Lemon Cupcakes and Thanksgiving Fun!

How was your Turkey Day? I had such a great Thanksgiving! My parents and my sister and her family came out, risking the drive in the snow. I am so glad that they did. We enjoyed every second. My sister has a little boy and a little girl and we had so much fun entertaining. We ate, went to the zoo, ate, went to the Children's Museum, ate, shopped, ate, went out to eat, and...did I mention EAT!!! We are all such gluttons! Any dull moment, we got out leftovers and stuffed our faces. Then we complained the whole time about being full, gassy, etc...you don't need ALL the details! :) While they were here I made Lemon Cupcakes for a friend's daughter's baptism. I kept the frosting white and used pearly white nonpareils. They were so simple and pretty looking and what a hit! They are so moist and fluffy I compare them to angel food cake! This recipe rocks...MAKE THEM!!!

Lemon Cupcakes
Source: Our Best Bites

In your shopping cart you need:
1 1/2 cup (three sticks) of butter
3 cups cake flour (no substitutions or they will not be as light and fluffy)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 Tab. freshly squeezed lemon juice
Zest of 2 lemons (zest before you squeeze em! :) )
1 cup buttermilk

Put your apron on and ...

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 muffin tins with cupcake liners.

In the bowl of your mixer...beat butter and sugar for about 4 minutes till it is light and fluffy and white. While butter and sugar are mixing, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a medium bowl. Set aside. Add eggs one at a time in mixer to butter and sugar while it is running. Beat in vanilla, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

With mixer on low alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk until fully incorporated.

Fill cupcake liners almost to the top. Bake about 20-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. These cupcakes are nice and flat...they are not supposed to have a round top...so you haven't done anything wrong! Remove from oven and frost with cream cheese frosting or lemon buttercream.

November 29th Family Night Treats

Don't forget to click on the Weekly Menu tab in the navigation bar to see what delicious sweet I am offering this week. Brown Sugar and Spiced Sugar Cookies! Yum! Click on the Weekly Menu tab for pricing and details!!!

Also this week: The Bakery Box will be participating in the Craft Fair at Walnut Hills Elementary from 10- 2 pm. Come and buy some goodies and support a local school and its parents! Hope to see you there! Mention my blog and I will give you a discount!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Holy Cow! Did anyone else out there have a day like mine? I spent the morning having 8 children here to play, helped them make pizza and roll-out cookies, made three dozen rolls, delivered rolls to three people, made cupcakes, cookies, went to Costco, Walmart, Sunflower Market, bathed three little boys, brined a turkey, cleaned the whole house from top to bottom, and still have things on my to-do list that I haven't crossed off yet...but WHO cares???!!! Tomorrow is another day and I am SO grateful to be spending it with family! What will you be doing? Will you hit up Black Friday? Ohhh...you will be seeing me racing for the $25 Leaspster!! Good Luck, eat lots, and more this weekend!

Oldies but Goodies!

Is everyone else so excited and exhausted busy getting ready for Thanksgiving?! What are you making? Please leave me a comment and let me know your favorite dish you are making! Right now, I am so excited to start some fancy shmancy sugar cookies for the big day... turkeys... gobble, gobble! I will be posting these along with a video showing a quick and easy tutorial on royal icing...you guys will love it. It is so fun! I promised you last week to post some pictures of a Halloween cookie order I did. I LOVED how they turned out. I shipped them in the mail back home for a Halloween carnival for my niece. Just looking at the pictures, makes me want to get started on my Turkey cookies!

Whoopie Pies!

So, I predict that the next fad in the dessert industry will be...drumroll please... whoopie pies! What isn't to like about cookies sandwiched together with frosting...HELLO! I hear there is a whole book dedicated to whoopie pies. I WILL be buying it and I WILL be sharing all the best recipes with you all! I wonder what kind of delicious Christmas flavored version there could be! Here is an amazing Fall version. They were a hit with my boys who usually don't love pumpkin flavoring!! And the addition of the maple syrup to the cream cheese frosting is a .... a...
I am at a loss for words! You have just got to try it!



