Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Five Toppings

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Five Toppings

My last cupcake recipe of the year! Can you believe I've done 53 of them altogether? I have no idea what I'll do with all my new-found free time! I am, however, really excited that I managed to stick with this and do a recipe every week. Go me!

Cupcakes:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

16 oz sweet potatoes, drained and mashed (I cooked down fresh sweet potatoes but if you need to save time canned works just as well, with the added bonus that you don't have to strain out the fiber!)

2/3 cup apple cider

1 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp nutmeg (if you don't have nutmeg, allspice will substitute)

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices, and set aside.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time.

In another bowl, mix sweet potatoes, apple cider, and vanilla until smooth. If you used a fresh sweet potato, you will need to strain it through a sieve of some kind to get out all the fibers before you mix it in.

Alternate in the sweet potato and flour mixtures, beating until just blended. The batter will be a gorgeous golden-orange color.

Fill cupcake liners about 3/4 of the way full. 

Bake for 13 minutes, turn, bake for 13 minutes.

Let cool.

Makes 30.

Caramel Topping:

6 soft caramels

Spread the caramels very thin with your fingers, then lay them over top of the cupcakes.

Vanilla Topping

3 tbsp butter, soft

1 1/2 cups xxx sugar

Dash of vanilla

2-3 tbsp cream

Beat all the ingredients until smooth. Frost generously.

Chocolate Topping:

2 oz fine chocolate, semisweet

1/4 cup cream

Melt the chocolate in the cream using a double boiler. Remove from heat and stir until smooth. Let cool slightly before using. Drizzle over cupcakes.

Cinnamon Topping:

2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup xxx sugar

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter and brown sugar together over low heat (between 2-4 on a stove dial). Add the cinnamon and stir until mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat and whisk in the xxx sugar.

Frost cupcakes immediately, as topping will set up fast.

Whipped Cream Topping:

Make or buy whipped cream (I cheated and bought because I was in a hurry). Top generously.

Cupcakes adapted from FoodNetwork.com.

And there you have it! Five different toppings, six cupcakes each. I couldn't decide which one would go best with the cupcakes when I was making them, so I decided to use all three. In retrospect, I think the cinnamon or the whipped cream would be best, but it's really up to you and what tastes good.

Also, I didn't have time to make them, but sprinkling some toasted pecans over the vanilla frosted cupcakes would have been divine!

I hope you enjoyed this foray into the world of cupcake baking; I definitely had a blast. Any future recipes will definitely be documented for this blog, but I'm not going to keep the same rigorous schedule at this point.

Thanks for reading!

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

These cupcakes are SO GOOD. I had no idea they were going to be so delicious and I was completely blown away. That said, summer is not the best time to make them, because they melt in the heat.

Cupcakes:

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp almond extract

3/4 cup cake flour

5/8 (about 2/3) cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened and cuber

2 eggs

1/2 granny smith apple, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Stir together milk and almond extract.

In a mixing bowl, sift together flours, sugar, bp, and spices. At in cubed butter a little at a time, mixing on low speed, until the batter looks sandy in texture.

Add eggs, then milk mixture. Mix until combined. Add apple pieces.

Fill cupcake tins 2/3 of the way full. Bake for 10 minutes, turn, bake 12 minutes. The cupcakes will be brown around the edges. Remove from oven and let cool completely.

Makes 18.

Cinnamon Frosting:

1 stick butter, room temperature

3 cups powdered sugar

3 tbsp cream or whole milk

1 tsp cinnamon

green food coloring, if desired

Beat butter until soft and fluffy. Sift in powdered sugar and cinnamon, then add cream. Beat until frosting reaches the correct consistency for piping. Add one or two drops of food color.

Caramel coating:

1 bag unwrapped caramel pieces

2 tsp cream or milk

Melt the caramel and milk together. If you do this in the microwave, be careful to do it in small increments and with lots of stirring to prevent the caramel from burning. It may take a while for the ingredients to combine fully. Let the mixture cool for a little while.

When the cupcakes are cool, pipe a spiral of frosting on top of each. Dip the frosted cupcakes upside down into the caramel. You need to do this somewhat quickly, especially if the caramel is still warm, or it will melt the icing. Let some of the excess caramel drip off if possible.

As soon as the cupcakes are coated, move them to freezer and let them sit for a while so the caramel can sit. The milk will keep it from becoming crunchy, but it will firm up enough to look really good. In this weather, they will melt almost immediately, so keep them in the fridge or freezer until you are ready to serve them.

Warning: these cupcakes are super messy!

Adapted from The Baking Robot.

Mini Rollo Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache

Mini Rollo Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup water

1 tsp vanilla

1 tbsp white vinegar

48 rollo candies, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift together flour, soda, and cocoa powder. Stir sugar and oil together in a mixing bowl, then add in flour mixture, water, vanilla, and vinegar. Stir until smooth; make sure there are no flour lumps in the batter, as this happens really easily.

Line a mini cupcake tray with wrappers, and fill 3/4 full of batter.

Bake for 7 minutes. Remove cupcakes and quickly insert a rollo into the center of each. It should sink in a little, but not be covered by the batter. As you can see that some of the rollos are visible and some aren't. The ones that aren't were where I tried to insert the rollos at five minutes; they ended up sinking to the bottom and sticking to the cupcake wrappers, so I recommend seven minutes. Since you're going to frost the cupcakes, it doesn't matter if the rollos are visible on top.

Ganache:

12 oz semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup heavy cream

48 rollo candies, unwrapped

Heat the cream in a saucepan until it comes to a boil. Immediately pour it over the chocolate in a heatproof bowl, then stir until totally combined and smooth. Refrigerate for several hours, or until firm.

Spoon the ganache into a piping bag and pipe little swirls onto the tops of the cupcakes, covering the rollos. I meant to take pictures of this process as I did it, and then forgot, but as you can see, the spirals don't need to be perfect, because once you have piped them you should quickly place a rollo on top of the ganache as an accent. I also used edible silver sprinkles for accents.

The original recipe directed you to make your own caramel filling, but I have had bad luck in this area. If you melt kraft caramels they have a tendency to reharden into solid lumps of rock-hard caramel, so I prefer to use the rollo, which stays soft even after being melted.

I will say that the recipe made exactly 50 mini cupcakes, and there was exactly the right amount of ganache, which has not been my experience with Martha Stewart recipes, which often lie about this key feature. So excellent!

Adapted from Design Bake Run.