The Cupcake Love Challenge: Orange-Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

First off my poor mom has been SO busy taking care of my sick grandma who on top of her radiation just started Chemo this week as well. So needless to say she is VERY busy with that. But I just wanted to say I love you Momma and Happy Mother's Day!!!

I have recruited some extra help in our little project so hopefully our extra Baker will keep this going because it's been SO much fun!

I have even had several people say they decided to get Martha's Cupcake book and start trying some of the recipes themselves which is super fun. I am really excited to get through even more recipes and I have my eye on Martha's cookie book next ;)

Like I said I am really drawn to the fruit recipes. My husband can't wait for me to get through all these "froofy" cupcakes and get some good "real" cupcakes which apparently must have chocolate in them.
I picked Vanilla-Beach Cupcakes on page 145. For some reason this just looked really yummy to me. The ironic part is that I don't really eat the cupcakes I make. I just have a little bite to make sure they taste alright.

First thing first I NEEDED to get myself a new whisk. This blue whisk just wasn't cutting it anymore. Can you see why....

I decided to make the candied oranges for the top and frosting first. For the candied oranges you simple cut oranges into thin slices(the book says 1/8 inch and honestly you don't want to go any thicker or any thiner)

I also was on a mad hunt to find vanilla beans. For some reason I was picturing them in the produce isle. Turns out they are in the spice isle and crazy expensive. Luckily I found them at Sprouts for only $3.30 a piece.

To make the candied oranges you simple boil one cup water one cup sugar and stick the orange slices in and wait until they start to get a little translucent.

I was seriously multi-tasking by making my oranges AND getting the Swiss Meringue frosting going. Which is taking 5 large egg whites, 1 cup sugar and a pinch of salt to a smooth consistency on the double boiler.

NOW in the book Martha says take all the candied oranges out stick them in a container and then pour the remaining glaze all over them. This is exactly what I did. Then I thought about it for a second and realized that once the glaze cooled there was no way in heck I was getting those Oranges out. So luckily I grabbed the oranges out before it was completely cooled and I am glad I did because I lost a few that were already cooled. When I make this again I will put them on parchment paper.

Then I got to the cupcakes which had some grated orange zest, fresh squeezed orange juice, heavy whipping cream and vanilla beans. Ohhh my kitchen smelled SO good.

So I have NEVER ever ever cut a vanilla bean before. It says to cut length wise and take out the beans. So as soon as I cut it length wise I didn't see any kind of bean. So I quickly went on YouTube and found this.

I love the internet.:)

Now you might remember before that I had a hard time with the meringue, but luckily this time I was able to accomplish the "fluff" that was really lacking before. I found that the trick is to add the butter before it reaches the peak level. I still didn't add the full four sticks of butter simply because I think it still taste great with just three and I am not trying to kill my recipients.

The cupcakes turned out cute. The candied Orange on top really adds to the look but I was thinking that everyone would probably just take it off and eat the cupcake. However it seems that everyone loved the candied orange on top. The people who got ones that had a thicker grind suggested I make it thinner so again if you are going to make this I really recommend cutting them thin but not TO thing because they will break when you candy them.

All in all I would say the recipe was medium on the easy scale and I only say this because there is SO many components to it. From making the frosting to candy oranges it took a total of 4 hours from start to finish which is a lot of time to devote to cupcakes.