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Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery has now been added to my list of happy places.
Made these a while ago. They became DELICIOUS. The only bad thing was that I didn't have one of those things that you use when you add cream frosting and I accidently used granulated sugar instead of powdered sugar when making the frosting.
Recipe from Hershey's Kitchen. Differences from mine and the recipe is that I didn't use the Hershey chocolate brand since we don't have it here and I used vanilla powder instead of extract which turned out fine.
Recipe (from the website)
"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cupcakes
IngredientsDirections
- 2 cups s
- 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flourcup Cocoa
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup boiling water
- Line muffin cups (2-1/2 inches in diameter) with paper bake cups.
- Heat oven to 350°F.
- Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin).
- Fill cups 2/3 full with batter.
- Bake 22 to 25 minutes.
- Cool completely. Frost.
"Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Buttercream FrostingIngredients
Directions
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
- 2/3 cup Cocoa
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Melt butter.
- Stir in cocoa.
- Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
- Add small amount additional milk, if needed.
- Stir in vanilla.
Today is RSPCA Cupcake Day! I have made about 30 cupcakes and brought them into work and am selling them for a whole $2.50 each... hopefully people decide that they are worth that much! I suspect I won't sell that many of them because pretty much everyone is away today. Boooo.
I brought them to work in my shiny new Cupcake Courier:
(Ignore the seriously ugly kitchen tiles on the splashback - stupid rental tiles).
It works so well - I luff it! I made 4 types of cupcakes: chocolate with peppermint icing, chocolate with chocolate icing, vanilla with vanilla icing, and vanilla with coconut icing. I tried to take good photos of them, but the bad lighting plus the dentedness of my camera combined for baaaad photos. Sad face.
Anywhooser, if you are a regular cupcake maker for parties and stuff, I recommend the cupcake courier. It makes transporting them without icing going everywhere a total snap. Plus, you can take the layers out and then use it to transport large cakes.
I missed out again on a Sundara Yarn update with Tuscan Rose Over Lemon sock yarn. I've been trying to get my hands on this particular colorway for months now and up until this afternoon, I had missed the updates. This time, though, I was ready, but because I was unfamiliar with navigating the site, and the site was slow, everything I had in the shopping cart fell out before I could finalize the purchase. There's another update next week and I'll be in training for it. No Tuscan Rose Over Lemon for the next update, but maybe I can score another color for trade. Does this sound insane?
A cupcake bake shop finally made it's way to the burbs! It's Vanilla Moon Bakery in San Carlos. The yelpers have already given it mixed reviews, but I like that it's a small owner-run business, and really, what's not to like about a cupcake?
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Had me a slice o' cupcake tonight.
Now, that's not being overly frugal or diet-conscious. Thanks to Williams-Sonoma's Great Cupcake Pan, the entire world I knew before this weekend has been completely upended.
On the one hand, cupcakes are meant to be small. Portable. Snacky.
On the other, for cupcake freaks like myself, who carry buttons that read "Make Cupcakes Not War," this thing was too good to be missed. Because the only thing better than the shrinking of something from its normal size is the embiggening of something meant to be small into an oversize.
I saw this in WS a few weeks back and it really never left my mind; after a doctor's appointment last week, I just had to go get it. And this weekend, I did two things I'd never done before: I made a giant cupcake, and I made it from scratch (the recipe came with the pan). Here's how it all went down.
The pan itself is described on the Web site thusly: "Our pan creates a cupcake of Dr. Seuss proportions (an impressive 6" high and 7" across) that lends itself to fanciful decorations. The pan consists of top and bottom pieces that can be baked in two different flavors and frosted."
Now, as you can see by the photo on the top, this isn't quite true: The top is meant to be frosted, while the bottom kind of goes naked. (Until WS comes out with Great Cupcake Pan liners, that is.) This makes for a nice picture, but an odd ratio of frosting to cake.
Additionally, the cake pan comes as you see here. There's no lid to keep the insides from getting dusty or what have you; the only "cover" is the cardboard fitted paper that it comes with, which you actually need to keep -- it's got instructions on how to use the pan, as well as the from-scratch recipe I used, and the from-scratch buttercream frosting recipe I didn't use. (I am just not a buttercream fan.) The cardboard has that semi-removable factory glue on it which fits on the widest empty parts of the pan, and is not very reusable -- despite the need to reuse it for many things.
But on to the recipe. Your usual cake recipe: Flour, butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt. Not cheap in this economy, but what the hell, I thought if you're going to do a test cake, may as well do what they tell you. I didn't have a sifter, but online told me I could whisk through the salt/sugar/flour combination with the same efficacy, and I didn't have special attachments on my beater. Still, all seemed right and the cake batter tasted fine, if a bit salty, when it was ready for pourin'.
The recipe says fill the containers up to within a half inch, and make the center a little lower than the sides. Since this stuff had the viscosity of, well, cake batter you tell me how you're supposed to do that. Nevertheless, in the oven it went, presenting problem No. 2: The swirly part of the cake ends on a pointed tip. Tips don't balance well on racks in the oven. I tried finding a good cross-joint to rest it on and let it be, but ultimately there was some tippage and the cake overgrew its space a little lopsidedly.
