Pineapple skinny girl cupcakes

Cupcakes are my favorite; they're mini-cakes that can be decorated, devoured, and destroyed individually. If I mess something up on one, I can just eat it and pretend it never happened. Hide the evidence!

I was browsing Pinterest this week (my newest obsession), and I came across a recipe for "Pineapple Bliss Cupcakes." They looked tasty, so I clicked to view the recipe. It took me to a website called skinnytaste.com. The nutrition facts boasted only 140 calories per cupcake WITH icing! And a mere 93 without icing! Not that I'm too interested in calories or counting them, but knowing that a sweet treat is low in calories makes me a little giddy. I decided that these were going to be my experiment this weekend.

What I used:
1 box yellow cake mix (again, I bought whatever was on sale)
20 oz crushed pineapple in juice


For the topping:
3/4 cup marshmallow fluff
8oz reduced fat cream cheese
20 oz crushed pineapple (drained)
a few handfuls of mini-marshmallows

How I did it:
First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. I lined the cupcake pans with cupcake liners. I decided to do some regular-sized cupcakes and also some mini-cupcakes. Smaller cupcake, fewer calories. A lot of times I'm just looking for a small treat to fulfill my sweet-tooth, and these little poppers are just right!

As the oven was preheating, I mixed the yellow cake mix and the crushed pineapple with a hand mixer. It took about 2 minutes to get the pineapple fully mixed in with the cake mix so that there weren't any big pineapple pieces. The recipe doesn't call for eggs or oil (to keep it low in fat), so I was a little worried about how these cupcakes would rise. 

After the mix was well-blended, I filled the lined cupcake pans with the mixture. I put 2-3 scoops into the larger cupcake liners, and I put 1 scoop into the smaller cupcake liners. I ran out of small cupcake liners, so I just sprayed non-stick cooking spray onto the last few cupcake spots.

I placed both cupcake pans in the 350 degree oven. The mini-cupcake pan baked for 15 minutes. The larger cupcake pan baked for 20 minutes. As always, I insert a toothpick into the center of a cake to see if they're done.


This is where the problems started.

My concerns about how the cupcakes would rise were valid. A lot of them fluffed up while they were in the oven, but they fell like spoiled souffle shortly after I took them out. They didn't turn into a sticky mess, but I was still a little disappointed. The cupcakes turned out more spongey than I had hoped. They still taste good though (see how many are missing from the mini-pan?).


Here come more problems.


I let the cupcakes cool completely, and then I started making the whipped topping (icing). I drained the crushed pineapple--or at least I thought I did--so that it wouldn't water down the mixture. I combined the pineapple, marshmallow fluff, and cream cheese with a hand mixer. The mixture looked a little thin, so I added about 1/4 cup more marshmallow fluff. It still looked thin. I added a few handfuls of mini-marshmallows. It looked thicker, so I tried it on a small cupcake. Too runny. I was hesitant to keep adding fluff and extra ingredients because I wanted it stay in the under 150 calorie range, so I hoped that maybe if I let the mixture sit in the fridge for a few minutes, it'd thicken up. It did.


I topped all of the cupcakes with the mixture and placed them in an airtight container in the fridge...after I snapped a few pictures and had a taste test!

Rating:

These cupcakes taste really good, but they're very spongey. Although they are cupcakes--implying that they should be able to be unwrapped and eaten on the go--they require a plate and a fork.

Justin likes them alright. His exact words: "They're okay...they're gooey...not that it's a bad thing."


Will I try this recipe again? Probably not as cupcakes. Maybe as a trifle or a pudding-type dessert. I'd also eliminate the pineapple from the whipped topping and probably stick to just cream cheese and marshmallow fluff.


