Oreo Penguin Cupcakes

IT WAS A MASSACRE.  THERE WERE PENGUIN PARTS EVERYWHERE.  I WAS SAWING THROUGH THEIR WINGS.  Oh the humanity.

Okay maybe it wasn't EXACTLY like that, but that's what it felt like on Sunday morning as i tried to quickly (I was about 1.5 hrs late to my dinner party, lalala) assemble my Oreo penguins on top of my cookies and cream cupcakes. Penguin body (face?) parts all over the place.

I actually made a list a few months ago of cupcakes I wanted to try to bake and I have baked almost all of them!  The only one missing is those darn tres leches cupcakes i never find time to make.  What I was able to scratch off the list this weekend were Oreo Cookies and Cream Cupcakes. I'm not sure why i wanted to try and make them since i don't actually even like Oreos that much ... however i saw a link on Cupcakes Take the Cake last month for these ADORABLE cupcakes that called for Oreo penguins as decoration.  Which meant i had to take it up a notch, of course. And lose the coconut.  Cuz i don't like coconut flakes.

To be exact my cupcakes had an oreo crumble crust, a vanilla cake, a cookies and cream frosting filling, a marshmallow fluff frosting top and were decorated for the holidays penguin style. 

I spent about a week looking up recipes and studying how different bakers/bloggers constructed their cookies and cream cupcakes.  In the end i decided to make mine a little like my smores cupcakes and to bust out my corer. God, how I love that little green thing. 

Oreo Cookie Crust
12 oreo cookies
1/2 a stick of butter 
zip lock bag
rolling pin

I don't think i need too many directions for this one. You can see below what to do to the cookies.

Then add melted butter to the bowl and mash together until it's workable.

Put a tablespoon into a lined muffin pan. Then smush it down with a spoon to make an even crust.

Pop them in the oven for 7 minutes and then set aside to cool.

Vanilla Cupcakes
(Makes 20 when you have a thick oreo crust at the bottom, if not probably around 16-18. Bake at 325*)
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups cake flour, not self-rising
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter at room temp
2 large eggs at room temp
1/3 cup full-fat sour cream
1/4 cup canola oil or vegetable oil
2.5 vanilla extract
2/3 cup buttermilk


I adapted this recipe from here.  I ended up changing it because i did not have real vanilla beans.  And so that kind of changed the order of how i had to bake things... so it ended up being a bit watery.  I mean it was still good, but i kind of wished i had chosen another recipe -- or at least been able to follow it step by step.  So i won't post what i did here.  Next time, ill have some changes for sure. They baked up a little like hills LOL. >.< oops?  Still edible and yummy though.

Once your vanilla cupcakes are out of the oven and they have had time to cool it is time to core the suckers.    I love doing it.  Save the tops though!  You need to be able to cover the holes.

And i am not going to tell you whether or not i ate the rest of the middles or i threw them away. Either answer is a bit deplorable.

Next you make that Oreo filling

Oreo Filling
1 stick butter
1/2 stick cream cheese
1/8 cup heavy whipping cream
2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
7 crushed oreos

Cream butter, cream cheese and whipping cream together.  Add the vanilla, and then the powdered sugar.  Beat until fluffy.  Then comes the fun part.  Throw in the crushed oreos.  It looks like this.  Haha.  It's like dirt.

Just fold them in carefully and evenly and you are good to go.  I threw them in a ziplock and snipped the edge so that i could pipe them in.  No tip required.

These cupcakes were just busting out with oreo goodness, weren't they? And i might have spilled powdered sugar everywhere at one point.  Oops. (Don't forget to cover them with the tops of the cored centers again!)

To frost the tops I used the recipe below.

Marshmallow Frosting
1 8 oz jar of Marshamallow fluff
1/2 stick of butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

Beat butter and marshmallow fluff.  Add powdered sugar.  Add whipping cream IF necessary.  It's SUPER effing cold in my house right now, so i had to use whipping cream in both my frostings to get them to do anything.  Even if i leave out the butter and eggs for hours, things are still not "room temp".  They're cold as penguins.  The whipping cream helped to make both fluffier.

Now there is an easy way to finish these cupcakes.  And that is to garnish them with an oreo on top.Cute huh?

Two seconds, easy peasy and call it a day. Looks adorable with my black and white spotted liners.

