Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Cupcake chaos...

I'm not someone who cooks.  Generally, I prefer to leave food preparation to the professionals, thus explaining my rather impressive collection of take away menus, but lately I've found myself wanting to bake for some strange reason.

And not just bake any old thing, bake cupcakes.

I have no idea why.  It's not like me at all!  Usually if I wanted a cupcake, I'd go the bakery and buy a damned cupcake!  None of this faffing around in the kitchen, creaming butter and sugar.  And who, exactly, came up with the idea of creaming butter and sugar together?  Whoever they were, they must have been sadists!  As someone who doesn't own a food processor, that's one of the hardest things to do with a hand held electric mixer.

Whether it makes me a masochist I have no idea, but I ended up pulling out my old recipe book and finding the pages for butter cake, johnny cake, chocolate mud cake.  Pulling out all the baking "extras" like chocolate chips and chopped nuts from the back of the pantry.  Digging the icing pipe out from the cutlery drawer.

My first attempt was with the traditional vanilla butter cake recipe.  Yeah ... that one didn't turn out so good.  I'm not sure how, but what came out of the oven was more like little doughy rocks than cakes.  I didn't even bother with icing them, it would have been a waste of good sugar.

Then I tried a "Four Minute Chocolate Cake" recipe.  It wasn't strictly a cupcake recipe, but I figured that didn't matter.  Surely cake is cake, no matter what shape it's in.  It's selling point was the fact that you were supposed to just dump all the ingredients in together, no blending, creaming or folding required.  Sounded right up my alley!

But when they were done the results were strange to say the least.  They hadn't risen very much, at least not as much as the vanilla butter ones, and they were almost crystallised.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and just assume that just because the recipe says it's a one step process, doesn't necessarily mean it SHOULD be.


My third attempt, red velvet cupcakes, was much better though.  They rose beautifully, looked exactly the way they were supposed to, and tasted great.  I waited until they cooled and then iced them with a cream cheese icing and teensy little candy hearts.  They were perfect, just what I wanted.

Shame that, strictly speaking, White Wings made them and not me.

Yeah, I caved and bought a cake mix.  What can I say, I got sick of failure!  Sure it'd be nice to be able to present a tray of immaculately iced cupcakes and say "Made 'em with my own two hands", but I think I'm going to have to just accept the fact that no matter how hard I try, a $2.99 cake mix is going to still yield better results.

I guess my dreams of escaping the office life and opening a cupcake cafe were a bit premature.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

32 comments:

  1. Mmm mmm little doughy rocks! Now you got me hungry!

    I wouldn't say buying cake mix is failing, I'd say its succeeding! in making taste cupcakes!

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    1. I know, but it just makes me feel like I'm letting down Julia Child! I'm sorry Julia, I'm so sorry...

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  2. I don't bake because I hate measuring, but I cook on a regular basis. The only baking I can do well is lemon poppyseed muffins, and pound cakes.

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    1. Mmm, lemon poppyseed muffins! Now I want some of them! Oh no, I think I feel another baking catastrophe on the way.

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  3. Hey, any cupcake is a good cupcake, as long as it's edible. I am a great cook, I can do lots of magical things with food. Baking, however, always eludes me. I just don't get the interactions of the ingredients. Cue nightmarish flashbacks of highschool chem here. I can't even remember the last time I tried to bake something that didn't come in a box. Kudos for trying!

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    1. Exactly! I have no idea why I have to combine the butter and sugar BEFORE the flour and milk! It's like witchcraft or something!

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  4. I like baking. I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants baker. I try to come up with something to bake with what I happen to have in the cupboard. I'm sure I've had larger disasters than you, but remarkably enough, I've had a couple of successes as well. If you persist long enough, something good will eventually come out of it.

    Don't worry about using cake mix though. We all do it when we want to be sure what's coming out of the oven. Sometimes we don't want to be surprised.

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    1. In the end I think that's why I went with the cake mix. Two unpleasant surprised was enough for one day.

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  5. I think using cake mixes is the way to go you just add extras to do a little something something better kinda like hamburger helpers they are so yummy when you add the fresh mushrooms bell peppers etc.. just church it up and it is a homemade creations. I give you an A+ ...:}

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  6. No shame in using a cake mix! That still counts as "homemade" in my book! Now please send me cupcakes.

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    1. LOL! I could send you some of the rock like vanilla butter ones, I'm pretty sure those things will outlast us all.

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  7. Who told you cake mix doesn't count? You turned on the oven, cracked some eggs and stirred some stuff, that's baking.

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    1. Aww, thanks. I just felt like I was cheating, considering how I built it up in my head. All the time I'm mixing the batter I was building a dream Cupcake Cafe. Oh well.

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  8. I made rock cakes once...we now use it as a door-stopper!

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  9. So I take it those photos in the post aren't yours?

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    1. Alas, they are not. That's just how I imagined them turning out when I started. Then reality rose up to bite me on the behind.

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  10. pssst, melt the butter just a tiny bit and creaming them is simple! I love baking and I never ever measure! those are some knock out cupcakes!

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    1. I measure everything religiously when I'm baking. I'm convinced that if I don't use a measuring cup and check at least twice, I'll somehow end up pouring half a bag of flour in.

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  11. lol no one blames you! Everyone gets sick of failure...

    Red velvet cupcakes?? umm, yum!!!

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    1. Hmm, maybe I can open up a Cake Mix Cupcake Bakery! It can be whole thing, the only bakery in the world that is totally reliant on Betty Crocker!

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  12. Not everyone was made for cupcake bakery. Keep your chin up. One day, with practice, your cupcakes will be glorious!

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    1. It's tough, Valerie, I won't lie. Every morning I wake up and think "No cupcake bakery for you, Kellie! If you opened one now, you'd go broke and your cat would starve".

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    2. I feel your pain. Every time I feel like maybe I should make some and give it another go, the cold steal of reality mocks me.

      Reality is a jerk!!

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  13. I went through a period where I had a desire to make muffins. I don't think either one of us cheated by using a mix.

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    1. Well you know what they say, it's only cheating if you get caught!

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  14. I love to bake, but I generally use packaged cake mix for my cupcakes, because there are too many variables when making your own cake mix. And when I want cupcakes, I don't want to mess around!

    But where, or where, can I get some of those lovely, lavendar cupcakes??? So pretty!

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    1. They are cute, aren't they! In my head that's how I imagined my cupcakes turning out. The reality, unfortunately, was a little harsher.

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  15. I don't bake or cook. Wait, is buttering bread cooking? Yeah, I do that.

    Red velvet is my all-time fave!

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    1. Buttering bread totally counts, so does pulling the plastic film back on a microwave dinner and nuking it for 10 minutes.

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  16. There is no way I would ever attempt to bake a cake from scratch. I have tried that with cookies, and the results were barely edible. I am more of a cook, and less of a baker.

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    1. Funnily enough, my cookies are usually okay. But I seem to be missing the gene for cake baking.

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