Also, the recipe said bake for up to 80 minutes; I did 70 and here's what it looked like (see side). A little browner and crispier on the exterior than the photo leads you to believe, but that could be attributable to the oven, so next time: 60 minutes and we'll see.
Mistake on my part: Although the recipe says to lop off the extra on the top of the swirly, it does not say you should do so on the bottom half of the cake, but I did it anyway. Reason for leaving the bottom half of the cake alone? Because the swirly top doesn't neatly fit over the bottom. Which is only obvious once you go to frost.
Taste? Dense, but excellent, not too salty at all. And by dense, I mean this is a real Glass of Milk kind of cake; you'll choke if you try to down it without any assistance.
I let it sit for two hours (more really) to cool down, and when I brought it out the next day for the frosting from its Tupperware home, it just smelled amazing. Still moist and lovely and sweet.
And thar she blows.
Presumably if the bottom of the cake hasn't been overcooked, pairing it with chocolate frosting won't make it so uniform looking, but therein lies another hazard: I don't know what kind of frosting they used in the photo, but frosting just does not adhere to the swirls in the top like it does up there. I mean, you still have a nice cupcake shape, but the beautifully smooth swirls get lost in the covering; this isn't even a very deep frosting.
So I put some sprinkles on to liven it up and added a cherry. Leading to a an aerial view of the cake which looks a little ... um ... salacious.
Right.
Needless to say, it was eminently slice-able, leading to my having a big glass of milk along with my slice o' cupcake tonight. And as someone who actually likes the burnt potato chips, the crispier edges of the cake were a bonus.
Overall, it was an easy recipe to make, and the use of the pan was certainly simple, but it's far from perfect. Maybe just a little more practice?
Oh, and wait, the Web site has one other idea:
"The pan can also be used to create an ice cream cake: in one side of the pan, bake the cake's bottom, then freeze ice cream in the other side to create the top."
Oh, my word.
Overall appearance: 9 of 10
Packaging: 4 of 10
Accuracy of instructions: 7 of 10
Milk requirement: Absolutely
Yummy factor: 8 of 10
I realize I haven't posted anything that I have baked here for a long time so hopefully that will change now. I will bake and cook a lot this summer so I'll try to update and post them here :)
Yesterday I baked doughnut muffins. They are from the following recipe but I did some minor adjustments (but not too big) and the recipe below is in another cooking metric than the US one. They did however turn out delicious!
Ingredients
Muffins
7 decilitre wheat flour
2½ decilitre sugar
1/4 teaspoons baking soda/bicarbonate
1½ tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1 decilitre softened butter
1 teaspoons vanilia extract
3 eggs
2 decilitres milk
1/2 decilitres creamTopping
1/2 decilitres softened butter
1½ decilitre sugar
½ tablespoon cinnamon
Procedure
1. Put the oven on 175 degrees (C)
2. Mix the butter and sugar in one big bowl. Add one egg at a time.
3. Mix cinnamoon, flour, baking powder, baking soda and nutmeg in another bowl.
4. Mix the milk, cream and vanilia in another bowl.
5. Mix the dry and liquid mixes into the big bowl, carefully, taking some of each at a time. End it with the dry one. Make sure the batter is smooth but not too dry or sticky.
6. Put cups into a muffin plate. Fill them almost up to the top.
7. Bake them for about 25 min or more. Make sure they are firm but not too dry.
8. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
9. Put the butter in another.
10. When the muffins are done and cold enough to hold, brush the top with butter.
11. Dip them in the mixture of cinnamon and sugar.
12. Enjoy. They taste delicious when fresh and with something not too sweet, like milk or coffee, as they are themselves very sweet.
I took a cupcake decorating class from Karen Tack, the author of Hello, Cupcake! to learn how to make some of her whimsical cupcake creations. With just frosting, store bought candies and cookies, anyone can make these playful cupcakes.
The problem was the density. They were in no way a cupcake texture, they were not moist. They were really tough, almost like a few day old banana bread. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about ingredients and how they affect the baking to know to change something on my own to make next time turn out better. So, for now, they will remain a failure.
The other thing I don't like about them is their sustainability. They are pretty much made to be immediately served-- and thats just not what I like to do with cupcakes! I like to have 'em hanging around for a few days and bring a few for people at work or family or boyfriend's family. I could not bring them to work, because they need to be kept refrigerated (and that's another thing... the coldness made them even more tough, and after awhile, made the frosting really disgusting-- and if you have leftover spaghetti in the fridge-- forget it, they are soaking up that scent and you're going to have spaghetti sauce banana creme cupcakes... yuck.) Don't bother putting the cute banana slices on top, because they will be brown and soggy within minutes (hence the serve immediately statement..)
Despite all these issues, they do taste wonderful if eaten immediately. Try them at your own risk :)
I found the recipe here: http://www.quickandsimple.com/recipe.php?id=131
Did I mention this frosting is so good I actually just licked it off the top of a couple of them and threw the rest in the trash? Yum!
I also sprinkled the left over graham cracker pie crust into the left over frosting and ate it that way too.. Yes, I'm a major fatty :)