And that's totally what i did with the last eight.  But first i had to struggle with making 12 penguins.  And by struggle i just mean it took me longer than i thought it would.  And i was late. And hadn't showered, and i wasn't dressed and i hadn't worked out.  AND worst of all, i had forgotten to buy heart sprinkles like i had wanted to.   I had wanted to make some girls too  :(

Penguin Faces
Oreo cookies*
Any left over marshmallow fluff frosting
Wilton Brand Eyes
Orange Starbursts
Patience

* Normal people will need one oreo cookie per penguin they make.  People like me need a whole freaking package for this endeavor.  Okay fine, two packages total.  Actually i suggest you try and do this part first.  Because the things you mess up you can use for your crumbs.  I ended up throwing away a lot of Oreo parts instead because every time i touched an Oreo it would just CRUMBLE in my hands. I BROKE SO MANY WINGS.  Stupid cookies.

One of the hardest part was twisting that cookie and having the cream stay on only one side.  It took forever.  Most because it takes more thank skill. It takes coordination.  Finesse.  Steady hands.  I have none of those.  But i got it done.

But guess what?  The cookies aren't that clean.  You still get left with some chocolate on the cream.  So i tried to fix that a little by putting a dollop of the marshmallow fluff frosting over the cream and spreading it out in order to hide as many imperfections as possible.

Then i added the eyes.  Not 100% white but it certainly helped i think.  The eyes (by Wilton) you can find at Target, Wal-Mart, Michaels, etc.  They're a little pricey but i am glad i did not have to worry about making eyes from scratch.

Next were the beaks.  Funny story about the beaks.  When i finally made it to my dinner party and someone asked me what the beaks were my response was a somewhat frazzled "mother effing Starbursts!".  This was because I was mentally transported back to kitchen - frantically microwaving Starbursts and smashing them into pliable strips that were not too hot or too cold while trying to text message "IM SORRY IM GOING TO BE SO LATE, I HAVE A FLOCK OF FACELESS PENGUINS TO CONTEND WITH OKAY????"

As illustrated in the picture below,  you take an orange starburst (left) and put it in the microwave for 15 seconds.  Then when its warm with super clean hands and a rolling pin you flatten it out so you can cut it with a knife.  The middle picture is what a cut strip looks like. You cut a triangle (right) and use that as a beak.  And you do this SUPER fast before it gets too hard.

That ladies and gentleman, is why its a mother effing starburst of a nose.

Lastly, your penguin needs wings.  This is where most of the massacre happened i admit.  Okay maybe i broke a few faces.  But mostly it was their wings.  Have you ever TRIED to cut an oreo with a knife before?

They break in 45 ways.  About 45 times.  And then maybe you get ONE wing.   As you can see i have a large pile of broken cookies on my (side note: isnt it so CUTE?) apple cutting board.  Try to cut them in half, and then cut off about the top 1/3 of one half.  That's a good size for wings.

It was an ordeal.  And then, THEN i was ready to make my penguins have a photoshoot.

Yes.  I made my cupcakes have a photoshoot.  Yes, i was late and unbathed and squishy but i still made them have a photoshoot.  (If there were some notabley female penguins in this photoshoot it would have made me uber happy though... I like to imagine that the white liners were the girls, the black ones the boys though.)

And yes, i found the only holiday tissue we had laying around and I made them have a background.

I mean come ON, they kinda deserved to be in the snow right? RIGHT?  They appreciated the camera in their face i think.  In fact, i seem to detect somewhat of a vain strut in their silent existence, don't you think?

Anyways, once I was done stroking their little penguin egos, i packed them up and went to my dinner.  When dessert rolled around i snapped a picture of the dissected cupcake for you guys.

Okay I am lying.  I dissected my friend's cupcake with the intent to give it back to her for her to eat.  What ended up happening however was that i dissected it. photographed it, put it back together, stared at it for a second and told her to get another one because i was eating it.  And so i did.  Everything except the Oreo face because what kind of monster would eat an oreo penguin face???

Bonus story:  I have a good friend who upon entering my phone number into his cell phone quite some years ago, typed in "Anna Penguin Face" because he didn't know my last name and because I genuinely like penguins.  And that's they way it reamined, said friend not entirely sure of my real last name for quite a few years.

xoxo,
Anna

Blackberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

So remember that crazy i talked about?  It makes me have internal monologues with myself like this:

Me: Look! Blackberries are on sale for87 CENTS A CONTAINER.  

