Recipe | Nutella Cupcakes

When I started learning how to properly use our Oven Toaster to bake cupcakes, I started checking so many cupcake videos on YouTube to know about different flavor combinations. One of the "easy" cupcakes to do is the Nutella Cupcakes, which I baked when my sister celebrated her birthday three days ago.


Nutella Cupcakes
{yield - 10 cupcakes}

Ingredients - Cupcakes

• 1 box Maya Butter Cake Mix
• 4 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 to 2 tablespoons cocoa powder (optional)

Ingredients - Frosting

• 2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon Nutella spread
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Let's bake!

> Cream softened butter and blend in the cake mix until well combined.

> Make a well in the center and add in eggs - one at a time - lightly mixing the batter in between eggs.
> Add the water and mix until well combined, making sure not to over mix the batter.
> Line muffin trays with cupcake liners and pour in batter, filling 2/3 of each cup.
> If using oven toaster, cover the tray with aluminum foil and bake in the oven toaster for 7 minutes.
> Take out the foil cover once it reached the 7 minute mark and bake further for three more minutes.
> Once the cupcakes are fully baked, cool them on racks and set aside.

To make the frosting, just beat the butter and cream cheese together until well combined, the pour in the vanilla, followed by the Nutella spread. Beat further then slowly add the powdered the sugar. Continue beating the mixture using an electric mixer until it becomes fluffy. As always, if it's too heavy, add milk (one tablespoon at a time) or if it's too light, add more powdered sugar. Top cupcakes with the frosting using a spoon or a piping bag, making sure the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting them. If it's warm, the heat will just melt the frosting. Drizzle the cupcakes with Nutella spread before serving. Also, you can also bore a hole into the cupcakes and fill it with Nutella spread, if you want to. I didn't do this as I don't want to overwhelm myself with the Nutella flavor.

As you can see, I made two kinds of cupcakes. When I checked YouTube for videos, most of the videos used chocolate cupcakes, but one used vanilla cupcakes because chocolate cupcakes might drown the Nutella flavor. To find out which I prefer, I decided to make two different kinds.

I just made the batter and made five cupcakes using the basic mix, and for the second batch, I added a tablespoon of cocoa powder and half a tablespoon of water into the remaining batter. Personally, I preferred the chocolate one more maybe because adding the cocoa powder made the cupcake less sweeter compared the butter cupcakes. My sister and mother loved it, and I was a happy baker.

This Christmas, we will certainly make our own cupcakes, but of all the ones we baked, we loved the Carrot Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting the best, so that would be part of our Noche Buena menu.

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Recipe | Banana PB&J Cupcakes

When I posted about the Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Cupcakes, I mentioned that I wanted to bake Banana PB&J Cupcakes next time. This has been something I wanted to do because we all know bananas go well with peanut butter and peanut butter goes well with jelly. When my sister and I once visited a pastry shop, they were selling this kind of cupcakes, and we tried it to give us an idea of how it will taste like once we create it at home. It was delicious, but there were things about it that we didn't like so we decided to tweak it. For this recipe, I once again used Maya Oven Toaster Cake Mix, because even if wanted to do something from scratch, we fear our oven toaster might not bake it good.


Banana PB&J Cupcakes
{yield - 12 cupcakes}

Ingredients - Banana Cake

• 1 box (3.11 oz) Maya Oven Toaster Cake Mix - Banana Cake
• 1 medium egg
• 2 to 3 pieces of bananas, mashed
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 tablespoons water

Ingredients - Peanut Butter Frosting

• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup), softened
• 1lb. powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy)
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• milk (optional, on stand by)

Other Ingredients

• Fruit Jelly
• Chocolate Bar Pieces

Let's bake!

Start with the cupcakes.

> Preheat your oven toaster.

> In a bowl, combine egg, water, and oil then whisk lightly. Add mashed bananas and mix.

> Sift the banana cake mix and combine with the wet ingredients. Mix or beat until well combined, without over mixing or beating it.

> Line your muffin pan with paper cups and pour batter until 2/3 full. Tap the pan once. Cover the pan with aluminum foil, without letting the foil touch the pan as the batter might stick to it while baking.

> Pop in the oven toaster and bake for 7 and a half minutes. Take the foil out and continue baking for 2 and a half minutes, or until the surface is brown and the toothpick comes clean when you poke it.

> Line cupcakes on cooling rack.

While the cakes are cooling, time to make the frosting.


> Cream softened butter and peanut butter until it turns light in color.

> Add powdered sugar slowly and beat for a while then add the vanilla extract. Continue beating until it becomes fluffy and light.

> If the frosting was too dense, add milk (1 tablespoon at a time). If it's too watery, add powdered sugar until you get the consistency you like.

