Serious Eats Shares their Favorite Cupcake Recipes

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Serious Eats released a list of their 12 favorite cupcake recipes. Their favorites include Kaleidoscope Cupcakes, Yellow Squash Cupcakes, and Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes. Yellow squash?...that sounds intriguing. You can check out the slideshow and recipes here.

Scharffen Berger Chocolate Adventure Contest Winners

At the end of last year I reported on Scharffen Berger Chocolate's Adventure Contest. Entrants submitted an original recipe using Scharffen Berger chocolate and an "adventure" ingredient for a chance to win $20,000 in prizes.

The winners have been announced and the best part is that they published the winning recipes! Interesting to note that all of the winning cupcakes used stout beer. Maybe that tells you something about the judges.

GRAND PRIZE

You Make Me Wanna "Stout" Cupcakes
Elaine Barbee
Adventure ingredient: stout beer

SECOND PLACE
Spicy Dulce de Leche and Chocolate Cream Stout Cucpakes with Chili Ganache and Candied Serrano Chiles
Jennifer Daskevich
Adventure Ingredients: Stout beer, buttermilk, sweetened condensed milk, chili pepper

THIRD PLACE
Beer Bellies (Cocoa-Stout Cupcakes with Beer-Malt Frosting and spicy Pretzel Crumbles
Jennifer Burke
Adventure Ingredients: Stout beer, coconut butter, sweetened condensed milk, chili pepper, Meyer lemon

Neopolitan Mini Cheesecakes

Photo: Bakers Royale

These Neopolitan Mini Cheesecakes from Bakers Royale are just adorable! And the fact that they are made with no-bake cheesecake makes them even better. She hasn't posted the recipe yet, but has promised it will be soon.

Bakers Royale is a new find of mine. She has posted pictures and recipes for lots of delicious looking (and I'm sure tasting) desserts. My taste buds are going crazy for some Salted Caramel Cheesecake Cups or these Banana Caramel Cupcakes or maybe Croquembouche Cupcakes (I'm not even sure what these are, but I want to try!).

Betty Crocker Introduces Gluten-Free Baking Mixes

I can't imagine how sad my life would be without gluten. But that's just me and that fact that I could eat bread products all day long.

I have several friends who avoid all gluten when possible because of allergies. But now they can enjoy eating cupcakes and other desserts more often! Betty Crocker has introduced a line of gluten-free baking mixes. Their website showcases four gluten-free mixes:

Gluten-Free Brownie Mix

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix
Gluten-Free Devil's Food Cake Mix
Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Mix

Along with their cake mixes, Betty Crocker also provides recipes for gluten-free desserts. Gluten-free Banana Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting, anyone?



Photos: Betty Crocker

Pioneer Woman and Cupcakes

We all know that Pioneer Woman is an amazing woman. She takes beautiful pictures, she bakes yummy food, and she home-schools her kids...there's practically nothing that she's not good at.

Have you seen her recently-new Tasty Kitchen Blog? Every single recipe she has posted on there looks beyond delicious!

Last week she did a feature on CUPCAKES. She explains that cupcakes are the perfect desserts for graduation season. Along with lots of pretty pictures, she posts links to recipes of all kinds of cupcakes, some of them her own and some not. There's sure to be a recipe you haven't tried yet.

101 Gourmet Cupcakes in 10 Minutes

I'm a pretty busy person, just like everyone else out there. I usually don't have the time to make cupcakes from scratch. Thank goodness for cookbooks like this!

I recently got my hands on 101 Gourmet Cupcakes in 10 Minutes by Wendy Paul. All of her cupcake recipes stem from using a cake mix.

I tested out her recipes about a week ago while making cupcakes for my sister's birthday party. I decided to be a little adventurous and make two different recipes using one box of cake mix. I also used one of the frosting recipes from the book.


Result: 12 Banana Strussel cupcakes and 12 Pineapple Upside Down cupcakes. Both were delicious and I got credit for baking two flavors of cupcakes!

This cookbook is available from Amazon.com for only $11.55. Perfect holiday gift for your favorite baker (or yourself)!

Recipes for Winning Cupcakes!

I'm always on the look-out for delicious cupcake recipes. But even if I find a recipe that sounds good, I'm always a little nervous that it won't be quite what I hoped for.

SF Food Wars has published recipes of some of the winning cupcakes from the SF Food Wars: Mini Cupcake Clash. Luckily, I know these recipes are fantastic because I already tasted the final results!

Recipe for "My Grandma's Bananas"
winner of People's Choice Award and Judge's 2nd Place

Recipe for "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!"
winner of People's Choice Honorable Mention

Recipe for "Cinnamon Horchata"
winner of Judge's 3rd place

Interesting note: noticed that "My Grandma's Bananas" used a yellow cake mix...from a box! (Gasp!) That cupcake won the People's Choice award, so maybe using a box mix isn't so bad. But if you're going to use a box mix, I would suggest adding your own twist to make it a little different.

Want to know more about this event? Check out my coverage of the SF Foods Wars: Mini Cupcake Clash

• Mini Cupcake Clash Competitors (Part 1)
• Mini Cupcake Clash Competitors (Part 2)
• Mini Cupcake Clash Competitors (Part 3)
• SF Food Wars: Mini Cupcake Clash

Looking for Cupcake Recipes

Last week I promised my co-ed, city league, softball team that I would make cupcakes if we won a game. At the time, our team was the opposite of undefeated. We are a very enthusiastic team, but that hasn't helped us...yet. Well, last week the other team forfeited so we got our first win of the season! So now I need to follow through with my promise and bring cupcakes to our next game on Thursday.

I am in a rut and need some new cupcake recipe ideas. Help me out by emailing your favorite cupcake recipe. I will publish my favorite recipes and will pick one to celebrate the success of our first softball win.

Thanks!