Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Muffins

I never make muffins, but recently a ton of muffin recipes have been coming my way. One in particular caught my eye: Chocolate Chip Muffins. I usually stay away from muffins because of my addiction to cupcakes with mile-high frosting on top. A muffin just seems naked to me. But there was something about this recipe that kept me coming back to it. I think it was the addition of buttermilk. I love buttermilk in recipes because it adds an irresistible tang. These muffins tasted like chocolate chip cookies with that familiar tang of buttermilk. I had to give some of them away so I didn't devour them all.

Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Muffins
Source: Melissa Bakes

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cups chocolate chips (I used a mix of semi-sweet and white chocolate chips.)


Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a cupcake or muffin tin with 12 paper liners.

Melt butter in microwave for one minute and set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, 1/3 cup sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In another bowl, stir together the melted butter, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla extract until well blended. Next, make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the liquid mixture into the well. Gently stir until combined and then stir in chocolate chips.

Fill liners about 3/4 full and sprinkle the remaining sugar on top of each muffin. Bake for 17 - 20 minutes and cool muffins completely on a wire rack.

Root Beer Float Cupcakes

My wonderful husband bought me a new cupcake book recently and quickly requested one of the recipes for his own birthday: Root Beer Float Cupcakes. He loves root beer, so these were perfect. I loved the flavor of these cupcakes, although the root beer flavor was not very strong. I think they tasted more like a strong vanilla. Next time, I'll use root beer extract to pump up the flavor. I topped them with cherries, a straw, and sprinkles to make them a little cuter.

Root Beer Cupcakes
Source: Betty Crocker Big Book of Cupcakes

Ingredients:
2 and 1/3 cups flour
2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter (room temperature)
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup root beer
24 cherries, 8 straws, and sprinkles (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake tins with 24 cupcake liners.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

In another large bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds on medium speed. Gradually add sugar 1/4 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat for two minutes and scrape down the sides of bowl as needed.

Add eggs one at a time and vanilla and beat well.

Reduce speed to low and alternately add flour mixture and root beer in three additions, ending with flour and mixing until just blended.

Fill the cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake for 20 - 25 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Top cooled cupcakes with root beer icing, cherries, and sprinkles. Snip the straws into three equal pieces and push a straw into each cupcake (if desired).


Root Beer Icing
2 sticks butter, room temperature
5 - 6 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 - 4 tablespoons root beer

Cream the butter. Add vanilla and beat well. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time and root beer until desired consistency is reached. Beat well.

Old-School Birthday Cake

My husband's coworker is one of my best clients. She has ordered a few cakes from me in the past few months. I love how busy she keeps me. It helps that she's nice, pleasant, and easy to work with! She asked me to make a double-chocolate layer cake (Hershey's recipe) topped with buttercream icing for her two dads' (father and father-in-law's) birthdays. She also asked me to top it with roses, which really aren't one of my specialities. I used some old-school styles that I learned in cake class: shell border, rope border, roses, and leaves. I don't think it came out too bad. The roses looked pretty decent and I loved the color scheme. Maybe old school birthday cakes will make a comeback after all.

Cake Class Round-Up

I finally finished basic cakes at culinary school. I learned some new things, but mostly brushed up on the basics. We worked with buttercream and learned different baking techniques in this class. Next January, I will learn how to work with fondant in advanced cakes. It was a lot of fun. Here are a few cakes for your viewing pleasure:

Black Forest Cake

Boston Cream Pie

Basketweave Cake

Carrot Cake

Banana Spring Cake

Pumpkin Birthday Cake

Chocolate Layer Cake

Fernando the Lamb Cake

Dynomite Character Cake

German Chocolate Cake

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Final Cake - I got an A.

Springtime Baptism Cake

My husband's family keeps expanding and we have another baby girl on his side. This makes three girls under three years of age. So again, I was commissioned to bake another baptism cake. This was a marbled chocolate-vanilla double-layer
9 X 13 cake topped with vanilla buttercream.  

Vanilla Vegan Cupcakes

This month's What's Baking theme is "Spring." Around here, we're dying to see the sun and ready for the warm weather. It's been raining nonstop since it stopped snowing and we're tired of the gloomy days. I decided to make this vegan vanilla cupcake recipe from this wife bakes and top them with my favorite vanilla buttercream decorated like spring flowers. I love trying new things, but for some reason vegan cupcakes never appealed to me. I always skipped over vegan cake and cupcake recipes until recently. I made chocolate vegan cupcakes and they were delicious, so I decided to try a recipe I had bookmarked for vanilla vegan cupcakes. The batter was beautiful and thick and it had a strong vanilla flavor. The cupcakes were good, but they were definitely not my favorite. I would make them again, but bake them a few minutes longer because I think I underbaked them a bit. The texture was a bit off and they were crumby and broke apart very easily. Also, the color was strange. They were not white. They were more of a shade of light brown. These didn't rise much during baking, but I like cupcakes with flat tops because they're easier to decorate, so that wasn't a problem.

I've been busy because...

We got a new puppy! Meet Manuel, or Manny for short. He is a Jack Russell/Chihuahua and isn't he just adorable? Between work, school, and the new addition to our family, I've have little time to bake, let alone blog. I promise to return to blogging when things calm down in the next few weeks.