PhDCupcaker

In honor of the summer ending and someone’s birthday I decided to make a trio of cupcakes; one of which I have made before and two which were completely new. All of these come from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes. From left to right we have Cookies and Cream, Chocolate Salted-Caramel, and Rhubarb with Whipped Cream. I also decided that since I was making three different cupcakes, to half all of the recipes (except for the Rhubarb because as written it made 16 and we were really excited to try these ones). It was nice to not have a million cupcakes laying around. We can only eat so much. Well, I should say we don’t want to eat too many! :-) The Cookies and Cream were so easy and really tasty! I followed the recipe as it was written in the book, refrigerating these overnight. Sorry the picture is a little blurry (I didn’t have my official photographer today). Look at that Oreo cookie at the bottom. That was a hit! The person who received this box of cupcakes for her birthday said these were her favorite of the three. I like that these are different – little mini cheesecakes – who doesn’t like cheesecake? Anybody?…?… That is what I thought. I won’t say too much about the Chocolate Salted-Caramel because I have made and posted these before. This time I made regular rather than minis. I wasn’t too happy with the caramel filling this time though. The first time I burned it and had to start all over. The next time it was okay, but the caramel was really grainy – not the gooey kind I had the last time. Oh well! The icing was still to die for – one of my favorites! Finally – the piece de resistance – Rhubarb Cupcakes with Whipped Cream! I decided to try these because someone had just given me fresh rhubarb from their garden. I first planned on making rhubarb crisp, but then I thought – why not try a rhubarb cupcake and Martha just so happened to have a recipe for this one. I created the sauce using a vanilla bean just like Martha describes. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to find one, but finally found a little tube of two whole vanilla beans at Foods for Living. These were not cheap! I debated on just using vanilla extract, but I decided to try it. If I ever need vanilla beans again I’ll be buying them over the Internet since you can find them much cheaper. These definitely added something. I am not sure about the taste, but they definitely gave the sauce the little black specks that you see in the picture. Someone said that they could really tell that I used a real vanilla bean, but I’ll have to try these with extract to compare. This same person said that she thought this was the best cupcake she ever had! How nice! I think just the fact that these were rhubarb made the difference. I don’t think they had the same sourness that I have had before with rhubarb, but they sure where tasty!