Semi-Homemade Cupcakes

When you want a homemade dessert for your family or friends, semi homemade cupcakes are just the perfect choice. Learn about semi homemade cupcakes with help from a two-time winner of Food Network's Cupcake Wars in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Arleen from Sweet Arleen's here in West Side Village, California. And today I have with me my executive pastry chef, Julia. Hi. When you are running short on time but you really want a homemade dessert for your family or friends semi homemade cupcakes are just the perfect choice. Don't you think Julia? Absolutely and it's a great way to capture homemade but not all the steps. Okay so we're going to show you one recipe that we've chosen which is a coconut lemon cupcake. And it starts with a just a box of any brand classic yellow cake mix. We are also going to use pudding and pie filling, in this case it's lemon to get the lemon flavor. And that's just the powder not prepared. Great. Thank you. And we're going to also add a little lemon dye to that, a little food coloring to it just to give it a little bit more of a lemon color. So this recipe is extremely easy. We are going to mix all of our cake ingredients together. We would typically start with a classic yellow cake mix. We would add the additional pudding and pie mix. That is again a instant pudding and pie mix using lemon. We would add our oil, our vegetable oil, our coconut milk to give it that coconut flavor, three eggs in this case. And again a little bit of lemon dye to that, food coloring to that if you choose. Once that's all mixed you are going to bake it, normal cupcakes typically take about 20-22 minutes in a 350 degree oven. And your lemon coconut semi homemade cupcakes are going to look like this. Yeah. So they are beautiful. Now in this recipe we've also chosen to use a little addition to some store bought icing. And in this case Julia I picked up the whipped cream icing. I thought it would be a nice balance. And we can add a little coconut extract to this. Right folding those two together will create a little bit special of a icing. And then that can be treated just like any icing to ice the actual cupcakes. Now the look that we are going for here is going to be a combination of toasted coconut and not toasted coconut. Okay. And we use unsweetened coconut but you can use sweetened since it's a little easier to find. So go ahead and dump that right on top. Okay. And just swirl it around. Alright. And then as soon as I ice these we are going to kind of roll it in there like we do our coconut snowball. Okay sounds good. You ready? That's a great mixture. Yeah and then with a very light hand. You don't want to push hard here. You're just going to kind of dab it in. Make sure you get all the spots. And boom. How's that? It looks beautiful Julia. If you want a variation you can just kind of ice it like we do here with our classic three tip swirl. And then just sprinkle it on top. Yeah. Okay. It's a little less. Great. Well these look like they are homemade but they are actually semi homemade here with Arleen and Julia at Sweet Arleen's. Thank you for joining us and enjoy.

