Lemon cake: 3 minutes, 100 calories!

A couple weeks ago, my four-year-old decided it was my "betend buwtday." To celebrate, she served me "betend wemon sauce cake."

And then I wanted real lemon sauce cake. But I knew I didn't want a whole lemon cake in my house, so I tracked down a microwave lemon cake recipe. The original recipe called for 3Tbsp of oil, and one commenter had trouble with the cake turning out oily. So I cut calories and fat by replacing half that oil with applesauce.

The recipe:

3 tablespoons all purpose flour
3 tablespoons confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice (I squeezed 1/3 of a medium lemon)
1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
splash of vanilla (oops, I forgot this!)

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients. The lemon juice will probably react with the baking soda and begin bubbling, resulting in a fluffy pancake-like batter.

Divide the batter between two ramekins and microwave. The original recipe suggested 45 seconds and that a full minute was too much. However, even after a minute, the edges of my cake were totally liquid. I ended up microwaving for 1:30.

The original recipe used a lemon juice + 2Tbsp confectioners' sugar glaze, but I used some leftover blackberry syrup. I'd also wanted to use this beautiful jar of lemon curd I have, but after the results, I decided it wasn't worth opening the jar.

The result was a little gummy at first and didn't release from my bowls well (even though they were greased and floured)--hence the :S on the plate.

However, after it had a few minutes to set, it tasted pretty darn good! I let my four-year-old try a bite and she insisted I share my cake with her. The bright flavor of lemon—and the word "deewicious!" from my daughter—totally brightened my day.

Each cake is 95 calories. Woot!

Have you tried microwave cakes?

Cauldron Cakes

My sisters and I love Harry Potter (except maybe Jordan...Jordan needs to read them still.) My mom and I had a Harry Potter marathon where we watched one Harry Potter a night for a week plus some days. We decided to make some Harry Potter recipes. This one was by far my favorite! These are SUPER yummy! These were even good without frosting. (I can't remember where I got the recipe from but you can find this recipe on several websites if you want to find some variations.)

Cauldron Cakes

•  2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup softened butter or 1/2 cup softened margarine
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon ginger

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2.  Mix eggs, sugar, butter, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla in large mixing bowl on whip for 2 minutes.
3.  Mix other solid ingredients and milk in gradually in the large mixing bowl.
4.  Put batter in muffin tins filling them about half full. These shouldn't be too full, more authentic of course. Bake for 25 minutes.
5.  Decorate with sprinkles and frosting if desired.

Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes with Homemade Cream Cheese Frosting

This past weekend I made some cupcakes for Mother's Day and a picnic for my husband's work. I still had plenty left over afterward. I may have eaten more than my fair share but hey they're mini so that's mini calories, right?

Cupcakes

Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cake mix

Water

Eggs

Oil

For mini cupcakes mix together recipe as it says on the box. Bake for 10-13 minutes at 400 degrees. Recipe makes 6 dozen mini cupcakes. To help with pouring the cupcakes I put the mix in a measuring cup with a pour spout.

Homemade Cream Cheese Frosting

 (source here)

8 oz. cream cheese (softened)

1 stick butter (softened)

1 Tbsp vanilla (I would use clear vanilla for this)

3-4 cups powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese until smooth in a medium bowl. Add butter until fluffy. Add vanilla then add powdered sugar 1/4 cup at a time.

The cupcakes cool quickly after they are taken out of the tin. I took mine out with a spoon so I didn't burn my fingers. When they are cool pipe on swirl of frosting. I used a plastic baggie with the corner snipped off because I didn't have any pastry bags. I started making the frosting as the last batch went in the oven and it was perfect timing.

They were delicious and I plan on making them again!

Cookie dough cupcakes

Quick note:  as of last Thursday, I'm an official guest blogger for Latter-day Woman Magazine! Come join me on a PieQuest—this week will be Hershey's S'mores Pie, so be sure to subscribe to my free updates, or the whole magazine blog!