> Place in a piping bag.

Once the cupcakes are cool enough, start piping the frosting. This frosting is a little on the rich side, so even if you love peanut butter, please don't over frost as the peanut butter flavor might over power the banana cake. There has to be a balance of all flavors.

Finally top it with fruit jelly.


I let my sister bake the cakes this time, but I did guide her with the aluminum foil and when to take it out (I made the frosting). Making 12 cupcakes, it meant us three girls have 4 cupcakes each, so the day we made this recipe, we only allowed ourselves to eat 2 cupcakes and I topped it with strawberry jam and pieces of Krackel chocolate.

Going back to the pastry shop visit we did, they presented their Banana PB&J Cupcakes by spreading peanut butter on the surface of the cake before piping the frosting, creating a well in the middle where they placed the fruit jelly. We found the strawberry jelly a little too tangy for our taste, so for these cupcakes, I decided to just drop a little strawberry jelly - just to provide flavor. It was tangy, but the peanut butter and Krackel chocolate balanced it all.


At home we have two jars of fruit jelly - strawberry preserves (the syrupy kind) and orange marmalade (from Good Shepherd). Whenever I make my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I always go for the orange marmalade because I loved to chew on the orange rinds. Seeing the bottle in the fridge made me go for it for our next set of cupcakes.

We all agreed that the one with orange marmalade tasted better.

With these cupcakes, as well as the whole wheat carrot ones, we are very sure that we won't be buying cakes this Christmas anymore, we will just bake it at the comforts of our own home.

Hmmm... what if I add oatmeal to this next time? :)

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Recipe | Whole Wheat Carrot Cupcakes with Sour Cream Frosting

I have cooked several cakes using the steamer - Banana Cake, Banana Cupcakes, Sweet Corn Puto-Muffins, and Bibingka, all using different Maya Cake Mixes. When I attempted to create pancakes using the Butter Cake Mix, I didn't get the result I wanted, but instead of throwing the batter away, I decided to line the muffin pan with aluminum foil and bake it using the Oven Toaster, just to give me an idea how it would be - making this my guinea pig, my sacrifice batter.


It wasn't a successful experience, but not a failure either. When I use the steamer, I fill the cups with the batter, which was what I did here, and as you can see it overflowed. The bottom right one I only filled halfway, and it turned out to be okay. The taste was good, and this moment, we knew we prefer the taste of cakes baked using the oven toaster compared to the ones cooked using a steamer. Baking the Rocky Road Brownies may be another not-so-successful experience... but I am very much willing to try and try until I get it right.

We still have several boxes of Maya Cake Mixes at home - three of which were boxes of Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Mix, so last weekend, I decided bake some cupcakes for us three girls. I decided to go with Sour Cream Frosting for no special reason... it just came out of my mind that I wanted to go with sour cream for the frosting.

Whole Wheat Carrot Cupcakes 
with Sour Cream Frosting
{yield - 12 cupcakes}

Ingredients (Carrot Cupcakes)

• One box (230g) Maya Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Mix
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 4 tablespoons water
• 1 medium egg
• 1 cup grated carrots (loosely packed), approximately 100g.

Ingredients (Sour Cream Frosting)

• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup) softened
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 3/4 teaspoon lemon juice
• 4 to 4 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Let's start baking!

> Preheat your oven toaster. Our oven toaster is the most basic kind - it only has a timer and not the kind that you can set the temperature. I just set it to its longest time, 15 minutes.

> Combine all ingredients for the cupcakes. Mix until there are no lumps, but be sure not to over mix or over beat it.

> Line your muffin pan with paper cups or if you don't have paper cups, brush the pan lightly with butter.

> Pour batter into the cups, leaving 1/3 space. You can also use an ice cream scooper or a measuring cup to make sure the amount you put in the cups would be uniform.

> Cover the pan loosely with aluminum foil, careful not to touch the surface of the pan to allow the batter to rise.

> Pop in the oven toaster and bake for 10 minutes.

> Cool each cupcakes for a few minutes before frosting.


Our oven toaster is small and it can only accommodate a cupcake pan with 6 slots, meaning I baked two batches of cupcakes. This is still a trial and error stage for me, so I experimented a little. For the first batch, I let it bake covered for 5 minutes, and baked it uncovered for another 5 minutes. It produced this kind of cupcakes - slightly toasted at the sides, but with a pretty dome shape at the center. The second batch, I baked covered for 7 minutes, and baked it uncovered for 3 minutes. It produced a batch of pointy shaped cupcakes, kinda like a mountain. The inside was also still moist even after 10 minutes, so I cooked it for 3 minutes more. Next time, I will just go with what I did with the first batch, but will add more batter into the cup.

