Last night, peanutbutter♥ showed me my birthday-slash-christmas present. My birthday was last December and as you all know Christmas is, too. You might have an urge to check out the date of this post but nope, this is not an old post.
My birthday-slash-christmas present will be arriving with him when he comes home in March. It’s actually a new camera and I’m so thrilled to the bone about the new features I could tinker and play with.
I love you peanutbutter♥…
The best presents I get always comes from you…
One of the many reasons why I’m excited in getting a new camera is because I know it will help improve my food photos. I know some of you are thinking that a beautiful photo does not depend on the camera but on the person taking the photo but really, I think it depends on both.
Or maybe, I’m just saying that because I have a phased out camera..hee.
Aaaallriiight. Enough about it, let’s talk about cupcakes. These are the cupcakes I made for our New Year’s Eve Camping Party. That party where one of my nephews wore one of those colombia jackets in the middle of a hot afternoon and I had to ask him to take it off.
This is made up of chocolate cupcakes, gummy candies and tootsie rolls. It’s really very easy to do once you’ve made the cupcakes.
For the hotdogs, though, I had a hard time looking for Mike and Ikes during the pre-holiday grocery shopping so I had to use the gummy ketchup from those gummy hotdogs sandwiches.
I hope this recipe would make it to one of your parties.
This is how I made the gummi barbecue skewers…
- ♥ for the cupcakes:
- 3 oz. semi sweet chocolate chips
- 1 ½ cups hot brewed coffee {if you absolutely cannot have coffee, substitute hot water}
- 3 cups sugar
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 ¼ tsp salt
- 3 large eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1½ cups well-shaken full fat buttermilk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- gummy candy of different colors and tooth pick for the barbecue
- mike and ike or gummy hotdog for the hotdogs
- tootsie roll for the steak
- royal icing and black food color
- Preheat the oven to 300ºF.
- Add chocolate chips to the hot coffee to let it melt.
- Meanwhile, Into a large bowl whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- In another large bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat eggs until thickened slightly, and lemon colored, about 3 minutes in a stand mixer, or 5 minutes with a hand mixer. Stir the chocolate mixture until all the chocolate is melted and combined.
- Slowly add the oil, vanilla, buttermilk and chocolate mixture, beating until combined well.
- Add a quarter of the dry mixture then blend until incorporated, then add another ¼ and combine, and repeat until all of the dry ingredients are just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and blend again just until that is all incorporated.
- Mixture will be like a thick liquid. Prepare cupcake tins with liners.
- Pour batter into cupcake liners filling about half to ⅔rds of the way full. Don’t overfill. These rise quite a bit. Bake for about 28-32 minutes.
- If the center still looks caved in, or wet in the middle, they are not done. The top should look slightly rounded. They are done when they pass a toothpick test. But don’t test them until they look rounded. If you do, they could cave in or fall and never rise again.
- Don’t open the oven till they have been in for 28 minutes or so, or until they look done. Keep in mind the oven temperature is lower than in most recipes, so they take longer. This is especially true when using the higher amount of oil. Also when you prepare the batter, use it right away.
- Cool on wire racks.
- For the grill, I used the instant royal icing mix. I mixed just ¼ cup of royal icing mix with a tsp of water and a few drops of black food color so it would turn gray. I piped it in like a grill and let it dry.
- While drying, I cut up my gummies using a scissors and skewered it in a toothpick. I molded my tootsie roll to resemble a steak. For the grill marks in the steak and hotdog, I also used the black food color. I just dipped a toothpick in it and drew small lines.
- When “the grill” is already dry, I assembled the barbecue, steak and hotdog on top of the cupcakes.
