A Calculated Whisk

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You are here: Home / Archives for frosting

Easy Gluten-free Vanilla Cupcakes

March 15, 2017 By Becky 65 Comments

When you need a simple but scrumptious spring dessert, look no further than these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes! Thank you to my friends at Bob’s Red Mill for sponsoring this post. Their gluten free 1-to-1 baking flour makes this recipe a snap!

It’s snowed twice in Chattanooga in the past three days, but I’m channeling spring with the blush tones of these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes. Now that we’ve sprung forward, the warm weather can’t be far behind, right?

Whether or not you’re buried under piles of snow this week, now is a great time to whip up a batch of these babies. They’re easy as can be and made with pantry staples, and are going to be on repeat around here for Easter, Mother’s Day, my birthday (hint HINT), and any old day that needs a sweet ending.
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Easy Gluten-free Vanilla Cupcakes | acalculatedwhisk.com

I use Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour from Bob’s Red Mill for these cupcakes. Bob’s Red Mill’s flours have always been my go-to. I usually bake with a mix of their super finely ground almond flour and tapioca flour, but this flour blend has won me over recently because it’s so convenient. You only need to measure one kind of flour, and it works as a cup-for-cup replacement for wheat flour in all sorts of recipes.

Bob’s has also recently come out with a paleo flour blend that I can’t wait to try in this recipe. And if you don’t follow a gluten-free diet, you can just use their regular flour here!

For these easy gluten-free vanilla cupcakes, I took an old family recipe for “little one-egg cakes” and made just a couple of substitutions: Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour instead of regular flour and butter instead of shortening. Boom! Easy and delicious vanilla cupcakes. No one will know that these are gluten free!

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, recipe Tagged With: baking, buttercream, cupcakes, Easter, frosting, sponsored, spring, vanilla

Grain-free Chocolate Cake with Mocha Buttercream

October 28, 2016 By Becky 8 Comments

This post contains affiliate links.  As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

This grain-free chocolate cake with mocha buttercream is super decadent and perfect for the coffee-drinking chocolate lover in your life.

It’s Friday, and I brought cake! Grain-free chocolate cake with mocha buttercream, to be exact. It’s my favorite paleo chocolate cake base (from the Black Forest Cake recipe in Paleo Planet) with a classic, very non-paleo mocha buttercream frosting. The cake layers are rich and tender, and the mocha buttercream hits you mainly with chocolate, but has just enough of a coffee kick sneaking up from behind to keep things interesting. The chocolate-covered coffee beans on top provide a welcome crunch and yet another layer of chocolate and coffee flavor.

Grain-free Chocolate Cake with Mocha Buttercream

I made this cake a couple of weekends ago for my future mother-in-law’s birthday. She grew up in Brazil, which grows a huge portion of the world’s coffee and cacao, and is a big fan of both. This cake was a hit with her and with the rest of the family. It’s so rich that we got a full 20 slices out of it.

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, recipe Tagged With: cake, chocolate, frosting, grain free, mocha

Carrot Cake Pancakes with Maple Whipped Cream Cheese

February 18, 2015 By Becky 6 Comments

Paleo Carrot Cake Pancakes with Maple Whipped Cream Cheese | acalculatedwhisk.com

When I was a kid, my parents once let me put frosting on pancakes. I think it was a special occasion, with frosting left over from someone’s birthday cake, and it was definitely a one-time thing. But after that breakfast, I was ruined. Nothing else could ever compare.

Paleo Carrot Cake Pancakes with Maple Whipped Cream Cheese | acalculatedwhisk.com

In case you haven’t had the pleasure, let me just tell you right now: pancakes with frosting are the epitome of the good life, the breakfast of hedonists, the ultimate “treat yo’self” meal (Parks & Rec style).

