Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes

When my husband found out that I was making Orange Creamsicle cupcakes this week he was not happy. He doesn't like creamsicles - at all! In fact he hates them. I'm not really a fan of them either but I was convinced that I would like these. Not only do I like them, but my hubby even said, "These are pretty good!"




I was going for a pretty mild orange flavor and color, but if you use the variations in the recipe you can make them as "orangey" as you would like. To get the very pale orange tint, I used 2 drops of red food coloring and 5 drops of yellow. You could always add as much as you want to make them really vibrant, or you can leave it out all together.



For the icing I just used a vanilla buttercream and topped it with a few strips of orange zest. Another option would be to inject the buttercream or even a whipped cream. I don't even think they would need a topping with something in the center!



I really hope that you enjoy these! Let me know if you think they are yummy or if you have any suggestions! Make sure you check out Cupcake Tuesday and It's A Blog Party this week!


Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes
(makes approx. 20 regular cupcakes)

2/3 cups butter, softened
1 ¾ cups sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 – 2 teaspoons grated orange zest, depending on desired flavor
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups orange juice
Yellow and red food coloring if desired

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins and set aside.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in vanilla and orange zest. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, alternating with the orange juice until all is added and batter is well blended. Add yellow and red food coloring, if desired, until color choice is reached. Mix well. Beat on high speed for 30 seconds.

Fill cupcake liners ¾ full. Bake for 17-21 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in pans for 3 minutes before removing to rack to cool completely.


Vanilla Buttercream

½ cup vegetable shortening
½ teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 cups powdered sugar
½ cup milk

In a large bowl, mix together shortening, salt, vanilla, and 2 cups of the powdered sugar. Add in remaining sugar, 2 cups at a time and alternate with milk. Add more milk to thin and more sugar to thicken the icing, if needed. Beat on high speed for 10 minutes until light and fluffy.

New Look and Upcoming Features

Have you noticed the new look at A Cuppy Cake Life? I am in love with it and it is all thanks to the amazing Kendra at Key Lime Blog Design! Check out her blog at http://keylimedesigns.blogspot.com/! She has free backgrounds, headers and tutorials as well as items you can purchase and custom designs. Please give her a visit and let her know what an awesome job she has done! Become one of her followers and you can get email updates on all sorts of fun things. She has been a complete lifesaver as I am totally technology-challenged!

As some of you may know I am a huge supporter of the March of Dimes. My family and I are walking this Sunday in the annual March for Babies. We are also walking again in November for prematurity awareness. You will soon see a widget at A Cuppy Cake Life where you can donate to the March of Dimes and help every baby have a healthy start at life. I will also be featuring stories from families who have been affected by prematurity. Please stay tuned for these updates and I hope you will join me in supporting this worthy cause!

Pina Colada Cupcakes

I don't like pineapple. I don't like coconut. I DO like these cupcakes! They are super moist and the icing is really creamy. All I did was start with a yellow butter cake recipe and make a few changes to add pineapple and rum. The icing is a basic buttercream using coconut milk and rum. They are very easy and can be completely kid-friendly or slightly intoxicating for the adults. See notes below for the variations. Just a warning if you eat the raw batter you may get a little tipsy! I topped these with flaked coconut. You could also toast the coconut before adding it. I wanted to put drink umbrellas on top as well for a little bit of fun but I couldn't find any in time.

Variations: To make these completely kid-friendly just replace the rum in the buttercream with imitation rum flavoring. You don't need to change the cupcakes because all of the alcohol cooks off leaving the rum flavor. To make the extra yummy adult version, use the optional soaking method listed in the recipe.

Check out Cupcake Tuesday over at Hoosier Homemade.

Drunken Pineapple Cupcakes
(makes 24 regular cupcakes)

2/3 cup butter
1 ¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice
½ cup rum, plus more for optional soaking

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with liners.

In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside. Drain crushed pineapple, reserving juice. Pour juice into liquid measuring cup. Add rum until the level reaches the 1 ¼ cup mark. Stir and set aside.

In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time and mix until well incorporated. Add vanilla. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, alternating with the pineapple juice mixture until well blended. Beat on high for an additional two minutes before adding crushed pineapple. Mix until well incorporated.

Fill liners ¾ of the way and bake for 17-21 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for three minutes before removing to wire rack. Let cool completely before soaking or icing.

To soak the cupcakes: Using a toothpick poke a few holes into the top of each cupcake. Spoon one spoonful of rum over each one and let it soak. Follow with the buttercream icing.


