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The Cupcake Thread!

thanks miss freke!!! yeah i think that the most important thing for me was to have more dry in that recipe. i am excited to try them again because honestly the taste was REALLY good. i would decrease sugar a bit too actually because the mango has a fair amount of sugar in it already and the muffins were really sweet...i want them to be a little less sweet i think.

a co-worker brought me a huge bag of meyers yesterday and i am so excited! i made lemon yogurt cake last nite, it came out so yummy and moist. i am going to be a lemon head for weeks now!
 
Date: 5/23/2008 2:18:25 PM
Author: Mara
a co-worker brought me a huge bag of meyers yesterday and i am so excited! i made lemon yogurt cake last nite, it came out so yummy and moist. i am going to be a lemon head for weeks now!
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Was that Ina Garten's recipe? Her lemon yogurt cake is scrumptious. So jealous about those meyers...mine are still not ready!!! I am going to try that lemon cupcake recipe you posted for my SATC get together with the Magnolia bakery vanilla buttercream recipe. I would use the gathering as an excuse to try the coconut lime recipe tweaks, but this group has eaten them twice already!
 
Mara that puppy dog cupcake are precious!!!
 
One of my favorite cupcake recipes that a friend gave me. Both kids and adults seem to really love this one!
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Devils food cupcakes with marshmallow filling

3/4 butter at room temp
1 1/2 c sugar
2 lg eggs
2 c all purpose flour
1/2 c dutch process unseetened cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 c mil
1 jar (7oz) marshmallow cream
choc cream cheese frosting (recipe follows)

1. In a bowl, with mixer on medium speed, beat butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition an dscraping down sides of bowl as needed
2. In another bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking poser and salt. On low speed, beath half the flour mixture into butter mixture. Add milk and beat just until blended. Add remaining flour mixture and mix just until incorporated. Spoon bater equally into 16 muffin cups (1/2 cup capacity; cups should be almost full) lined with paper baking cups
3. bake in a 350 degree regual or convection oven until tops spring back when lightly pressend in the center and a wooden skwere inserted into teh center comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Let cool in pans on racks for 5 minutes;remove cupcakes from pans and set on rackst to cool completely, at leaset 30 minutes.
4. with a small, sharp knife, cut a cylinder about 3/4 inch wide and 1 inch deep from the center of the top of each cupcake. Trim off and discard about 1/2 incluch from the bottom of each cylinder. With tip of knife, hollow out a small cavity inside each cupcake.
5. Spoon marshmallow cream into pastry bag fitted with 1/2 in plain tip. Twist end of bag tightly to secure. Place tip in cavity of one cupcake; without moving tip, squeeze filling into cavity, to 1/4 inch from top. Repeat to fill remaining cupcakes. Insert cake symlinders into holes.
6. Spoon chocolate cream cheese frosting into another pastry bag, fitten with 3/4 inch star tip and pipe onto tops of cupcakes or spread on cucakes with a knife.

Chocolate cream cheese frosting
In a bowl, with a mixer on low speed, beat 8 oz cream cheese and 1/2 c butter, both at room temp until well blended. In another bowl, sift together 1 1/2 c powdered sugar and 6 tbs unsweetedned cocoa. Beat into cream cheese misture until frosting is smooth.
 
FG, the lemon yogurt cake was from a blog i love, but apparently it''s a recipe that is from Dorie Greenspan which is no surprise since i love her baking book ... i looked up diff recipes and most of the lemon yogurt cakes are the same...or similar anyway. it was very yummy!!!

i just made the revised batch of mango muffins and they are in the oven, we''ll see!! i added the milk back in freke as the wet was seeming too thick, the batter looked good so we''ll see!!

i also am making brioche bread for this weekly baking thing i do...and then i have to make these pecan sticky buns out of it...the bread is slightly intimidating as the stand mixer was jumping around and then stopped entirely (it was hot)...i read that this dough can burn the motor out of a hand mixer so i''m not sure if the stand mixer motor is kaput or just needs a rest! we shall see. my bread is puffing in the microwave oven warm climate now.

ice princess, that cupcake recipe looks yummy!!
 
