Baking suggestions

So yesterday I was wondering, what should I bake this week? Without specific inspiration, sometimes it's hard to come up with something to try. So I asked my online friends for their suggestions. I got quite a few interesting ideas!

Apple Pie
Carrot cake
Cheesecake
Red Velvet
Black Forest
Orange Creamsicle Cake balls
Pecan Pie cupcakes
Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes
Strawberry cupcakes with coconut frosting
Cream cheese brownies
Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
and
Meat Cake

Well, that's a lot of suggestions! My goal is to keep on baking new things, to expand my abilities. Most of those things I've made before, with the exception of banana cream pie cupcakes and the cranberry oatmeal cookies. Yes, I've even made meat cake, and cupcakes. And I'll never do it again, unless I'm paid very well. Meat is a lot more expensive than flour!



After all that, I decided to modify a few of my recipes to create a new one: peanut butter-chocolate chip-bacon cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Yum!

I used my go-to peanut butter cupcake recipe, added the candied maple bacon from the maple bacon cupcake recipe, threw in some chocolate chips, and topped it all off with a new chocolate frosting recipe.

The bacon gets roasted in the oven, with a sprinkling of maple sugar on each side to caramelize it. It's so sweet and crispy and salty! I also used some of the bacon drippings in the batter in place of butter.
The cupcakes turned out great, but the peanut butter kind of overpowers the bacon flavor. Even though there are chunks of bacon in the cupcakes, it's not a strong flavor.



I used a new frosting recipe as well. I'm never satisfied with my chocolate frostings, so I've been trolling the web for a new one. I found this recipe on many food blogs, so I don't feel bad about re-using it. It's pretty much the same as most chocolate buttercream frostings, but it's made in the food processor instead of a stand mixer.

Much quicker, but a bit messier to get it out of the bowl. It also makes a lot of frosting, I had enough left over for at least 3-4 more cupcakes.

All in all, these turned out pretty great. A quick dash of glittery sprinkles on top, and done!


So thanks to everyone for your suggestions, I'll save some of them for another time when I need inspiration.