Next, the frosting.

> In a mixing bowl, beat butter and gradually add sugar. Beat until well incorporated.

> Add vanilla, lemon juice, and milk, and continue beating until fluffy. If it's too dense, add milk (one tablespoon at a time). If it's too liquidy, add more sugar.

> Refrigerate for about 30 minutes before spreading or piping it on top of the cupcakes.


I don't know what the heck I was thinking that I could make a good frosting without the help of an electric mixer. I thought I could make it with just a hand held whisk, beating as fast as I could. It only melted the sugar and even if I used our blender, it still didn't look good. As is, it tasted good, because it had a nice balance of tang and sweetness, and was a good pair for the carrot cupcakes.

We were kind of prepared to just spread a little frosting on top of our cupcakes before eating it, but the next day, we were lucky to find an electric mixer at the mall sold for 50% off, and bought it just to complete this trial and error stage of our baking life.


The sugar has already melted and the butter wasn't creamed at the start of the process, so even if the electric mixer did wonders to the frosting, it still didn't look the way I hoped my frosting to look like.


Still, I could say this was 90% successful. Now that I tried different things, the next batch of cupcakes would definitely be much better.

Now, I am trying to locate a shop to buy disposable piping bags because the cake decorator I bought was a little small and quite difficult to work with. I need to learn how to pipe awesome frosting, so by Christmastime, we don't have to buy cakes at the bakeshop, we will just bake it.

I do love the cake mixes of Maya. Each and every product we tried tasted good, and as a person who's just trying to learn the ropes of baking, using the mix helps a lot. Of course in time I also would like to bake cupcakes "from scratch," but for now, I am quite satisfied with this. Even without the frosting it tasted great as it had the goodness of the cinnamon that goes well with carrots, and I am sure you will like it, too.

Next time, I will bake Banana PB&J cupcakes. :)

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Baking My Very First Rocky Road Brownies

Baking is something we truly want to learn and enjoy. My sister and I have been eyeing this oven for so long now, but we still can't decide whether we'll buy it or not, because #1 we don't want to blow up our electric bill and #2 we are not sure if it is something we really want.

We have used quite a number of Maya baking mixes, but whenever we use it, we usually opt to steam the batter and even if it gives us a good way to enjoy good tasting food, we still want to try baking it. Some Maya cake mixes are made for oven toaster, so we wanted to try that route first.


One of the Maya baking mixes we had was the Celebrations by Sharon Fudge Brownie Mix. It was near its expiration date, so sister and I decided to bake it using the oven toaster last weekend.


What was needed to make the basic brownies were - 1 box of Maya Celebrations by Sharon Fudge Brownie Mix, 1 medium egg, 1/4 cup oil (we used corn oil), 1 tablespoon water, and chopped nuts. But then, we still have marshmallows and chocolate chips from previous "Kitchen Lab sessions" so I also added them in the recipe.

Mixing the brownie mix, egg, oil, and water resulted in a very heavy and thick batter and at first my sister was questioning if I read it right that it only needed 1 tablespoon water. Let me tell you that you just have to keep mixing it and soon it will all come together.


To make the brownies, we could use the oven toaster tray, but because we wanted to make Rocky Road Brownies, we used one of our loaf pans. Before popping it in the oven toaster, we wrapped it with aluminum foil first so that the heat from the oven toaster would not shock the surface of the brownies. We baked it for 15 minutes at 5 minute intervals, allowing it to rest for a few minutes before baking it more so that the residual heat would cook the inner part of the brownies. Last one minute of baking I tore off the aluminum foil.


One boo-boo about leaving it open for 1 minute was that the marshmallows got toasted... really toasted. I realized, using itty bitty marshmallows would burn toast very fast. It resulted in a slightly failed Rocky Road Brownies, but not totally wasted because even if the top was okay... burned, the brownies were chewy and very delish!


I didn't put all the batter in the pan, I also tried making some Rocky Road Brownie Cups, and it was much better because I didn't take off the aluminum foil cover, but it still toasted the marshmallows because they were much smaller.

I totally love the Maya Celebrations by Sharon Fudge Brownie Mix! It made baking brownies easier, and both my mom and sister expressed that it tasted the brownies we used to buy at this bakeshop (won't tell what). Now that we knew how it tasted, we will definitely just bake our own brownies.

Lessons to consider - mix the marshmallows and chocolate chips in the batter and just top it with cashews, use unsalted cashews, and don't peel off the aluminum foil covering.

We are now really going to buy that oven soon... but before that, we would attempt to bake Carrot Cupcakes using the oven toaster first.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad