A Just Because Cake (Peanut Butter Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and mini chocolate chips) sitting on top of my new cake stand that I found at Goodwill for quite a steal!

One of my baking resolutions this year is to get better at making cakes. I haven’t shared my resolutions with you, but I’ll get to that at some point.. before the month is over, maybe. I love making cupcakes, I love the idea of cupcakes. Once it’s made, you have a single serving of cake, no cutting or forks required, you can bring one to a friend easily, etc. I think cupcakes are just so great, I haven’t really felt the need to dive into the world of cake making/decorating. I have made a couple in the last 2 years or so, but definitely have a lot of room for learning and improvement. 

The cake above is not the best example of me practicing my skills in decorating. I didn’t make a crumb layer while frosting and I should have waited a little longer for the cake to cool down but I wanted it to be done and was being impatient so I finished it a little on the messy side. I found both cake and frosting recipes from Joy the Baker’s book (I know, I’ve been using it a lot lately, I’m a little obsessed) and they were fantastic!

Even though the cake is little, Tyler and I couldn’t finish the whole thing (don’t worry, none of it went to waste) but I’m gonna need some help for all these cakes I’m going to try and make this year. 

Gingerbread Babycakes with Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting. (In case you’re new, babycakes is what I call small cupycakes and cupycakes is occasionally what I call cupcakes).

The other evening I instagramed a couple of pictures while baking. I couldn’t find my camera which was in my bag which was missing so I also couldn’t find my keys or wallet and I couldn’t go to the store to get more confectionary sugar so messed with my frosting recipe and made-do with what I had, and it really all worked out fine and it turned out my bag was under a shirt in the kitchen on a chair… pretty much that explains why I used my iPhone for the pictures and why I was “live blog/baking” for all of 2 pictures on Instagram.

I saw the recipe for these cupcakes in Martha Stewart Living last month and have been wanting to try it out. The recipe in the magazine uses a different, fancier frosting, but I liked mine and (mostly) had all the ingredients for it. I was also really looking forward to using good farmer’s market blueberries and I went last Saturday and picked some up, so I just had to make these cupcakes. They are AWESOME. And combined with my frosting, they have a very subtle sweetness. I want to try the cupcake recipe sans blueberries as a base for some other ad-ins sometime. 

(…don’t worry, I am wearing an apron in the first picture. It’s just a half apron. I always wear one when baking, of course)

At the beginning of this month, I turned 26. I think I’m finally starting to feel a little older. I can’t stay out as late as often. I like being home more. I clean the bathroom…

Anyway, for my, well our… it was a joint thing because Tyler’s birthday is exactly a week before mine, party I wanted to make one of my favorite combinations, banana and chocolate and peanut butter. So I made chocolate chip banana cupcakes with peanut butter cream cheese frosting. (I’ve done this before) Me and the oven are still not besties and I haven’t gotten used to it yet. The big-uns got a little over baked on the bottom and I was so sad and I didn’t want to serve them at my party because I felt it wasn’t a correct representation of myself as a baker but Tyler said they tasted fine and as the night went on, I took them out of the fridge and they weren’t so bad. I still wasn’t happy about it, though. The babycakes turned out fantastic only I wish I had mini chocolate chips for them because you either got a huge piece of chocolate chip in your minicake or none at all. 

I told you I was going to start talking about baking again. 

It’s March, and while I’m not making anything Irish themed, I am thinking green with my zucchini cupcakes. I am more behind in my blogging than I would like to be, these (and some upcoming posts) are from a week and a half ago. I made what felt like a gazillion big and little cupcakes for a few different occasions. Sadly, I don’t have any good pictures of them finished (outside of tupperware).

Zucchini cupcakes are definitely a favorite of mine. I’m very happy with how the cream cheese frosting came out, too! I based it off a different recipe than I usually use, and I think I’ve found what I’ve been looking for… I especially was thinking about this when I went to East End Cupcakes (back in February).

Side note referring to the middle picture: I recently redeemed a coupon at an online baking supply store and found myself drawn to buy 500 gingham tiny cupcake liners… because one never knows when they’ll need a surplus of teeny cupcakes for a picnic.

Pumpkin Pecan Chocolate Chip cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

These (very delayed) birthday cupcakes were made for co-workers last week. Originally, I wanted to make cupcakes for, or close to people’s actual birthdays, but timing and life often doesn’t work out like that. I asked for preferences and both of the teachers said they like almost everything I’ve made, but are partial to cream cheese frosting. I didn’t want to have to go food shopping so I decided to work with what I had in my cabinet. While pumpkin season has passed, I thought I’d use the can now, instead of waiting again for the fall to come. I had toasted pecans from these pies and some chocolate chips hanging around so I thought they’d be great to mix in the pumpkin batter (a Martha Stewart recipe) topped with a creamy cream cheese frosting (also, Martha). I didn’t turn my Kitchen Aid on at all and mixed everything but the frosting, with a whisk and my muscles. 

I was not happy with the fact that I under-filled the cupcake liners, but nobody complained. Whenever I think I know how much to fill, I have a different recipe and it has a different weight and consistency, etc. That’s what’s happening right? I’m not too too worried about it. However, under-filling did give me the opportunity to make some babycakes, which gave me the ability to taste the cakes and share with more friends.