Ladybugs



The little Ladybugs

As I start this post, I am realizing I may seem a bit hypocritical from my opening statement.  These are cupackes with food coloring in them.  However, the rest of the ingredients are fairly natural.  I like to use as many foods as I can find from our local organic food store, in this case it was a special occasion, so I used a few ingredients that aren't a part of our every day lives.  One of my favorite things to do is to find a recipe and make it my own, my husband says I am the 3m of cooking.  This recipe came about because our daughter wanted to have a ladybug themed birthday party which of course included ladybug cupcakes!  She has tree nut and peanut allergies so I have learned to make everything from scratch.  Back to the recipe...this was originally a red velvet cupcake recipe full of sugar and oil, so I tweaked it and made it more on the healthy side of things, and oh was it delicious!  I did not take pictures of the batter making process, but here are the steps for the decorating. 

The eyes

After I made all the cupcakes, I let them cool over night so
I could make sure the frosting wouldn't melt
and so I could make sure they were as
fresh as possible.


The cream cheese and butter sat at room temp all
morning to get nice and soft for the
frosting.  I don't like to use food coloring
but to make ladybugs, I kind of needed
to have some red frosting.  I've seen blogs
where people have used Hyacinth flowers
to make red coloring, but I have never been
able to find them here.  So I opted for the Duff
brand coloring paste.  It takes much less to get
the correct color than normal liquid food coloring.

A few days before the party I melted white bakers chocolate in a double boiler (large glass bowl sitting on top of a pot on the stove, with water simmering in the pot) and piped out little circles.  These were on parchment paper on a jelly roll pan, then while still warm I pressed an organic chocolate chip in the middle to make the eyes.  After I did this about 1000 times, I put them in the freezer and left them there until the morning of the party.  I let them get to room temp before I stuck them onto the cupcakes.

The morning of the party I did all the assembling and made the frosting.  The frosting turned out nice and creamy and I put that on as smooth as I could with a frosting knife.  I wanted it to be covered, but nice and thin so with all the decorations it wasn't a huge mound of mess for the kids.

The next steps were pretty simple, I bought a little tube of black sparkly gel for the wings and head of the ladybug, and tried to make this a thin layer also, and make it look like a bug as much as I could.



Step 2

Step 3 I tried to just blend the outline and the dot together so not too thick

Step 4

The final product

I think they turned out pretty cute for my first time making ladybugs, but the best part was all the little kids just loved them!  They had purple tongues from the black gel, so of course they thought that was great too.

So finally for the recipe...I made it for 5 dozen cupcakes so it looks big but it can be halved for a smaller party.  The cupcakes are nice and moist and not too sweet.  Also, I added in the substitutions I made, but classic ingredients can be used instead.





CUPCAKE BATTER

preheat oven to 350*

4c white whole wheat flour

2 1/2t baking soda

2 1/2t salt

3/4c cocoa powder

1c veg oil (or sub 1c organic applesauce, or flax meal)

2c low fat organic vanilla yogurt

1 1/2c organic sugar (you can use all brown rice syrup, or agave nectar)

1c organic brown rice syrup

2 1/2c low fat organic milk (or sub rice milk)

6 organic free range eggs (room temp)

2 1/2t white vinegar

5t vanilla

~sift all dry (flour, salt, baking powder, cocoa) ingredients in one bowl and set aside.

~mix all wet (oil, yogurt, sugar, syrup, eggs, milk, vanilla, vinegar) in another bowl or stand mixer.

~once wet ingredients are well mixed slowly add the dry, just until mixed.

~put into lined or greased cupcake pans, I use a batter scoop (like an ice cream scoop) so they are all equal, a quarter cup measuring cup works great for this also, so the cupcakes are all the same size.

~place into a preheated oven and bake for 18-20mins.

~let cool on a wire rack

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1 cube of organic butter at room temp

1 brick of organic cream cheese at room temp

1 bag of organic powdered sugar

2T vanilla

1/2c low fat organic milk

~cream together cheese and butter, once it's nice and light, add vanilla and slowly add powdered sugar and milk alternately until  you get a nice creamy texture.  You probably won't use all the milk, but it helps the frosting spread a little easier I think.