I definitely didn't see anything in my son's Wednesday Folder about a bake sale to accompany his school's carnival (*cue my mom and sisters swooning that our baby could be SO BIG*). But I couldn't miss the purple slip of paper advising us that they hadn't gotten a lot of donations, and we could bring them to the carnival if need be.

When you're wayward and crafty, you'd better plan on bringing them to the carnival. Late.

Anyway, I just finished a book called Always the Baker, Never the Bride, and the eponymous baker heroine had won awards with her Crème Brûlée Wedding Cake. So my first thought was Crème Brûlée Cupcakes. Though I found (and pinned!) some really awesome recipes, I realized we didn't have nearly enough time, since the carnival was starting in . . . about three hours. Awesome.

On one of the websites with a crème brûlée cupcake recipe, though, was another tempting treat: Cookie Dough Cupcakes (from How to Eat a Cupcake).

The recipe for the cupcakes themselves came from the Cake Mix Doctor, but How to Eat a Cupcake's link to the CMD's site didn't work, and a search of her site didn't show the recipe, either.

But I wasn't giving up that easily. In a past life, I was an Internet marketing professional, so I pulled out my toolbox and found an online archival copy of the recipe (it takes a few minutes to load).

The recipe is also found on pages 124-125 of Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor. (The book also happens to have a recipe for making mini crème brûlées in cupcake tins on pages 294-295.)

The basics: they're yellow cake mix a little dressed up, but I don't know that all the dressing was necessary—the extra oil made the cake a bit greasy.

Then you need frozen cookie dough. The Cake Mix/Cupcake Doctor says:

If you use the 18-ounce logs of refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough (instead of the 1-pound packages of frozen dough), cut them into 24 equal pieces and freeze them before using them in this recipe. It's important to use frozen dough, because you don't want it to bake completely and become a cookie. You want the center to be gooey when you bite into it.

 We went to/called four local grocery stores and not one carried frozen cookie dough. And, as I mentioned, we were on a time crunch, so I'd initially rejected the idea of a refrigerator cookie dough, but I had no other choice. My mother-in-law was visiting, and we opened the 1 lb. package and put the 24 cookie dough cubes into plastic baggies and stuffed them in the coldest places in the freezer.

After about 40 minutes, they were pretty firm, so I mixed up the cake. Then my mother-in-law and I poured them into the cupcake liners. Now, here is the tricky and hard part: getting a gooey nugget of raw cookie dough (come on, you know you love it) in the middle of a cooked cake. See if you can pick up on our technique:

Yeah. Just stick 'em on top.

The batter swallows them up in the oven.

Unfortunately, sometimes they cave in pretty badly:

But if you get them browned, they're a bit more stable (ignore the cheap, ugly muffin tins):

I happened to have some canned vanilla frosting on hand, and I added about 2 Tbsp of cocoa, which actually tasted pretty good. We also had come Cookie Crisp, so that became our decoration.

Now, of course, I totally spaced on taking a picture of the most important part: the cookie dough in the middle! Here's the idea (notice the void left by the cookie dough—be careful when taking the cupcakes out of the pan!) but our cookie dough spread out a bit more and didn't quite get all the way to the bottom:

Flickr photo by Kristin Ausk of Meringue Bake Shop

I think they'd be better chilled than room temp, and I'd reduce the oil in the recipe. (In fact, I'd probably just make a regular cake mix and follow their directions.)

The worst part: we didn't label our cupcake tray for the bake sale, so nobody knew what they were getting when they bought these. I wonder if they liked the surprise (or knew what it was!) . . .

What do you think? What's the most unusual cupcake you've ever had or made?

Perfect S'more Cupcakes (+ giveaway winner and update on Sister Saturday Challenge)

For my son's fifth birthday a few months ago, I wanted to make s'more cupcakes. (To be honest, this was completely for me and the other moms, since my son wouldn't eat marshmallows that were "aww mewty!" Thus he did not appreciate the joy of s'mores, though he did enjoy lighting a marshmallow on fire while camping this weekend.) Since summer officially begins this week, I thought this was the perfect time to share! What says summer better than s'mores?

