Sprinkles Cupcakes! October 26, 2008
Posted by Dorothy in cake, cupcakes, information, sweet eats.Tags: frosting, strawberry, sprinkles, sprinkles cupcakes, sprinkles cupcakes recipe, beverly hills, daily bruin
7 comments
Who doesn’t love cupcakes?! Especially gorgeous, well decorated, darling, whimsical cupcakes ?!
Enter Sprinkles Cupcakes.
I was fortunate enough to interview the founders of Sprinkles Cupcakes this past week for the Daily Bruin! They chatted with me about starting a small business from scratch, and gave me some baking advice! And they also shared this recipe with me, to share with everyone else!
Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcakes
Makes 1 dozen
1 ½ cup all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp kosher salt
4 oz (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 large egg whites, at room temperature
¼ cup whole milk, at room temperature
1/3 cup pureed strawberries, measured in liquid measuring cup (use
all-natural frozen strawberries that have been thawed and pureed until
totally smooth)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Fill a 12 cup cupcake pan with cupcake liners
• Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set
aside
• Add vanilla and strawberry puree to milk and set aside
• In standing mixer, cream butter on medium-high speed until light
and fluffy
• Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until full incorporated
and fluffy
• Slowly add egg and egg whites and mix on medium speed until
blended
• With mixer on low speed, add half the flour mixture until just
blended
• Add milk mixture and mix just until blended
• Add remaining flour mixture and mix just until blended. Scrape
down bowl to make sure entire mixture is smooth.
• Divide batter between 12 cupcake cups and bake for approx 23 – 25
minutes or until tops are just dry to the touch
• Cool cupcake pan on wire rack. Once, cool cupcakes can be turned
out and frosted.
Sprinkles Strawberry Frosting
Generously frosts 1 dozen
8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly cold and firm
1/16 tsp kosher salt
3 ½ cups confectioners sugar, sifted
½ tsp pure vanilla extract
3 tbsp pureed strawberries (use all-natural frozen strawberries that have
been thawed and pureed until totally smooth)
• Beat butter and salt on medium high speed until light and fluffy
• Reduce speed and gradually add confectioner’s sugar and beat until
incorporated
• Add vanilla and strawberry puree and mix on medium low until
blended. Do not overmix, or the frosting will incorporate too much air.
The consistency should be dense and creamy, like ice-cream
I will post my video once I finish editing it. Can’t wait to try this recipe!
Desperation Cupcakes October 24, 2008
Posted by Dorothy in cake, cupcakes.Tags: banana, cake mix, chocolate, cupcakes, delicious, easy, frosting, quick, sprinkles, sprinkles cupcakes
6 comments
Its midnight and I’m desperate. There’s no baking soda anywhere in the house, let alone the entire apartment complex (i’m currently living at one of those snobby places where no one bakes; everyone just walks down the street to Sprinkles for a cupcake instead), I don’t have ingredients for anything, I have no food in the house except for orange juice and chicken soup, but I need to bake. I NEED to bake!! I promised everyone baked goods for tomorrow and I like to keep my promises (and i have this annoying baking craving that won’t go away! It loves to show up all the time during midterm procrastination season)! But I’m all gross and nasty sick and a huge living mess of germs, and I don’t have anything I can bake with. I refuse to leave my house of germs to buy ingredients. And google has totally let me down this time because I couldn’t even find any recipes for the few ingredients I did have on hand (baking powder, flour, chocolate, milk, oil, brown sugar, and bananas)! So I got desperate. And came up with these DELICIOUS desperation cupcakes.
Desperation Cupcakes, a la Dorothy
1 pckg yellow cake mix
1 c mashed banana (i used 2 very ripe bananas to get 1 cup)
4 eggs
1/3 c oil
1 c water
for the chocolate frosting:
2 c semisweet chocolate chips
2 Tbsp butter
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 cupcake trays with 24 liners. Prepare the yellow cake mix as directed (but with 4 eggs, instead of three – it makes it denser; so if you want to keep the texture of a regular cake mix just use 3), and fold in the mashed bananas. Pour into cupcake cups. Microwave the butter and chocolate together for 1 min, stirring at 30 sec. intervals. Let cool slightly. Swirl 1/2 – 1 tsp frosting into each cupcake. Bake at 350 degrees for 18 – 22 minutes. Let cupcakes cool completely and then frost! Or just enjoy them without the frosting; they’re superdelicious either way!
I have to repeat – These are sooooooo delicious! AND they don’t take like box at all; I guess the bananas and chocolate cover up the artificial taste. I’ll have to make these more often. Maybe tonight! Because the first batch I made are all already gone.