Dirt Cupcakes for Kids

Dirt cupcakes are a great treat for kids and are wonderfully easy to make. Prepare dirt cupcakes for kids with help from an accomplished chef in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi. I'm chef Amee Hoge and I teach kids and adults how to play with food. Today, we are cooking or actually going to be making some dirt cupcakes. But it's really simple. We take our favorite cake recipe, your favorite frosting recipe, you kind of put them together and then you crush some Oreo cookies, put them on top like your dirt. And then we went ahead and we're playing with fondant today. And we are going to, we made some leaves and actually I just took a butterfly pick, put this here for a little butterfly cupcake. And then over here she's playing with, this is my assistant Samantha, she's going to be playing with right here, some fondant. Fondant's like an edible Play Dough which is really fun to work with. And it allows kids to be creative while playing with food. So let me show you how to do that. We have, I'm just going to keep three Oreos. We're just going to make two cupcakes here. Three Oreos, I'm going to use my rolling pin. I kind of press down on it, get them crunched a little bit, and then I use my, I keep it in a Ziploc because it keeps the mess down. I mean I don't mind cleaning up stuff, but I'd rather not. So, I give it a good shake. Let me move that out of the way. And then the little, the frosting in there kind of gets all mushed up. You can also do, this is good for kids because sometimes they just need something to do and they want to go ahead and roll something and squish it up. I do all angles. I roll them, I flip the bag over a couple of times. That way all the crumbs get nice and crushed. Then what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and frost our cupcakes with a rubber spatula, a little rubber frosting spatula. OK. I'm going to do one. You want to do one Samantha? OK. Nothing to it. You want a nice hardy amount of frosting on there. Here's the frosting spatula. Here, if you want to go ahead and do that one. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and roll it in the dirt right here in the Oreo cookies, right in my bag. I tell kids when they cook at home, they need to learn how to clean up or their parents are not going to let them cook again. Because parents have enough to do. So this is my cookie. See it looks like, or my cupcake. And what we're going to do is let me show you, here's our cute little ladybugs. I'm going to set that on there, push in there a little bit, OK. And then what we're going to do is, let me show you. Basically all you're going to do, now fondant dries out pretty quick, ours is already starting to dry out here crumbling. What you do is you kind of use some of that, your fingers, rub it around in there. You have a little heat from your hands which will make it kind of soft. All right. Again we're playing with a little Play-Doh. Nice. All right. Beautiful, and it's dirt. We're not worrying about perfection here. Let me move that out of the way. All right. And so we've got this. You kind of make a little, you want to squish the head here a little bit, flatten it down on the back. And then, we're going to go leave it right here. And then we make a couple of eyeballs and the spots on it,, tiny, tiny, tiny pieces. OK. Press it on there. It's amazing how far that goes, just a tiny little piece of fondant. Now if it starts to dry and you're trying to put your spots on there, go ahead and dip your finger in a little bit of water, just a little bit, kind of pat it and it works like a little bit of a glue. OK. Sometimes you might have to wipe off your finger here. Like that. More spots should be good. Make sure you dry off your hands, because it does, fondant like Play Dough, it gets sort of sticky. We don't want it going all over the place. Now these are great for birthday parties, for even like a spring baby shower, all sorts of fun activities that you guys can do at home. And then actually here's our little butterfly pick. You can put that in there as well. So, there you go. Thanks for letting me teach you how to make dirt cupcakes for kids.

Snowflake Cupcake Holder Crafts

Snowflake cupcake holder crafts are a great, fun project to overtake on a rainy day. Make snowflake cupcake holder crafts with help from a crafts expert with over fifteen years of experience in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi. I'm Holly Silva and I've been a crafts expert for about fifteen years now. Today, we're going to make cupcake holders. Now these aren't the typical cupcake holders. These are special cupcake holders. So, what we're going to do is, well let me show you first. First we have these really cool little snowflakes. I bought them at the 99 Cent Store. You can get them in all different sizes. It comes in a pack of I think like fifteen or something. But they're meant for ornaments but they have these little strings on them. I just cut the string off. So, I grabbed here a piece of red construction paper because it really pops. Now what you're going to do is pick up the paper and cut around the snowflake here at an angle. I like to keep it kind of like a, I like the word catty-corner. I don't know why. I don't even know where is comes from. If somebody could look it up and let me know what that means, then please do. Actually please don't because I don't really care, I just would rather say it. And then you just cut around it like so. You know, just make it cool. Just make it a little fancy, nothing crazy. Make it crazy if you want. It's your project. Do as you like. We're going to do that and maybe cut off just a little bit of a corner here and a little triangle here. I love holiday crafts. I think one of the best things about holidays is the whole baking and crafting aspect of it. Because it's about using your creativity for something pretty. Because there's so much joy around the holidays. I mean even if you know, your family isn't joyful then there's still certainly reason to be joyful about it. Like the time that you get to spend by yourself doing these crafts in complete quite or you know, maybe you turn on some music. I personally love music. As I'm filming this I can't use any music because you wouldn't be able to hear me. And it would just be like, wha, wha, wha, wha. It would be really weird, so we don't do that. But I grabbed some double stick tape and hopefully, hopefully it cuts on the edge like it should, and stick it to the back of a snowflake. Now it doesn't really matter with these particular ones, what side the back is because they're double sided, just like the tape. And we're going to, I mean you could do every single side if you want. I'm just doing these, and try to keep it, try to keep it to the places that are going to be hidden, because if you don't, I don't know, you might get cupcake frosting on it or something that's going to stick and it's not going to be pretty. So let's stick it there, like so. It's not perfect but it's cool looking, if I say so myself. And then you stick a cupcake on it. Whaa, cupcake holder and that is the cupcake holder. I hope you enjoyed it. You can use any type of crafting items that you want to do this. You can use Cricut, you can use construction paper, you can use you know, things that you bought at the 99 Cent Store, you can make snowflakes. The main thing is, be creative, have a good time doing it. I know I did. Happy Holidays.

