It’s the 15th, so it’s time for another installment of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club (please go check out some of the other member’s blogs). This month’s cupcake is Pumpkin Patch, from Martha’s cupcake book – a timely choice. I usually make pumpkin bread around this time of year and also have a pumpkin cookie recipe that is a favorite around here. I was excited to try the pumpkin cupcakes.

I used all whole wheat pastry flour in this recipe – a first for me. The recipe also include buttermilk, which always means it will be very moist. This doesn’t have a ton of pumpkin – a cup and a half. The cupcakes mixed up nicely – and they were my first recipe using my brand new hand mixer. The beaters on my old one rusted and were falling apart, it was time for a new one (and the replacement price for the beaters was higher than the cost of a brand new mixer!).

These took longer to bake than Martha predicted – about 10 minutes more actually. They were very wiggly for a long time. I made the cream cheese frosting suggested in the recipe (except I only made half a batch of it because I remember how much it made), but here, my cupcake club friends, is where I failed you. As you can see, my cupcakes were a bit of a mess. I tried to just spread some frosting on top. Silly me. This really needs to be piped on since the cupcake is very soft and fragile. Mine completely fell apart when I tried to put frosting on with an offset spatula. I’m just not into piping (mostly because I HATE trying to clean those little plastic tips). So these cupcakes are the ugly stepsisters of the ones other members of the club will have on their blogs, I’m sure.

Even though they didn’t look very nice, these tasted great! They were fabulous and I was pleased with the way the whole wheat pastry flour tasted. It wasn’t too heavy nor was it overpoweringly wheaty. It did have a pumpkin flavor, but again, it was not overwhelming. They were soft and moist. The frosting, of course, was just evil, as Martha’s cream cheese frosting always is. Everyone in the family liked these very much. A winner!

It’s the 15th, so it’s time for another installment of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club (please go check out some of the other member’s blogs). This month’s cupcake is Pumpkin Patch, from Martha’s cupcake book – a timely choice. I usually make pumpkin bread around this time of year and also have a pumpkin cookie … Read more →

I signed up to participate in a bonus round of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. Members are required to bake one recipe a month, on the 15th. A bonus round for the Banana Pecan Cupcakes was set for Sept 30 on a voluntary basis. I couldn’t pass it by. It just so happens that the kids had been asking me to make banana bread AND I had some practically rotten bananas at the ready.

Mr. MarthaAndMe grew up eating banana bread a lot. I didn’t. His mother always baked banana bread inside a clean tin can, so that it came out round. As a kid, that was a big deal to him. Although I don’t bake my banana bread in a tin can, I do make it once in a while. Mr. MarthaAndMe likes to put cream cheese on his (blech!) but the kids like theirs plain. I always use my grandmother’s recipe which is foolproof. I was ready to give Martha’s recipe a try though.

Martha’s recipe is pretty similar to mine, but she uses cake flour. Normally I use half white flour and half wheat flour in mine, but I followed the instructions here. The rest of the recipe was pretty unremarkable. I whipped it up and filled cupcake papers with it. Then it hit me – the recipe has no cinnamon in it! That is a travesty, so I mixed some cinnamon and coarse sugar together and sprinkled it on the tops of the cupcakes. Also, I left about 6 cupcakes without nuts for Dude Martha, who prefers no nuts in his.

These cupcakes took a lot longer to bake than Martha said – about 10 minutes more. They turned out nicely and everyone liked them. I did not frost them because these are really a muffin, not a cupcake and I also did top them with cinnamon and sugar.

I think I would stick to my grandmother’s recipe in the future, but I might make them as muffins, because they are convenient for freezing and for people to grab for breakfast.

I signed up to participate in a bonus round of the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club. Members are required to bake one recipe a month, on the 15th. A bonus round for the Banana Pecan Cupcakes was set for Sept 30 on a voluntary basis. I couldn’t pass it by. It just so happens that the … Read more →

I recently joined the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club – a group of bloggers who together make a recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake Book each month and post on the 15th. What fun to be joining this group. This is my first post for the club. This month’s pick was Zucchini-Spice Cupcakes. Timely indeed, considering I have some zucchini lying about and I’ve run out of ideas for them. I recently made Martha’s Lemon-Zucchini Cornmeal Cookies (Sept Everyday Living) and was happy to have another Martha zucchini baked item to make with zucchini.

These were easy to whip up.  The recipe uses vegetable oil and brown sugar, and includes cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg as spices.  Other key ingredients are walnuts (I used pecans instead) and some lemon zest which is an interesting touch. As always, I cheated and did my wet ingredients and then dumped in my dry ingredients without sifting. I know Martha would be appalled.

I grated the zucchini in the Cuisinart (which is on its last legs I think, since it is now over 20 years old – a wedding gift). I think that if you wanted to be

sneaky, you could peel the zucchini so there wouldn’t be any telltale green in these cupcakes to give you away to your kids. I was tempted to do that, but ultimately I was too lazy to peel.

I filled 24 cupcake holders and put it in the oven to bake…..and bake…. and bake. I always have this problem with Martha’s recipes. It took an extra 10 minutes for these to finally be done.  When they came out they looked and smelled great.

The book says to use the cream cheese frosting recipe from the back of the book, so I did, but I used light cream cheese and organic cultured butter. Cream cheese frosting is just evil. It tastes so darn good on anything. You can fool

yourself that zucchini cupcakes are healthy until you slather on a mound of cream cheese frosting. This frosting recipe made far too much in my opinion, even after I mounded it on the cupcakes.

Results? Excuse me while I wipe the cream cheese from my upper lip. They were good. Really good. They were like a light spice cake. The nuts are a nice addition. They were so good that I had to get them out of the house (this is part of my Martha philosophy – Martha Stewart makes desserts, but she has one serving and then shares the rest and gives it away). Bye-bye cupcakes! I know you will be enjoyed by people at Mr. MarthaAndMe’s office!

I recently joined the Martha Stewart Cupcake Club – a group of bloggers who together make a recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcake Book each month and post on the 15th. What fun to be joining this group. This is my first post for the club. This month’s pick was Zucchini-Spice Cupcakes. Timely indeed, considering I … Read more →