28 Days of Recipes: Wake Up Cakes

On one of my many quests to create sugary pastries that I can eat guilt free and not feel like I have to go jogging afterward, I came across this recipe somewhere on the internet.  It may have been the American Heart Association site, and if so, I'm giving most of the credit to whoever the genius over there was that thought it up.  However, I took some liberties, scaled down the size, and topped it with an owl instead of almonds.  

So without further ado, here is the best damn cupcake recipe I have ever run across.  I call them:

Wake Up Cakes

Everybody loves coffee, right?  Well these cupcakes are full of caffeinated goodness.  It is such an awesome idea that I'm pretty sure I'll be substituting coffee for water in everything I bake from now on.  Mashed potatoes and coffee.  Coffee flavored pot roast.  Coffee quiche.  

Okay, no.  But here are some of the things you need to make these happen.

Again, these are just some of the things.  The complete ingredient list is as follows.

Cupcakes:

1 box devil's food cake mix (mine was sugar free)

1 jar of baby food puree (any fruit will do, I used apples and plums)

1 cup of coffee

3 egg whites

2 tbs canola oil

Raspberry Sauce:

1 bag of frozen raspberries 

1/2 cup of sugar

1 1/2 tbs corn starch

1 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting:

2 tsp instant coffee grounds (I went overboard and bought instant espresso)

2 tsp water

1 entire tub of fat free cool whip; and

1 Owl

Now that we have that out of the way...

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Mix all of the ingredients in the "cupcakes" list together in a giant bowl.  Here's me pouring some of today's leftover coffee in there right on top of the cake mix.  Its so brilliant, I can't believe I never thought of this before.

I'm not gonna lie.  The original recipe called for prune puree baby food.  But prunes and I haven't gotten along since my mother tried to sneak them into every single thing I ate for the first ten years of my life.  Fiber comes in many forms, and I had absolutely no interest in eating like a 70-year-old when I was 5.  Prunes are disgusting.  There is nothing about a prune that is okay in any sense of the word.  The closest I could stand to come was apples and plums, and even that I know is fairly similar in nature.  Really, I think you could use anything you want.  

Just don't use prunes, or I'll never speak to you again. 

You have to separate the egg whites from the yolks.  I used to think this was difficult, but really all it entails is flipping the yolk back and forth between shell halves until all the white falls into a bowl.  It started to get fun once the heavier egg white goop would fall down and leave the yolk spinning in the shell.  I'm easily amused, though.

Don't tell anybody, but I threw out the yolks.  It can be our little secret.  Our little extremely wasteful secret.

The whisk is my favorite kitchen utensil ever.  I remember the day I bought my very first whisk.  It was about eight years or so ago, and it was the highlight of my day.  Later on at a friend's house, I brought up that fact, and she confessed that she too had purchased a whisk on that very same day, and how damned excited she was about it. 

I think that was a defining moment for the both of us.

Shut up and start whisking.

Whisk until the batter is Owl-Approved. 

You didn't forget your owl, did you?  If so, stop what you're doing right now, and go get one.  You cannot make these cupcakes without one.  

I completely forgot to take a picture of the batter in the cupcake tins.  I truly hope you don't need to know what it looks like when one fills a cupcake tin with cake batter, but as a general rule, you fill them about 2/3 of the way to allow for rising up over the top without coming out looking stupid.  I made both standard sized cupcakes, and minis.  Not because I thought it would be special, or more creative, but because I'm lacking in the cupcake tin department, and I work with what I've got.  

Here they are halfway through baking, when I realized I hadn't visually schooled you all in how to pour batter.

Please forgive me.

Also, it is worth noting that for standard sized cupcakes, I baked them for 20 minutes.  For the minis, I took them out around the 15 minute mark.  

Now we're on to Phase 2.  The raspberry sauce.  Which, by the way, you should really have been doing while you were waiting for the cupcakes to bake.  If you can't multitask, quit making this recipe and head on over to the previous entry.

Combine your bag-o-berries with your half a cup of sugar and vanilla extract in a saucepan on medium-high heat.  Then...panic, because you can't find any corn starch.  You could have sworn you had corn starch somewhere, but don't forget to tear the kitchen apart looking for it only to find that you're completely out.

Luckily, I found this in the cupboard.

To be completely honest with you, I have no idea what this even is.  I just know it serves a similar purpose to corn starch, and I needed it immediately.  It didn't seem to have any noticeable effect on the sauce, but do yourself a favor and make sure you have corn starch before you start this project, because most people don't have random weird substitutes laying around, and its even less likely that you won't totally ruin everything by using one.

I should know, I'm the queen of ruining everything.  

After a few minutes on high, your strange little mixture should be bubbly and smell like heaven.  It should look sort of like this..

Resist dunking your face in there, because it is hot.  I know its hard, but try not to leave this recipe with third degree burns.  The hospital is not an ingredient.  

Once its boiling for a couple of minutes, turn off the heat and cover it.  Just leave it sitting there till the end of the process.  You could always stick it in the fridge too, though its probably better warm when you serve it.  I would say its a matter of personal preference. 

I betcha your cupcakes are done.  

Here's one of my minis:

Look, it fits in a spoon!  It was adorable, so I ate it.  I think that all children and animals should count themselves lucky that I can resist eating them.  There's some primal urge in us humans to see cute and want to put it in our mouths.  It appears to be very strong in me.   

Lets move on to Phase 3...the topping.  

This is the best part.  Why?  Because there are only two ingredients.  Instant espresso, and Cool Whip.  I don't think there are many better words in the English language.  And you get to mix them together.

I even used fat free whipped topping so that I could stand there and eat it with a spoon for a while before making the actual frosting.  

Mix your 2 tbs water to 2 tbs instant coffee (or really just equal parts each, you can mix as much as you would like), and then fold in the entire tub of white sugary awesomeness.  Or at least as much as you can manage not to eat with a spoon beforehand.  

It helps if you stir it up to look like some sort of melted animal, or, say, a nipple.  I don't know what that says about me.  What do you see?

After this, I covered the bowl and stuck it in the fridge for later.

When everything is done and made, you just combine them in a super awesome snack-stack.  

Raspberry sauce on a plate, cupcake on top of that, and caffeinated frosting on top of that.  The original recipe recommended tossing some sliced almonds up there, but frankly I am too cheap to buy them for one time use.  Instead of almonds, I prefer this approach:

When in doubt, owls.