Date: 5/23/2008 2:29:21 PM
Author: FireGoddess

Date: 5/23/2008 2:18:25 PM
Author: Mara
a co-worker brought me a huge bag of meyers yesterday and i am so excited! i made lemon yogurt cake last nite, it came out so yummy and moist. i am going to be a lemon head for weeks now!
Click to expand...
Was that Ina Garten''s recipe? Her lemon yogurt cake is scrumptious. So jealous about those meyers...mine are still not ready!!! I am going to try that lemon cupcake recipe you posted for my SATC get together with the Magnolia bakery vanilla buttercream recipe. I would use the gathering as an excuse to try the coconut lime recipe tweaks, but this group has eaten them twice already!
Click to expand...
HI:

Is that recipe in the Barefoot Contessa CB? At any rate, I must try these lemon cakes....sound fab! And Mara your decorated cakes are pretty cute
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cheerrs--Sharon
 
Lol. Brioche is a tricky bugger. How did it come out? Making any bread in a non commercial mixer is tough on it-but Brioche especially because it has so much butter that it would be next to impossible to mix by hand...

You are one baking machine over there Mara!!

And how did the muffins come out?
 
Date: 5/25/2008 2:01:25 AM
Author: FrekeChild
Lol. Brioche is a tricky bugger. How did it come out? Making any bread in a non commercial mixer is tough on it-but Brioche especially because it has so much butter that it would be next to impossible to mix by hand...

You are one baking machine over there Mara!!

And how did the muffins come out?
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HI:

My Mother has been making breads & brioches without the aid of commercial mixers for decades....but she admits the latter is much less laborious now she has one....

cheers--Sharon
 
I actually enjoy making lean bread by hand (when I don''t have tile with grout that makes things...interesting), but brioche is a whole other story because it''s almost half butter. It''s essentially an emulsion which is tricky with a mixer, and it would be very tricky to do by hand because of the large butter content and butter''s low melting point. I personally would reconsider making brioche if I didn''t have a stand mixer to mix it in. And I can''t imagine making it with a hand mixer. Actually the only thing I would use a hand mixer for, would be whipped cream or creaming stuff. But I can do that by hand, so I don''t own a hand mixer. And the only thing I use my stand mixer for would be brioche and Italian buttercream. Dangit, now I''m craving brioche.
 
yes apparently people can mix the brioche by hand but they said it was very tedious. so my mixer is not moving ... i think a trip to the kitchen aid service place here locally will be in order this week. thank goodness for the hand mixer that greg got me because i have my first cupcake orders today to churn out and i need something other than ''by hand''...!! but yeah what a drag about the mixer, i was just happy the brioche was actually DONE mixing. if it wasn''t...ay carumba!

the brioche is going to be baked today...it looks good. it rose super well in a humid microwave environment, fridged it and punched it down for a few hours. then it rested overnight per the recipe. i am going to freeze half of it for the future and then make the rest into these pecan sticky rolls for my weekly baking thing.

so hilarious, the brioche has 3 sticks of butter in it, yes crazy huh!! so when i punched it down each time, my hand came away all shiny. yikes...and then after adding the butter and cinnamon pecan glaze...oooh heart attack city. i better make these roll things then immediately get 3/4 of them OUT OF THE HOUSE!!

the muffins came out very nice ... but i think i could have baked them a little longer. the inside was a little too moist for my taste, i have to remember that it''s okay if muffins overcook slightly...i am so used to taking cupcakes out like RIGHT AT THE SECOND they need to be taken out...muffins might actually be tastier with a little crisp on the top and bottom. but the flavor is good for sure. i will add more mango and cinnamon next time.

random note but freke what would cause a muffin or cupcake to be ''crumbly'' where crumbs fall all over when you take a bite. when people describe cupcakes sometimes they mention this and i do recall like starbucks muffins having this same kind of crumbly texture. do you know how to get a crumbly muffin or cupcake vs a spongy or lighter or denser but ''stuck together'' crumb?? just curious...want to play around a bit. thanks ma''am you are seriously the BEST. i love your knowledge.
 
You're taking orders now Mara? And you just spending your Memorial Day weekend baking or what?

I love making brioche, it's such a soft dough when it's totally mixed. I used to have to make little brioche *cups* (they were actually the size of a small soup bowl) for the restaurant I used to work at-we added cranberries and fresh herbs to it and it had some kind of veg with it, and grilled salmon half inside the *cup* and half on the plate, as well as the sauce. It was pretty fabulous if I say so myself.

