Wednesday, March 21, 2012

How to Core a Cupcake...and Fill it with Fun Stuff!

Hi all! This little cupcake plunger is going to change your cupcake life! Coring a cupcake and filing it with something delicious gives it an extra kick! It's very easy to use, and kinda fun too. One of my best friends gave it to me as a gift and I use it all the time. See below for step by step and some cupcake fun!


Here it is! I made chocolate cupcakes, and put them in the refrigerator overnight. You want to make sure the cupcakes are completely cooled before you remove the core, or else they will fall apart.


And off we go! For a normal sized cupcake, I would suggest going to the second line of the cupcake plunger as seen above. You don't want to take too much cake from the middle, or else your filing might come out the bottom or your cake could collapse =)


Using a twisting motion (think turning a door nob back and forth) remove the plunger from the cake. You don't need to use the top springy part of the plunger just yet. Let the extra cake sit tight in there, we are going to use it again later. And there you have it! You're ready to start filing..


Yum!!! I filled my cupcakes with Nutella - I think the chocolate cake combined with the chocolatey/nutty Nutella taste is a killer combo. I added the Nutella with a spoon, but you could also use the bag filing method (i'm sure it's a lot less messy!) There are so many other filings you could use as well - whipped cream, fruit, fudge, even ice cream if served quickly. These cupcakes are a favorite of my coworkers, so I made them again!


Remember the excess cake that the plunger removed? We're going to put it back in on top of the filing. Using the springy part of the plunger, simply hold it over your cupcake and push the spring all the way down. This will cause the extra cake to be pushed out and added back to the top of your cupcake. After all, we want to salvage every last bit of cake we can get right?


Almost done! All cupcakes have been cored, filled, and topped off with the excess cake. Too bad they look a bit ugly, no? We can fix that...

With icing! Simply frost over the cracks left by the cupcake plunger, and you will have a gorgeous, magnificent cupcake! I applied mine with a knife, but it's of course your preference. I got this buttercream frosting recipe from the side of the sugar box, and I'm really happy with the way it came out! See below for recipe.


The frosting is very creamy and light, exactly what I was going for. I wanted the Nutella to be the star of this cupcake, and didn't want the frosting to be too overpowering. This buttercream was a nice balance.

Off to work we go! I commute into Manhattan for work every day, and this cupcake carrier has been a life saver! It holds 24 cupcakes, and is very sturdy. I bought this one at Target.


That's all for now, hope you guys enjoyed my post! Comment with any questions or cupcake love! xoxo

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Sometimes, it's the Little Things

After a looooong Saturday night out celebrating my new job (yay!) we had a VERY lazy Sunday. I had a severe pancake craving, so Greg and I went to Pathmark to pick up a few things. We bought the Bisquick Shake N Pour pancake mix (when I said LAZY Sunday I wasn't kidding).

To our surprise, it wasn't bad! And to top things off, Greg made me a heart pancake =) Sometimes it's the little things that make me smile!


How cute =)


If you want pancakes with the least effort possible, buy this

Us celebrating on Saturday!


Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! Will post more baking stuff soon! xoxo



Wednesday, March 7, 2012

My 2 Favorite Things Rolled into One...



Makeup and cookies!!! A co-worker of mine gave me these cookies today - the lipstick and little nail polish are obviously my favorites. I desperately want to try and recreate these on my own. Made my day! xoxo

Monday, March 5, 2012

This Weekend - Birthdays and Desserts Galore

Hi friends! Hope everyone had an excellent weekend. Mine was awesome, very busy! I had two birthdays this weekend, so everyone knows what that means - me baking my butt off all night on Friday! I made vanilla cupcakes with milk chocolate frosting (will post recipes later), and the infamous vanilla cake pops with vanilla and chocolate candy melts. With the cupcakes, I was trying to experiment with different decorations and icing techniques. Check out the photos below!



A friend of mine got me a big jar of multi-colored sprinkles, so naturally I had a field day with them. I thought the bright blue sprinkles looked pretty against the chocolate icing!


Ooohhh ahhhh =) I bought new cupcake cups as well, TJ Maxx had a set of 75 in 3 different polka dot shades. I used the blue and pink, there is also black with white polka dots.


Instead of piping on the icing with a bag, I used the knife technique to get a more home made look. Some people don't like a ton of toppings on their cupcake, so using a knife gave it just enough icing.


Non perrels, or more commonly known as Snow Caps. I thought this dressed up the cupcake a bit. I also like buying the small non perrels and use them to make different designs on the top of cupcakes.

Purple sprinkles and pink cupcake paper! I went easy on the sprinkles because I think it looks prettier that way. A cupcake surely fit for a princess =)


Just plain vanilla cake ha! My cousin, Michael turned 18 this weekend. And he loves cake - just no icing AT ALL. So in honor of him, I left a few cupcakes plain.


Here are some of the cakes at the party! I always like giving people choices - leaving some plain without any toppings, and some that have fun stuff on the top!


If you are faint of heart, then look away from this cake. This is what you would call a baking DON'T. My aunt made these beautiful layer cakes and asked me if I would help her decorate them. "I'd be happy to!" I said. Needless to say, we didn't have enough blue icing to finish the word "Birthday." After hysterically laughing for a few minutes, my brother, boyfriend and cousin attempted to remedy the situation - by writing the A and Y in MINTS. The cake of course tasted great but we couldn't stop laughing at how the cake looked. Oh and my brother made a mint "balloon" on the top cake, in case you were wondering what the hell that was.


It was also Greg's momma's birthday this weekend! We went out to a nice restaurant, and they brought her a beautiful dessert - 3 types of sorbet and they wrote Happy Birthday to her in chocolate! Looks a lot better than the job I did on that poor cake huh?

Hope you enjoyed the post, thanks for reading! xoxo