King cupcakes

The other day, my friend asked me to make cupcakes for her company, King.  I've made King cupcakes before, but those were of the Mardi Gras variety. These are different. These are for the company's IPO! We all know King for its games, most famously, Candy Crush Saga. It's super fun and addicting. I've been thinking about making Candy Crush cupcakes, so this is a good introduction for me.

I made one dozen vanilla gluten free cupcakes, topped with yellow frosting, orange sprinkles, and the King logo. I thought they turned out quite well! And everyone at the company loved them.

To make the logos, I used yellow candy melts to pipe the design. I first printed out a scaled version of the logo, then placed it under a sheet of wax paper so I could trace it. Worked like a charm, once I got the candy melts to the proper consistency. While it was still wet, I sprinkled orange sanding sugar on top, since the company's colors are orange and yellow. Then I let them dry, and placed them on top of each cupcake.

To make the cupcakes gluten free, I used Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour. I found it at Whole Foods! It was super easy, and really is a cup for cup substitute. The consistency of the batter is a little different, but the end result is still light and fluffy.

This was a fun challenge and I got to practice my piping skills. Maybe now I'll be inspired to tackle a more complex cupcake. Or maybe I'll just go back to playing Candy Crush.

Pumpkin Cake Pops!

The last of my Halloween treats were pumpkin cake pops. They look and taste like pumpkin. I made these Saturday while watching Back to the Future :)

I followed directions from the Cake Pops book by Bakerella. She uses green tic tacs for the stems, but I couldn't find green, so I used orange. Every time I make cake pops they turn out better than the last time, so that's encouraging.


I made the balls with pumpkin cake and cream cheese frosting. Before I started I made sure that the baking sheet I had fit into the freezer and fridge, a mistake I've made before.


I melted the orange candy gradually according to the directions, and it was quite smooth, not like the chocolate I've used in the past. I'm still not satisfied with the bowls I have for dipping, maybe I need to search more for the perfect one. The pop has to be dipped in and out straight up and down, and that's my biggest challenge.

Anyways, dipped the pops, added the tic tacs for stems, and let them dry. They were already super cute!
Then, I used a food color marker to draw on faces for the jack o lanterns. Or at least, I tried to. I don't know what it was, but the marker wasn't working properly. I could get maybe one or two lines out of it before it died. I tried cleaning it on a paper towel, as suggested, but that didn't really help. I gave up after 4 or 5 pops, it was too time consuming and frustrating. Maybe the pops were too cold, but I left them at room temp for a while to see if it made any difference, and none at all. Oh well!
I still wrapped up the plain pumpkin pops in fun Halloween treat bags. Gotta love the dollar section at Target! :)
According to my taste tester, these were "mmmmmmm". I love how it looks with a bite missing. Yum!
This project was certainly more successful than the last, and hopefully the next one will be even better!

Martha Cupcake Challenge #21- Triple Citrus Cupcakes

Next on the list is Martha's triple citrus cupcakes. She made these on her show when the book came out originally, and I'm finally getting to them. I had oranges already, so I just needed to pick up a few lemons and limes.
First, I zested 3 lemons, 3 limes, and 2 oranges. Also juiced them. Limes have a lot of zest! My kitchen smelled fantastic, as well as my hands.
This recipe made 36 cupcakes, and used 4 sticks of butter! It could be halved easily, since that's a lot of cupcakes. I added about 1/8 tsp of baking powder, since there was no leavening agent included in the recipe.
They came out great! Some were a bit lopsided, but that's probably because the batter wasn't even in the cups to start with. I love how you can see the flecks of zests in each cupcake.
The recipe then adds a citrus glaze on top, which you can use any of the three citruses for. I chose to use a combination of orange and lime. The glaze was thick, so I spooned it on top of each cupcake, and it kinda ran over the top to mostly cover it. It's pretty strong and sweet, so a little bit is enough.

Chocolate and Orange

One of my favorite flavor combinations is chocolate and orange. Remember those orange-shaped chocolates that you can get around the Holidays? You whack it and the chocolate slices come apart? I always looked forward to that each Christmas. So I decided tot urn that into a cupcake! I made a few varieties to see what tasted the best: chocolate, vanilla, chocolate-orange, and vanilla-orange. Then I mixed and matched the frostings so each flavor of cake had a different flavor of frosting. The vanilla orange tastes a bit like a creamsicle :) And the way they smelled when coming out of the oven was just heavenly.
So, the ones with the orange sprinkles on them are the orange flavored frostings. The flavor is super intense, since I used orange juice, orange zest, and orange extract. I personally prefer the double chocolate orange combo.