I'm glad the muffins came out ok. I was wondering if it may need more mango, but I decided to be conservative the first time around.

And that's a doozy of a question. More crumbly would probably be attributed to a very short mixing time, or high sugar/ fat...As for cakey-this would have more eggs/flour. Denser like pound cake (one of my favorite things to make-I'm so tempted now!!! Poundcake cupcakes!! Yum!) would have a mechanical leavener (creaming method) or a lower amount of chemical leavener.

The reason for the name of *shortening* is that it shortens gluten strands--the protein in flour that give it that elasticity. So that's why brioche is so soft and has such a delicate crumb-all that butter makes smaller gluten strands, making it softer. I don't know, I could go on for a while on this...Basically, it depends on the recipe. My poundcake (butter, eggs, sugar and flour) is dense as heck because there isn't a leavener. My chocolate chip cookies are pretty cakey because I added eggs and a small amount of flour, as well as reduced the butter and sugar to my original recipe-which started out crispy and chewy. Yeah...So it's all a delicate balance of chemical processes and seeing what it makes and what happens when you mix things up.

You should try to check out this book: "Practical Baking" by William Sultan link We used it as a textbook in my first baking class. Another one would be CIA's Baking book, link Although I'd bet they'll be coming out with a new one soon.

Both books have a lot of basic recipes-but they are all in weight measure-however they have a lot of theory behind it all in there (baking ingredients and what they do in combination with other ingredients, and alone). The first 80 or so pages (first 2 chapters) of "Practical Baking" would probably come in very handy.

Let me know what other questions you have.
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I'm considering making rum cake cupcakes or poundcake cupcakes. Something that I can freeze that doesn't have/need frosting on top. I ate my aunt's rum cake today, and I'm super inspired. She's my initial inspiration to bake for a living, and she's amazing at it. She actually had a wedding cake business that she ran out of her house when she was newly married at 19. Now she's 80 and I need to get all of her recipes and pick her brain...
 
hey freke if you want a yummy easy cake, try the lemon yogurt one i made last week. i got from awhiskandaspoon.wordpress.com, it''s like the 3rd one down. it was super easy, you could adapt it for another flavor vs lemon, and after sitting a day or so, it gets more dense so it''s kind of like a pound cake but without all the super crazy unhealthyness!!! we are still eating it and it''s like 3 days old, i just keep it really well wrapped.

and YES i have just been spending my whole weekend baking, it''s been seriously wonderful. i was telling our neighbors last nite at dinner that typically my baking is like ''i have 2 hours to spare on a weeknight'' and i have to be fast and efficient about stuff. this wkd i have had really not that much to do (on purpose, we wanted a really lazy holiday!) and so i have just been spending all my days in the kitchen!! it''s been so fun. then we go out or do something at night with friends. today we have a bbq with fam which i am making a carrot cake for. but yesterday i was baking from 12-5pm. and having this extra time gives me room to experiment. i made my cupcakes for my order yesterday (and i''m not really doing ''orders'' but one of my friends really wanted me to make some cupcakes for her friend''s graduation and then for her work party next week so i said okay to see how it was--plus it helps me recoup baking costs a bit!!) and then i had leftover coconut vanilla cake batter, so i tossed it into 4" springforms and made 2 cakes and then made a really yummy coconut vanilla layer cake with cream cheese coconut frosting and layered with mango pineapple jam. it was SO GOOD..we had it for dessert with our friends last nite. but so anyway i had to cut the domes off the cakes because they got a big crown and so i had these 2 crowns thinking what to do. well typically i wouldnt have TIME to do anything, but i thought of that Bakerella thing where she makes those cake crumbles, mixes it with cream cheese frosting and then rolls them into balls and dips them in chocolate or shapes them or whatever. so i thought, wow i actually have the time to do that!! so i made the balls..they are in the fridge. i''ll dip them today.

anyway, it''s been a lot of fun just playing around and not really having too many time constraints.
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thanks for the education on the crumbly vs other textures...that baking book sounds good, i will have to pick it up. oh and the brioche pecan sticky rolls came out DIVINE .... they are warming in the oven now for breakkie but seriously this stuff is amazing. i think the broken mixer was KINDA worth it!!!!
 