Recipe adapted from http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/04/pineapple-bliss-cupcakes.html

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Justin's dad's birthday was this week, so we went over to his parents' house last night to celebrate and have dinner. Justin got his dad some manly grill gifts, but I wanted to give him something special from me. Knowing that Justin's dad likes ice cream sandwiches, I decided to make homemade (or semi-homemade) ice cream sandwiches. I've made ice cream sandwiches before using chocolate chip cookies, but the cookies don't stay soft when they're stored in the freezer. I decided that this time I was going to try to use cake as the "sandwich" part. Luckily Justin gave me a whoopie pie pan for Christmas this year:

I figured that this pan would be great to use for ice cream sandwiches; all of the mini-cakes would come out the same size.


What I used for this recipe:
1 box chocolate cake mix (yes, I consider this cheating)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups water
3 eggs (I actually forgot to add the eggs; oops!)


1 1/2 quarts vanilla ice cream (I just bought whatever was on sale)


How I did it:
The cake mix box instructed to preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I mixed the cake mix with the additional ingredients listed on the box (except for the eggs because I forgot!). Fill the whoopie pie pan (that is greased with non-stick cooking spray) with the mixture; I put approximately 3 spoonfuls into each mini-cake. Next time I think I'd only put 2 spoonfuls in each because each sandwich side blossomed into a muffin-top kind of pastry which turned into a problem later... 


I had a little bit of the mixture left over, so instead of waiting for the first pan to cook, I just dropped rounded spoonfuls (again, 3) onto a greased cookie sheet. I put both pans in the preheated oven for about 18 minutes. I checked them with a toothpick every 5 minutes because I wasn't sure exactly how long they would take to bake.


After the toothpick came out clean, I took both pans out of the oven. I let everything sit for 10 minutes and then moved the cookie-sheet sandwich sides to a piece of tinfoil (I was out of wax paper). I tried to remove a few of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides, but a few started to crumble. I decided to let those cool completely before I tried to move them out of the pan again. 


An hour later (after going out to run a few errands and pick up the ice cream), I moved the rest of the whoopie pie-pan sandwich sides to another piece of tinfoil. I had let the ice cream sit out for 20 minutes to soften, so now it was time to make some sandwiches!

Right when I started assembling, I realized that the muffin-top sandwich sides would not work for ice cream sandwiches--see the problem noted above. I cut the muffin-top sandwich sides (the ones that were in the whoopie pie pan) in half with a serrated knife. The bottom side was a bit smaller than the top side, so I just had to be careful not to over-fill with ice cream.


I smeared about 2 1/2 spoonfuls of ice cream onto the smaller of two sandwich sides and topped it off with a larger sandwich side. After assembling each ice cream sandwich, I wrapped it with saran wrap and tied it off with a curled ribbon.

I made 11 good ice cream sandwiches. I tried to make an even dozen, but my last one fell apart. I saved all of the crumbled cake to make ice cream sundaes though; we do not waste food in this house!

I'm not sure how long the sandwiches will keep in the freezer, but I don't expect that they'll sit too long out there.


Rating:
I didn't try more than a bite of a sandwich that Justin ate, but I thought they turned out pretty good (even with me forgetting the eggs in the cake batter!). 


Justin's only criticism was that he prefers a crispy outer sandwich on his ice cream sandwiches. Next time I'll bake the cakes a bit longer.


Justin's dad had no criticism; he's a good man!


Will I try this recipe again? Definitely. I'd like to do yellow cake with strawberry ice cream.

Confection by Error

In an effort to keep my New Year's resolution alive, I'm starting yet another blog. I have this dream of opening a cupcakery one day, so I have so start somewhere. Writing about my failures and successes (always failures first) in the kitchen is a great place to begin.


The name "Confection by Error" came about when I was in the kitchen trying another new recipe--I think it was for kale chips (ew, by the way)--and I was telling my boyfriend that I usually have to try a new recipe once and create a humungous disaster before I can try the recipe again and have it turn out. I told him that when I opened my cupcakery, I could call it "Perfection by Error." A few seconds later we both looked at each other and said, "Confection by Error." And behold, the name has stuck. 


So yes, I may write about some of my other adventures outside of confections (i.e., kale chips), but my focus is on the sweet side. I bake way more than I cook; I enjoy eating sweets way more than I enjoy eating real food. It's a sickness really...


Until I post my first confection, 
June