Baking Through Disney: Pinocchio and Wishing Star Cupcakes!

I finally got my act together and took care of the next Baking Through Disney.  This time, its for Pinocchio! If you  missed the movie review, you can check it out HERE!

I’m going to be honest and say that I went through a few concept ideas for Pinocchio and many of them proved to be more time-consuming and much higher than my rusty baking skills.  Its been busy so time efficiency is a huge consideration in what I had to make.  It might sound a little crazy but the idea dawned upon me when I was aimlessly exploring the baking aisle at the grocery store.  Its not as perfect as I’d like it to be and I’ll talk about what changes would’ve been more along the lines of my ultimate design later on but I ended up making these for a potluck I had over the weekend.

For lack of a better name, they are just Wishing Stars Cupcakes.  You know, from the song in Pinocchio called When You Wish Upon a Star.

Let me present them to you!

Before we get to the recipes, the first batch was for the potluck.  Then the day after, I used up the remaining batch for 6 more cupcakes where I decided that my original concept was to use white and yellow stars to imitate the sky a little more.  Obviously, if the icing was not sky blue but midnight blue, it would have been more suitable but I was a little taking the easy way out while I master making good cupcake icing so I used a store-bought can of it.

Here is the recipe.  The Chocolate Cupcakes are from Butter Baked Goods by Rosie Daykin.

Butter’s Chocolate Cupcakes

Makes 18 cupcakes

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups dark cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup coffee, room temperature
2 tsp pure vanilla

Chocolate Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Onto a large piece of parchment paper, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and both sugars on medium to high speed until light and fluffy.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
4. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl several times.
5. In a liquid measuring cup, whisk together the milk, sour cream, coffee and vanilla to combine.
6. Turn the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the liquid ingredients in two parts (begin and end with the dry).  Scrape down the sides of the bowl several times.
7. Use the ice cream scoop to fill each paper liner about three-quarters full with batter.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until a wooden skew inserted into the center comes out clean.
9. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes then transfer the wire racks to cool completely.

Additional ingredients for icing and decoration:

• Ingredients: Cupcake icing (Sky blue color) & Stars Decor –> both of mine are from Cake Mate brand

Changes to the recipe:

• Cocoa instead of dark cocoa
• Almond milk in place of whole milk
• Omit sour cream and coffee

The taste of the cupcake as a whole turned out really well.  Everyone at the potluck wanted seconds and my worry was that it would be too sweet and it wasn’t.  The chocolate cupcakes were moist and a really nice texture.  It wasn’t sweet so paired up with the icing and the sugar star decors, it gave it a little fluff and crunch to the bite and that was a good choice to use.

Overall, this was a success! Pinocchio was hard to concept and the icing could have been mixed into a darker hue to match the night sky but they still looked pretty cute and the effort was definitely in icing them nicely, which I thought I did a decent job. The chocolate cupcakes recipe is definitely a  winner and one I’m sure to use in the future. I had thought about adding in a center, either blue icing or marshmallow or something to give it the trapped in the whale belly idea added in but I ran out of marshmallows so I had to change that a little. Still, I’m happy with how this turned out.

What do you think about these Wishing Stars Cupcakes? Would you have done it differently? I would love to hear your ideas.

Next up is the review for Fantasia! Expect that soon! 🙂

Glow in the Dark Cupcakes!

Last night I went to the Halloween party and being inspired by a recipe from another blog, I decided to make chocolate cupcakes with glow in the dark frosting.  I had asked my boyfriend’s sister and she went to get the black light to make it all work.  Originally, I had wanted to do a test run of these cupcakes first but ended up doing the Pumpkin Spice Muffins instead, so I brought some of those as well as a backup plan if the others ones weren’t enough or others weren’t interested.  It will also be the first time that I used my frosting piping set that I had bought last month.

This is how they looked like at my place before going to the party:

Later on, I’ll show you what they look like under the light.  First of all, I’m going to show give you the link for the recipe.

The cupcakes are called Devil’s Food Cupcakes found on Sweet Little Thang’s blog: http://sweetlittlethang.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/devils-food-cupcakes/

She also came up the Glow in the Dark Frosting which can be found here: http://sweetlittlethang.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/glow-in-the-dark-frosting/

See them glowing? The top ones are more obvious.

First off, I’d like to say that my cupcakes are lacking a bit of decorative skills. I tried my best though and I guess they look okay.  I will try to practice more.  Now for the changes I made to the cupcakes recipe.  Instead of cocoa powder mixed with hot water, I just melted Semi Sweet Chocolate Chunks.  I also decreased the portion of butter and sugar because that just looked way too fattening.  I used 1 cup butter and 2 cups sugar (not sure about the sugar modification). As for eggs, I used 3 extra large ones.

As for the frosting, I just kept it the way it was and I think it tasted alright.  The only thing was that I ran out of time so when it said to dip 4-6 times, I only had maybe 3 or 4 times.  I’m just glad it glowed so all the hard work wasn’t wasted and plus, the friends that ate the cupcakes seemed to enjoy it.  The only thing is that with the frosting process, the green ones need to be in the freezer for an hour so it was still pretty hard when it got to the party.  Although it sat in the fridge for a bit afterwards and I think it helped a bit.  Still, it seemed to be a hit.

The whole glow in the dark concept of it as it gave a little extra Halloween spirit to the dessert.  Extra because the place was decorated with spider webs and body parts, and everyone that came was dressed up really nice to the theme.  I’ll have another post touching on that soon.  As for anyone that wants to do this, try to schedule in maybe 2-3 hours from making the cupcakes to doing the frosting and making them glow in the dark, if you plan to do it all in one day.  If not, just do the cupcakes first and then the frosting and all the remaining work another day.

So what do you think about it? You think that it would be something interesting to do? Anyone going to give this a shot? Anything special that you usually make for Halloween?