Coffee-Cake-Cupcakes, my Hero!

For a few months I've been watching and LOVING Laurie's monthly event CUPCAKE HERO over on her fabulous blog, the QUIRKY CUPCAKE!



This month was SUPER busy for me at work and I have been seriously neglecting my kitchen, so I thought I was going to have to admire from afar for one more month and hope to get in a good entry for February....BUT THEN, I decided there was not one good reason why I couldn't bust out a batch of creative coffee cupcakes Thursday night to get my submission in by the Friday 1/25 cutoff. So I started thinking (on my drive to work Thursday morning) of what kind of coffee cupcake I could make...something simple, but yummy, and creative but not too crazy.....and here is what I came up with- COFFEE CAKE! Why not?! I found a good recipe for coffee cake on ALL RECIPES and did a little modifying so there was actual COFFEE in the CAKE! I had no idea how this was going to turn out and these are not the best cupcakes ever, but they were tasty, and a fun breakfast-cupcake to boot!I 'm definitely excited to see the other submissions to this fabulous event.
Check them all out at THE QUIRKY CUPCAKE.





Coffee Cake Cupcakes
Inspired by THIS RECIPE for Coffee Cake on ALL RECIPES

2 c. pastry flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup cold butter
1 egg
1/4 cup brewed & cooled espresso or coffee
about 1/2 c milk- a little more if needed
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 and place cupcake cups on foil covered cookie sheet or grease a muffin tin. In a large food processor fitted with dough blade combine flower, sugar and tsp cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Crack the egg into a measuring cup. Add espresso until it equals 1/4 cup, then add milk to make it measure one cup, then stir in vanilla & whisk until egg is incorporated. Pour the crumb mixture into a large bowl and stir in the egg/espresso/milk until just moistened. Fill cupcake cups about 1/2 full & bake for 20-25 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.

For Cream Cheese Frosting
The perfect amount of cup cake frosting :)

1 8oz pkg softened, room temp cream cheese
1/4 c. softened, room temp salted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 c. confectioners sugar
1 tsp hot chocolate mix
1 tsp instant espresso

Using an electric hand mixer, cream together the cream cheese and sugar. Mix in vanilla until incorporated, then slowly sift in confectioners sugar until smooth. Frost cooled cupcakes & dust with hot chocolate mix and instant espresso.
keep frosted cupcakes in the fridge :)