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 c sugar
1 c butter

First, mix the flour and milk in a saucepan over medium heat. (Weird, right? It’s an icing with flour? And on the stove?) It’ll get thick, but it’ll take a few minutes. Mine didn’t get thick in the time frame I thought it should, and I go worried and took it off the stove and it thickened up almost immediately. Then I added the vanilla. Alright, let this sit and in a separate bowl mix the sugar and butter. I left both of these sit while I made my cupcake batter, because the flour/milk mixture has to be cool before you can mix it with the sugar/butter mixture.

Mmm, warm flour and milk. Yum!

So, while that is cooling I made my cupcake batter. I got this recipe from Joy the Baker. I’m going to put the original recipe, but I tweaked it a bit. Also, as a heads up…this recipe uses about a million bowls. So, be ready to do extra dishes.

 

1 c unsalted butter, soft
1 3/4 c sugar
4 large eggs
1 c milk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out
2 3/4 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

I didn’t use a vanilla bean in my batter, because…well…I couldn’t find one. I’m going to look into that though. But everything else is good. So, first in one big bowl add the flour, baking powder, and salt and whisk together. In a separate small bowl mix the milk, vanilla, and if you have one the vanilla bean seeds. In a third bowl, mix the butter and sugar until it is fluffy. After your sugar and butter are fairly fluffy add your eggs one at a time, mixing in between each egg. One you have all of this together, Joy the Baker says:

“with the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the vanilla milk mixture in three batches, starting and ending with the flour.  When the batter is almost combined, stop the mixer and finish mixing the batter with a spatula, making sure that any flour bits at the bottom of the bowl are well incorporated.”

My different sections of batter

My cupcakes in their liners. As you can see, the one on the top has a few with no pink…I made some cupcakes without strawberry extract incase someone at work was allergic to strawberries. I was thinking ahead!

At this point, I deviated a little more. Once everything was mixed together to my satisfaction, I separated the batter in half in two different bowls. I left one half of the batter as it was. The other half I added red food coloring and about a tablespoon of strawberry extract. I wanted to make multi-color cupcakes for my lovely co-workers. One I had that done, I put one spoonful of each batter into the lined cupcake tin. I put them in the oven on 350 degrees for 24 minutes…which is what JtB’s website said. I would do it a couple minutes less, the next time.

The finished cupcakes!

While my cupcakes were in the oven, I mixed my two icing mixes together and added some red food coloring to that, as well. It’ll be a very fluffy icing. I couldn’t help myself at this point: I had to try this weird icing. It was delicious! Perfectly sweet and smooth!

Delicious!

 

After this, I took  my cupcakes out of the tin to cool so they would cool faster. While they were cooling I jumped in the shower so I wouldn’t be impatient (because last time I was and my cake fell apart!). I iced my cupcakes and poured red, white, and pink sprinkles in a little bowl and dipped the top of the cupcakes down into the sprinkles. Less mess, let me tell you! Then, the liners I had bought came with little hearts on toothpicks to stick in the cupcakes…I used them to make the plain cupcakes from the strawberry mixed ones! And, voila!

 

I made some without sprinkles and some without icing, just so there would be a little variety for everyone. I took them into work, and they were gone in about 30 seconds! I tried one myself, and the strawberry part was so good I wish that I had done the whole cupcake in strawberry. But, I’ll know better next time! Also, it would have been convenient if I owned a cupcake holder…but I’m just a new baker so there are a lot of things on my “to buy” list…so back in the muffin tin it is! For now, anyways!