Today I wanted to share the easy ladybug cupcakes I made for Cate’s birthday. One of my “things” as a mom is making fun birthday cakes for my kids, but this year Anna simply wanted a cake made out of donuts and Cate wanted chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing. While I was a little disappointed to not be making more elaborate cakes, I will admit it was a nice break, especially one week before Christmas.

Then, the day of her birthday, Cate informed me that she wanted ladybug cupcakes. I was like, “Uh, what?” I was completely unprepared, but really wanted to come through for her. Luckily I had some red cupcake liners and a pack of candy eyes in the cabinet and was able to pull these off!

These ladybug cupcakes are seriously EASY.

• Cook the cupcakes in red or black cupcake papers.
• Make a batch of buttercream frosting. Color about 2/3 of it with red food coloring (you’ll need a lot of food color!). Color the rest of the buttercream with black food coloring.
• Frost the cupcakes with red buttercream using a butter knife, spreading the frosting on smoothly (doesn’t have to be perfect!).
• Place the black frosting in a piping bag with a small, round tip. Pipe on the outline of the wings, the polka dots, and a head, as shown in the diagram below.
• Finish off the ladybug with small candy eyes placed on the black icing piped on as the head, right at the edge of the cupcake.

I was able to knock these cupcakes out no problem, and the design is so simple even the non-artistic among us can pull it off.

Click here to get the recipes I used for the chocolate cake and buttercream frosting. (Feel free to use a cake mix, I’m not keeping track!)

Happy decorating!

When I was getting ready for the Cambria Cove post, I wanted to make something “cute” for the purpose of showing off my cake stands. I had these cute white paper cup thingys, so I decided to go with cupcakes. I made the batter then realized the papers I had bought were not for baking. My muffin tins are packed away somewhere, so I was left with 1 mini muffin tin and no papers. Needless to say the cupcakes were a pain in the patootey to bake, and by the time I got around to icing and photographing, I was over it! So, my cupcakes aren’t that cute. But they ARE delicious. So I have to share them anyway! (PS…if you don’t have cupcake liners, don’t make cupcakes!)

Have you ever seen the Cupcake Bakeshop blog by Cheryl the software quality engineer, aka Chockylit? It was one of the very first blogs I ever laid eyes on and I’ve loved it from day 1. I used one of her recipes and I loved everything about it – the cake itself came out great, and this strawberry frosting? Be still my beating heart…it is perfect. PER. FECT.

The original post for this recipe is great – Cheryl provides detailed explanations as to why you want to perform each step of the recipe. It’s a very handy post. Thanks, Cheryl! (P.S. You have to read her bio…I love her completely non-cupcake related background!)

Chocolate Cupcakes

 

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Author: Cupcake Bakeshop with my notes

Ingredients

• 2 sticks of butter (room temp)
• 2½ cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1¾ C flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 C cocoa powder
• 1 C milk
• 2 tsp. vanilla

Instructions

1. Beat the butter until it's all nice and whipped. Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy...as in for a long time, so the butter is completely incorporated into the sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. (Cheryl mentions that whisking will suffice over sifting...but my cocoa was all lumpy, so I wish I had thrown at least the cocoa through the sifter quickly...just keep an eye out for that problem in your cocoa.)
3. Mix the milk and vanilla.
4. Add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter mixture - alternating and beating between each addition, about 3 cycles.
5. Scoop batter into cupcake tins (with liners!!) or those uber-cute cupcake papers that Cheryl uses that I can't wait to get my hands on. ONLY FILL THEM HALF WAY. Bake for 22-25 minutes at 350, or until tester comes out clean. (Obviously my mini cupcakes baked a little shorter than that.)

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AMAZING Strawberry Icing

 

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Author: Cupcake Bakeshop with my notes

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter (room temp)
• 1½ - 2 C powdered sugar
• ⅛ C strawberry puree (I had some pretty big strawberries - ⅛ C was a little less than one giant strawberry all smooshed up)

Instructions

1. Beat butter until soft. Sift in the powder sugar and beat. Add strawberry and mix. Add more powdered sugar if you need it. Seriously...this frosting ROCKS.
2. This is about enough frosting for one-half standard batch of cupcakes.

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White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

 

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Author: Jane Maynard

Ingredients

• 3 oz white chocolate
• 4 oz cream cheese
• ⅛ C butter (room temp)
• 1 C powdered sugar

Instructions

1. Melt chocolate and set aside to cool. Beat cream cheese and butter together. Add chocolate and beat. Sift in powdered sugar and beat for a long while.
2. This makes about enough frosting for one-half standard batch of cupcakes.

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Once Valentine’s Day is over, I’ll let you eat dinner again.  But I’m going to force you to have a little more chocolate today. Sorry. I know it’s torture.

For our Super Bowl shindig last week, my friend Rachel made cupcakes in addition to the homemade oreos I shared with you yesterday. I love these cupcakes. We all kept debating back and forth about which we liked better – cupcakes, oreos, cupcakes, oreos. It was a close race, but these chocolate-packed cups of heaven won.

The cupcake recipe is from The Pioneer Woman. As always, she provides beautiful step-by-step photos. Everything about these cupcakes is great. The actual cake part in and of itself is fantastic. The Hershey kiss hiding inside…oo la la! And the ganache icing…to die for.

A few quick notes.

• Rachel said the recipe made a TON of ganache, enough for a double batch of cupcakes.
• The cupcakes are really heavenly served warm. Since Rachel had made them the day before, when we were ready to indulge, we put the cupcakes in a 250-degree oven for 7 minutes. They came out PERFECTLY.

Life by Chocolate Cupcakes from The Pioneer Woman

 

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From Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman (and one of my favorite people)

Author: Jane Maynard

Ingredients

• Cupcakes
• 2 cups Sugar
• 2 cups All-purpose Flour
• ¼ teaspoons Salt
• ½ cups Buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk on hand, put ½ TBSP of lemon juice or vinegar in your ½ cup, fill the rest with milk and let it sit for 5 minutes)
• 2 whole Eggs
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 Cup Butter
• 4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa Powder
• 1 cup Water, Boiling
• 18 whole Hershey’s Kisses, Unwrapped
• Ganache
• 8 ounces, weight Bittersweet Chocolate
• 1 cup Heavy Cream
• 6 Tablespoons Corn Syrup
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 18 muffin cups with baking spray.
2. To make the cake batter, combine flour, sugar, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a separate container, combine buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir to combine and set aside.
4. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and stir to combine. Add boiling water, allow to bubble for a few seconds, then turn off heat.
5. Pour chocolate mixture over flour mixture. Stir a few times to cool the chocolate. Pour buttermilk mixture over the top and stir to combine.
6. Pour ¼ cup cake batter into each muffin cup. Lightly set one kiss in the middle of each cupcake; do not press down.
7. Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove cupcakes and allow to cool on a baking rack.
8. To make the ganache, heat cream and corn syrup over medium heat. Chop chocolate and add to a bowl. Add vanilla to cream mixture, then pour cream mixture over the top of the chopped chocolate. Whisk together until melted, smooth, and glossy.
9. Dunk cupcakes in ganache. Allow to cool and set before serving.

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