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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Cupcakes

Even though I have not been craving them, how could I go a weekend without trying out my new goodies? I got to try a new cake recipe, and perfect the buttercream icing, and try out some new icing tips, food dyes, flavours & decorations.


The cake recipe is from Bakerella, as is the buttercream recipe. I found the cake slightly dry, but if you follow all of her tips, you might be able to make up for it. I thought the cake tasted best a day later, already iced. I suppose some of the moisture of the icing rehydrated the cake overnight. Also, my oven makes me mad and cooks things weirdly, so I am always scared of underbaking. But this was definitly the best white/yellow cake I have ever made from scratch.


Anyhow, I decided to have some fun with everything, and created these monstrosities. I was actually told they look 'poisonous'! But I wanted to test the limits, live on the edge (ha). I was surprised to see that even with that much colour I couldn't taste the dye. And I purposely bought a red dye, since that is usually the one you taste. (But I actually like the taste of red dye...you know, those waxy red roses from the grocery store bakery? And those red mashmallow strawberries from 7-11? Yummm.). I will definitly be buying more from Bake It Pretty.


The flavours were great too! The marshmallow was subtle, but worked so well with the buttercream, just giving it an extra special boost. Coffee was really good too, but now that I think of it, I could have just added some really strong instant coffee. But that depends on how moist you want your icing. The coffee has a brown tint, so if you want a natural coffee / mocha cupcake, don't even colour the icing. Just sprinkle on some cocoa, and put a nice coffee bean ontop, and it would look so elegant. I, of course, was not going for elegant. I was kind of going for gross, keeping the blackish icing for the rouded tip, to emulate...well, you guess. I was told as much too.



I need some more practice with the tips yet - pretty messy and lopsided right now. The icing/cake ratio is pretty awesome though. I did a few mini cupcakes, and they ended up being way too top heavy with icing, and the ratio was even too much for me. Anyhow, I am really happy with my new tips, colours, flavours, sugars and cake recipe!

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