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My hus­band men­tioned that he’d seen a Paula Deen recipe for pink lemon­ade cake.  I thought that sounded really nice and would be a great Sum­mer­time dessert.  After look­ing at Paula’s recipe online and the com­ments by users who had found it “too dense” “too this” or “too that” I decided to run with her basic flavour idea but to tweak it and hope­fully turn out some­thing really nice.

This is what I did.  It’s really easy and very tasty.

Pink Lemon­ade Cup­cake Batter

I took a box of white cake mix and pre­pared it as directed on the box except that I don’t like to use oil in my cakes so I replaced the 1/3 cup of oil with an equiv­a­lent 1/3 cup of nat­ural, unsweet­ened apple sauce.  To the mix I then added three heaped table­spoons of the Coun­try Time Pink Lemon­ade drink mix and also added a dash of Mada­gas­car Vanilla and about a table­spoon of lemon zest.  I decided I wanted my cake to be more pink than the pale colour it was cur­rently so I added a dash of pink food colour­ing until it was pink enough for me.

Ingre­di­ents so far:

1 box of Moist White Cake Mix

3 egg whites (no yolks)

1/3 cup nat­ural, unsweet­ened apple sauce

1 & 1/4 cup of water

3 heaped table­spoons of Coun­try Time Pink Lemon­ade drink mix pow­der (not diluted)

1 tsp of Mada­gas­car Vanilla or Vanilla Essence

1 table­spoon of fresh lemon zest

Coun­try Time — Pink Lemonade

Pink food colouring

(Bak­ing purists are prob­a­bly rolling their eyes at my sug­ges­tion of using a box mix and then the addi­tion of pink food colour­ing.  It worked for what we were doing here so I’m ok with it.  If you aren’t, there are plenty of from scratch white cake recipes out there to delight your pure lit­tle baker’s hearts.)

Even though I have a pas­sion for bak­ing we try not to keep too many good­ies in the house because we both could stand to lose some weight.  So we send our good­ies off to work with my hus­band and I’ve heard his cowork­ers think this is ok.  Since they are headed for the office I decided to make cup­cakes as they are far more man­age­able than need­ing to find a knife and plates for carv­ing up a larger sin­gle cake.

Next I cre­ated a tasty com­ple­men­tary frost­ing.  I pretty much always go for my basic cream cheese frost­ing and just change it up a lit­tle to suit what it is that I’m making.

Frost­ing:

Crust­ing cream cheese buttercream

5 heaped table­spoons of Coun­try Time  Pink Lemon­ade Drink Powder

Pink Lemon­ade Cupcake

After the cup­cakes came out of the oven and cooled I frosted them with a gen­er­ous swirl of but­ter­cream and some sugar sprin­kles just to make them shiny.  So that’s it folks.. really a quick and easy recipe and per­fect for sum­mer meal­times or snacks.  Enjoy!  And remem­ber if you have any ques­tions don’t hes­i­tate to email me.  I try to answer all emails even if they may take a cou­ple of days to get you your response.

~ Colleen

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After many emails and requests on how to do this I am going to do a quick post.  I have used coloured sug­ars on many cook­ies and cup­cakes and it’s really sim­ple to make your own.  I’ve even made it with a pearl­ized sheen.  It all depends on the food colour­ing you choose.  The main thing to keep in mind is that you must use a POWDERED form of food colour­ing.  Any liq­uids or gels will just melt the sugar and you’ll have a colour­ful but sticky mess.

I try to buy a coarsely ground sugar for my dec­o­rat­ing sug­ars just so it gives a lit­tle more impact, or you can always use reg­u­lar white sugar if that’s all you can buy or have on hand.

To be on the safe side you should prob­a­bly start off with just a lit­tle of the food col­or­ing and see what shade you get after you shake it (with the lid on tightly of course!).  You can then adjust it and make it darker by adding a lit­tle more col­or­ing until you get the desired shade you are after.

Store your sug­ars in a dry space so they don’t clump up from moisture.

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We so loved yesterday’s batch of Upside-down Caramel Apple Cup­cakes that I decided to make some more but this time right way up. I had a dozen plain spice cup­cakes left over to use.

This time around I peeled and chopped 2 large Pink Lady apples which are excel­lent for cook­ing with. They held their shape won­der­fully and didn’t break down when stirred into the caramel even once they were tender.

