(Birthday) Cupcakes

Saturday was my first gluten-free birthday, and with a little creativity, I wasn't missing anything!  Seeing as cupcakes are experiencing some sort of revival, I decided to make some.  If you've ever tried g-free baking, you know what a pain it can be.  Baking is much more a science than cooking, and there is a lot that can happen in the 30 minutes your experiment is in the oven, even with regular baking.  Because I don't like to be restricted to just g-free recipes, I have modified regular recipes on several occasions.  My lemon-poppyseed layer cake was quite delicious, but it was time consuming to sift together my own flour blend.  (I refused to use a pre-blended flour.)  By the time my sister and I finished the cake, we had clocked about 3 hours, and after the layers had cooled, they proceeded to sink like a bad soufflé.  Along with my mother, we determined that there must be some tinkering needed with our leavening agents.  We used Xanthan gum, but thought that perhaps more baking powder and soda were necessary.  I have yet to attempt that cake again, but I am searching for some information online that will tell me how to modify recipes to gluten-free.  Since that time consuming flop, I've been a little lazy, but with good results.  The birthday cupcakes are a prime example.  You simply make some additions to g-free boxed cake mix.  I managed to crank out three varieties of cupcakes: Mexican chocolate with chocolate buttercream, coconut with salted caramel buttercream, and orange with citrus buttercream.  Mmmmm!  The coconut were my absolute favorite, and the homemade frosting certainly didn't hurt.

For the Mexican chocolate cupcakes you start with a chocolate cake mix, then add about a 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper to the batter, but start with less if you're sensitive to spice.  The cayenne brings a pleasant heat.  Then, you simply frost them with the chocolate buttercream, which calls for 1 stick butter, 1/4 cup confectioners sugar, 3 packets chocobake and 3 tablespoons cream.  Whip all the ingredients together with an electric mixer and you've got a delectable, and easy, frosting!

For the orange cupcakes, you begin with a yellow cake mix.  Make them according to instruction, EXCEPT, you substitute fresh-squeezed orange juice for the water, and you add the zest of one orange.  These get frosted with the frosting recipe at this link: http://www.countryliving.com/recipefinder/almost-homemade-buttercream-clv I just substitute orange juice for the lemon juice, add the zest of a second orange, and use less sugar.  Also, this make a VERY generous amount of frosting, and unless you're making a layer cake, you can get by on half a batch.

For the coconut cupcakes, you also use a yellow cake mix.  Prepare them according to directions, then add a teaspoon of almond extract and about 1/3 cup shredded sweetened coconut.  The frosting is this recipe: http://www.chow.com/recipes/12100-salted-caramel-frosting and gets followed to the letter.  This frosting will be gracing many of my future baking endeavors!

Everyone at my party loved the cupcakes, and we didn't talk about gluten-free at all.  ;)  That can be our little secret.  These pseudo-recipes can easily be used with regular cake mixes as well.  Hope you like them!