Pumpkin Whoopie Pies With Maple Cream Cheese Filling

I found these delights over at Brown Eyed Baker

In your shopping basket you will need:

For the Whoopie Pies

3 cups flour

2 Tab. cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup veggie or canola oil

3 cups pumpkin puree-that is one of the large cans

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Maple Cream Cheese Filling

3 cups powdered sugar

8 oz. cream cheese, at room temp

1/2 cup butter, at room temp

3 Tab. maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Put your apron on and

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Whisk together the flour , cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, and nutmeg in a bowl (not your mixing bowl)

3. In your mixing bowl, mix together the sugars and oil. Add pumpkin and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk until combined.

4. Gradually add flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture.

5. With a large spoon, drop by the tablespoon on silipat lined cookie sheets, about 1 inch apart.

6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Cookies should be firm to the touch.

Let the cookies cool completely before you frost them...or they will melt the frosting!!

To make the frosting, make sure the butter and cream cheese are room temp. To be honest, I always forget this step and am too impatient to wait. Then my frosting is lumpy. Be better than me, follow the directions!!

To make the frosting, combine the above ingredients in a mixer for about three minutes till smooth!!! Assemble sandwiches and ENJOY!!!

Family Night Treats

Don't forget to check out The Bakery Box every Sunday to see what delicious treat I will be offering for Monday night... Family Night! Click on "weekly menu" in the navigation bar at the top of my blog under the header!

Tomorrow I will be offering Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. They are as good as they sound! I took these bad boys to a Halloween party a few week ago and they were a huge hit! Prices are only $3 for a half dozen cookies and $5 for a dozen. Call now!

Dalmatian Cupcakes Part II

First of all, if you are reading this post and haven't read its' prerequisite...read Part I below. Then come back to this post for the "riveting" conclusion of the pups! Part I was done the night before the big party. I started at 9:30 pm and worked till 2:00 am. I made 36 dalmatian cupcakes. I feel it is important to notify any of my millions of followers out there of the time these took before you might get crazy like myself and undertake these bad boys. Part II steps are below and really only took about 2 hours. So total time commitment was about 7 hours. But, some things are worth dedicating the time to. Since I didn't LOVE the result...don't know if this project was...but maybe you will feel differently. Leave a comment and let me know your opinion!

Okay, where we left off yesterday was with the mouth of the doggies intact, the snouts constructed, and the cupcake frosted over. Here we go... I know you are all on the edge of your seats I am sure...

As you can tell by the cotton ball holding up the mouth of one injured pup in the above photo, some of my dalmatian's mouths didnot hold. Dang it! This is where my breakdown occured. I was able to re-glue most of them with frosting. I felt like a surgeon at work. The pressure was on. :) After repair work, I used black frosting to attach little black jellybeans as the noses.
Forgive some of these photos. I did not have my professional photographer with me this day. This was all me and my fancy shmancy $100 camera baby! OK, next was the jelly bean eyes. And adding spots. This is were I really was struggling. The spots were camoflogauging the eyes. I tried bigger eyes, smaller eyes, marshmallow eyes, big spots, smaller polka dots, and didn't love any result. So, I stuck with the instructions and used the jellybeans.

Next to come were adding the ears. These didn't want to stay on and I decided to finish all the dogs without the ears and add them on at the party...much easier for travel. So I cut the ears out and brought them along. The book Hello Cupcake! (link provided in yesterday's post) called once again for Famous Chocolate Wafers for the ears. Who the h#$% carries these?! Anyways, I found some chocolate mint cookies that worked okay. They were fancy shmancy and expensive though. I ran out and had some generic oreos on hand. These actually worked just dandy. I separated the cookie, scratched off the frosting, and cut each cookie like a ying yang symbal to create the ears. Then I attach them to the side shoving them into the cake part of the cookie and you have got your self a funky cute looking dalmatian! Woof!