Self: Oh Em Gee, that's hellah cheap!  Get one!

Me: Already on it...

Self: Would go great on your greek yogurt you know.

Me: I'm buying THREE.

Self: What, why? They're all ripe.  You can't eat that much yogurt.

Me: Yogurt? I'm going to bake all the things with it.

Self: For WHAT? You'd have to bake tomorrow. And tomorrow, you're sitting at home by yourself all day. You'd have to eat 12 cupcakes! Don't do it!

Me:  -.-
Cashier: Paper or plastic?

So in short, blackberries went on crazy sale and i decided to bake for no reason at all.  And guess what?  They were crazy good.  =x  I wish i could have given these to more people.  Because i actually thought they'd turn out bad, but they were nommies.  

I used the blackberries in four ways; 1) to flavor the cake 2) to make a filling  3) drizzle on top of the frosting 4) garnish.  Then i used Ghirardelli white chocolate chips to make a white choco butter cream frosting.  The result of it all was a pretty gosh darn good cupcake with all sorts of flavors playing off each other.  And as my dear Pam  said, the prettiest looking cupcake she has seen me produce yet! Haha. 

I ended up taking 100 pictures.  Makes sense since i spent the ENTIRE day in the kitchen.  So needless to say, prepare for a picture heavy post. 

I made 12 cupcakes.  Double this recipe if you'd like a full batch.

First step is to make the blackberries useful.  I did that by making them into a blackberry sauce.

Blackberry Sauce

2 containers of blackberries 

1.5 table spoons  of sugar

Directions: 

Wash and drain blackberries in a bowl.  Pour sugar on top and set aside for 15 minutes.  

Put berries into a saucepan and heat on low, stir frequently.  

Crush them with a potato masher.  

Turn off when they start to boil.
Throw into blender on puree setting. You will see lots and lots of seeds.

Pour into strainer.  This takes forever. >.<  You will have to (with clean hands) press down on the puree to make sure its going through the strainer.  You'll also have to stop at least once to scrape out all the little seeds and toss them.  Let it cool a little before doing this though, or you will burn your fingers.

You will end up with a very rich red sauce.  We will use it on it own as well as add it to other things.

The first thing we will do with it is use it to make the filling.

Blackberry Filling

1/3 cup blackberry sauce

1 cup water

2 tablespoons corn starch

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

Directions: 

Combine sugar and cornstarch.  

In a saucepan on low heat, combine sauce, water and lemon juice.

Add in sugar/cornstarch mixture a little at time and stir constantly.

It's ready when its thick and gelatinous 

Tip: 

Sift cornstarch first to avoid lumps.

You can set this aside to cool so it's ready for the baked cupcakes.

But first the cupcake!

Blackberry Cupcakes 

1 stick room temp butter

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 room temp eggs

1 1/4 cups flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup room temp milk

1/4 cup room temp sour cream

1/2 cup blackberry sauce

Directions:

In one bowl whisk together the sauce, sour cream and milk and set aside.

This actually looks pretty good and i had to fight the urge to try some.  I don't think it would have TASTED yummy. 

In a second bowl combine salt, flour and baking powder and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar, adding in the eggs and vanilla.

Add dry ingredients and wet ingredients into the butter mixture in five sections; flour, milk, flour, milk, flour. 

This process looks pretty, as you make the batter more and more purple!

Line your muffin pan with 12 liners, and add a ice cream scoop size amount of prety purple batter.  Bake in a preheated oven for about 15 minutes at 325*.

Once they are done and cool comes the really fun part.

CORING THEM!

It's like my new favorite thing, I swear.  I bought this fun little guy at Target for like five bucks.  (When you buy yours, it wont have purple cupcake crumbs on it, don't worry.

How it works is that you stick the big part into the cupcake all the way to the base.

Then you twist it in a  circular motion and pull up.  You end up pulling up a core of the cupcake, making a hole in it and keeping the middle inside the corer itself.  Use the little part of the corer to take out the innards.

 You can toss the inside. Or eat it.  Or use it for cakepops.

This is what it looks like on the left.  I took a knife and cut the top off so that i could use it later to cover up the hole I made.

 Now you get to use the blackberry filling that we made to fill the holes! Pipe in the filling. And by pipe i mean shove as much filling as possible up in there.  Cuz you best believe this filling is yummy.

