Mojito Cupcakes

With all the warm(er) weather that we’ve suddenly been blessed with, I’ve found myself fantasizing about summer lately…sangria, gardening, barbeques – I even went out and bought some flowery short-sleeved dresses today.

What else reminds me of summer? Mojitos. Mind you, I am guilty of drinking them year-round…but they’re just so much better on a hot summer day.

I’ve wanted to make mojito cupcakes for awhile now. I’ve seen recipes floating around the internet and with a friend’s housewarming party over the weekend, I thought it was a perfect time to try them out and use my friends as my favorite food-loving guinea pigs.

These cupcakes are unique and delicious. Plus they have booze in them. So I suggest you go make some the next time you are, like me, having pre-summer mojito cravings.

Mojito Cupcakes
(Adapted from Alpine Berry’s recipe)

Ingredients:

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1¼ tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup mint leaves, loosely packed
3/4 cup whole milk, hot
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
grated zest of 2 limes + the juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp white rum

Directions:

Preheat to 350F.

Add mint leaves to the hot milk, and let steep for 10-15 minutes. When steeped, pour milk through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl and press liquid from mint leaves. Discard leaves and allow milk to cool slightly.


Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat butter on medium speed until creamy, about 30 seconds. Add sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy, 3-5 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl occasionally.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in lime zest, juice, vanilla and rum.

On very low speed, add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with milk and ending with flour, mixing until just incorporated.


Fill paper-lined muffin cups half full. Bake until cupcakes spring back when touched, 18-22 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and cool completely.


I iced these with a mojito buttercream recipe I found here, though I ended up adapting it so much to my tastes that it really didn’t resemble that recipe at all by the end and I don’t really have a set recipe for it. However, I basically just added more mint and lime until it finally tasted like a mojito to me – so use that recipe as a guideline.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream

I used to hate chocolate cupcakes. Scratch that – I used to hate making chocolate cupcakes. I had mastered a pretty amazing vanilla cupcake, but I struggled to find a good chocolate cupcake recipe. They would always come out dry or not chocolatey enough and needless to say, I always ended up frustrated.

Then I found Martha. She has this “One Bowl Chocolate Cupcake” recipe and it’s pretty much perfect. It’s so simple, as you really only use one bowl, and the cupcakes turn out moist and just chocolatey enough. They aren’t too dense and fudgy so they take well to a heavy chocolate or peanut butter icing.

A good friend of my brother and I, a lovely girl named Kayla (who also has her own blog here), had a birthday this weekend. Unfortunately, since she lives in an apartment, she couldn’t have a big party so we volunteered our house to have the party for her. Naturally, I made cupcakes. She told me she wanted chocolate and since I knew she was also a big fan of coffee, I topped them with a mocha buttercream.

Unfortunately, the reviews were mixed, as about half the people at the party didn’t like coffee (crazy people...). But I still think these are amazing. They’re not too sweet so it’s a nice change.

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
(Taken from my Martha Stewart Cupcakes book)

Ingredients:

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1½ cups flour
1½ cups sugar
1½ teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners; set aside.

Sift together cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Add eggs (I actually cheat and lightly beat these first in a separate bowl), warm water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla, and mix until smooth (about 3 minutes). Scrape down the sides and bottom of bowl to assure batter is well mixed.

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full. Bake until tops spring back when touched, about 20 minutes, rotating pan once if needed. Transfer to a wire rack; let cool completely.

Mocha Buttercream

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 tsp instant espresso
3 tsp hot water
icing sugar
cocoa powder

Directions:

Unfortunately, I suck at using recipes for icing…I kind of just make it up as I go. But basically, first mix your hot water with espresso powder. Then, beat the butter, melted chocolate and espresso mixture together. Now you can add as much icing sugar as you need and beat it in until the buttercream is at the consistency you want. I also added a little bit of cocoa powder to give it some more chocolate flavor.

Mocha Marble Birthday Cupcakes!

Out of everything I bake, I’m probably most known (by my friends and family, at least) for my cupcakes. I bake them a lot. I’m actually shocked that this is the first cupcake recipe I have on the blog. I’ve been seriously slacking in the cupcake department and for that, I apologize.

It was my best friend Krystyn’s birthday this weekend. Naturally, I offered to make cupcakes and when I asked her what kind she wanted, she replied with, “Vanilla!!! Or espresso ;)” (that is a direct quote).

I pondered the possibilities for a bit and finally decided on marble cupcakes, to have the best of both the vanilla and espresso worlds. I topped them off with a vanilla buttercream as she’s also a huge sucker for anything “vanilla or buttercreamy goodness” (also a direct quote). Don’t you just love her already?

Clearly, we are friends for a reason.

Anyways, I sifted through my stack of cupcake cookbooks and decided to make a variation of the marble cupcakes in Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes book. And they turned out beautifully.

P.S. If you’re in the market for a cupcake book, I definitely suggest investing in Martha’s. It’s my fav. And Krystyn is actually the one who purchased it for me for MY birthday last year. See? Meant to be best friends.

P.P.S. Cupcakes Galore by Gail Wagman is also an amazing book. Second favourite, for sure.

Mocha Marble Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream
(Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Marble Cupcake recipe)

Ingredients:

Cupcakes

1¾ cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk, room temperature
1/3 cup heavy cream, room temperature
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1/4 cup boiling water

Icing

1 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2½ cups icing sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners (I used brown ones with white polka dots).

Stir together cake flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl. Combine milk and cream in another bowl.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and granulated sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk mixture, and beating until combined.

To make the chocolate espresso batter, measure out 1 cup batter, and transfer to another bowl. Combine cocoa, espresso and the boiling water in a bowl. Stir into reserved 1 cup batter.

Fill prepared cups with alternating spoonfuls of vanilla and chocolate batter, filling each three-quarters full. Run the tip of a paring knife or wooden skewer through batter in a figure-eight motion to make swirls. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until tops are golden and a cake tester (or a toothpick) inserted in centers comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.

To make the buttercream, mix the butter and the vanilla together and then slowly beat in the icing sugar. You can use food colouring to make it any colour you’d like; I left it white to go with the color scheme of the papers and the cake, but reserved a bit at the end and made it purple to write Happy Birthday on a bunch of them.

Makes 18-20 cupcakes.

Happy Birthday, lovely <3