White Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes

It is so good to be back beautiful readers!  Last week Allison shared a gorgeous post with all the delicious summer food she's been eating.  I thought about doing something similar, but then I remembered that my meals from the last few weeks consist of frozen pizzas, prepackaged salads,and Thai takeout.  Not exactly the stuff that culinary dreams are made of.  John has spent the last 3 1/2 weeks working in Chicago, and what I've learned is that I don't cook well without an audience.  When it's just me, a giant bowl of chips and salsa and a glass of red wine does the trick.       

The good news is that John is back on California soil, and I found a new frosting I'm crazy about.  I'm feeling like myself again, and really excited to bring you a great cupcake.

Butter + Cream Cupcake Bash!

Happy Friday! Last Friday, I skipped out of the office at 2:30, and picked Allison up from the airport!We went to Cafe Surfas and got iced tea and croissants. We bought chocolate. Allison wished she could take all of Surfas back home with her. And then we went home and baked cupcakes. A LOT of cupcakes.
We used every available space we could find while baking, including the laundry room:
It may be a bit of an oxymoron, but the dryer actually made a very good cooling area. And after hours of baking, we ordered Thai food. And may or may not have watched eleventy five episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress". Don't judge please. Baking cupcakes for 5 hours fries your brain.
The next morning, we frosted!
And topped! These are coconut cupcakes with an almond cream cheese frosting. They're probably the best coconut cupcakes you'll ever have. Yeah, that's right, I said that.

We're Having a Party!

Allison and I have an announcement.  We love cupcakes!  We have a stinking suspicion that you love them too.  What would happen if cupcake lovers united for an afternoon of sugary bliss?  What if, admist the cupcaking and frosting and sugar coma-ing, we did a little bit of good?  We're about to find out! 

Please join us for our first annual (hopefully) Butter + Cream cupcake extravaganza!  It'll be an awesome afternoon where we can all bake, decorate, and of course eat our favorite cupcakes.  If you're the baking kind, we'll be hosting a cupcake recipe contest where a group of skilled judges will pick a winner who will be heralded and admired across all the land.  We'll score a sweet prize for you too.  If baking's not your thing, come on over and see how many cupcakes you can consume without yarfing. 

Bring your friends, your kiddos and your dogs, we welcome any and all cupcake enthusiasts.  And yes, there will be champagne.  There's always champagne at our parties.

Proceeds from this frosted blowout will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, a cause that's very near and dear to my heart.  So it's kinda like buying carbon credits.  Whatever damage you do to your blood glucose levels will be offset by the good you'll feel in your heart, knowing that you donated to a good cause.

Allison is hopping on a Southwest flight to join us in LA for this madness, so it will surely be an event to remember.  Here are the details:

Butter + Cream Cupcake Extravaganza

Saturday, May 15, 2010

1:00 pm-5:00 pm PST

Location- Westside Los Angeles (exact location to be sent upon RSVP)

Suggested donation- $15, or $10 if you bring a dozen of your best cupcakes or a bottle of bubbly.  Cash is preferred, but plastic works too.

RSVP- Send an email to butterpluscream@gmail.com, or a DM tweet to @butterpluscream.  Let us know how many peeps roll in your entourage, and if you plan on participating in the cupcake contest.

I know it'll probably just be our moms who respond to this, but we'd really love to meet the people who read B + C.  I promise we're not as weird as we seem...  

 

If you can't make it but you still want to donate, please click on over to John's Leukemia & Lymphoma Society fundraising site!

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

I don’t think I fully understood that my family was Irish until we took a trip to Ireland when I was 18. I don't think I even realized that our last name Hackett was Irish, until we came upon a castle in the Ireland countryside with the same name. It was on that trip that I started thinking about heritage, tradition and my family namesake. It was also on that trip that I had my first taste of Guinness, and it was love at first sip. Unlike anything I had ever tasted; dark and rich, yet smoother than expected. After a pint of it, I felt full, like I had just eaten a large meal. And being underage for drinking back home, it made the whole experience seem slightly illicit. It was not until years later however, that I had my first Irish Car Bomb; which let’s just say was love at first chug.

If you are unfamiliar with what an Irish Car Bomb is; I will do my best to describe it. First, Guinness is poured about ¾ of the way into a pint glass. Then a shot glass filled with half whiskey, half Bailey’s Irish cream is dropped in to the pint glass and the mixture must be chugged quickly. If not drank quickly, it can start to curdle; not the most pleasant drink experience.
Something about the way all three ingredients combine creates a wonderful tasting mixture that I would best describe as a beer milkshake. This beer milkshake was love at first chug for my father as well. I will forever remember my college graduation dinner as the time we went to Cheesecake Factory and my Dad insisted on ordering an Irish Car Bomb, even though it was not on the menu. He had to order each ingredient separately, assemble the drink himself, and after spending a ridiculous $18 later he was happy. So happy that he ended up ordering two of them.

And somehow over the years, the Irish Car Bomb has become a Hackett family tradition. I guess you could call it our signature drink. At least a few times throughout the year, on holidays, birthdays and special occasions, we inevitably will have a round of car bombs. I know this may make us seem like a family with a drinking problem, but I swear it’s just our Irish roots, or something like that. Here we are at Christmas, chugging away. Classy, right?Classy or not, I loved the idea of turning this drink in to a dessert for St. Patrick’s Day. I had seen several interpretations of it on the Internet, typically a Guinness chocolate cupcake with some sort of Irish Cream or Whiskey frosting. But I loved the idea I saw on Smitten Kitchen, which was to fill the cupcakes with a whiskey chocolate ganache, and then top with an Irish Cream frosting.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

This is my friend Javi.
Javi is the real deal. We run on the same marathon team, and during my very first 8-mile run when I had to stop and pee, Javi waited for me so I wouldn't have to run alone. More importantly, Javi is on a mission. He has already raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and he's not stopping until they find a cure. To do this, he is training for the Lavaman Olympic Triathlon, and you can support his mission here.

When Javi wants chocolate cupcakes, Javi gets chocolate cupcakes. And these are some serious, gooey, hardcore chocolate cupcakes. My go-to chocolate cake recipe had always been the one on the back of the Hershey's cocoa powder box, but then my office-mate Faith brought these bad boys to our Halloween potluck and the clouds parted and the angels came down from the sky and I thought I had died and gone to heaven right then and there. This is no hyperbole, they are that good.