Caramel Apple Cupcakes

About a week ago (yes, I'm kind of bad at this) I made some caramel apple cupcakes and sent them to my mother's office for what I like to call a "Bakery Fairy."

The concept of the Bakery Fairy was born one afternoon of an overindulgence of caffeine and baked goods, upon which I remarked "I want to go around the neighborhood and leave cupcakes for strangers!"
It was later decided that this would be a poor decision. Nonetheless, the idea remained.

These were fairly basic cupcakes. A spice cake recipe with some Honeycrisp apples added, whipped cream with cinnamon and leftover salted caramel from a prior project. They came out a little small and a little like muffins, but people seemed to enjoy them just the same. Only one came back in the carrier.

The really fun part about these was playing with the new toys from my kitchen supply store. I had a disher(!) to use on the cupcake batter. I was so excited that for the tester cupcake I forgot to add the apples.

It was tasty, though. As for the frosting, I got to play with the large star tip I had just purchased.

The caramel was a little hard to get control of, though. If I had been smart, I would have piped it. Or something.

All in all, a fairly successful attempt at cooking and also remembering to take pictures. Now let's work on posting before all the cupcakes get eaten... Or within 24 hours. Whatever comes first.

Starting Off With a Bang - Bite-Sized Hi-Hat Brownies

This one didn't survive very long after the picture was taken.
(Omnomnom)

One of the benefits to being well-known as a baker to your acquaintances courtesy of making about a trillion birthday cakes at one point or another would be that no one questions you when you decide to start selling stuff. In fact, they usually start with "How much for [blank]?"

And so it came to pass that I picked out a bakery name on Thursday afternoon, got my first order that night, got a job on Saturday while baking said order and made my first delivery on Sunday. And even though the chocolate was a little melted due to a prolonged stop at the local Waffle House (where I received more orders and requests for business cards from the staff) the customer was delighted by the brownies and the free gift I sent along, Caramelized Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies. The latter were devoured during the subsequent conversation before I even left, while the brownies went in the fridge to harden up again.

When I received the order, I hadn't made anything like it before. But I had heard of hi-hat cupcakes and was eager to attempt it. Step one would be the brownies.

Now, I love brownies. They have to be one of my favorite things to eat and make, and I've made a lot of different types. But I didn't have one go-to recipe or anything I really thought had come out well enough to make the cut. So standing in the kitchen Saturday morning, I pulled out Old Faithful. When my mother was 9 years old, her sister gave her a copy of Joy of Cooking, and if you want the traditional, rich, really really bad for you stuff, there's no better source. I was surprised and a little bit worried to see there was only one brownie recipe in the whole 700 page book, but, boy-howdy, it was enough.

The first step of the recipe was to melt a stick of butter with four ounces of bakers chocolate. Right then, I knew me and this recipe were gonna get along just fine. I *cough* accidentally got a little bit of the batter on my fingers and had to lick it off. The next second found me shouting to my mother to get in the kitchen and taste this batter. It baked up beautifully and I easily got my dozen pretty ones out of the four pans with a few left to snack on in the house. This is my new favorite brownie recipe. I'll have to cart the behemoth of a recipe book up to my room one of these days and publish it here.

I wasn't quite so lucky with the buttercream. I made Alton Brown's recipe and instead of putting it in the fridge to cool off extra when it was soup, I kept beating it until the butter separated. Ooh, it was ugly. So I made the recipe off the side of the powdered sugar box. It wasn't that great, but it was passable. And I did like the vanilla flavor more than the straight butter of Mr. Brown's version.

Then I iced maybe eighteen of the brownies and stuck a dozen of them in the fridge and left the rest on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.

Oops.

We have nine dogs in our house. And not little ones, either. My mom runs Tallahassee Collie Rescue and one of our foster dogs (okay, more than one, but this time we caught the culprit) is a bit of a counter cruiser.

The face of a brownie thief.

So, I lost some of the experimental brownies, but that was my own fault and he didn't get enough chocolate to hurt him. So I piped some icing on a few more, and stuck them in the freezer with the others like I should have in the first place anyway. After they were nice and frozen, dipping them in chocolate was the easy part. Though I did get a little chocolate on my fingers. Such a hard life I lead.