Alright, for this next recipe, I’m just going to give a very basic cupcake recipe. This can be easily modified to fit any holiday, event, or taste.



I’d like to note that you don’t absolutely have to separate the eggs. I made these when I was in a little bit of a hurry and just poured the entire egg in when it calls for the yolks. They turned out fine.

I used this recipe to make some cupcakes for Halloween. I decided I’d do them as Jell-O poke cupcakes with bright purple frosting. The Jell-O adds a good amount of fruity flavor to the cupcakes. You can also add food coloring to the cupcakes, chocolate chips, or any other mix-ins.

It’s pretty simple to add the Jell-O to any cupcake, or cake for that matter. Allow the cupcakes or cake to cool in a pan. When they reach room temperature, boil about half a cup of water. Add this water to any flavor of Jell-O you want, just make sure you use the smaller package. Stir it up so there aren’t any granules left. Using a wooden skewer, poke holes about halfway into your cupcakes or cake. For a cupcake, anywhere from 3 to 8 holes should be good. Make sure they aren’t too close to the edges of the cupcakes and aren’t too close to each other. Using a spoon, pour the Jell-O over the cupcakes. I used about a tablespoon for each cupcake. Set the cupcakes in the fridge to allow the Jell-O to solidify. After about 2 hours, you can frost them.

For the frosting, I just mixed in some purple frosting coloring until I got the color I wanted. You can also substitute the vanilla extract for any flavor you want, or add in another flavor. You could use root beer flavoring and vanilla to make a pretty interesting frosting. There are also flavors like banana, grape, strawberry, chocolate, and licorice.

less

How do you frost a cupcake? Simply spreading the frosting on with a knife doesn't make cupcakes look as good as those done by the pros. I’d like to cover the topic of frosting a cupcake with a decorator’s tip and bag.

For this, you’ll need some jumbo cupcake frosting tips, which can be purchased in a cupcake frosting kit from Wilton, or just the largest available tips from a decorating kit, a coupler, and a decorating bag. Some good tips are 1M and 2D from Wilton.

First, you’ll want to attach the tip to the bag. You’ll need to snip off the tip end of the bag, between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch. Next, you insert the coupler and get it pushed as far down into the bag as is possible without pushing it out of the plastic. Once this is done, screw the tip onto the coupler. It should screw on just fine over the layer of plastic.

Once the bag is prepared, set it tip-end down into a large cup with the opening draped down the outside of the cup. Fill it with your favorite frosting. Once you’ve got enough, take the bag back out of the cup. Push and squeeze the frosting down into the bag to remove any excess air. Your bag should now be ready to decorate.

Starting on the outside of the cupcake, swirl inward with the decorator’s bag, keeping a constant pressure on it. Lessening or increasing pressure on the bag could disrupt the frosting flow and your design. Once you reach the center, lessen the amount of pressure on the bag and pull it upwards gently. This should create a nice mountain of frosting on your cupcake.

You can experiment with different shapes in tips. The two basics are round and star-shaped. You can even use a star-shaped tip, working outwards from the center of the cupcake, to create a pretty rose on top of your cupcake!

With cupcake and cake piping, practice will make perfect. You shouldn’t expect your first batch of cupcakes to look like they belong on a baking show or in a bakery. The more you try at it, adjusting your pressure and finding what’s comfortable, the more confident you will become at your piping.

As a note, when you color frosting, make sure you use frosting coloring, which is thicker than food coloring. It’s found in jars at craft stores and baking supply stores. It’s almost as thick as frosting is, and won’t thin your frosting out when you try to decorate your cupcakes. less

How do you frost a cupcake? Simply spreading the frosting on with a knife doesn't make cupcakes look as good as those done by the pros. I’d like to cover the topic of frosting a cupcake with a decorator’s tip and bag.

For this, you’ll need some jumbo cupcake frosting tips, which can be purchased in a cupcake frosting kit from Wilton, or just the largest available tips from a decorating kit, a coupler, and a decorating bag. Some good tips are 1M and 2D from Wilton.

First, you’ll want to attach the tip to the bag. You’ll need to snip off the tip end of the bag, between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch. Next, you insert the coupler and get it pushed as far down into the bag as is possible without pushing it out of the plastic. Once this is done, screw the tip onto the coupler. It should screw on just fine over the layer of plastic.