I've had a s'more cupcake at our local cupcake shop, but I wasn't impressed. I think it's a texture thing: you just can't replicate the experience of warm melted chocolate, even with chocolate cake. And a crispy-gooey marshmallow is nothing like a boiled meringue frosting.

So I sent Jasmine off to do some digging for me, and she came up with a couple s'more cupcake inspirations. I found a quick graham cracker cake recipe on All Recipes—and then I did what I wanted. (Hello! Wayward!)

To start, I made a milk chocolate ganache by bringing 1/4c heavy cream to a boil, then taking that off the heat and adding 1/2c milk chocolate chips. Once the chocolate chips were fully melted, I poured that into my small mixing bowl to cool and refrigerate.

For the cake, I crushed one cellophane package of graham crackers into fine crumbs (about 1 1/4 c crumbs, but I think 1 1/2 c would be better):

Baby helped me dispose of the extra graham cracker pieces.

I added the crumbs an 18.25 oz dry yellow cake mix:

Since we're at a high altitude, I figured this would be okay. And since I didn't feel like getting out a whole 'nother egg carton just for the third egg, I only added two eggs with the other indicated wet ingredients.

I took a page from Cupcake Wars and used an ice cream scoop to fill the cups.

Yes, baking is an exacting science, and an exacting scientist, I am not. Luckily for me, this time it turned out even better than okay: the cake was moist and delicious!

By now the ganache was cool (I started it in the morning and baked the cupcakes in the afternoon). I took it out of the refrigerator and whipped it in my mixer.

Then I scooped the middles out of the cupcakes with a serrated spoon which called itself a "tomato corer":

Holy cupcakes!

And filled with the whipped ganache:

I used a plastic baggie with a corner snipped off for both the ganache and the frosting: marshmallow crème.

I'd show you how I piped it on, but 1.) it took both hands and 2.) it's not impressive.

Now, marshmallow crème will run together after it sits a few minutes, so I recommend only "frosting" a few at a time (at most 6, less if you're going slowly). Once you have a small batch frosted, pop 'em under the broiler:

I like to keep my oven open while I do this because I do tend to burn things under the broiler.

But if you burn these, it's okay! The burnt marshmallow pops off like a lid:

And you can try again.

These actually keep pretty well in airtight containers overnight. The delicious golden brown crunchiness of the marshmallow will dissolve but it keeps the coloring and the shape. But nothing beats a warm, fresh one! (Reheating under the broiler made the frosting crack, but it tasted amazing!)

Next time, I might even brave making a cake from scratch.

Recipe

Whipped chocolate ganache filling
1/4 c heavy cream
1/2 c milk chocolate chips
Boil cream. Add chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate chips are fully melted and mixture is deep brown. Pour into bowl. Cool and refrigerate. Once cold, beat with electric mixer until you reach the desired consistency (like frosting).

Graham cracker cake
Add 1 1/2 fine graham cracker crumbs to yellow cake mix. (May omit 1 egg.)

This recipe was prepared at high altitude

How would you make s'more cupcakes?

---

And a few updates:

The first ever Saturday Sister Spotlight was so much fun! I loved getting to know the Three Sisterz better—and I loved seeing how they took up the Saturday Sister Challenge! You can see all their watermelon-inspired crafts in the challenge update here!

And the winner of my ribbon runner from last week, chosen completely at random, I swear, is . . .

Flannery of Three Sisterz!

Send me your address, Flannery, and I'll get that in the mail to you this week!

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes

Or as I like to call them, pineapple CUPside-down CAKES.

Well, I thought it was clever.

So last Wednesday, my husband came home and announced that we needed to make a cake. My first thought was, "Score! I know what I'm blogging about next week!" My second thought was, "Why?"

Turns out the woman who makes wonderful cakes for everyone else's birthdays had her birthday—on the previous Sunday. After enjoying many of her dark chocolate/strawberry/whip cream leftovers, I knew this cake needed to be special. I'd just seen something about a jellybean cupcake decorating contest. While I don't think this will win any prizes there, I was inspired to use cherry jellybeans instead of maraschino cherries in this:

To make the pineapple upside-down cupcakes, I started with a yellow cake mix. The box called for a cup of water; I replaced half of that with pineapple juice (but the flavor was very subtle in the end, perhaps not even worth it).