Date: 5/24/2008 6:40:12 PM
Author: canuk-gal
HI:

Is that recipe in the Barefoot Contessa CB? At any rate, I must try these lemon cakes....sound fab! And Mara your decorated cakes are pretty cute
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cheerrs--Sharon
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Hi Sharon - it's in her Barefoot Contessa At Home cookbook, and also online here.
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I didn't get a chance to do any cupcakes this weekend....the time just flew by!
 
So I made a batch of Mara''s peanut butter cupcakes and they weren''t much of a hit. And after I got a friend to post over Reese''s Pieces and all! But then, Reese''s Pieces are generally despised over here anyway, different palates and all that. I liked them rather a lot but no-one else did
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So I modified. I took some Cadbury''s Caramel bars and put a segment in each bun. Oh boy. Yummeeee
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I brought them along on a group weekend away and they begged and begged for more. Huuuuge hit.

Thank you Mara for the yummy vanilla cupcake recipes and for the inspiration! This thread is fantastic
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HA delster that is hilarious that reese's isn't that popular where you are!! it's funny you say this right now in particular because one of my friends who has had those same cuppies loves them so much that she made them for her hub's birthday, actually she adapted the recipe into a CAKE and put reese's pieces in the batter! it apparently was a massive hit cuz birthday boy loves peanut butter and reese's...and then on top she did the spaghetti and meatballs from the class i just went to, using the tips i gave her. it looked so awesome! she sent me a picture, if i can dig it out from email i will post it.

so funny about diff palates. i like cadburys too though hehee. anything sweet practically. well i'm glad the base of the recipe worked for adaptations that your friends loved. yay!

did i already say that the pecan sticky rolls from the brioche were heaven sent? we only have one left. these things are evil, in a wonderful buttery, amazing way!!!

greg bought me a standalone 4 tiered metal shelf that we put into our dining room/wine closet and i moved all of my fun baking stuff into closet on the rack. i have so many pans and sugar crystals, cake boxes, blah blah blah...now i have my own spot for them all, yay!

oh and my carrot cake for memorial today was a huge hit, funny but mom who is a real stickler for critiquing desserts gave it an a+...i was shocked!! hope all the PS bakers had a wonderful memorial day wkd...we definitely did!!
 
Rum balls!!!

Cake crumbs+rum+melted chocolate rolled into balls, chilled and then dipped in chocolate. You can "freeze" them, but beware-they don't harden completely because of the high sugar/fat/alcohol content. But they are FANFREAKINGTASTIC. And I love them around Christmas time...In fact I haven't met anyone who hasn't loved them...

ETA: Yay for extra storage for baking stuff!!!BF bought me a smaller bookcase (our big one is about 7x7 and the one he got me is about 6' tall x 3' wide) for all of my baking/cookbooks. That thing is a lifesaver.
 
OK, so I finally got the pictures from my cake decorating final and I wanted to post them for all you lovely ladies to see!

The cake was a heart shaped "basket of roses". I did the roses as a homework assignment a few days before (I still need more practice on roses--my frosting wasn''t quite at the right consistency, but I think they came out alright) and let them dry a bit so they''d hold up, then decorated the cake in class. Here''s a general shot:

BasketCake1.jpg
 
Here''s a close-up of the basket-weave:

BasketCake2.jpg
 
And here''s a look straight down at the cake so you can see the heart shape & roses a bit better. All in all I''m pretty happy with how it turned out, although I did this cake the weekend we moved, so I didn''t have time to make anything too tasty--the cake is from a box and I used canned frosting! I know--I''ve failed the PS bakers.
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BasketCake3.jpg
 
Even though you used store bought stuff, I think it looks great! (I''ve been known to take short cuts too, don''t worry about it!!!) Seriously, your roses look awesome, although I''m betting that the frosting was a little on the dry side. And your basket weave looks great too, I''m awful at it. Not good at all at straight lines...

