These are Lavender Pear, Green Tea & Honey Dew, and Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes. My friend Klint came up with the idea of the Green Tea & Honey Dew cupcakes (thanks Klint!). When baking these I left the lavender cupcakes and the green tea cupcakes in the oven for a bit too long. If I didn't over bake them, they would've come out better. People seemed to like a lot anyways. I was afraid of the lavender cupcakes tasting too much like perfume. For the green tea cupcakes I didn't have matcha green tea powder, which would've helped with the flavor a lot. If you don't have a decent amount of time on your hands to bake these, I wouldn't recommend it. Other than that, these are interesting flavors that you don't hear of on an everyday basis, and they were fun to make. Here are the recipes:
Lavender Pear Cupcakes:
You need to get dried lavender flowers for this recipe. You can ususally find them at Whole Foods or any other natural organic grocery store. If you can't find them yourself, ask someone. You need 2 tbsp of lavender.
Once you have this, put the 2 tbsp in a bowl with 1 tbsp of sugar and 1/4 cup of water. Heat this up over the stove or in a microwave (I used the microwave) for a minute. This will bring all over the flavoring out of the flowers, and into the sugar water. Set this aside to cool.
Once cooled, strain out the flowers (a sifter works good for straining the flowers out). You can throw out the flowers, you just need the sugar water. Put this in a 1 cup measuring cup, put in some soy milk, and fill the rest of it with the syrup/juice from canned pears.
1 cup soy milk/lavender sugar water/pear juice
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
very finely sliced pears (canned)
Although you can't tell in the picture because I over baked these, I made the batter a light lavender color with food coloring.
Bake at 360 for 18-20 minutes. Take out, set to cool.
Pear Buttercream Frosting:
1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup shortening
3 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup pear juice/syrup from canned pears
2 tsp vanilla extract
take the pears from the can and cut them up very thin and small
about 1/4 cup of small thin chopped pears
I used a frosting knife to frost these, because the base in the frosting is juice and using a piping bag would've made a huge mess.
I put some purple food coloring in the frosting, and cut little slivers of fresh pear to garnish the tops of each cupcake.
Green Tea & Honey Dew Cupcakes:
These will be best with matcha green tea powder, but unforuntately I couldn't find any so I had to improvise. I had green tea bags, so I put 1 cup of soy milk in a bowl, and added 5 tea bags to the milk. I heated it up on the stove for about 3 minutes on low heat, and set it aside to cool. Before you throw out the teabags, make sure you squeeze the milk from each bag.
1 cup green tea soy milk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
With matcha green tea powder, you wouldn't need to color the cupcake batter because it's a bright green color. Just using tea bags, it doesn't have much of a color at all so I also added green and brown food coloring to this (it should be more green than brown).
Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes. Take out, set to cool.
Honey Dew Buttercream Frosting:
For this I just bought the pre-cut small container of honey dew melon from the store because it was guaranteed to be ripe. When I got home, I cup up the melon into small chunks, and put some sugar over it and set it in the fridge overnight.
I don't have a blender or a food processer, so again I had to improvise. I just mashed up the melon with a potato masher to get all of the juice out, and so it was mostly pureed (it worked better than I thought it would).
1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup shortening
3 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup honey dew juice
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup mashed/pureed honey dew
Once frosted, I garnished with a raspberry.
Thanks again, Klint!
Pinapple Upside Down Cupcakes:
These aren't really upside down, because they are cupcakes and it wouldn't be easy to do with cupcake liners. These are the easiest cupcakes to bake out of them all.
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup crushed pinapple (in the juice)
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes. Take out, set to cool.
Simple Vanilla Frosting:
1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup shortening
3 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup soy milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
To garnish, I sprinkled the tops with cinnamon and added a maraschino cherry.
Happy Baking!
