For lemon lovers

I decided to make another cupcake tonight, in the event I don't get time to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow I start school, I'll be at work until 5:30, and then its off to school until about 10pm...yay..and to make it even better I'll be in my computer science class. Something that really doesn't interest me. Just one of those classes I have to take in order to finish up my degree.

I have found another cupcake that I simply love. Its such a simple recipe, why didn't I think of these combinations myself?

I just finished up poppy seed cupcakes with a lemon drizzle. (Aunt Donna, you will love these!)

The cupcakes are made with sweet butter, sugar, flour, eggs vanilla extract, poppy seeds and grated lemon zest, bake for twenty minutes and the cupcakes should come out moist and light.

The drizzle is also very yummy. Confectioners' sugar, lemon juice and more poppy seeds. Its a little tart so go easy on it, it's also very runny so you'll have to pour slowly to avoid it from running along the sides. Although, next time I decide to make them I think I'll try an idea I got from Travis and just bake the drizzle right into the cupcakes.

Well I think four types of cupcakes is enough for one day.

Next cupcake: banana cupcakes

Photographer: Travis J. Premo

Got Milk?

Does anyone remember that Got Milk commercial from a few years ago, where the little boy feeds his dog a spoonful of peanut butter, and the whole commercial is us watching a dog trying to eat the peanut butter?? Well this is how I felt when eating this cupcake.

My eleventh cupcake is peanut butter cupcakes. While they were very tasty, be sure to have a glass of cold milk sitting beside you.

The cupcakes themselves had crunchy peanut butter mixed in them and the frosting also had 1/2 cup of peanut butter.

The recipe called for them to bake for twenty minutes. I might suggest 17-18. They seemed to dry out way to quickly. Another factor to the dryness of the cake was that the liners were pulling away from the cake, creating a gap for air to come through.

The frosting was a little difficult to work with. I'm guessing it was the peanut butter, but it was super sticky and very hard to spread on to the cupcake. It was just a goopy mess.

These cupcakes can be stored unfrosted in an airtight container for about 3 days, or you can also freeze them for up to 3 months.

With a few adjustments, I would definitely make these again. Maybe somehow add chocolate in the mix!

Photographer: Travis J. Premo

My 10th Cupcake

Well my tenth cupcake is one that I've also made before. My first time I left out a couple ingredients because I didn't have them in the house. I loved them the first time around, so I cant wait to see how they taste now that I've added pecans, raisins, and apples.

Applesauce & Cinnamon cupcakes are very delicious and they stay moist for a longer period of time due to the applesauce. The cinnamon brings out the sweetness and complements the applesauce pretty well.

For this recipe, you'll need superfine sugar, and self-rising flour. I love using superfine sugar in the recipes rather then your regular granulated sugar. It breaks down in batters a little easier, and you don't have to mix it as long. Over mixing your batter is never a good thing anyway.

As far as the raisins go, I may suggest leaving them out in this one. I love raisins don't get me wrong, but I'm not sure the combination goes well.

They still tasted awesome though I must say. Maybe next time I'll leave out the raisins but substitute them for chunks of apples instead...hmmmm

Photography: Travis J. Premo

Where's my glossy sheen??

I'm taking advantage of the fact that it's Sunday and trying to do about three different types of cupcakes. I'm going to have to do this on weekends as much as I can if I want to accomplish 500 in 368 days.

This will be my ninth cupcake. Classic chocolate buttercream cupcakes.

Now before I started this little project I had made these already, so lucky for me I had some notes on them already, because the first attempt needed some adjustments.

So this time around I used unsalted butter for the cupcakes, and I added more heavy cream to the frosting. Last time the frosting was a sticky gooey mess that didn't have a sheen to them at all. The picture in the cookbook shows the frosting light and shiny. This isn't the case at all. Even in my second attempt I couldn't get it to look like the picture. There is an improvement I'll say that for sure. I probably tripled the amount of heavy cream it asked for to make it more smooth, which it did. But when it sets, it becomes clumpy and weird looking.

I think the next time I'll try using a double boiler to melt the chocolate and butter, that's what I use when I make brownies. So hopefully that will treat the chocolate a little better instead of directly heating it on the stove.

Photographer: Travis J. Premo

Not so "very cherry" like

Never fear, even though there was no post yesterday. I did make cupcakes. I had to wait until my photographer came home so he could take pictures of them before I put my blog up. Last night I made "Very Cherry Cupcakes". I was all into them until I tasted the frosting. Now I’m not a cherry person to begin with. I don’t like the artificial flavor of them. Now fresh cherries I like. But its the fake stuff I cant stand.

The cupcake was your normal vanilla cupcake with kirsch added into it. For those who don’t know what that is, its a cherry liqueur. I couldn’t find it at my local grocery store. My husband was able to buy it for about $8 at BevMo.