Once the bag is prepared, set it tip-end down into a large cup with the opening draped down the outside of the cup. Fill it with your favorite frosting. Once you’ve got enough, take the bag back out of the cup. Push and squeeze the frosting down into the bag to remove any excess air. Your bag should now be ready to decorate.

Starting on the outside of the cupcake, swirl inward with the decorator’s bag, keeping a constant pressure on it. Lessening or increasing pressure on the bag could disrupt the frosting flow and your design. Once you reach the center, lessen the amount of pressure on the bag and pull it upwards gently. This should create a nice mountain of frosting on your cupcake.

You can experiment with different shapes in tips. The two basics are round and star-shaped. You can even use a star-shaped tip, working outwards from the center of the cupcake, to create a pretty rose on top of your cupcake!

With cupcake and cake piping, practice will make perfect. You shouldn’t expect your first batch of cupcakes to look like they belong on a baking show or in a bakery. The more you try at it, adjusting your pressure and finding what’s comfortable, the more confident you will become at your piping.

As a note, when you color frosting, make sure you use frosting coloring, which is thicker than food coloring. It’s found in jars at craft stores and baking supply stores. It’s almost as thick as frosting is, and won’t thin your frosting out when you try to decorate your cupcakes. less

Now I’m going to take a brief break from cupcakes and discuss some regular cakes.

First up is rainbow cake. I made this for my Grandpa for his birthday in July and it was a smash hit at his 70th birthday bash. It was also a pretty easy cake to make.



For this, you’re going to need:

- Your favorite white cake recipe or mix
- Two 8 or 9 inch round pans
- 6 bowls ranging in size
- A whisk
- Red, orange yellow, green, blue, and purple food coloring
- Aluminum foil
- Cake release spray or flour and oil

First, you will need to preheat your oven to the temperature called for on your cake mix box or in the recipe. Mix your cake batter according to directions.

You will then divide up the batter into the six bowls, starting with ½ of a cup in the first bowl and working up to 1 ½ cups of batter in the last bowl. Whisk in your food coloring, starting with red in the largest bowl and ending with purple in the smallest. Rinse the whisk off when switching colors. I did not have all of these colors on hand in food coloring, so I just used frosting coloring, which turned out fine. I also did my colors differently, with blue being in the largest bowl and purple in the smallest. It doesn’t really matter which color is the largest or smallest, just that they go in order of color.

You’ll then prepare the pans for the batter by either coating it in cake release spray or oil and then some flour. Make sure you shake out the excess flour.

Starting with the red bowl of batter, add half of the amount in the bowl to each pan. Spin each pan gently after each addition of batter to evenly distribute the batter. You don’t want to stir it or spread it, as it will mess up the rainbow effect. Gently poking it with a skewer to swirl the colors together would give you a swirly rainbow look.

Cover each pan with foil and bake as directed. Each cake will be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. The foil is used to keep your cakes from browning on top, giving them a better appearance.

After each cake cools, you can place one on a plate, platter, or cake board and frost it. Stack the other one on top and frost it as well. I used a buttercream frosting to go with my cake. Once I had smoothed on my frosting, I sprayed it with some purple Wilton spray color to give it a little color. less

Finally, I’d like to share a delicious homemade dark chocolate cake recipe. This cake is very heavy, unlike most cakes. However, this heaviness works great when stacking cakes up and frosting them, as they come out perfectly even, rather than rising in the middle and needing to be evened out on top. What you see when you pour the cake batter into the pan is pretty much what you’re going to see when it’s done.



Ingredients:
2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 3 - 9 inch round cake pans. In medium bowl, pour boiling water over cocoa, and whisk until smooth. Let mixture cool. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at time, and then stir in vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture. Spread batter evenly between the 3 prepared pans.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool before frosting

I baked my cakes as directed, but I did not use three 9 inch round pans. I used two because the cake batter did not look like it would fill three. My pans were filled about half way, which made the layers kind of thin. You can use more pans if you want a thinner cake layer.

I also paired this cake up with the buttercream frosting, since the cake itself is very chocolatey and rich. The simple flavor of the buttercream worked well with it. I think a marshmallow flavored frosting would also taste great with it.

If you do happen to make this cake, I strongly suggest taking a much smaller piece than you normally would. This cake has very little air in it. I took a slice with about an inch and a half of an outer edge and could barely finish my piece. less