How to Adjust the Oven Temperature for Mini Cupcakes

If you're making mini cupcakes, you're always going to need to adjust the temperature of your oven to meet some very specific criteria. Adjust the oven temperature for mini cupcakes with help from the founder of Two Prince Bakery Theater in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Dorangela Bobet, founder of Two Prince Bakery Theater. Today, I'm going to show you how to adjust the oven temperature to bake mini cupcakes. First thing is, it's the same exact baking temperature. You bake it at 350 degrees for most recipes whether you're baking a little cupcake or a big cupcake. So there's no change in that whatsoever. But however you do need to change the amount of time that you do bake so that you don't overcook your cupcakes. For small mini cupcakes usually I would say about half the time. So anywhere between 10 and 15 minutes depending on your oven and your recipe. First thing you're going to want to do is you're going to line your cupcake pan with the liners and we're going to pour the batter in. Making the least amount of mess as possible. So you're going to do this and get them all filled in. And actually a little trick when you're baking, if you decide to only bake a few cupcakes and not a whole pan, it's good to add maybe water into the cavities that you're not baking in because that will actually affect your baking time if you don't have every singe cupcake hole filled with something. So that's good to know. Now we're going to put the cupcakes in the oven. As you can see we've set it to 350 degrees and now I'm going to set the timer for 10 minutes. And when the timer beats in 10 minutes I'm going to get a toothpick and check it to make sure again the toothpick comes out clean, and if it doesn't I'll probably add 2 more minutes to the baking time and check it again. These are ready to go and now what you're going to want to do is you're going to let them cool for a few minutes. Then you can pop them out and they're ready to serve.

Can You Stuff a Cupcake With a Cupcake Plunger?

A cupcake plunger is the tool that you'll use to add filling to your delicious cupcake creations. Find out if you can stuff a cupcake with a cupcake plunger with help from a chef instructor in this free video clip.

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Lorie Fangio with Around the Table. And I'm a food blogger and chef instructor. And today, I'm in the kitchen showing you how to stuff cupcakes with a cupcake plunger. It's going to be fun. Okay so lets get started. I'm in the kitchen, I've got my prepared cupcakes, I've got my filling already to go and I've got my little cupcake plunger. And this is kind of a neat thing. You can push it down into the cupcake and it pulls out a chunk in the center of the cupcake so you can stuff it with whatever kind of filling you like. And so I want to show you how it works. I'm just going to take my cupcake and just press it in like this and pull it up and then I just push the button to get the little piece of cake out. And so I'm just going to go ahead and plunge the rest of my cupcakes and then I'll show you how I can use the cupcake plunger to fill my cupcakes. Now when you're talking about filling cupcakes you can fill them with all kinds of things. I mean you could fill them with frosting if you wanted, whipped cream, today I'm using kind of a pudding. Often if I'm making chocolate cakes I often stuff them with chocolate ganache. Now I'm going to tell you, usually when I stuff my cupcakes I just use a zip top bag and I just put my filling in the zip top bag and I clip the edge and just pipe it right into the holes. But I'm going to go ahead and show you how to use your cupcake plunger to do this. So if you've got your filling you want to just spoon your filling into the center of the cupcake plunger and if we get this full we'll be able to plunge about two cupcakes with this amount of filling. So I'm just going to spoon it in like this and then I'm going to take my cupcake and just put it right back in the hole and press down a little bit and then go on to my next cupcake and do the same thing. And now the cupcakes are ready to be frosted. And when your guests bite into their cupcakes they'll have no idea there's a yummy filling on the inside. And again I'm Lorie Fangio and we've been in the kitchen stuffing cupcakes with cupcake plungers. Take some time to get your family around the dinner table, see you next time.