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Good job LP!!!!
 
cakes are a lot of work LP!! taking shortcuts is not a big deal hehee...that looks great! my roses are HORRIBLE...i think they look more like wilted peonies or something, but hey it''s a flower !! the basket work is SOOOO detailed...when we did that in class all i could think of was...i will so never use this...it''s so time consuming but it does look very pretty-love your 2 tone look!

dipped my cheese cake balls tonite...they sound similar to your rum balls Freke, i did add kahlua to the chocolate when i dipped so that they were like little kahlua cheese coconut cake balls, yummy!!!
 
I lurk on this thread all the time I can''t believe all the pretties that get made here :)

LP did you eat the cake I don''t know if I could bear to it is just so pretty :)
 
Guess who made a 1/2 recipe of pound cake cupcakes but added 1/2 whole wheat flour instead of all white?

Can we say yum?
 
Date: 5/27/2008 3:01:59 AM
Author: Deelight
I lurk on this thread all the time I can''t believe all the pretties that get made here :)

LP did you eat the cake I don''t know if I could bear to it is just so pretty :)
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Aww, thanks Dee! I sent it off with SO to work since I couldn''t bear to eat it because it had crisco in it.
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umm yum freke, you are going to post that recipe right? right??

lp lol i am not a fan of shortening either, i haven''t made one thing with it yet even though some people swear by it in their frostings, yak.

i made my cupcake orders on tues night, whew a lot of work but fun!! they got rave reviews...! now i am baking resting for a few days...hehee.
 
Ok ok.

Classic Pound Cake

1 pound room temp butter
1 pound sugar
1 pound eggs (beaten until mixed well)
1 pound AP flour (I used half white and half whole wheat)

And I also threw in about 1 tsp salt and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract.

Basically you cream the poo out of the butter and sugar(and salt)-I mean it. This is the only place where you get any leavening-so I beat it until it''s light and fluffy (and makes glopping sounds. Yes, that is the technical term). Then you add the eggs (and vanilla) in a little bit at a time (like 3 times) until it''s as incorporated as it''s going to get. Because there is so much egg, it''s going to look curdled, but don''t worry. Then you add the flour and mix until smooth. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes for cuppies, and a lot longer for a actual pound cake (1 hour +). Tada!!! Pound Cake. And if you don''t have a cool digi scale, you can totally use one of those 5 dollar diet scales, but it has to be by weight measure.

FYI, a large egg usually weighs around 2 ounces each-I used about 4.5 (I made half of the recipe) because my eggs were a little on the light side.

Being that I made only half of the recipe, but that the purpose of these was to keep in the freezer for when BF or I are craving something sweet, I only used enough batter to make these fill up 1/2 of the cupcake cups. So a full recipe should make about 24 full size cupcakes. They do rise quite a bit, considering there isn''t any chemical leavener.
 
Rich chocolatey cupcakes...only in existence because I had too much batter for the pan that my dad''s birthday cake is going to come out of....oh my, these are yummy....
 
Ok. Dad's birthday cake consisted of: dark chocolate (85% cacao) cake, dark and milk chocolate soft ganache for the filling and chocolate Italian buttercream for the outside frosting. We gone done eating and heard my dad doing something in the kitchen...turns out he was cutting into it and getting himself a slice while we were finishing our dinner.
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So he kind of mangled the cake, but I did what I could to get a couple of decent shots.

The top of the cake-I didn't write anything because I was in quite a hurry and barely had time to finish piping on it before I had to go pick up FF.

IMG_1082.JPG
 
And the layers. Because of the heat, the buttercream was a bit melty and you can tell in this pic. The layers came out ok, but I guess I could always do better. Bleh. Another thing that''s odd is that the texture of the crumb was a bit different depending on which layer of the cake I got it from. It was all from one pan-but the larger crumb texture was from the very top of the cake. I didn''t do so well in keeping them in order, but the third layer was the top most part of the cake.

Whats ridiculous is that my aunt brought over a dang cake from Whole Foods for him too. My mom is going to have him take it to his office tomorrow to get rid of it (they didn''t even cut into it), while they kept most of mine.
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I know it isn''t cupcakes, but it''s kind of close!

IMG_1081sized.jpg
 
hi gals!!! that looks so yummy freke! i made this a week ago...it was a coconut white cake with mango pineapple filling and cream cheese frosting, it was SO GOOD!!!

mango pineapple coconut cake side.jpg
 
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