MSC: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

It's been awhile since I've baked along with the group over at MSC (Martha Stewart Cupcakes). So this month was the perfect one for me to jump back in with as I am a huge fan of lemon. Lemon Meringue Pie, Lemon Cakes...you name it, I'm your girl to help eat it. So I was happy to see that Megan from My Baking Adventures had picked this recipe for March.

Because of my great love for lemon meringue pretty much anything and including pie, I planned on making mini cupcakes and taking some of them along to dump on my coworkers to avoid eating the entire pan myself (I know it sounds like a stretch but give me a few days and I can pull that off very easily).  The only problem was that I had a few absent minded moments which greatly undermined the quality of the recipe. Well, really one (the other one tasted pretty darn good to me) but the one that was affected...well, that was a bit of a doozy.

As in forgetting to put the eggs in. I know. I have no idea what was going through my head but I mixed the ingredients exactly (almost) as it was called for and was perplexed because the batter was so thick. So i started to improvise. Like adding milk until the consistency was closer to normal. Which was right around the time the lightening bolt hit and I realized I had forgotten the egg. Needless to say, the batter was runny,which require adding more flour and the poor cupcakes never quite recovered from this debacle.

Now as for the curd, oh yum. i would definitely make this again. I kept looking for excuses to dip the spoon into the mix as it was cooking to taste a little bit more. And the end result was awesome. Tart with a hint of sweetness. Never mind the fact that I forgot to put the butter into it. It was still great in my eyes.

And I'm sorry, but I am not ready yet to overcome my fear of cooked frostings so I skipped the meringue part altogether. I really need to get a kitchen blowtorch to cut back on using that as one of my excuses too. 

Overall, not bad. The cupcake due to my mangling didn't have the lemon taste that I had been expecting but the curd more than made up for it.

Please check out my fellow bloggers over at MSC to see how their baking turned out!

MSC: Candied Sweet Potato Cupcakes

This month's recipe for the MSC (Martha Stewart Cupcake Club) was hosted by Karen over at Karen's Cookies, Cakes & More.

Awesome selection.
I had thought when I first went into this recipe that it would be pretty similar in taste to last month's pumpkin muffins. But I think, after having made these, that I would use this recipe more than I would last months.

Now the marshmallows definitely push this over to the winning side for me. I am a marshmallow junkie at heart. Give me a jar of marshmallow fluff and I would be a very happy woman. And give me a spoon and a jar of marshmallow fluff and I would be a very happy and full woman.

I did cheat a little with the recipe and used canned sweet potatoes instead of baking and mashing fresh sweet potatoes. Also, i went with marshmallow fluff for the top instead of toasting marshmallows. I also tried putting some marshmallows in the batter once I'd poured it into the cups with some mixed results. Although that might have been due to slightly overfilling the liners as well as not pushing the marshmallows further down into the batter for some of them.

I also did try to make the candied pecans with limited success but that was due to not letting the sugar syrup fully carmelize and dipping them in the syrup a little too soon.

Overall, a great recipe for the fall. I'm looking forward to next month's recipe!

MSC Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes

For my first baking with the Martha Stewart Cupcakes Blog we made Pumpkin Patch Cupbakes. Now I had borrowed out my brand new book to last week to a friend who has yet to return it at the baking deadline, so in desperation I had to use the recipe on her website hoping it was the same one as the book. I figured she couldn't have that many pumpkin patch recipes out there.So if I've made the wrong recipe as the rest of the group, I apologize and promise to get back on track (and get back the book) by next baking.

Now I should admit I have a love/hate relationship going on right now with the pumpkin patch cupcakes. But it's probably not their fault. Nor is it Martha's. It is, however, my tendency to underestimate the amount of work that goes into recipes at times. Like the pumpkin one. I had been wavering toward using just canned pumpkin then decided at the last minute to be a brave, strong grown up and follow Martha's recipe...at least the one she had online.

I'm thinking next time, canned pumpkin all the way.

Clearly my memories of pumpkins were a little skewed. I don't remember them being that much of a pain. And then again, as a kid, my mom did most of the cutting and my sister and I got to scrape the seeds out. I am just flaberasted at the number of seeds a tiny 2 lb pumpkin can hold. They were everywhere. And don't even get me started on the peeling of the pumpkin. I'm fairly surprised I didn't cut myself in the process.

As for the grating...yeah, not so much. I'll confess. I cheated. I cut everything into chunks after sawing off the shell of the pumpkin and dumping them in the blender because I didn't have a food processor and the blender had a pulse tab which I rationalized as being close enough. Despite the fact that every single time I have come up with the brilliant solution to use the blender for an job that really needs to be done by hand or with a food processor it has not turned out well, I still forged ahead. So I had a blender that kept would blend part of it but leave the chunks on top whole requiring me to pull the pure out and start all over. And in order to get the seeds out, I'd somewhat made a mess of the pumpkin that made grating it impossible..although I only tried for maybe all of a minute before giving up. After a good 15 minutes of scraping out the bits clogged at the bottom, I had maybe 2 cups of somewhat grated pumpkin and not the 2 1/2 the recipe said I would have.

I figured that was going to be good enough because at this point, my kitchen was a mess and I was borderline cranky. In the end, I dumped everything into a mixing bowl, pulled out my hand held mixer and after fighting a bit to incorporate the oil, I had  respectable batter with little chunks of pumpkin that I poured into the muffin tin. Unfortunately, I realized after it was very nearly baked that I'd forgotten to put the pecans in. I also ended up substituting a pinch of allspice for the cloves as I had none in the house.And I also went with store bought pumpkin candies, skipping the part of making my own as my artistic skills with such things are pretty much non existant.

Despite all of it, I love the muffins. It had a mellow taste to it that surprised me so I'm not sure that I would necessarily make these for a kid...they seem more like grown up pumpkin muffins to me. I also only made 12 as for this recipe, what I made was what I was going to eat.

One big plus in their favor is that they stay moist for several days after baking. I had made them on Friday and was still enjoying them on Monday. And there's even a few left (okay, there's 2). And fortunately for me, I now have a food processor. Although, i still can't see myself making these again with  a pumpkin and going though that peeling pain in the...well, you get the point. Now if i could get some precut pumpkin most definitely.