Posts filed under 'cupcakes'
Count Down Cupcakes
What the hell are those?!
Well, you see, I had an idea. Some of my ideas are great. And then there are ideas like this one. It starts off promising, and then, well, smoosh.
So let me explain this cupcake misadventure.
I thought, hey New Year’s! Times Square… ball dropping… Count Down Cupcakes! The idea was to have a sugar crystal frosting ball suspended over chocolate cupcakes. You unwrap the cupcake, pull the stem through the bottom and voila! Your crystal ball descends and rings in the new year. You can see this to the left.
But oh, what a smooshy new year it is.
The frosting balls were really heavy, wobbling on their sticks and making larger and larger holes in the cupcakes. As they warmed they slid down their little sticks, ringing in 2007 on their own around 5:30 pm. Something had to be done, and fast.
I settled on removing the sticks and squashing the frosting balls, to make what resemble brightly colored cartoon mushroom caps sitting on top of the cucpakes. Here they are in all their.. glory…
Ah well! Happy New Year! VeganYumYum wishes you good tidings and strange little cupcakes throughout the 2007!
December 31st, 2006
Lemon Gem Cupcakes
Apparently I while away the hours filleting lemon peels with a sharp, sharp knife.
What? Why are you looking at me like that?
The recipe calls for a very tasty lemon glaze, but have had trouble in the past making those look good. You can’t go wrong with piped frosting, so I made a batch of the Lemon Buttercream from VCTOtW for these puppies. But then what? I wanted to use the lemon peel, and my crazy brain kept saying, “use the paper punch!”
It was such a bad idea, I had to try it. Of course, the paper punch was made for, you know, punching paper. The lemon peels had to be thinned a bit or else it wasn’t going to happen. So I filleted them.
Pretty huh? I cut the lemon in four quarters, and got four flowers out of each piece. It wasn’t even a large lemon! I’m definitely going to use this technique again, and I think it’ll work equally well for limes and oranges. Ooohh, the just think of the possibilities. I need to buy more paper punches, stat!
December 26th, 2006
Rosewater Cupcakes
I still had some leftover frosting from the humongous batch I made the other night, but it was definitely going to have to be used sparingly if I wanted to frost another dozen cupcakes. I thought I would have enough as long as I didn’t pipe the frosting, and I was right. There’s nary a tablespoon leftover. I should have cooled the frosting before spreading, though. It was very sticky and didn’t play well with my frosting spatula.
So, before I decided on what recipe I wanted to make, flipped through VCTOtW and realized that I definitely didn’t want to go to the store to gather ingredients. I remembered that I had some rosewater in the pantry from when we used to make lassis, so I decided to make the Rosewater Pistachio cupcakes, sans pistachio.
So I’m making cupcakes, late at night, without all the right ingredients (I was also missing cornstartch and decided to sub arrowroot), and barely enough frosting… so why not also experiment with my new cupcake liners? These are pretty, but this is not the best application for them. They can be stunning but I missed the mark here. While this is a perfectly acceptable batch of cupcakes, they don’t quite have the visual affect that I usually shoot for. They are more “happy birthday!” than “welcome to my bakery!” But whatever, who doesn’t love birthday cupcakes!?
They cooked faster than I intended leaving the bottom of each one not burnt but definitely browned. I think that’s because they weren’t in a cupcake pan, but on a cookie sheet, allowing them to get hotter faster. I wouldn’t say they were overcooked - the crumb was absolutely perfect. It was soft, silky, spongy and moist. You can see the color variation I’m talking about below.
The liners were sort of difficult to remove, so much so that I’d hesitate serving these to a group. No one wants to fuss with their cupcake, trying to use enough force to rip through the paper but no so much that you end up holding a squashed mess. Perhaps if you cut through the rolled edge in a few places before baking this task would be easier to manage, but who wants to do that? As soon as I caught myself considering that as an option, I realized how ridiculous I was being. These are cupcakes, not ketchup packets.
Once you get them out of their wrapper, however, they’re a real treat. Since they’re taller than your usual cupcake, you really feel like you’re eating a miniature cake instead of a cupcake. I might use these liners if I wanted to serve cupcakes without the wrappers, or perhaps if I intended on making miniature cakes. Frosted on all sides and decorated, these would look outstanding.
Wow. That was a lot about cupcakes. I’m a total cupcake nerd.
December 23rd, 2006
Chocolate Cherry Vanilla Cupcakes
Stewart gets to take the batch to work tomorrow. Thankfully our largest tupperware container only fits eight cupcakes - I won’t feel guilty about making him leave four of them at home for us to devour!
As usual, more gratuitous cupcake pics up on flickr.
December 22nd, 2006
Cherry Chocolate Creme Cupcakes
They are so tasty, even our new kitten couldn’t resist them. We found her on the table licking one - she had gotten through the first frosting puff and was heading towards the second. Since when do cats like frosting?
If you want to see more pictures of the cupcakes, click here.
December 20th, 2006
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