Pumpkin Spice Bread October 21, 2008
Posted by Dorothy in bread.Tags: bread, fall, october, pumpkin, williams sonoma
3 comments
Its mid-October, and we’ve had a couple of chilly days here in Southern California, which means it is officially time to start baking with pumpkin! I love baking with pumpkin because it lets me pretend my desserts are healthy. Pumpkin is a fruit, after all. And its superhealthy. Pumpkin is very very high in vitamin A, low in calories, and full of fiber! And its so yummy! My first dessert with pumpkin this season was a generic pumpkin spice bread. I love pumpkin spice bread, and I’ve been craving it since Williams-Sonoma started putting out samples of their pumpkin bread mix (delicious, by the way) in the beginning of October, so I had to make some of my own!
Pumpkin Spice Bread
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
3/4 c sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup pumpkin puree (I just used canned)
1/4 c oil
1/4 c applesauce
2 eggs
1/4 c milk
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin spice
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9×5 loaf pan with cooking spray. Sift together the dry ingredients - except the pumpkin spice. Thoroughly combine the wet ingredients together, and stir in the pumpkin spice. Combine the dry ingredients and wet ingredients together, but do not overmix. Bake for 55 – 65 minutes. Enjoy!
This cake was soft, moist, and delicious, but a bit sweet, so I would cut out some of the sugar the next time I make it.
Leftover Cereal Make Delicious Cookies! October 8, 2008
Posted by Dorothy in cookies.Tags: cereal, chocolate, cookie, fudgy, total
7 comments
Yup, they really do!
I am a total cerealfanatic. I could eat nothing but cereal all day if I tried. There are sooooooooooooooo many varieties, colors, shapes, flavors, textures, etc, and its all so sugaryyyy!! And you can get in all your vitamins with an inexpensive bowl of simple deliciousness. LOVE IT! The cereal peeps are so creative. There is seriously every cereal possible out there on a grocery shelf. I can’t think of anything they haven’t thought of! Cereal that lowers my cholesterol, fiber filled cereal, cereal that will help me lose weight, cereal that will make me smart, and of course they come in every flavor i could possibly want. Fruit, caramel, chocolate, cinnamon……YUMMMMMM. My personal favorites are Cinnamon Toast Crunch (or any cereal that tastes like cinnamon sugar) and Total cereal (bc I can get 110% of all my daily vitamins in one serving!). I’m always seeing new varieties of cereal at the grocery store, and dying to try them so I end up buying a lot of cereal that I don’t finish. Which is such a waste… until I realized I could put them in cookies!!
Enter Fudgy Cereal Cookies!! This recipe is super simple and uses boxed brownie mix, which you probably have sitting on the pantry shelf next to that half eaten box of forgotten cereal anyway.
Fudgy Cereal Cookies (adapted from a Fiber One recipe)
1 box brownie mix
1 egg
1/3 c water
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 c flake cereal (i.e. corn flakes, total, special k, etc) – I used up a leftover box of Total Whole Grain
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix everything together in a large mixing bowl. Drop by tablespoons on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper/ aluminum foil. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
These cookies are a bit sweet (probably from the overly sweet boxed mix in addition to the already sweet cereal), but that’s just perfect for my supersweet sweet tooth!
Coconut Macaroons October 6, 2008
Posted by Dorothy in information.3 comments
Yummy, yummy, yummy coconut macaroons! Coconut macaroons are a type of sweet, chewy, coconut cookie. I don’t know why they’re called macaroons, when they are so different from the typical macaroon made of almond flour and egg whites and associated with France. Coconut macaroons are usually found in the United States instead of France. I see these delicious cookies in the bakery section of every grocery store!
Sadly, my new four year old friend and I devoured these right out of the oven, so I don’t have any droolworthy pictures to post 
But here’s the (very, very, very simple) recipe I used:
4 c flaked coconut
1/2 c all-purpose flour
one 14 oz. can condensed milk
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper/ aluminum foil. Spray parchment paper/ aluminum foil with cooking spray (so the macaroons will come off easier after baking). Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix condensed milk and vanilla extract together. Pour milk mixture into dry mix and thoroughly combine. Shape (very sticky) batter into balls and place on baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.
These are great dipped in chocolate, or with a 1 tsp almond extract substitution!
If you don’t want to use condensed milk, check out Stephanie Jaworski’s (slightly more difficult) version of coconut macaroons. She also has pictures of the coconut macaroons!