Now the frosting is what killed it for me. It called for salt, just a pinch. But the pinch was way to much and ruined the sweet frosting taste we all know and love. I tried counter balancing it with adding more confectioners sugar, but it didn’t work. After you mix the frosting together, you add red food coloring to the mixture to make it pink.

When the frosting and cupcakes are put together you put the finishing touch on it by adding a maraschino cherry with the stem on top.

I only had a bite of the cupcake since I was so turned off by it, Travis on the other hand finished it off. His comment was there wasn’t too much cherry flavor to it, with the exception of the cherry on top.

So if I were to make it again, I'd leave out the salt in the frosting, and add more kirsch to the mix.

Cupcakes by Coley now has email for those who want to place an order. You can reach me at CupcakesbyColey@hotmail.com.

Photography: Travis J. Premo

These must be good for you......

I say if a cupcake has veggies in them, they must be good for you. Well that's my thoughts on it anyway.

Tonight I made carrot & walnut cupcakes. They were fairly easy to make, you just need extra time to prepare a few things.

The recipe called for shredded carrots, now of course you can buy pre-shredded carrots but I'd rather buy them whole and shred what I need. I do everything the long way. I guess it's in part my mom made, or shall I say makes, everything from scratch. Buys every ingredient fresh and does what she needs with them. At least it guarantees the freshness of the dish.

The cupcake is filled with shredded carrots, walnuts and raisins topped with a cream cheese frosting and walnuts to garnish.

The taste is similar to carrot cake, a little less sweet then the traditional cake, and a lighter batter over all.

I'll be bringing some to my Grandma to taste tomorrow afternoon, I'll have a second opinion by then.

Cupcakes by Coley had a pretty exciting day today. I try to go by the saying "It never hurts to ask." The worst that can happen is that someone will say no, you'll move on and that will be that.

Well today I was browsing the Internet when I got the idea to write to Food Magazine. I was curious how their advertisement works. I was contemplating buying a small space in the magazine to promote my blog and get some potential customers for the future. I explained that I was a 23 year old trying to become a business woman. Within the hour a woman answered my email saying I was in luck and she would love to do a piece on me and my blog! She said there were a few others out there like me, who got inspired by the "Julie & Julia" movie and she'll be in contact with me at the end of September to put the article together. So I'll be keeping everyone updated on how that turns out.

I'll be putting some business cards together this weekend and hopefully get some ordered soon. Ive had a few people ask me for some already.

Thank you everyone for all your support it means the world to me.

Tomorrows cupcake: Very Cherry Cupcakes

Photography: Travis J. Premo

A bit of history

Tonight I made the cupcake recipe on page 29 of my book. Mini raspberry and coconut cupcakes.

As is says in the book they were inspired from classic English bakewell tarts. I personally have never heard of this so-called English tart. So Wikipedia helped me understand: "consists of a shortcrust pastry shell, spread with jam and covered with a sponge-like filling enriched with ground almonds." It goes on to say that they were first created by accident in 1820. I love stories like that, people coming across lovely desserts on accident.

The original recipe calls for mini ceramic baking cups and place them on a cookie sheet. I unfortunately didn't have any nor could I find any. Not that I looked that hard for them. In any event I used a mini muffin pan, and it seemed to work just fine.

The cupcakes are made with almond meal, flaked coconut, egg whites and your usual staples: sugar, flour etc. Then you place a single raspberry and shredded coconut on top and bake 12-15 minutes at 375 degrees. For my oven and mini muffin pan, they needed more like 15 minutes to bake properly.

And as far as tomorrow's cupcake, I know Travis is looking forward to it: carrot & walnut cupcakes!

Photography: Travis J. Premo

A not for everyone warm delight

These cupcakes, seemed much easier then last nights.

This cupcake uses dark rum and raisins.

A little hint for those following or interested in this recipe. You'll need to set a side some time to prepare for it. The raisins need to soak in the rum 2-3 hours or overnight to soften them. I didn't know this until I was ready to bake, so it put a damper on things for a little while. (this let me catch up on some food network TV!)

The cupcakes themselves are vanilla cupcakes with 3 tablespoons of rum and about 1/2 cup of raisins. Topped with a dark rum syrup with light brown sugar.

As far as the taste goes, I had to rely on my husband. Being sick seemed to take away all my taste buds. I cant taste a thing. He isn't a fan of raisins so his opinion is leaning a certain way. Which is fine. He said it tastes like its supposed to taste, rum and raisin-ish. Needless to say, he wont be getting one in his lunch tomorrow.

The cupcake seemed to crumble in our hands, much like they portrayed them in the picture.

Cupcakes by Coley has no new development. Still researching some copyright ideas. Travis and I are also throwing around the idea of a professional website. Perhaps after this 500 cupcake project is over and done with. Id like to have some more experience and have more pictures to show.

Right now Cupcakes by Coley is a word of mouth business. So if anyone has any birthday parties or events coming up, keep me in mind.

A special thank you to Travis, thank you for all your help.

As for now, I'm going to bed. I have to get back to work eventually....