Caramel Sauce

10 oz unsalted but­ter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tea­spoon of nut­meg
1 table­spoon of cin­na­mon
pinch salt

Melt the but­ter over medium heat in a pan. Add the sug­ars and spices. I cooked this reduc­ing the heat a lit­tle until it bub­bled and didn’t look so watery on top. To test my caramel I place a tea­spoon full of the sauce on a glass plate and pop it in the freezer for a few min­utes to see how it’s set­ting up. You don’t want a hard tof­fee like caramel in your cup­cakes. When you get a nice soft but not runny con­sis­tency add the chopped apples and con­tinue to cook until the apples are ten­der… I wasn’t adding them to the oven this time since I was using cup­cakes I had made pre­vi­ously, so I needed to cook them a lit­tle longer.

Cut a small cap from the top of the cup­cakes by diag­o­nally insert­ing a sharp knife into the cup­cakes  from the edge towards the cen­ter about one inch.  Cut around until a small cap pops out.  You can see the shape of the well in the image below.  I trim off the point on these caps so they sit flat when I put them back on top of the caramel apple filling.

Add a heaped tea­spoon of the caramel apple fill­ing to the cup­cakes.  Replace the trimmed caps and sprin­kle with pow­dered sugar.  I think these looks so fes­tive and use col­ored cup­cake papers to suit the sea­son.  Great for those Fall par­ties, Thanks­giv­ing and other Hol­i­day festivities.

As always, if you have any ques­tions be sure and drop me a line.  I love hear­ing from you all and will do my best to answer in a clear man­ner…  Often I think my instruc­tions are clear but then again…

Cheers for now,

Colleen

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You might think I’m a lit­tle pre­ma­ture in bak­ing an item so suited to Fall weather, but there is some­thing won­der­ful about the fra­grance of cooked apple and cin­na­mon that I just couldn’t resist.

When the air con­di­tioner is on and it’s over­cast it’s easy to over­look the fact that the tem­per­a­ture out­side is actu­ally in the upper 90s.

I saw a photo of an upside-down caramel apple cup­cake on Flickr made by 4GoodnessCake and thought they looked easy enough to make, which they were.  For some rea­son I decided to chop up my apples when the ones I saw online had used a ring of apple.  The ring would have been far eas­ier to get out of the pan I’m sure and prob­a­bly would have made a more tra­di­tional flat bot­tom shape.  I had to scoop out some of the apple chunks and repo­si­tion them on the cup­cakes.  But as they cooled they set up well and stayed where they were put.

I used a recipe for Applesauce-Spice Cake from my Betty Crocker Best of Bak­ing book.  The spicy cake with added apple­sauce was great cou­pled with the cooked apple I placed into the pan before the cake mix. Step 1 — Cook the Apples This recipe test yielded enough bat­ter for two dozen cup­cakes but I only had enough cooked apples for one dozen so the remain­der are just plain old spice cakes.

• Peel and chop into small chunks two apples of your choice.  I used Granny Smith because they hold together well when cooked and that is what hubby bought back with him from the store so lit­tle choice really!
• In a skil­let I melted 1 cup of unsalted but­ter, to which I added 1 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 tea­spoon of cin­na­mon and 1/4 tea­spoon of nut­meg and just a pinch of salt to bring out the flavours.
• Add the chopped apples (or rings if you pre­fer) and cook just until they begin to get tender.
• Scoop about 1  table­spoon of this mix­ture into the bot­tom of a greased cup­cake pan.

Step 2 — The Cake Bat­ter
Seri­ously peo­ple, if you want to use a box spice cake mix — DO IT! I’m all about con­ve­nience and some­times we just don’t have the time to do it from scratch. Yeah, yeah, I know purist bak­ers are rolling their eyes…

2  1/2 cups of all pur­pose flour
2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of but­ter
1  1/2 cups of apple sauce (I pre­fer the unsweet­ened nat­ural)
1/2 cup of water
1  1/2 tsp of bak­ing soda
1  1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground all­spice
1/4 tsp bak­ing pow­der
3 eggs

Pre­heat oven to 350F (180C) degrees.  Beat all the ingre­di­ents together in your mixer on low speed, scrape the bot­tom to ensure no dry ingre­di­ents are sit­ting down there for about 30 sec­onds.  Then beat on medium high for around 3 mins until bat­ter looks rel­a­tively smooth.

You can now add this bat­ter on top of your cooked apples in the cup­cake pans, fill­ing each hole to about 2/3 full.  I use a quar­ter cup mea­sure to try and get some uni­for­mity in my cup­cake size.

