Cupcake Tuesday-Chocolate and Honey

Finding the perfect chocolate cake recipe took me forever.   I tired so many recipes, oil based, butter based, with sour cream and without sour cream, etc.

As my experiments progressed I knew I wanted two things: butter based and with sour cream.

After some messing around in the kitchen, I made my own vanilla recipe, and it's actually the base of pretty much all my cupcakes, it's insanely versatile and I love it!  Turns out that adding a touch of cocoa makes the perfect chocolate cupcake as well!

You've seen variations of it before in my Black Forest Cupcakes and my Malted Chocolate Cupcakes, but this one is the plain, all chocolate chocolate cake recipe!

It's nice and dense and moist and delicious!  It's hard to find in a chocolate cake!

Chocolate Cupcake
makes 24
2 sticks butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
vanilla
salt
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two cupcake pans.

In a large bowl whip together the room temperature butter with the sugar until they get nice and light and fluffy.  Add the 2 eggs and beat for about another minute.

When the eggs are fully incorporated add in the vanilla, salt and cocoa powder.  Mix well.

Next, measure out your baking soda, baking powder and flour in a medium bowl.  Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat until just combined.  Add 1/2 of the sour cream.  Follow that with another 1/3 of the flour, the last of the sour cream and the last of the flour, beating well after each addition.

Scrape the sides of the bowls and mix on last time to make sure it is all combined.

Scoop into the cupcake pans using a 2 oz ice cream scoop, or filling about 2/3 of the way full.  My rule with chocolate cake is that it should look like chocolate ice cream before it bakes

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool

Honey Cream Cheese Frosting
2 blocks cream cheese
1 stick butter
1/4 cup honey
2-3 cups powdered sugar

In a medium bowl use a mixer and whip together the cream cheese and butter.  When those are combined, add the honey and mix well.

Next, slowly add the powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time.  Beat well after each addition and taste occasionally.  Stop when you have reached your desired consistency and flavor.

Pipe or frost on top of the cooled cupcakes and drizzle with honey.  Enjoy!

Love,

Keely

Sunday School-Crepe Cake

It's Sunday!  Today is a day to sleep in (or go to church, but that is the beauty of my church meeting on Tuesday nights, I still get to sleep in on Sunday) have brunch, play outside, do some shopping, make a big dinner and have dessert.

It's the dessert part (and I guess if you stretch it the brunch part) that I'm aiming at here.

Sunday's are my favorite days.  I never really realized that until I started going to my Tuesday night church but it's such a great day!  I love to get creative on Sundays, spend time with people on Sundays

Have you ever heard of a crepe cake?  Well I saw some on Pinterest and it seemed easy enough so I decided to just go for it.  You just need crepes, and filling of choice (I used ganache, Nutella and salted caramel).  Here's what it looked like.



Ah, drippy, salted caramel.  I love you, oh so much!



Making crepes is way easier than people claim.  All you need is a pan and some butter and a batter, easy as pie (actually far EASIER than pie).



Simple, wonderful layers.

We're going to start with the ganache, and then the caramel, cause that's really the order things need to be done in.

Chocolate Ganache

3/4 cups chocolate chips

1/2 cup heavy cream

vanilla

Set up a double boiler and add in your chocolate chips and heavy cream.

Cook over medium heat and stir frequently until the chocolate is mostly melted.  When there are just a few chocolate chunks left, remove from the heat and continue to stir until completely smooth.  Add the vanilla.  Set aside and allow to cool.

Salted Caramel Sauce

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1/2 cup room temperature heavy cream

vanilla

In a medium sauce pan briefly stir together the sugar, salt, water and corn syrup.  Bring to a boil over medium high heat.  Allow to boil for 8-10 minutes or until the liquid turns an amber color.  Keep an eye on this, you do not want it burn!

As soon as it turns a dark amber, remove from the heat.  Slowly add the room temperature cream, stirring constantly.  It will boil up, just keep stirring.

Once the mixture has come together, add a dash of vanilla and allow to cool.

Simple Crepes

adapted from She Knows

2 cup flour

4 eggs

1 cup water

1 cup milk

salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/4 cup melted butter

In a large bowl mix together all liquid ingredients (this everything but the flour).  Whisk together until the eggs are well incorporated.

Slowly add the flour and whisk until well incorporated.

(See that was easy).

Spray your non-stick pan and pre-heat it over medium-high heat.

Use a 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop out the batter into the middle of the pan.  Swirl the pan around to spread out the crepe.  Allow to cook until the edges barely turn brown.

Use your thinnest spatula (or your awesome flipping talents...it's all in the wrist) to flip to the other side and cook for another minute or so.

Slide out of the pan and onto a plate.

This is where the fun starts.

To be totally honest the easiest way to build this is to do it while the crepes are cooking (finish one crepe, layer with ganache while another one is cooking, so on and so forth).  So let's do that.

Take that first crepe and spread some ganache on it.  Now keep cooking crepe number 2.  Slide that on top, spread on ganache (or caramel, or Nutella, you can decide on the ratios).  Nice work, just keep stacking!

Congrats you did it!  Now pour any left over caramel all over the top of that.  Nice work, add some extra sea salt for good measure and hazelnut whipped cream if you're feeling super adventurous.

Wow that looks amazing.  You enjoy that! You earned it!



Love,

Keely

Whimsical Wednesday-Week 1

I love May.  May is a good month.  It's spring time and it's beautiful.  The flowers are blooming and there is just so much joy...plus it's my birthday month!  Which makes it all even better!

Here are a few things that caught my eye this week.



This double bun is adorable, and so easy!  For a tutorial click here.



I also love this crossed fishtail.  I'm working on figuring it out for you...maybe there's a tutorial in the future :)



I'm gathering the necessary items to make this "hair necklace."  You can find the tutorial here.



via



via

This little mini bundts were so adorable that they inspired me to order my own mini bundt pan.  I'm so excited and I don't think I can wait until next week for it to come...but I guess I have no choice!  It's going to be a whole new world of baking and I can't wait to tackle it!

Well, there you have it, hair and baking, two of my favorite things.  There wasn't a ton that caught my attention this week, but these few things are enough to totally inspire me.

I also find myself inspired by some of the most random things.  The realization that April 30 was "Oatmeal Cookie Day" got my mind reeling, developing an Oatmeal Cream Pie Cupcake (recipe to come).  It's more than just pictures that inspire me, it's real life!  The little details can be huge sources of inspiration, so pay attention~

Love,

Keely

Happy May Day!

What a perfect day to make blogging official here on Hair Bows and Butter!

To be completely honest it's going to take a little while to get this going, I don't want to dive in head first without a plan, so I'm planning and taking photos and working on getting myself prepared to bring you the best possible content!  I'm so excited and I hope you are too!



Check out all that planning!  And that cupcake wall art might be a fail, but I'm excited to try it!

Also, it's a new month which means a fresh start.  Today I found this awesomeness...



For more information on it click here.  I hope that I can stick with it, but I'll let you know.

So to start off the blogging I'm going to work on showing you a behind the scenes of my incredibly fabulous life (read: reasonably boring life) by sharing a recap of my Instagram photos every Friday and a gathering of some of my inspiration on Wednesdays.  I'll slowly work into some baking tutorials and also some hair and crafting lessons.

We'll figure this all out together!  Thanks so much for reading and keep checking back and we'll get things going!