Gingerbread Mango

Gingerbread cupcakes with Mango Buttercream Frosting. My husband's uncle and aunt came by for a visit so my sister (who was also visiting) and I decided to make this award-winning cupcake. Uncle Fred's comment after tasting it said, "this is the best cupcake I've ever eaten!" He said that a couple of times, so I'm going to have to believe him. Makes the incredible amount of effort worth it. Rather than list what I learned, I'd rather summarize the 2 pages of directions it took to make these. That will be at the end of the post. For now, though, be advised: do not attempt to make these unless you have a lot of time and energy on your hands. And if you make them, be prepared to taste yumminess! And I don't even like gingerbread-tasting stuff!

I chose gold wrappers because the crystallized ginger is gold. I thought it turned out pretty well.

The recipe said to brush the tops of the "just baked" cupcakes with a ginger glaze. But I forgot to do that when they first came out of the oven. I did it several minutes later, decided that they weren't getting very glazed, poked tiny holes in them, re-glazed, decided they still weren't moist enough, cut the tops off and then poured the glaze in with a spoon. Talk about moist and yum!

When Jayden saw me poking holes in the cupcakes, he jumped to assistance. He probably poked 30 holes in each one!

If you look closely, you can see how the cupcake looks dry on the inside but more moist near the edges.

Finished product. We garnished the tops with huge chunks of candied ginger which we promptly removed before eating them.

Summary of steps it took to make these:

1. Make batter. Not too hard; used powdered ginger.

2. Make glaze: peel and mince ginger, boil in sugar water for 2 minutes; let sit for 20, remove ginger pieces.

3. Make frosting: Peel and cut 3 mangoes, cook them slowly till they caramelize, push them through a mesh strainer to remove all "hair." Literally the hardest part! Serious forearm workout. Mangoes are hairy!

4. Separate 6 eggs, watch your 4-yr-old experiment with eggs, clean up his mess, beat the eggs.

5. Cut up 1 lb! of butter and beat into the eggs with sugar and alternate mango mix with water.

Okay, so it doesn't sound like much in retrospect. I guess what made it immensely more difficult is that my sister was also whipping up 4 different kinds of gourmet salads at the same time in my little space and on my stove while my 4-year-old was getting into everything. So, I take back my other statement. You don't need a lot of time and energy to make these. You just need to have the kitchen to yourself and put your kids to bed. Then you can enjoy the most tasty mango buttercream frosting - ever! atop very moist gingerbread cupcakes.

St. Patty's Day

Well here we go, the cupcake-making is finally starting to work like I planned. I'm bummed that I don't have a picture of the batter. It was quite green. I used a buttermilk batter and then used almost an entire tube of liquid green coloring. Chocolate ganache glaze covers the top with green sprinkles and a (non-edible) shamrock sticker on the top.

My original plan was to put these stickers on toothpicks and garnish the top of the cupcakes. So I had them all ready to go. But after I stuck the toothpicks in, the cupcakes wouldn't fit in my awesome cupcake carrier. Besides, they didn't look as cool as I thought they would. So I just stuck the sticker on top and made sure to tell everyone that it wasn't edible.

I didn't get a picture of the making of the chocolate ganache glaze because one must work swiftly, I guess. The glaze tasted awesome, of course, but it was clumpy. I'm sure that had something to do with my technique. It didn't bother me too much cause it was tasty.
The tops of the cupcakes were dipped into the glaze, then allowed to sit for a few minutes before rolling the edges in green sprinkles.



The lumps are pretty obvious in this picture but you can't really go wrong with melted chocolate and heavy cream. Yum.



Ready for delivery!

A rundown of what I learned:

1. Turns out the 2 tsp of vanilla you put in the batter, really makes a difference.

2. If you tell people that they are "vanilla free" cupcakes, they automatically assume that they are healthy. I had to pull that joke on several people. Worked every time. Hilarious! "Wow, you always make such healthy things." or "I shouldn't have one. . . vanilla free? well, okay."

3. Chocolate ganache takes technique to make. Since it didn't work perfectly the first time for me, I've decided that my statement is fact.

4. Never put inedible items that look edible on a cupcake.

5. It takes a lot of green food coloring to make a green cupcake.

Ladybugs in the Grass

Jayden and I decided it would be fun to make cupcakes for a picnic on Saturday. We looked through our handy-dandy Martha book and chose this fun design. I've been wanting to try it so was looking for any excuse. The frosting had been made ahead of time and frozen. Good thing, too, cause this is the most labor-intensive frosting I ever make. It's called Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Although, in my opinion, it should be called "Buttery Butter Butterbutter". Even Jayden doesn't like it. But it is the only frosting that works for grass. And I should know since I've tried 3 other frostings with my grass piping tip!

A lot of butter and a lot of effort but all worth it! I just love them!

Jayden took this picture, himself.  It's pretty darn good. :) What a little photographer.

After I finished baking these, Jayden came into the kitchen and exclaimed, "These cupcakes look MAGNIFICENT good Mommy!" What a sweetie. What 4-year-old talks that way? :)

The grass was a little greener than it looks here but still not very green. I don't know what it is about me and food coloring but it just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. I used green liquid as well as a combination of blue and yellow gel. Geez.

The cupcake was a basic vanilla buttermilk. Tasty. I didn't use buttermilk cause I don't usually keep it on hand and we decided to make this last minute. I used homemade soy buttermilk. Sounds gross, but I assure you, tastes very similar. (1 T lemon juice/ 15 T soy milk)

Jayden decided the ladybugs should have colored eyes.

Lady bugs took quite a bit of time! I started with white fondant and tried to dye it red. After my hands were sufficiently stained with bright red, here's what I learned:

1. My fondant still looked orange. Adding brown to it, only makes it look even more orange.

2. Gel food coloring works way better than liquid. Even though I added about 1/2 of my container of red gel, it was still workable and not getting gooey.

3. Store-bought fondant is still kind of orangey-red too. (I finally gave up on perfectly red lady bugs, packed up the kids and my red-stained hands and bought colored fondant; there's no way I was going to try and make black fondant!)

4. I made the body first and then the heads, then the dots. In the meantime, the bodies hardened so I brushed them with a little bit of water to make the dots stick. I did the same to the connection between the heads and the bodies.