I have quite a few flavors to catch up on here, so bear with me!
First, we have Mocha Chip, topped with just a sprinkling of powdered sugar. This was my last attempt at mocha, I think--the batter seemed perfect, but the cupcakes ended up just tasting like chocolate after baking, again. The chocolate chips were great and these made a wonderful breakfast cupcake without the frosting. I'm disappointed that I couldn't taste much "mochaness" in these, but I think it's just wasting the coffee extract. I'm going to revise my Mississippi Mud plans to use either a chocolate or coffee cupcake base, I think. Delicious, it's just not clear enough that they're mocha instead of just chocolate.
Next was my first...well, not failure, but less-than-success. My goal was Strawberry Cheesecake and Blueberry Cheesecake cupcakes. Unfortunately, my frosting plan backfired because the fruit added so much extra liquid to the frosting and I wasn't able to thicken it enough to fluff back up. The blueberry just didn't taste very good; the strawberry tasted good but looked like goop! Everyone said they were delicious, but it just wasn't what I wanted it to be. I have some plans for the next incarnation of Strawberry Cheesecake, though, and I look forward to trying those out!
The third and fourth photos are Chocolate Chocolate-Chip with vanilla and chocolate buttercream. They got rave reviews at a playdate I brought them to, so I'm happy! These ones taught me to love the chocolate buttercream--I thought I preferred vanilla but I made a "light chocolate" instead of the regular chocolate buttercream frosting and it was delicious. I'm trying to come up with a name for it to contrast the two--but I guess "milk chocolate" vs "dark chocolate" is probably not going to work! Maybe a "Not-Milk Chocolate"?
The fifth is English Breakfast Tea cupcakes, sprinkled with powdered sugar. These came out a little different from the first time--not as heavy and dense, and the tea flavor wasn't quite as strong. They were yummy, but I'm not sure what caused the difference. The tea flavor may have been because I made a single batch instead of double like last time, or maybe I didn't steep the tea as long before adding it to the batter. I'll have to play around with these more, and I'd like to try some other tea flavors too!
Last is a simple Golden Vanilla with "not-milk" chocolate buttercream frosting. These were whipped up to bring to a brunch before our FAAN Walk for Food Allergies today at Delaware Park and got rave reviews, too, from another allergy family as well as friends of the family. Seeing the many walkers today just confirmed our belief that there's a broad market out there for allergen-free cupcakes!
