Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's Cupcakes

News does not take a holiday.

That means that if you work in the news business, you're going to be working holidays. Christmas, New Years, Easter, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, etc...you're going to be working most of, if not all, these days. After many years, you might get enough seniority to get one or two of those days off, but the fact of the matter is, you're going to be working while the rest of the world is enjoying a day off.

But we all know this going into the business, it isn't all bad. When I work a holiday, I always tried to make and take something in to celebrate. Over the past couple of years or so I've been working on making up my own recipes or tweaking recipes into something new. This year, I decided, for Christmas Eve, to take Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's and make up a cupcake based on them.



Trader Joe's Joe-Joe's are sandwich cookies, similar to Oreos, but so much better. They come in different flavors: chocolate cookies with vanilla filling, vanilla with vanilla filling, and, during the holiday season, candy cane (chocolate cookies with vanilla filling that had crushed candy canes mixed in).

I began with my favorite chocolate cake recipe. It's a Wilton recipe called Chocolate Fudge Groom's Cake. I made a couple of small changes to the recipe, it calls for 3 oz unsweetened chocolate. I used 2 oz of unsweetened chocolate and 1 oz of Trader Joe's Peppermint Hot Chocolate mix.





The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup of milk, I heated the milk, mixed in the 1 oz of hot chocolate mix and let it cool to room temperature.



This gave the cake a very subtle peppermint flavor, but it was still chocolaty and moist.

For the icing, I made the usual buttercream icing I always make, I learned it from my Wilton cake class. I double the recipe because I have a fear of running out of icing.
~ Cream 2 sticks of unsalted butter and 1 stick of unflavored Crisco shortening
~ Slowly add 2 lbs of powdered sugar
~ Add a small amount of milk until the icing is the consistency you want

For this icing, I crushed 24 Candy Cane Joe-Joes cookies.



This could be done in a food processor, but I like putting them in a big Ziploc back and using a marble rolling pin to crush them by hand. I like the texture that comes with the varying sizes of the cookie pieces.

After creaming the butter and Crisco, I added the crushed cookies before adding the powdered sugar.



The icing was flavorful and rich! The cupcakes, overall, are very good! A moist cake, rich icing, and I was worried that it might be overpowering, too peppermint-y, but the flavor was just right.

Because of the different sizes of cookie pieces in the icing, I didn't get fancy with the decorating, there was just no use trying to squeeze this icing through a decorator tip. I used an off-set spatula and placed a mound of icing in the middle of the cupcake. Then I smoothed the sides and the top before sticking a Joe-Joe in the top.

Baking With Stonewall Kitchen

Stonewall Kitchen is a wonderful company known for their amazing jams, sauces and chutneys. I'll be honest with you, the prices of their products do tend to run a bit high, but the flavor makes it worth every penny.

Last weekend, I was at National Harbor where I was delighted to find a Stonewall Kitchen store. My cousin had never been in one of their stores, so I dragged her in and introduced her to the amazing flavors. As usual, they had several items set out to sample and my two favorites were Caramel Apple Butter and Raspberry Liqueur Hot Fudge Sauce.

Being who I am, I had to come up with something to bake with these. The first thought was thumbprint cookies. They're easy and delicious. But I didn't want to that with both sauces. So I got on Stonewall Kitchen's website and looked through their recipes for inspiration.

I decided to take their recipe for Black Raspberry-Filled Sugar Cookies and tweaked it for use with the Caramel Apple Butter and their recipe for Thumbprint Jam Cookies and used the Raspberry Liqueur Hot Fudge Sauce.

Caramel Apple Butter Filled Sugar Cookies




I cheated a little with the sugar cookies, I had premade refrigerated dough

that I rolled out and cut into 3" circles.

I laid the circles on the baking sheet and spooned just under a teaspoon of the apple butter into the center of each circle.


Then I put another circle of dough on top, crimped the edges with a fork and poked holes in the center. I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on top and popped them in the oven.


These cookies are amazing, probably the best I've made in a long time! The cookies were crisp and tasted like little apple pies. I can't wait to make them again.



Raspberry Liqueur Hot Fudge Sauce Thumbprint Cookies



The recipe I used from Stonewall Kitchen's website was like a shortbread cookie made with finely chopped walnuts. After making the dough and refrigerating it for an hour, I rolled the it into 1 inch sized balls. I then used a 1/4 teaspoon and pressed a "thumbprint" into each cookie.


I didn't really measure how much hot fudge sauce I put in the indentation, it wasn't more than a 1/4 teaspoon.


A couple of the cookies I overloaded and the sauce spilled over the edge in the oven. They looked messy, but tasted great. They made for good test cookies.


Both of these cookies tasted great and were very easy to make. There was also plenty of left over apple butter and hot fudge sauce to come up with new uses for. And every chance I get to visit a Stonewall Kitchen, I will and I'll come up with new, delicious ways to use their products.

Easy Trader Joe's Chocolate Salted Caramel Cupcakes

I've already shared with you my love of Trader Joe's. Every time I enter one, I find something new.

I spent Thanksgiving with my brother and his family in Illinois and, of course, we took a trip to Trader Joe's. My brother proceeded to follow me around the store telling me I need to buy Trader Joe's brand of Chocolate Frosting mix. I really didn't want to because no matter what I make, I always make my frosting from scratch, it's easy and it tastes better than any store bought kind. But after having my brother follow me down three aisles, telling me how awesome this frosting was, I broke down and bought it. I also found a jar of Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I felt the need to buy it.

I had to go in to work on a Sunday evening, so I decided to bake something to take in with me. I didn't feel like going all out and getting all fancy, so I started with yellow cupcakes from a mix. I was out of vegetable oil, but I did find cinnamon applesauce in the fridge. Just let me say, that from now on, whenever I make a cake from a mix, I am using cinnamon applesauce. It adds a subtle cinnamon flavor that just deepens the flavor of the cake. So good!

I quickly whipped up the Trader Joe's Frosting mix. All it called for was 1 stick (4oz) of softened butter and enough hot water, added 1 tablespoon at a time, to get the right consistency.

I have to admit, the frosting was very good. Creamy and chocolaty, a great consistency. It won't replace my chocolate buttercream, but definitely something I'll use again.

I microwaved the caramel sauce for about twenty seconds (I stirred it after 10 seconds) so that it was thin enough to spread easily.

I spread a little bit of frosting on each cupcake, then used my Wilton #18 tip to pipe a ruffled edge, and then spread about a teaspoon of caramel sauce on top.

These cupcakes worked up very quickly and were so delicious!

I'm planning on going to a Trader Joe's again this coming weekend. I'll be sure to look around for something new to bake.