Sometimes a good remix is better than the original.  I’m not sure if that was the case for these, but people seemed to like them just as much as the original… so that’s a good thing! I made both of these remixes back in May. The first one was for our end of the year Secondary Math Intern Poster session. I had subbed once for the class and decided to bring the  Maple Buttermilk Pancake cupcakes as a treat. One intern told me that they would be great with banana. So, when I was asked to make a mini version of these I thought why not try a little banana filling. Since I wasn’t completely sure how these would come out I made half banana filling and half plain. I then garnished the banana ones with a little banana chip. People seemed to like them. I actually think I like them better without the banana, but the banana is a nice change from the usual. The second remix was for my friend who just finished up his PhD and was going back to Singapore. I did my usual MSU PhD cupcakes (I think I have done some various of this one about 5 times already!) Since we were having the party at my house I could have them set up on a table and so I decided to do both green and white ones and write a little congratulatory  message for him. Here’s a close-up. The party started before Josh got home, so I took this with my little camera so the quality isn’t as great! I think these will forever be the signature PhDcupcaker cupcakes…

Also, in case you didn’t notice… I now have a little Twitter icon way on the right. Josh and I joined Twitter for a contest to win a really nice camera… Not sure I will tweet much, but thought I could tweet my posts there as well…. Also, I only have 7 followers on the blog (look to the right under Fellow Cupcakers and Enthusiasts) right now and one of them is me… how sad… I think more people are reading my blog though… so, if you haven’t already, why not become a follower :-) Who knows… there may be a cupcake in it for you at some point… Thanks to those that are already following!

One night I was looking for something sweet to eat… I knew I had some peanut butter and I had some chocolate left over from my Hostess with the Mostest Cupcakes so I thought I would try to make some putter butter cups. I had been given a recipe for these from a vegan cookbook, but I didn’t have all those ingredients so I just made do with what I had – peanut butter, chocolate, powdered sugar, and vanilla. I melted the chocolate and lined some regular sized cupcake liners with the chocolate.  I put them in the fridge for a while to harden up a bit and I made the filling by mixing 1 cup of peanut butter, a 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and 1 tsp. vanilla extract. I also put this in the fridge for a bit. When the chocolate liners were ready I took them out and added a dollop of the peanut butter mixture into each liner and then finished them up with a dollop more of chocolate to cover… Like I said, I was doing this on a whim and so I ended up not having enough chocolate to cover them all. Two of them just ended up having just a bottom layer of chocolate, but they still tasted great.  After a little more time in the fridge they were ready to go. Here’s a snapshot of one that I cut in half.

I must say that they were not easy to eat – biting through the chocolate layer to get to the peanut butter was a bit of a chore, but they tasted so good!  I would definitely try these again. They would also be great in mini-liners – you could just pop a whole one in your mouth -more like the Reese’s Miniature Peanut Butter Cups!

So, if you are looking at this cupcake saying… That looks just like the Hostess cupcakes I used to eat as a kid – Great! That was the idea! There is this cupcake place that I have talked about before in Toledo called Cake in a Cup. They have some great cupcakes. Check out their menu here.  I couldn’t tell you which one is my favorite because they are all so good. One of my uncles though does have a favorite – he is obsessed with their Hostess with the Mostest – yes Rob, I am talking about you :-) When they came to visit this winter I talked about trying to make my own version. At the end of May when I wanted to make some cupcakes for a friend’s birthday and for Josh’s Calculus class (who I promised I would make cupcakes for again because they loved those e^xcellent cupcakes so much) I decided I would make some Red Velvet ones (since those are one of her favorites) and I would attempt to make my own Hostess with the Mostest. If you couldn’t tell by the name – this cupcake is basically a much tastier version of the good old Hostess CupCake. Using what I knew about the Cake in a Cup version I made a a somewhat dense chocolate cupcake, a creaming/icing-like filling (using marshmallow cream), some tasty chocolate ganache, and a little icing for piping on those Hostess swirls. Here they are filled before I put the ganache on top.  I had enough filling that I ended up going back through and adding more filling to each one. Then, it was time for the ganche. I love this picture of me adding the ganache because if you look closely you can see how much of a cupcake fan I am – not only am I icing these cupcakes I am also wearing my one (of two) cupcake aprons (this was a present from myfriends Aaron and Megan – thanks!) and I am also wearing a cupcake shirt that I purchased at Johhny Cupcakes with my Uncle David in Boston. He told us we were going to a cupcake shop on Newbury St. – little did we know they don’t actually sell cupcakes, but they sell cupcake apparel and accessories. I must admit it was pretty cool. Check out the story behind the store here.  I found the perfect cupcake shirt. You can’t see the shirt since it is covered by the apron, but here is a snapshot – it was the perfect  mix of cupcakes and teacher supplies! The cupcake is lined paper and you’ve got your pencil and sharpener – it was perfect (and on sale)! Anyway, once the ganache was on I put these in the fridge for a while to let it harden a bit. It didn’t come out as smooth as I wanted, but it wasn’t too bad. Then it was time to put the iconic icing swirl on top. It took me a while to get the right consistency and get the swirl to look good. As you can see… some came out better than others. Did you notice that they are not all swirls? Since I was giving these to Josh to bring to his Calculus students I wrote Calculus on a a few of them, but man Calculus is a rather long word to try to spell out on a cupcake, so there were only a few of those. I also wrote my friend’s name on one. I actually mailed four cupcakes to NYC for her. She said they arrived okay so I guess I didn’t do too bad of a wrapping job. Unfortunately Rob was in Japan and so he didn’t get to sample one of these. He reminded me though that they do have FedEx in Japan too… Note sure they would have made it!

