This month's MSCupcake was chosen by Megan from My Baking Adventures. I love all things lemon and I couldn't wait to bake these! The only thing that turned me off was the meringue frosting. I baked these cupcakes on the same day that I made carrot cupcakes. I made orange cream cheese frosting for those; I made lemon cream cheese frosting for these! Then I adorned them with a lil sugar flower -- what a way to welcome Spring! These were delicious!!!
Do you have a recipe that you swear by? I do, and it's carrot cake (click here for my recipe & "story"). Julie of A Little Bit of Everything chose this Sunday's Sweet Melissa recipe. I almost opted out of this weekend's bake-along, cause like I said, I have a recipe that I swear by.
Compared to Melissa Murphy's recipe, I use more carrots, cinnamon, nuts, baking soda & baking powder, and LESS sugar.
I made a cake last week and opted for cupcakes this week, using really cute baking cups. I have so many baking cup papers that I can't keep track of where I bought what. The thing I love about these papers is that I pour the batter right into the cups (no pan necessary!) and bake right in it! Cool, right?
Aside from looking really cute, these tasted pretty good and very close to the recipe I use. Eaten without the frosting, there's something missing -- I can't pinpoint it or compare it to my recipe because I havent had a chance to make mine again. I LOVED the orange cream cheese frosting! Thanks, Julie for a great pick! Be sure to see what other SMS bakers did this week!
Come back tomorrow for MORE (MS) cupcakes!
One of our newest members, Leslie of Lethally Delicious, chose this Sunday's recipe. The long winded name of the recipe says it all — Roasted Pecan Cake with Caramel Orange Marmalade and Burnt Orange Buttercream — sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, sort of.
For the cake:
I halved the recipe, toasted up pecans, process them in a food processor. Beat SIX egg whites into a meringue. I'm so glad I always have some frozen for a time like this. Fold in and bake. Then I made caramel peach marmalade (with some fresh oj). The last step is the Burnt Orange Buttercream. By this time, i was exhausted and just made fresh whipped cream (lightly sweetened) with some orange zest.
Half the recipe made a really cute 2-layer 7-inch cake, that was delicious!
My family knows me so well. I love shopping at Williams-Sonoma.... and so does my aunt. She got me the Cookie Cake Pan for Christmas and I finally got to use it this past weekend... for a friend's birthday cake. I used the recipe that was on the box, but I'm sure any cake recipe would work. This was a huge hit!
My cake is not as photo perfect as the one on the WS site but I will surely work on it.
This Sunday's SMS recipe, chosen by Nina of Nina's Cupcakes, was a lil on the odd side to me. It's a pie crust recipe that you can use to make sugar cookies. As you all know by now, i HATE making "dough" recipes, i.e., pie crusts or any recipe that calls for rolling dough. After contemplating for a week and reviewing the P&Q's of SMS, I decided to go ahead and make these. I did what many others suggested: increase the sugar, the zest, and add lemon juice. I also increased the vanilla extract and added some almond extract.
Well... it didnt work out for me. After refrigerating my dough OVERNIGHT, I set out to roll it this morning. It was too wet and sticky and I couldnt get it to roll properly. No matter how much more flour I added to the rolling pin and dough... it just stuck everywhere.
Sorry, Nina, but I tried. I really HATE working with dough now and I have no idea if I'm going to ever get over it... seeing how we're suppose to make a pie in two weeks. BOO!
