Happy Birthday Food Nasty: cupcakes!

We have officially had a year since our first post! So this is Food Nasty’s 1^st Birthday!

 A lot has happened this year, many great and fun things, and we are happy that you have been a part of it! We hope to grow even more and share many more things with you in our second year!

So enjoy these birthday cupcakes we have made for you after you get a look at some of Food Nasty's best recipes of our first year!

 Happy Birthday Food Nasty!

Going clockwise and starting top left:

1. Low Calorie Breakfast Sandwich

2. Rainy Day Chipotle, Chorizo, and Beef Chili!

3. Heat Wave Popsicles

4. Cinnamon Crumble Apple Muffin

5. Detox Slaw

6. Meyer Lemon Cake with Coconut Frosting

Cinnamon Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream

Ingredients: makes 12
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt                                      
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup raspberry jam (seedless)
1/2 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your cupcake tray with cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl mix together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a small bowl place vanilla extract in milk.

In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar. Beat adding one egg at a time. Add half of the dry mix, and beat, then add milk, then finishing off with the rest of the dry mix. Do not over beat.

Using an ice cream scooper if you have one, and fill your cupcake liners 2/3 of the way up. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.

Pull out and cool until they are cooled all the way through before you put frosting on.

To make frosting mix half the cream cheese and half the butter together with all of the sugar. Beat until mixed completely, add jam. Add the remainder of cream cheese and butter slowly as to not make runny frosting.

Set in fridge and cool for 20 minutes to let set.

If you don't have an actual piping bag, place frosting in sandwich bag, and cut tip off and pipe!

Enjoy these delicious food nasty birthday cupcakes!!!

Happy Halloween

On the final night of Halloween Michael and I have made for you a devilishly delicious spiced black velvet cake oozing with a red strawberry cream cheese frosting. Make this if you dare, for you are doomed to eat the whole thing at once!!!

Ingredients:

Cake:
Vegetable oil for the pans
2 oz Black food coloring
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon fine salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 oz black gel food coloring
1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting:
1 oz red food coloring
1 cup macerated strawberries
4 cups powdered sugar
1 cup butter
8 oz cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract

To start make your cream cheese frosting, because you want it to harden a bit in the refrigerator. We made two frostings, one to hold the cake together, and the other to create the eerie drips. In a large bowl whip together 2 cups of powdered sugar, ½ a cup of room temperature butter, 8 oz of cream cheese, 1 oz red food coloring, and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Now macerate your strawberries and add them to the frosting, this will make it soupy, and this will be the frosting you use to make the drips.

In another bowl, beat the rest of your butter and powdered sugar together, adding about a cup of the soupy frosting mix, to make a thick frosting you can use to hold the layers of cake together. Refrigerate and use after you bake the cakes.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, spice, and cocoa powder. In another large bowl, whisk together the oil, buttermilk, eggs, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla.

Using a hand mixer, mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined and a smooth batter is formed.

Divide the cake batter evenly among the prepared cake pans. Place the pans in the oven evenly spaced apart. Bake, rotating the pans halfway through the cooking, until the cake pulls away from the side of the pans, and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Remove the cakes from the oven and run a knife around the edges to loosen them from the sides of the pans. One at a time, invert the cakes onto a plate and then re-invert them onto a cooling rack, rounded-sides up. Let cool completely, if you don’t, even your stiff frosting will be runny.

To assemble the cake, us the cake layers as is, cake layers are rounded and usually you cut them to perfection, but we left them as is to create this morbid beast of a looking cake. So place the first layer on your plate or cake stand, cover the first cake layer with the stiff frosting, then dollop a large spoonful of soupy frosting and spread around letting some drip down the sides. Place the second cake layer on top, smooshing it down a bit to stay, and repeat. Once you have the final layer, really lay on top that soupy frosting to get that gory effect. This cake without fail will be the spookiest thing in the room with the harsh black cake up against the oozing red frosting!

Happy Halloween!!!

Graveyard Cupcakes

If you are going to bake a bunch of cupcakes and bring them to a party, they may as well be a graveyard of cupcakes. Not every single one needs to say RIP, be creative and make a gravestone for each person at the party. Freak them out with a little personalized grave!

What Mikey and I did for these cupcakes is make a spiced pumpkin cake, topped with a cream cheese frosting, and a gravestone made of gum paste.  So get creative, celebrate the 7^th day and the week until Halloween and spook your friends with their future grave site!

*Gum paste can be made from a mix or you can buy it premade at most cake shops or even Michael’s. The gum paste takes a while to dry so make the headstones a day in advance.

Ingredients:
premade gum paste
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
2 cups confectioner sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
 4 1/2 cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising), plus more for pan
 2 tablespoons baking powder
 3/4 teaspoon salt
 1 1/2 cups milk
 1 1/2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
 1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
 7 large egg whites
2/3 cup pumpkin puree
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp allspice
2 tsp clove
2 tbspoons spiced rum

First things first roll out the gum paste and cut into the shape of a gravestone and let dry overnight. Once they dry, use black food coloring and a paint RIP or your friend’s names on.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line your cupcake trays with cupcake holders. We used brown cupcake liners to signify the dirt under the grass.

Get four bowls together, this is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle but you will see why. In one bowl sift together
flour, baking powder, and salt. In a second bowl combine milk, vanilla, and pumpkin puree, and set aside. In a third bowl beat butter with an electric mixer until the butter is pale and creamy. In a steady stream add continue beating until light and fluffy.

Reducing speed to low, add the flour mixture to the sugar mix in three batches, alternating between the milk mixture and flour, starting and ending with the flour mix.

In the fourth mixing bowl, beat all the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold one-third of the whites into the batter just until combined, fold in the remainder in two batches.

Pour the batter into the cupcakes holders so that they are about a ¼ of an inch to the top, and bake for 20 minutes. Make sure they are done by inserting a point and making sure it comes out clean.

When they are done remove from oven, and cool on a wire rack, and once cooled decorate by piping green frosting using our previous cream cheese frosting recipe, to create grass, and then place your gravestones on top! Build your graveyard! BOO!