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Filed Under: breakfast, gluten free, paleo, recipe, uncategorized, vegetarian Tagged With: carrot cake, carrots, cream cheese, frosting, grain free, maple syrup, pancakes

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting {Secret Recipe Club}

March 31, 2014 By Becky 45 Comments

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting (Gluten-free, Grain-free) | acalculatedwhisk.com
Sometimes you just need a cupcake.  Or a few cupcakes.  I feel that I need cupcakes often, but it’s rare that I actually need a dozen, full-size cupcakes.  Unless I have a party to take them to, making a whole batch of cupcakes can often end in disaster, with me deciding that a cupcake with coffee is a great breakfast, a cupcake with a side of fruit is a perfect lunch, and dinner is best concluded by eating another two cupcakes, and so on for the next few days.
That’s why I love small-batch baking.
This delicious recipe for a small batch of easy vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting comes from Asiya at Chocolate and Chillies.  I was assigned her blog for my first month participating in the Secret Recipe Club, and had so much fun perusing her recipe index and deciding what to cook (if you haven’t heard of the SRC, it’s basically a club where each month you’re assigned a blog to cook from, and someone else is assigned your blog, and it’s a fun surprise on the reveal day to see who had your blog and what they decided to make).

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Filed Under: dessert, gluten free, recipe, uncategorized Tagged With: baking, chocolate, chocolate frosting, cupcakes, frosting, grain free, secret recipe club, small batch, vanilla, vanilla cupcakes

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Brownies

February 12, 2014 By Becky 8 Comments

The large amount of frosting on these brownies represents the large amount of love I have for you!  It constantly makes my day that people actually read my blog, and I’m even more thrilled when I get a comment or get to connect with you on FB, Twitter, or IG.  You are the best, and that is why I made you the best brownies.
I’ve been wanting to make frosted brownies for a while now.  They just seem fabulously over the top–because once you’ve baked a rich and fudgy brownie, you totally need a big pile of buttercream on top, right?  (Hint: the answer is yes!)

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Filed Under: gluten free, recipe, vegetarian Tagged With: baking, brownies, buttercream, chocolate, frosting, grain free, Valentine's Day, vanilla, vanilla bean

Spiced Honey & Corn Cupcakes with Coconut Buttercream (Gluten free, Paleo)

September 7, 2013 By Becky 4 Comments

I wanted to make a fabulous end-of-summer, beginning-of-fall cupcake, and here it is!  These have corn kernels baked right in, and a batter laced with fall spices.  The frosting is my favorite part: butter and coconut cream are delicious together, with a little honey and maple sugar for sweetness.  I tested the frosting with and without butter, and it’s great both ways.
Some people don’t include corn in their paleo diet, so feel free to leave it out.  If you wanted to substitute something else, I bet these would also be delicious with little chunks of apple instead.  Let me know if you try it!
Oh, and do you love these parchment cupcake cups as much as I do?  I got the idea from this post on Alexandra’s Kitchen.  They take a few minutes to make, but I love their rustic look.  The BEST part is that NONE of the cake crumbs stick to the paper!  And, the cup unfolds into a nice little placemat to put your cupcake on between bites.  You can also use parchment to line a loaf pan if you are making banana bread or something like that, and you don’t even need to grease it.

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Filed Under: gluten free, paleo, recipe Tagged With: baking, cinnamon, coconut milk, corn, cupcakes, dairy free, frosting, honey

Salted Caramel Cupcakes

June 21, 2013 By Becky 16 Comments

 

Okay, this is it!  My best cupcake ever.  If you haven’t jumped onto the salted caramel train yet, now is the time.  These are light and delicious vanilla cupcakes (my new favorite white cake recipe) filled with salted caramel sauce, topped with salted caramel buttercream, and sprinkled with a little more sea salt to finish.  They’re amazing!  I recommend that you make them right now.  If you prefer, you can use chocolate cupcakes as the base–I tried that, too, and it’s also amazing.

 

To make these, you’ll need to some salted caramel sauce.  You might want to make a double recipe so you can stash some in the fridge or drizzle it over ice cream.  If you make a single recipe, it should be just enough to fill the cupcakes and make the frosting.

You’ll also need cake flour.  I know, I also wish all-purpose flour could really be used for all purposes, but this time you’re going to need the cake flour.  It makes the cupcakes really light and gives them a nice fine crumb.  If you don’t have any cake flour but you do have cornstarch, use this post from Joy the Baker and turn some of your regular flour into cake flour.