Coconut-Rum Buttercream
(makes enough for 24 regular cupcakes)

½ cup vegetable shortening
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon rum
6 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup coconut milk

Stir rum into the coconut milk and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together shortening, salt and 2 cups of the powdered sugar. Add remaining sugar alternating with the coconut milk mixture until desired texture is reached. You will probably not need all of the liquid. Beat on high for 10 minutes until creamy and fluffy.

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Oh my goodness! I may have found another cupcake to add to my favorites list - and it doean't even have chocolate! It's almost like a Tastycake Coffee Cake. It tastes just like a Snickerdoodle cookie. I think I am in love.

These cupcakes are very simple but amazing. I researched several recipes online and mixed and matched until I came up with this one. I think the half and half in the batter and the icing really enhance the texture.

Just a few things to note for when YOU make these. First, the cupcakes don't really get brown. They are very light in color so use a toothpick to check if they are done. Also, there are several options for when and if to dust them with a cinnamon sugar mixture. I dusted the tops before I baked them and it made almost a sugar crust on top. You can also dust them after they are iced. Or you could do both. Or neither. It's up to you. Another thing you could do is fill the cupcakes with a thick vanilla whipped cream and forget the icing. Those would really taste like a coffee cake!

This time around I used a Wilton #12 tip for piping the icing onto the cupcakes. I thought it made them more homey and casual then the 1M tip. You can even spread the icing on with a spatula or knife. These are pretty hard to mess up.

I hope you enjoy these! Let me know how they turn out!

Be sure to check out Cupcake Tuesday and It's A Blog Party!

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
(makes approx. 24 regular cupcakes)

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 ¾ cups sugar
4 eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups half and half
Cinnamon sugar mixture for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift together both flours, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Add the flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of the half and half. Beat 2 minutes until light and fluffy.

Scoop batter into cups, filling ¾ of the way. Bake for 17-22 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan two minutes then remove to rack to finish cooling.

Cinnamon Vanilla Buttercream
(makes enough for approx. 24 regular cupcakes)

½ cup vegetable shortening
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 cups powdered sugar
½ cup half and half

In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together vegetable shortening, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and 2 cups of the sugar. After incorporated add remaining sugar in two batches, alternating with the half and half. Add more sugar to thicken and more half and half to thin to desired consistency. Beat on high for about 10 minutes until creamy and fluffy.

Exciting News

A Cuppy Cake Life is now on Facebook! Come check it out and become a fan.

I can also be contacted via email now at acuppycakelife {at} hotmail {dot} com.

If you are in the Norfolk area I am taking orders for cupcakes. Check out the list of flavors on my facebook page, email me about what you are interested in, how many, etc. and I will get you a quote.

Snickerdoodle cupcakes will be done tomorrow. I should warn you, they are pretty tasty.

Only a few more hours to vote for the next cupcakes. It looks like pina colada might win. If it does I will show you the kid-friendly version as well as the one for adults.....yum!

Banana Nut Crunch Cupcakes

These cupcakes are a real treat for anyone who loves banana. They are really dense, almost a combination of cake and bread. The super-sweet buttercream is the perfect topping for the milder cupcake. You can thank my Nana for the recipe! She makes a banana cake and I just turned them into cupcakes. It's her buttercream recipe, too. Speaking of the buttercream, this is a triple recipe. I made 14 jumbo cupcakes so I had some left over. If you make 30 regular cupcakes you should have just the right amount. After the cupcakes were iced, I added 3 toasted pecans to each one. To toast them I used a small stoneware dish and heated them at 30 second intervals in the microwave for about 2 minutes, stirring each time. You could also do it in a small pan on the stove. Just make sure you take them off the heat when you start smelling them. They can burn if you aren't paying attention. You could also chop the pecans and sprinkle them over the top. I was just feeling kinda lazy! Be sure to check out Cupcake Tuesday!

Banana Cupcakes
(makes approx. 14 jumbo or 30 regular cupcakes)

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 bananas, mashed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together all of the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Add vanilla. Add a third of the dry ingredients at a time and alternate with the buttermilk. Add mashed bananas and mix well.

Fill lined cupcake pans to ¾ full and bake for 24-28 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in pans for 3 minutes and then move to wire rack to finish cooling.


Vanilla Buttercream
(makes enough icing for approx. 30 regular cupcakes)

¾ cup vegetable shortening
1 ½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vanilla
9 cups powdered sugar
¾ cup milk

Mix together shortening, salt, vanilla and 3 cups of the sugar. Alternate adding the milk and remaining sugar until smooth and creamy. Add more sugar to thicken or milk to thin as needed to reach desired consistency. Beat on medium-high speed for about 10 minutes to make the icing light and fluffy.