I haven't done a cupcake on this here blog for 2014 Baking Fridays, and I thought Halloween was a good time to do one, since Halloween is such a kids holiday.
Except...maybe these aren't really kid cupcakes? The Pumpkin Spice are. One of my tasters took two home to her two little taste testers, and one of them said, "I like Deb coz she makes sweet things!" I told her that I like him back "coz he says sweet things!" Another taste tester said that these took her to her happy place, since the flavors of fall are so sentimental to her. She asked her mother to make spice cake for their wedding cake for an early November wedding. I like taking people to their happy place!
The Turtle cupcakes are rather sophisticated, what one taster described as pure decadence with the candied pecans, chocolate leaves...the kind of dessert one would find in a 5 star restaurant. That is probably over-stated high praise, but there was apparently some near workplace violence between two workers over the last bite of one of these.
And I'm not sure how many kids would like Maple Bacon, but they were described as "playful" from the presentation as much as anything else. Cause if you're talking maple and bacon, then you must be talking pancakes, right? How cute are these?
I'm not going to share the recipes for any of the cupcakes. Any of the pumpkin spice cupcake recipes you can find online or is already a favorite of yours are great. Same with the chocolate and the maple recipes out there. What I want to spend my dissertation talking about is what I did to finish each one off.
Starting with soaking syrups. I like to either fill cupcakes with a filling or use a soaking syrup to add flavor and moisture. And I chose soaking syrups this time.
A soaking syrup is simply sugar and water, in equal parts or no less than a 2 parts sugar to 1 parts water ratio, boiled together for about 3 - 5 minutes and then let cool. But it can be flavored a lot of ways.
Like cinnamon and ginger for the Pumpkin Spice cupcakes. When G and I were in Branson the last time, we stopped in at an Amish store and picked up some dried ginger. I don't know about you, but when I want ginger root for a dish, and I buy the fresh, I end up not being able to use it all before it goes bad. Enter dried ginger pieces that I can reconstitute in hot water as needed! Genius!
For the Turtle cupcakes, I simply added a bit of caramel ice cream sauce to the syrup. Easy!
And for the Maple Bacon cupcakes, I simply used real maple syrup. Cause...maple syrup.
There are a few other elements to presenting these cupcakes. Such as candied pecans for the Turtles.
We also needed some chocolate leaves; I will do a post on chocolate leaves another time, but here they are drying, ready for the freezer.
And we can't forget the bacon! Diced up small...
Finally we have our icing. For all three, I used my standard cream cheese frosting base but with no liquid:
1 cup of shortening
1 cup of butter
8oz softened cream cheese
Dash of salt
Splash of vanilla and almond
I beat all of these together, but it was on the stiff side since I hadn't yet added liquid. As I dragged a spatula across the top, I saw ragged edges rather than smooth edges.
Ok...I think I'm ready to assemble! Let's start with our players for the Pumpkin Spice:
I began by drizzling our soaking syrup over the cupcakes and letting it sit for a few minutes to soak in.
Oh, and I seemed to have chosen the 6 ugliest cupcakes for the above picture, but there were some that were much prettier!
Then I added a small amount of icing to serve as a base for our turtle. Followed by a spot of caramel sauce and then four candied pecan halves, like the four legs of a turtle.
I suppose if decadence wasn't our goal here, we could have ended right there and it would have been a perfectly tasty cupcake. But this is for a holiday, so we "need" decadence! Therefore we press on!
So I added more frosting, and then a chocolate leaf, more caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, chopped candied pecans and finally some mini-chocolate chips! And Voila! We have turtle cupcakes!
Are you ready to dig in yet? Do you need another pic? How about this one?
But wait! We're not done! We have one more Halloween cupcake - our Maple Bacon!
Now, I must confess, would you believe that this...
...could become this...
...and this...
...but then ultimately this?
Yep, that's right folks. I overfilled my cupcake holders on these, so ended up having to trim off the edges with scissors and consequently cover more of the edges with the frosting...but I'm pretty sure most folks did not notice the edges. Cause pancakes. And bacon.
I didn't show you the pancake prep above. I did these just prior to assembly so that the pancakes would stay as moist as possible. I have two go-to pancake options: this recipe from KAF OR the recipe that is on the side of this one on the side of the buttermilk powder can from SACO. I used the buttermilk powder can one, but upped the sugar by 1 T. and added a dash of vanilla. How cute are these little quarter sized pancakes?
I couldn't seem to flip over in the same neat rows...but...
...still kinda cute!
Our final cast of characters!
Bacon! Pancakes! Maple cupcakes that have already been soaked in maple syrup and our maple cream cheese frosting. Ready for action!
Putting these together couldn't have been simpler once we had all of the parts together in the same place. I began with a layer of frosting - clear to the edges, because of my overfill error, and then a circle of bacon around the edge.
Then I added 2 pancakes (with a dab of icing between to hold them on the cupcake better) and gave the whole thing a drizzle of maple syrup. Folks said that they'd never had bacon on a cupcake before and especially not at breakfast, but why not? The only thing that could have made these better was more bacon! However one word of caution. Should you decide to cut these in half, be very careful. You need to move the pancakes out of the way before cutting. Otherwise...well...let's just say that there was Maple Bacon cupcake cutting coaching going on (not by me!) along with one that looked perfectly cut and one that, well, looked like coaching was needed...ahem...
Now I'd planned to take in serving plates and making tiers and a beautiful presentation of these with height and fall napkins, but it was raining the day that I took these into work, so they ended up being served from their plastic containers. But don't be like me! Use pretty cupcake stands and platters for your Halloween cupcakes!
One last thing....either I took too many cupcakes in or these weren't really that good or the cupcake craze is coming to the end of its 15 minutes of fame for now. I'm not sure the real culprit, but these are the treat that lasted the longest of anything I've brought in. The last piece was not consumed until the afternoon. Maybe it was that I didn't present them on tiered cupcake stands. Maybe that's it, coz people do eat with their eyes first, and these embellishments may not have been enough...hmmm....
"I'll think about that tomorrow!" (Extra points for naming where that line is from!)
Thanks for stopping by! Happy Halloween cupcakes!
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