Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mini Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

We had our neighbors over for dinner the other day, and I got a little too excited and made two different desserts for the occasion. I made Mini Vanilla Bean Cupcakes, with Vanilla Bean Butter frosting, and some Oreo Brownies. I'll get to the Oreo Brownies later; today I'll just talk about the cupcakes.

I originally got the idea for the Vanilla Bean frosting from my baking and blog friend, Grannyloohoo. On this post, she mentions a vanilla bean cream frosting, and I immidiately knew I had to make it! I have a large stash of vanilla beans hanging around, so I added the seeds from one bean to a batch of butter frosting. For the cupcakes themselves, I took this recipe and added the seeds from two scraped vanilla beans to the batter. Then I made them into mini cupcakes, and baked for 12 minutes. I got 58 out of the recipe. I frosted the mini cupcakes using a 1M tip, and practiced making different swirly designs on top.

Vanilla Bean Frosting

1/2 cup salted butter, softened
1/2 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped out
1-3 TBS. milk

Cream butter and powdered sugar together. Add vanilla extract and vanilla bean seeds. Add milk, a little at a time, until frosting is at desired consistency.

This made enough to frost all of my mini cupcakes, with enough left over to make 4 graham cracker sandwiches. :)


7 comments:

Shelby said...

These are adorable!

LadyJayPee said...

Yum on all of those little vanilla bean bits!

Linda said...

Oh they look incredible, Dishy! I love your "swirly" designs. Lucky neighbors!

Carrie said...

Yummy! I've never seen vanilla beans around here, all of these recipes that use them look so delicious. I love the little flecks in your icing.

What a Dish! said...

I get them from an Ebay store, Carrie- I don't know off the top of my head what it's called, though.

La Cuisine d'Helene said...

These are so cute.

Anonymous said...

The recipes is very simple and testy.