Cover with the tops!  See how they pop out?  Yeah, that's filling heavy for you.  

What's left to do?  The frosting.  This is probably the first time in a year that i tried making a frosting that wasn't cheese cream based.  And i am glad i did.  It was a little difficult to get the hang of, but i will try it again.  I was totally eating more of it than i should have.

White Chocolate Frosting
(taken from here)

5 oz. melted white chocolate chips

1 stick room temp butter

2 1/4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1-2 tablespoons of room temp milk

Directions: 

Melt chocolate chips in microwave, set microwave on high and melt in 30 second increments, stirring often.  Should take 2-3 minutes.

Beat butter in mixer until fluffy, add vanilla.

Add powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time.

Add melted chocolate.

Pour in milk as needed.

Tips:
 MAKE SURE NOT TO OVER COOK THE CHOCOLATE.  For reals.  Don't over melt  Watch it like a hawk.  Also, keep stirring once its out until you add it to the mixer because you dont want it to harden.  Scrape down the sides of the mixer as needed.

The end result is a thick thick frosting. That tastes just as yummy as it looks.

Pipe it onto all your cupcakes.  Work as fast as you can, because if it hardens inside the tips it's a pain to frost.

If you actually look closely, all the cupcakes look piped differntly.  That's because i used the wrong tip (2D instead of 1M) for half of them before i noticed.  Oops. They still look pretty though.

Next we get to re-create a murder scene.  At least that's what it looks like because i don't have a fancy squeeze bottle, and just took a spoon and splashed and dripped and threw the left over strawberry sauce over the cupcakes.

Once they allhave that drizzle, just add the finishing touch -- a blackberry on top.

Don't they look so pretty all together???

The best part of course, is the mixture of all the flavors.  At least for most.  When you slice it in half you can see that better.

My boss told me that she took a bite out of it and then decided to eat the inside filling with her finger. lol!

These might be my favorite ones I have made so far.  :)   Yes they took ALL day, but they were kinda worth it!

xoxo,
Anna

Chocolate Strawberry Filled Cupcakes

I have seriously been waiting for strawberries to come back into season for months. Mostly because i wanted to replicate last year's experience of getting to smell cooking strawberries. Best.smell.ever. And because i am still trying to get a handle on the whole "filling" cupcakes thing.

So i set out to make some (kinda barely) Mardi Gras themed cupcakes for the usual drunken debauchery at the Evan's house.

Used the same chocolate cake recipe as last time, except i used better cocoa powder this time. Yummy Ghirardelli! I could taste the difference. You can find the recipe here.

And I used pretty gold liners. Because there is no such thing as Mardi Gras liners.

The frosting was the same as this frosting (except with the measurements halved!!!) And in case you havent noticed, i really prefer cream cheese frosting. I hate buttercream.

I used the same technique for the strawberry sauce. I cooked one carton, separated the 1/4 cup for the frosting and used the rest for the strawberry filling. I got the recipe from Wilton. But they used frozen strawberries so i had to make up my own recipe using the fresh ones i has just cooked.

So i mixed together:

1/4 cup of strawberry sauce

1 cup of water

2 table spoons of corn starch

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons of lemon

And heated them for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. It looks gross. It does. I won't lie. Once it was cooled, i added the rest of the strawberry sauce that was left over from the carton and stirred it in. YES IT LOOKS GROSS. I already said it did. But it tasted good!

I threw in the resulting 2 cups or so into a ziplock and used a piping tip to fill the cupcakes. This time around though, i made 5-6 holes in each one to get as much in as possible. It took too long, and only worked okay. I need a cupcake corer. Bad. It's on my to buy list! (Or on your list of things to buy me...)

I dyed the frosting purple, which means everyone thought they were raspberry. They weren't!

I think the most exciting part about this batch was that i finally got to use the stickers that Katie bought me for Christmas. Instead of a cupcake carrier i might have gone out and bought an actual box. =x haha. (I kinda want to buy some pink boxes to have on hand, actually...) I don't think anyone noticed it on the box once it was opened, but i did. I knew it was there!

I will admit though, i have gotten reallllllllllly lazy with the decorating in the last year. Mainly because i've been too busy concentrating on baking from scratch that the aesthetics have become secondary. Maybe once i have a handle on the standard flavors, i'll get back into it. But for now i will be lame and go back to my standard cop out of using chocolate on top of everything.

xo,

Anna