Coffee Cupcakes With Orange Chocolate Ganache Filling and Baileys Buttercream

I'd heard of the Cupcake Hero competition here and there but hadn't ever properly looked into how to enter. There was some confusion for me because the host changes each month to the previous month's winner, so I had a hard time figuring out where to join. This month, however, I've tracked the competition to The Insomniac Baker so I'm on board and ready and rarin' to go! Fitting because the theme this time around is caffeine.

While I'm usually not the type to get hopped up on the stuff I do relish the challenge of incorporating something new into a cupcake. I've already come up with the best tea cupcake I can imagine, so it was time to broaden my horizons and try something different. I'm not a coffee drinker but I do like coffee-flavored sweets (ok, I like sweets of any flavor) so why not try a coffee cupcake? This is a first for me because my husband doesn't like coffee, so I'll be on my own eating this one. Oh, the sacrifices I make for my art.

I only own two bottles of liquor: cheap vodka I use for vodka cream sauce and a small bottle of Baileys I bought on a whim. The latter perfect for my current baking experiment. After all, what goes together better than coffee and a splash of Baileys? Decided on coffee cake and Baileys frosting, I had to brainstorm to find just the right filling. Did some research into various cocktails made with Baileys and fell for the idea of incorporating orange into the mix. In the form of orange chocolate ganache, naturally. Bam! Sometimes the cupcake creation process really is that simple.

The end result is a coffee-flavored cake with a sweet and subtle Baileys buttercream offset by the slightly bitter but oh so rich chocolate ganache filling with a hint of orange. Just like a tasty cup of gourmet coffee. And just like your coffee no one would ever suspect that it's laced with booze.

Coffee Cupcakes
Adapted from 6 Bittersweets

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons instant coffee powder

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a standard muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
2) Heat the milk gently on the stove or in the microwave, then add the instant coffee powder, stirring to make sure that it's completely dissolved. Set aside.
3) In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
4) In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and yolk and mix until combined into the batter. Then add the vanilla and mix again.
5) Alternately beat in dry ingredients and milk mixture, making three additions of dry ingredients and two of milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Beat just until combined.
6) Fill cupcake liners until they are about 2/3 full. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in pan on rack for ten minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Orange Chocolate Ganache Filling

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup heavy cream
Peel from 1/2 large orange, torn into pieces
1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature

1) Place chocolate in a bowl and set aside.
2) Heat cream and orange peel in a saucepan over medium heat until it just boils. Strain out orange peel and pour cream over chocolate. Let sit for one minute then stir until smooth.
3) Add butter and stir until smooth.
6) Using the cone method, cut a cone out of each cupcake and fill the cavity with ganache. Replace top.

Baileys Buttercream

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons Baileys Irish Cream

1) In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for 45-60 seconds.
2) Add 2 1/4 cups powdered sugar and beat until mixture comes together.
3) Add Baileys and beat an additional 45 seconds. Add additional powdered sugar if necessary.
4) Pipe onto cupcakes and enjoy!

A Photo A Day [Day 9]

Day 9

RIP Banana Boat. Once the home of funnel cake sundaes and other artery-clogging frozen confections, conveniently located just a few blocks from my house. You were here for but a brief moment and then gone the next! Good thing there are a million other ice cream joints in the vicinity. Not to mention three pints of Ben & Jerry's stashed in the freezer. Shh, don't tell my husband that.

This week's theme: "Around town"

A Photo A Day [Day 8]

Scenes from the mean streets of New Jersey:

Let's play spot the superfluous apostrophe

If at first you don't succeed

I'm pretty sure that's not how you spell that word

Time for a new theme for the Photo A Day project. This week it's "around town." While I could easily do an entire week's worth of posts where I take the piss out of NJ (see above) I'm instead going to focus on some of the more ordinary sights from my day-to-day life. A friend pointed out that she hasn't seen pictures of me in my element so this is your chance to see the world as I see it every day.

Today we drove to a local vantage point to watch the sunset over the Delaware River with the Philadelphia skyline in the background. I couldn't limit myself to just one photo so consider all of these my entries for today.

Day 8

Reversible Halloween Tote

Two bags for the price of one! One of my favorites parts of sewing is choosing which fabrics I'll use for a project, making sure the combination is interesting and pleasing to the eye. For this bag I got to use a sparkly skull fabric that would be terribly menacing were it not for the liberal use of glitter. While I personally prefer to keep my weirdness on the inside, I feel bad relegating some of my kookiest and spookiest fabrics to the inside lining of my bags. With this bag I can pretend to be nice and normal by flipping the bag one way and show off my skull-loving side simply by reversing it.


I've been looking for a good pattern to showcase some of my fabrics that have large prints. This one's just a few pieces sewn together into a wonderfully large tote that can accommodate all of the goodies I carry around. I got creative and made a lot of adjustments to One Yard Wonder's "Collapsible Shopping Tote." Basically I lopped a few inches off of the bottom, rounded out the corners, interfaced the entire thing, added a second layer, and sewed a ribbon tie closure to the top center. I'm really happy with the result, which is a big but not unwieldy bag. The measurements of the finished bag are 16" wide across the bottom and 18.5" from the top of the handles to the bottom of the bag.

To show off a little of my weird side, I appliqued a small skull panel on the "normal" side of the bag. Gotta have a dash of that Sourkraut flair in there even if I'm trying to be subtle about it.


Two Halloween bags down, one to go. I'm hoping to finish the last one up this week. Love this time of year!