Campfire Cupcakes and S'more Treats - Garden Seeds and Honey Bees

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

*3/4 cup All-purpose Flour
*3/4 cup Cake Flour
*1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Powder
*1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt
*1 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
*1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
*1 1/3 cups Sugar
*2 Eggs, room temperature
*1 teaspoon Vanilla
*1/2 cup Milk plus 2 tablespoons
**12-14 Gold Cupcake Liners

Preheat oven 350*F.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in bowl. Then in electric mixer, mixing bowl, cream together the sugar and butter and beat in eggs, one egg at a time. Add milk and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients about a 1/2 a cup at a time until creamed mixture and mix until smooth.

Bake cupcakes in cupcake liners in muffin tin filling them 3/4 full and bake for 25 minutes or until done. Cool, frost and decorate.

Cupcake recipe Adapted from Martha Stewart

Frosting:

*6 ounces Cream Cheese, room temperature
*1/4 cup Butter, room temperature
*1/2 pound (8 ounces) confectioners’ Sugar, more if needed
*1 tablespoon Brown Sugar
*1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla
*1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

Cream together cream cheese and butter and mix together in mixer sugars, vanilla and cinnamon until fluffy/smooth. Use a decorating bag with tip of your choice and pipe frosting onto cupcake and decorate with “fire orange” hard spun sugar.

Frosting recipe adapted from Recipe Girl

Orange Hard Spun Sugar

*1 cup Sugar
*2 tablespoons Light Corn Syrup
*2 tablespoons water

**2 teaspoons Orange extract, or flavoring of your choice

**Food coloring, 1/2 teaspoon Orange or until color you desire

Combine the sugar, light corn syrup on medium heat and bring to a boil, now without stirring (we used a coated cast Iron pot). **(Flavoring and coloring are added after your candy is done cooking) cook to hardball stage.

Making hard candy takes about 25 minutes to cook so be patient and use a candy thermometer to cook to the right temperature. 300 to 310*F. (149 to 154*C), you could also test it by dropping some drops of the Candy syrup into a cup of cold water, it should form a very hardball.

Remove pot/pan from heat. Using a Silpat lined cooking sheet dip fork into hot candy mixture, holding the fork high above a marble rolling pin on Silpat drizzle hot candy back and forth making thin strings of hard spun sugar. (Be very careful this candy is very hot and messy.)Make sure you have newspaper or large non-stick counter space to collect the candy mess.) Make the strings into piles of spun sugar. See picture below. It’s nice to have two people for this process.

Also see The Curvy Carrot