Bake for around 20 min­utes or until the cake springs back when touched with a fin­ger­tip.   They will look brown due to the spice cake mix but don’t let them get too dark.   When cooked, cool in the pan for approx­i­mately ten to fif­teen min­utes.  I used a large spoon to remove mine from the pan, scoop­ing up the apple and sauce that stayed in the pan.

Have your cup­cake papers sit­ting on the cool­ing rack and place each cup­cake apple side up in the papers.  I driz­zled on any syrup and apple left in the bot­tom of the pan.  Let cool.  You can dec­o­rate any way you wish.  These were good the next day cold out of the refrig­er­a­tor or heated in the microwave with a scoop of vanilla ice­cream and some caramel sauce.

If you have any ques­tions do not hes­i­tate to com­ment here or email me.

Happy happy baking!

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My favourite drink is an Arnold Palmer – half iced tea, half lemon­ade. Paula Deen’s recipe for a cup­cake by the same name didn’t receive very good reviews so I set out to make my own.  And yes, it uses a box cake mix… I know, culi­nary purists are mor­ti­fied, but hey, cake mixes are per­fected and a great time saver, so I say go ahead, there are no rules in your own kitchen!

Oh and don’t for­get to pop on over to Kitchen Rap to see the Sum­mer 2009 Cup­cake Crawl! Vote for these cup­cakes or my “You’ll go bananas” entry…

Yield: Approx 18 cup­cakes Prep time: 10 mins Bake time: 17–20 mins Ingre­di­ents: 1 Betty Crocker or sim­i­lar super moist lemon box cake mix 1/3 cup veg­etable oil 1 1/4 cups milk 3 Large Eggs 4 White Tea Bags or loose leaf equivalent.

Lemon & White Tea Cupcakes

_______
Method:

Pre­heat oven to 350F. Either spray a cup­cake pan or line with cup­cake papers.

Heat milk to around 130F and steep tea bags or leaf for five min­utes. Strain milk through fine sieve or strainer to remove any tea leaves. Allow milk to cool before adding to mix­ture so as not to cook the eggs.

In a mix­ing bowl, add cake mix, tea infused milk, oil and eggs. Beat on medium speed for two min­utes. Scrape side and bot­tom of bowl to ensure no dry mix left.

Fill cup­cake pan to three quar­ters full and bake for around 17–20 mins. Cup­cakes should be golden and spring back on top when depressed slightly.

Cool com­pletely before frost­ing with your favourite lemon but­ter­cream. Fin­ish off by zest­ing some fresh lemon rind across the top.

These are more lemon flavoured with just a hint of the tea. I will be try­ing out dif­fer­ent tea types in future batches. Enjoy!

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Why is it that when you take your eyes off the fruit bowl for one day the bananas end up black and over­ripe?  I hate to see fruit go bad and luck­ily when it’s bananas you can still use them for yummy banana bread or in this case banana cupcakes!

Be sure to visit Kitchen Rap & Gourmet Girl’s 2009 Sum­mer Cup­cake Crawl to vote on the lus­cious cup­cake entries.. of course a vote for me would be great too!

Banana Cup­cakes

Ingredients 4oz (125g) but­ter 6oz (175g) sugar 2 eggs 2 large mashed ripe bananas (or 3 med sized) 1 tsp Bak­ing soda 2 Tbsp boil­ing milk 1 tsp bak­ing power 8oz (225g) flour

Method Cream but­ter & sugar for around 2 min­utes prefer­ably in your stand mixer with a pad­dle attach­ment.  Or you can do it by hand if you’re up to it! Add eggs one at a time. Add mashed bananas. Add bak­ing soda that has been dis­solved in hot milk. Lastly mix in sifted flour & bak­ing powder. Spoon into cup­cake papers and bake at 350 deg F for around 20 mins.  They should begin to get golden on top but don’t over bake. Glaze Ingre­di­ents 1/4 cup butter 2 cups pow­dered sugar 2 tbsp milk, (or you can use heavy cream for thicker glaze) extract/flavoring — I used Banana and it was great! Melt 1/4 cup (4 table­spoons) of but­ter in a saucepan or microwave. Sift 2 cups of pow­dered sugar into a medium size bowl. Add the melted but­ter to the pow­dered sugar. Add 2 table­spoons of milk. If desired, add 1/4 tea­spoon of almond extract or 1/2 tea­spoon of vanilla for flavor. Beat until smooth and creamy, adding a lit­tle more milk if necessary. Driz­zle over a cooled cake. Tips: For a richer and creamier glaze, use heavy cream in place of the milk. Sub­sti­tute cit­rus juice for the milk and add a lit­tle grated zest for a cit­rus glaze.