Then I consulted a recipe for PU-DC. It called for a brown sugar sauce made with melted butter and brown sugar. Add just a little water and it turns into this:

I opened a poured in a drained can of pineapple tidbits (but I don't recommend this: it did something weird to the butter and looked super nasty. Instead, just pour the brown sugar sauce over the pineapple once they're in the cupcake liners).

I was worried about the brown sugar syrup leaking through paper cupcake liners, so I used foil+paper liners.

Fill the lined cups with the jellybeans first (cut in half), then the pineapple and brown sugar sauce (use a spoon to strategically place the jellybeans and fruit), then a scant scoop of batter:

I tried to make sure the batter touched the sides of the cupcake liner (but with the fluting, I couldn't really get a "seal" to the sides).

Bake as per package instructions:

Very carefully peel the paper off (the jellybeans may stick to the liner, so you might have to rescue them).

The dye from the cherry jellybeans did run a bit, and the effect wasn't so great. Interestingly, the batter pushed the pineapple out to the edges a lot of the time, leaving a pineapple ring:

All in all, they were a little more work for a much more impressive effect than just a cake mix.

What's your favorite kind of cupcake?

Winner of Cupcakes!

The winner of the Cookies and Creme Cupcake package (cupcake recipe, dry ingredients and whipped cream frosting recipe) is Waymom!

Congratulations! Waymom, send your mailing address to waywardgirlscrafts at gmail dot com so I can send you your prize!

There's still time to win the rest of our launch week giveaways:

• A set of 10 charm squares from vintage fabric,

Remember, each entry should be in a separate comment.So if you're following us (thank you!), you still need to leave a comment on the entry so we can enter you in the drawing!

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Cookies and Creme Cupcake Recipe
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
18-24 whole chocolate sandwich cookies
12 crunched chocolate sandwich cookies

Mix together cake mix, sour cream, eggs and vanilla. Place a spoonful of batter on the bottom of each paper liner. Place a whole cookie on the bottom lying flat. Cover with remaining batter until 3/4 full.
Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes. Allow cupcakes to cool on a rack completely.
Add crumbled cookies to frosting.

Recipe from 101 Gourmet Cupcakes in 10 Minutes by Wendy Paul

Cookies and Creme Cupcakes

Welcome to Wayward Girls Crafts!!

I'm Jasmine, the youngest of the Wayward Girls Crafts. I'm a college student far from home. I don't have a ton of time for crafts with classes and homework or room living in a small, shared space. I love fun, easy, and inexpensive ways to decorate in such a small space. Somewhere in my busy schedule I try to find time for creativity, crafts and baking.

I'm giving away the Cookies and Creme cupcake bundle.  They're easy to make and of course delicious!

This giveaway has ended. The winner is announced here.

 

The Cookies and Creme cupcake package will include the dry ingredients and a recipe card. As a bonus, the recipe for the homemade Cookies and Creme whipped cream will be added! The biggest surprise is when you bite into the cookie center. They're super yummy and fun to make with the kids. 

**Next week's post will include the recipe.

• One entry for becoming a follower of our blog, and commenting on this blog post to tell me about it.
• One entry for following us on Twitter, and commenting on this blog post to tell me about it.
• One entry for tweeting this post, and commenting on this blog post to tell me about it (with a link directly to your Tweet).
• One entry for Liking us on Facebook, and commenting on this blog post to tell me about it.
• One entry for blogging about our new blog, and commenting on this blog post to tell me about it (with a link to your post!).
• One entry for telling us your thoughts on our new blog, or asking me a question in a comment on this blog post.

Just so we're clear: each of these should be in their own comments! So if you like us on FB, comment, Follow us on Twitter, you should make 3 separate comments.

The winner will be announced one week from today, and we have more giveaways throughout this week!