So, one of the blogs I have been following, Karen’s Cookies, Cakes, and More had a post the other day about something called Club:BAKED. For those of you that follow cooking blogs you have probably run into bloggers that are part of these baking clubs… I have been participating in the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club for a while now. Basically, everyone has the same cookbook, someone picks a recipe, and everyone bakes and posts about it on a particular day. Club: BAKED is all about baking through the book Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented by  Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito. They are the owners of Baked NYC, which by the way was voted best cupcake shop in NYC by Serious Eats! I seriously need to check that out the next time I am in NYC. So, anyway, back to Club: BAKED – I will be baking along with the other club members twice a month. I know what you are thinking… don’t you have a dissertation to be writing? Yes – I do, but I figured I would probably bake here and there anyway, so mine as well just do it strategically. If I get to the point where I am just not making progress I’ll have to take a break… I just couldn’t resist when I saw the cover of that cookbook… Yum! So, be on the lookout for the first post… NY-Style Crumb Cake on July 1! Anyone interested in joining me? You know it will be lots of fun! Come on… Did you click on the link to Club:BAKED when you saw it before? No… why not?!?! Here it is again – go check out Club:BAKED!

I have not been good about posting my Sweet Places adventures… Although I have been trying to keep up by updating my Sweets Map! I just think that is so cool. Anyway, here is one from April…I had been scheming for quite a while with a faculty member to hit this cupcake place called The Flying Cupcake when we were at a conference in Indianapolis, IN – the very same conference to which I had brought my own geometric cupcakes. We looked for times when we were both free and we just couldn’t find the time to go together. We both  had pretty tight schedules. I was able to secure a little bit of time and told her I would bring her back a cupcake. She just wanted one… but of course I couldn’t resist buying a few more. The place was about a 20 minute walk from my hotel. When I had been walking for a while I started to think maybe I missed it… and then,  there it was just this little shop with this cute little awning right on the corner… It was pretty empty in the area and if I wasn’t looking closely I may have missed it altogether. There was no way I was going to walk this far and not get cupcakes! :-) They had a great variety of cupcakes in all different sizes. Check out their menu here. It wasn’t that cheap because not only did I end up getting some jumbo filled cupcakes, but also because I bought a t-shirt… I figured you can never have too many cupcake shirts, but maybe that is not true. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the cupcakes. I ended  up bringing a few of them to an event the day I bought them and everyone thought they were tasty… I felt kind of like the “Crazy Cat Lady, except I guess I was the “Crazy Cupcake Lady” bringing cupcakes with me everywhere I went… I guess people don’t mind too much though because cupcakes are so tasty! :-)  Here’s a close-up of their awning with their cute flying cupcake logo!