Stay tuned in, tomorrows cupcake will be mini raspberry & coconut cupcakes.

Photography: Travis J. Premo

A delicate little number

The lemon butterfly cupcake was an interesting one to make.

The cupcake itself was your stanard vanilla cupcake made with sweet butter, topped with a lemon zest frosting.

I'm not sure if it was because I'm sick, but I felt a little off my game tonight. The instructions for the butterfly effect was to "Cut a slice from the top of each cupcake and cut into two". I read that into meaning cut the whole top off and make it flat. That wasn't the case, in fact it was supposed to be cut a small piece off the top and you can cover it up with frosting later. My little mishap made the wings of the butterfly way to heavy and toppled over. I realized this on my last cupcake, so out of the nine I made one came out perfect.

Other then that the cupcake came out pretty good. My husband had two =)

So just remember if your following along with the recipes, the top of the page mentioned the word "delicate", and they really were delicate to make, just be careful when slicing the top of the cake, go slow to avoid crumbling.

Tomorrows cupcake: Rum & Raisin Cupcakes

Photographer: Travis J.Premo

Terra Cotta

Well its the third day of my little project, which means another cupcake is under my belt.

This evening I made Gingerbread pots. They are basically gingerbread cupcakes that I placed in terra cotta pots, ceramic planting pots. (you can find them at your local gardening center, such as Green Thumb for about 0.50 cents each) It gave sort of a "rustic charm" to them.

Using the terra cotta pots lead me away from cupcake liners for a night, which is nice. On the other hand I had to use parchment paper, which was a little difficult to work with, trying to stuff it into the pots. But by the third or forth one, I seemed to get the hang of it.

The cupcakes are filled with candied ginger. Which I'm not a huge fan of ginger but it seems to work well in this recipe.

On top of the cupcakes are a lemon sugar drizzle. Its very sweet so go easy on it. For anyone following the recipe, I recommend cutting the drizzle in half.

I was a little bummed when letting my cupcakes cool, I came back to them all caved in. So that brings me to my next question: Does anyone know why this happened? Should I have baked them longer? Did I need to put more of an ingredient in them? Please enlighten me.

As far as the company, I'm trying to do some research as how I can go about getting the logo copyrighted. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to let me know.

It's going to be a chaotic semester, as most of you know I work for a local travel agency, your standard 9-5 job. Monday I'll be returning back to school, three times a week for a grueling semester of computer science and statistcs until about 10pm. I hope I dont, but in case there is a day I go without blogging, never fear, that just means I have to catch up with the baking.

So stay tuned, tomorrows cupcake: Lemon butterfly cupcakes.

"The grand dame of cupcakes..."

Fergal Connolly said it best, I just took my second cupcake recipe out of the oven. This time I baked Vanilla Cupcakes. Even the batter tasted yummy. Six simple ingredients and the house began to smell very sweet. I'm getting pretty excited, I'm finally getting that round shape top on my cupcakes. When I first starting baking cupcakes they always turned out with flat tops, not pretty at all. But these are actually round. I didn't know I accomplished this until I took them out of the oven. Now all I have to do is figure out how I did it exactly. Was it the amount of time spent in the oven, or was it just how much batter I put in the liner? Any suggestions? Thoughts? Cupcakes by Coley is coming along nicely. Travis, whose already made a few company logos, for engineering consulting firms, and a fitting manufacture has made my logo for the bakery. A simple yet delicious looking cupcake will set the tone for the bakery. Photography: Travis J. Premo Graphic art designer: Travis J. Premo

The first of many

My first cupcake batch went well: Spanish Orange Syrup Cupcakes. This recipe had alot of "firsts" for me. I learned what semolina was, which is just another type of flour. And after searching the local market for almond meal and not finding it, I learned how to make it from scratch. I learned, with the help of my husband Travis, how to thinly slice an orange rind while removing the pith. It takes great patience, and an excellent knife. For being the first cupcake in the book, I loved them. A little fancy, but if you take your time it's do-able. Here's to cupcake #1 and 499 to go. Photography by: Travis J. Premo

My Mission

My name is Nikki, but you can call me Coley. My passion for baking and the movies lead me to this idea of starting a blog. I recently went to see the movie "Julie & Julia". It was her mission to complete 524 recipes in 365 days.

So here's my mission: 500 cupcakes in 368 days. You may be asking why 368 days? Why not stick to a year and make it easy on yourself? Well in 368 days I will finally be able to transfer schools and finish up my degree in business.

Fergal Connolly published a book, "500 cupcakes, the only cupcake compendium you'll ever need" It will be my source for the next 500 days. From mastering the plain vanilla cupcake to sticky toffee pudding cupcakes, I'll try them all.

I'll be blogging about each cupcake, and how they turned out. And if anyone is interested I am trying to get a business up and running, "Cupcakes by Coley" I can do birthday cakes, cupcakes any sort of cake you name it. So I'll be blogging on my progress with that as well.

Stay tuned, it should get interesting.