Vanilla Porter Cupcakes with Vanilla Porter Salted Caramel Frosting

I will be the first to say I have never been a big fan of beer, any beer and my goodness I have tried.  We recently had dinner with some lovely friends and they introduced me to Vanilla Porter.  I was so surprised how well I liked it.  So this same dear friend had a birthday coming up and I thought what if I incorporate this deliciousness into a cupcake (cupcake on tap!!).  It definitely turned out better than I expected and I will definitely be making these again.  Indulge!

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Well it's that time of year again a chance to spoil our amazing teachers with yummy treats.  My little one's preschool is having teacher appreciation week and today is their special lunch.  Of course I immediately jump in and request to make cupcakes.  It has been a while since I have made any and really wanted to try something new.  I also bake at least two different flavors (a chocolate one and vanilla one).  For the chocolate one my son requested my Nutella cupcakes.  I really wanted to try a Spring like flavor so I decided to try putting lemon and strawberry together.  This cupcake truly is refreshing.  I hope his teachers know how much we appreciate them.  Indulge!

Chocolate Toffee Cupcake with Salted Caramel Frosting

Part II of Graduation Party:  Here is the chocolate cupcake I also made for the graduation party.  Indulge!

Banana Split Cupcakes

Part I Graduation Party:  This past week my baby girl graduated from 5th grade.  It was such a bittersweet moment.  On one hand I am excited for her to explore this next chapter in her life, but it saddens me that she is growing up way too fast for me.  The parents decided to throw the graduates a party and I decides to bring cupcakes.  Anyone else surprised, more and more that seems to be my go to dessert to bring.  Now mind you once I had already signed up to bring them, I soon realized that there were about 100 5th graders!!  The panic was soon to set in.  I have never made that many at once.  I knew that I had to plan plan plan.  I wanted to bring a chocolate one and a vanilla one.  For the vanilla one I thought it would be fun to create a favorite ice cream treat into cupcake form.  With this cupcake I think I pretty much captured all the flavors (except pineapple).  I put the banana flavor into the cupcake, strawberry in the cream filling, vanilla in the frosting and drizzled it with chocolate, topped with nuts and a banana split wouldn't be complete without a cherry.  I had so much fun making these and hopefully the kids enjoyed them just as much.  The Chocolate cupcake up next.  Indulge!

Nutella Cupcakes

Last week was Teacher Appreciation week.  Of course K's favorite day is "bring something sweet".  We had a hard time deciding what we were going to make.  We new it was going to be a cupcake of some sort and though she is not much of a chocolate fan, I convinced her into letting me make the Nutella cupcake.  Nutella is something I could just eat with a spoon it's so delicious.  In the past I have made Nutella cookies and Nutella molten lava, but not cupcakes.  I will definitely be adding this to my list of favorites.  Indulge!

Margarita Cupcakes

Happy Cinco de Mayo! There is a historical significance to this day and like most holidays that celebrate a heritage, people enjoy celebrating Cinco de Mayo with authentic food and beverage.  I love Mexican food and look forward to indulging in some chips, salsa and guacamole and washing it down with an ice cold classic Mexican cocktail.  But who says you can only drink your margarita.  I came across this recipe and just new it would be the perfect dessert.  Indulge!

Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes

I love everything about cinnamon.  I think I would put it in almost anything if I could get away with it.  I was excited when my daughter requested this recipe for her birthday.  On her actual birthday I made my triple cinnamon roll recipe and baked them in individual cupcake liners to take to her school and share with her class , but due to timing I decided to do an actual cupcake for her party.  Indulge!

Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

The end of February and the month of March are busy birthday times for me.  Every couple of weeks we are having a birthday celebration.  This year we combined our oldest daughters together.  My daughter requested her favorite Cinnamon Roll cupcakes (recipe and post coming soon) and the Mr.'s daughter requested Peanut butter cup cupcakes.  This was the first request for anything peanut butter and I have been wanting to bake with it for a while now so I was excited to give it a try.  Growing up one of my favorites was Reese's peanut butter cups (once many many years ago i bought a bag of the miniatures and ate every last one of them.. I don't think I could get away with that now).  This cupcake definitely brought back childhood memories.  Indulge!

Mocha Salted Caramel cupcakes with an Irish surprise

We invited some friends over for dinner this weekend and one of them had a birthday coming up, so I thought what a great excuse to make cupcakes.  I was in the mood for chocolate and salted caramel, but also wanted to try a Bailey’s whipped frosting.  I decided to go with the salted caramel butter cream as the frosting and use the Bailey’s along with some of the salted caramel as a secret filling.  The Chocolate, caramel and Bailey’s cream is heavenly together.

Tiramisu Cupcakes

I am usually not a big tiramisu fan, but there was something about this recipe that I just had to give it a try.  For my daughter’s birthday, the dinner theme was Italian (she loves pasta).  Now mind you her choice of cake flavor was pumpkin and her birthday is in March, who eats pumpkin cake in March… we did, I wasn’t going to be the one to deny her what she wanted, it was her birthday ( I have a pumpkin Bundt cake I make every fall for Thanksgiving and she LOVES it and asks for it all year long~ I will post that recipe another time).  I decided to throw in a couple of cupcake flavors so our guest wouldn’t think I was out of my mind for serving pumpkin cake during spring. 

Since we were having Italian for dinner It inspired me to make my own tiramisu, but in cupcake form, recipe courtesy of who else but Martha Stewart.  As I usually tend to do I tweaked it slightly.  I took some of the left over coffee syrup and made a quick whipped cream filling for the cupcake. It may seem like a lot of components went into this delicious cupcake and it may seem intimidating, but once you pull it all together it becomes a party in your mouth.  Indulge!

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

My family adores snickerdoodle cookies and when I came across the cookie recipe in cupcake form, I just had to try it.  I have made it a few times now and each time I tried something a little bit different to try and please my own taste.  The first time I followed Martha Stewart's cupcake recipe to a “T”, but chose not to try her seven minute frosting.  I went with a whipped cinnamon frosting instead and it was amazing, but it still lacked something.
With this last attempt I think I finally found ‘the one’.  I added a mascarpone/cinnamon filling (who doesn’t enjoy filling oozing out) and went with a cinnamon butter cream.  I decided to adorn it with a miniature, chewy and adorable snickerdoodle cookie~ in my opinion the best of both worlds.