Lately I have had a few cupcakes that have been a long time in the making. This is one of those as well… Not sure if you can read the text on the picture above, but it reads “Happy Birthday Aaron!” My friend Aaron had found this recipe for Mountain Dew Cupcakes from All Things Cupcake and asked me about 7 months ago if I would make these for his birthday in May. Of course I said I would and I made sure to add it to my Google Calendar! Since Aaron already knew these cupcakes were coming I decided to add a little something extra. I had been wanting to try to make royal icing transfers because I saw these really cute ones on Sweetopia. Here they are. I thought about just making big letters for Aaron’s name just like these, but then I thought that I might combine Aaron’s love of Mountain Dew with his love of   Disney (hence the Disney wrappers) and create the letters to display the phrase  “Happy Birthday Aaron!” in Disney font since he is such a lover of all things Disney… Hey Aaron – you should start that blog “All Things Disney”, after finishing grad school that is :-) I just checked and allthingsdisney.com is taken, but I’m sure you could come up with a clever Disney blog name. Anyway, back to the cupcakes… since these were Mountain Dew cupcakes and the icing was going to be a neon green color and the cupcakes were lemon-limey I thought I would make the letters with a yellow royal icing and add a little lemon extract. I downloaded a Disney font and got transferring. It was actually not too hard, but a little time consuming. I did two of each letter in the phrase just in case one of them broke. The post I mentioned before of the that got me interested in this explains exactly how to do the transfer. I already had some transparencies laying around! We are teachers after all – they were left over from the days before computers and projectors!  It retrospect, a wider font might have worked better, but I was afraid if I made these too large they wouldn’t sit upright on the cupcakes. I think when I brought them in I actually ended up laying the letters flat on the cupcake because they wouldn’t fit in my Martha Stewart cupcake carrier if they were standing upright. I am not a Mountain Dew drinker, but I must say I was pretty impressed by these cupcakes.They had a really nice lemon-lime flavor and were pretty dense and also really moist. Here is a picture of Aaron enjoying the cupcakes. Unfortunately it was taken with my phone and I tried to zoom in for some reason and so it is pretty blurry. Also, I thought you might want to hear what he had to say about these cupcakes. So, you can check out his blog post here.  Thanks Aaron for asking me to make these! It was a ton of fun!

So, how did you like the title of this post? These cupcakes were one  of those ones that were in the works for quite a while. I am part of a center called the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum (CSMC) and I have gotten to know a lot of really great people from other universities. Many of these people are my Facebook friends and have seen my cupcake posts. So, when it was time to head to Indianapolis for a conference my friend AJ asked if I would make some cupcakes and bring them to the conference. Since we were driving to the conference I thought it might be possible. I asked AJ for some ideas… the conference theme was Geometry: Constructing and Transforming Perspectives. The first idea he suggested was origami shapes – AJ does not mess with the easy stuff :-) I toyed around with different ways I could actually make edible origami (e.g., rice paper, edible origami wraps), but then decided that I didn’t have time to mess with that. I then came up with the idea to make some geometric shapes. I was going to do the trick I always see on Ace of Cakes and CakeBoss and use as Buddy calls them “cereal treats” to carve the shapes and then either use candy melts or fondant to cover them…. Well, I tried this and it just did not go very well… Josh and I just ended up enjoying Rice Krispie Treats for dessert! So, I did some searching on the Internet and found a recipe for creating your own modeling chocolate. Here is what you do: Melt about 10 oz. of chocolate or candy melts. I used Wilton Candy Melts and I just melted it in the microwave. Stir until the chocolate is smooth. Once the chocolate is smooth add 1/3 C. of light corn syrup and mix until you form a thick ball (it will be similar to the consistency of a melting tootsie roll).  Then I placed the ball into a freezer bag and used a rolling pin to flatten it out. I let these sit at room temperature overnight. The next day I just broke up the big “sheets” into smaller pieces and started molding my geometric shapes. For most of them I wanted hard edges and so I would create the shape a little bit bigger than I wanted, put it in the fridge for a while and then take it out and carve it – I did this for pretty much all the shapes except for the sphere. The picture above is actually of the ones I made the weekend before NCTM for a party I had for my interns. These ones were red velvet with cream cheese icing. The ones I brought to NCTM were chocolate chocolate -chip with cream cheese icing. I carted these from my hotel in my collapsible cooler which was sitting in my nerd cart. If you are familiar with a “nerd cart” you now that it doesn’t keep things parallel to the ground and I obviously didn’t situate the cooler very well because two tipped over… (well, more than two, but Funda and I were not able to get these two upright). Here is a picture of Funda and AJ (the one who encouraged me to make the cupcakes in the first place). Thanks AJ and Funda for letting me take this picture! I was pleased that I did not have to take any of these cupcakes back with me!

So, has your  perspective changed from reading about these geometric cupcakes? I hope so!