I made these for an event we had at my Quaker meeting last night.  Every Wednesday in the summer, my meeting hosts a Wellesley Wednesday cookout, where everyone brings something to share and then someone presents on an interesting topic.  Well, yesterday, the interesting topic was THIS BLOG!  I had so much fun telling everyone all about A Calculated Whisk and how it all works–some of them did not even know what a blog was!

After the discussion, we made frosting together!  I showed everyone how to stuff a cupcake with salted caramel, and how to use sugar, butter, a little milk and salt, and flavorings to make a delicious small batch of buttercream.  I brought all kinds of fun things for people to flavor their frosting: grenadine, vanilla, vanilla beans, cinnamon, cocoa, almond extract, peppermint extract, salted caramel, and lime and lemon zest.  We had a blast!

Salted Caramel Cupcakes Recipe
Yield: 20 cupcakes
Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients for the cupcakes (adapted from this recipe at Cookies & Cups):

1 3/4 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter (2 sticks), at room temperature, cut into chunks
4 eggs
1 cup milk (I used 2%)
2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup salted caramel sauce, for filling

Ingredients for the frosting:

1 cup salted caramel sauce
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

To make the cupcakes, preheat the oven to 350 and line your muffin tins with paper liners.

In a large bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Use a mixer to beat the mixture on low speed for about a minute to make everything light and fluffy.

With the mixer still on low, add the butter a couple of pieces at a time.  Mix until it looks like coarse sand.  Slowly pour in the milk and vanilla and mix until combined.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing all the while and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula as needed.  Raise the mixer speed to medium and beat for about two minutes until the batter is really smooth.

Fill your cupcake liners about 2/3 full.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cupcakes are puffed and set, but not browned, and a toothpick comes out clean.  Remove to a rack to cool.  Make sure the cupcakes are completely cool before you fill or frost them.

To fill the cupcakes, use a small paring knife to cut a small cone-shaped piece out of the top of the cupcake, making sure you don’t cut too close to the bottom of the cupcake.  Spoon salted caramel in to fill the cone.

To make the frosting, mix all ingredients by hand or with a mixer until smooth.  Spread or pipe onto cooled, filled cupcakes.

If desired, drizzle some salted caramel and sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on top of the frosted cupcakes.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Filed Under: recipe Tagged With: baking, buttercream, caramel, chocolate cupcakes, cupcakes, frosting, salted caramel, vanilla cupcakes

A Cupcake Party and Simple Chocolate Buttercream

May 20, 2013 By Becky Leave a Comment

We had a decorate-your-own cupcake party last night!  I got the idea from this post on A Beautiful Mess.  People had so much fun choosing a cupcake flavor and heaping on toppings inside the ring of frosting.  Carrot cupcakes were the most popular, and I saw lots of people spooning on strawberry curd.  It wasn’t too bad waking up to leftovers this morning, either.  I am a big fan of cake for breakfast.  Maybe the decorate-your-own cupcake station can become a permanent feature around here?
In case you want to throw your own cupcake party, here are the recipes I used:
  • Carrot Cupcakes with Vanilla Bean Neufchatel Frosting
  • Double Chocolate Vegan Cupcakes
  • Vanilla Bean Cupcakes from Annie’s Eats
  • Strawberry Curd
  • Salted Caramel Sauce
For the chocolate cupcakes, I was too lazy to make the Swiss meringue buttercream that’s in the post for the Double Chocolate Vegan Cupcakes, so I made a simple chocolate buttercream.  Here’s the recipe in case you want to make it!


Ingredients (makes enough for 12 cupcakes): 

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted
Pinch of salt 

Combine all ingredients and beat on high speed until smooth.

I also put out these toppings:
  • Shredded coconut
  • Chopped pecans
  • Chopped strawberries with a little sugar
  • Sprinkles
  • Mini m & ms
There are so many other things that would be great on cupcakes!  What are your favorite cupcake flavors, frostings, and toppings?

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Filed Under: recipe Tagged With: baking, buttercream, chocolate, cupcakes, entertaining, five ingredients or less, frosting, party

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