Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes for Secret Recipe Club

Happy August Everyone.  I know that many of you are busy, busy, busy, getting the kids ready to go back to school but I hope you have a few moments to stop by and take a look at what the members of Group D in the Secret Recipe Club have to share with you today.

The Secret Recipe Club, or SRC as we fondly refer to it, is a group (well actually 4 groups) of bloggers who get together each month to play a fun little game of I Spy (kind of).  Each month we are assigned another blogger from our group.  We start spying on that blogger, learn about them and what makes them tick, find a recipe on their blog that we cannot resist and make it.  Then we all get together on the same day and reveal who we were assigned and what recipe we recreated.  It is a lot of fun and one of my favorite cooking clubs.  We are a friendly bunch and we love to welcome new members.  Interested??  Go right to this Join SRC link and find out how.  You will be very happy you did.

This month I was assigned Erin of The Spiffy Cookie.  Erin loves baking, cooking, crafts and working out.  She needs to work out because she LOVES desserts the best and always makes room for it.  She also has tons, and I mean TONS of dessert recipes.  Erin also has a lot of other recipes and she, like me, tries to make her meals somewhat healthy but she always has room for dessert, especially if it contains chocolate and peanut butter.  That is another thing Erin and I have in common.  Erin and I belong to several of the same cooking clubs so I get to enjoy her blog on an almost daily basis.  Let me tell you, you should stop by Erin's blog each day and see what she is up to...you will not be sorry.

I knew that I wanted to make a dessert recipe from Erin's blog.  My husband is a CPL instructor and he was holding a class this month.  Each time he has a class, I provide lunch and I always like to have a great dessert to finish up the meal.  Now, you would think that this would make my decision easier this month since I, basically, knew what I wanted to serve.  That is because you have not yet popped over to Erin's blog to see how very many choices I had!!

Erin has 9, yes 9, subsections in her dessert file.  Now I had to decided if I wanted to make brownies, cakes, cupcakes, cheesecakes, cookies, ice cream, pies, puddings or truffles.  Then as I started going through the subsections I found choice after choice after choice.  I was starting to suffer anxiety....so I decided to narrow it down a bit. 

• There were going to be 10 students and my husband, the instructor, making 11. 
• I was serving Biscotti with coffee in the morning so I didn't want another cookie.
• I would have to make 2 pies or cheesecakes if I wanted to serve 11 people.
• I  was not going to be on hand to cut and serve cake and wanted to have a nice presentation so didn't want to cut the cake before hand.

That left me with brownies and bars or cupcakes.  I started going through those two categories and I found a lot of great ideas like Maple Walnut Blondies (definitely being made this fall) and Lemon Lush Bars (doesn't that make your mouth water?) but then I went to cupcakes and found the PERFECT recipe.  The recipe I chose is one of my favorite summer flavors, Orange Creamsicle,  and it makes only 12 cupcakes so I wouldn't be tempted to finish off the extra 13 that would be left if everyone ate just one cupcake.

I need not have worried, had I made a triple batch I don't think there would have been any leftovers.   Frank said that his students were crazy about these wonderful cupcakes.  I will have to take his and their word for it that they were delicious because I did not get one little bite of one little cupcake...they were inhaled and gone within moments.  You know what this means don't you?  Yep, I will be making these again in the very near future.

I followed Erin's recipe exactly.

The only changes I made were to the aesthetics.

Erin, very prettily, had her frosting piped on with dual colors, adjacent to each other.

Too much work for me.

I made some orange frosted, some white frosted and some a mixture of both.

Erin also topped hers with orange gummies (my favorite candy in the world).

 I forgot to pick any up so I decorated with sprinkles.

Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes

Very slightly adapted from Erin of  The Spiffy Cookie

Cupcakes

1 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

pinch of salt 

1 c. sugar

1/4 c. butter, room temperature

1 egg

1 t. vanilla

1 t. orange extract

zest and juice from 1/2 an orange

2/3 c. milk

Orange Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter at room temperature

2 c. powdered sugar, sifted

1/4 t. vanilla

1/2 t. orange extract

juice from half an orange

orange food coloring

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter at room temperature

1 1/2 c powdered sugar, sifted

pinch of salt

1 t. vanilla

2 T. heavy cream

Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350*.  Line a cupcake tin with paper or foil liners.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.  Mix in vanilla, orange extract, zest and orange juice.
Add dry ingredients alternately with milk, beating after each addition.
Scoop into 12 cupcake liners and bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted removes cleanly.
Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

In two separate applications, using 1 bowl for each.  Cream butter until light and fluffy.  Sift sugar over butter, add any extracts and liquids and beat until combined and fluffy.  Add the food coloring, a drop at a time, to the frosting containing the orange extract and juice, until desired color is reached.

When you are ready to frost the cupcakes you can follow Erin's directions found here or frost the cupcakes with one or both of the frostings  as desired.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Print Recipe

Check out all the great recipes chosen this month!

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