Saturday Munchies 15 - My Cups Runneth Over

This is clearly a lesson on following instructions. Haha. The recipe indictated 18 cups, but I made adjustments again because I had no confidence in olive oil, and now my cupcakes runneth over. What a disaster!!! And what a waste. After watching how they made cupcakes on the Food Network, I should have used more cups instead of lesser. Sigh. Stupido.



Anyway the original recipe is Yogurt Cupcakes, Pg 36 from "Cupcakes Galore" by Gail Wagman.

[Pardon the sheer crappy quality of the photos, it's all my G1's fault. You definitely cannot say you bought HTC for the camera's quality...]

Cupcake Toppings

Orange Jus Cupcake Glaze (from cupcakerecipes.com)


Ingredients

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 4 tablespoons orange juice
• 4 drops red food coloring

1. Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir until smooth.  Place a wire rack on a baking pan or over wax paper to catch all of the dripping glaze.  Turn all of your cupcakes upside down on the rack so that the bottoms are up.
2. Spoon the glaze over the bottom of the cupcakes.  I even used the spoon to spread the glaze evenly over the bottoms.  Dry 5 minutes and repeat. 
3. Let the glaze set for at least 15 minutes before turning over to frost the tops of the cupcakes. 

GREEK YOGURT TOPPING (from souvlakiforthesoul.com)

• 100 g of good quality strained Greek yogurt
• a good splash of vanilla extract
• 1/2 a cup of icing sugar

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together creating a well in the centre.
2. Mix all the wet ingredients thoroughly, whisking with a fork.
3. Add the wet to the dry and MIX UNTIL JUST COMBINED.
4. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with some paper liners and scoop in the mixture making sure to leave a bit of room on the top for them to rise.
5. Bake in a pre heated 180 deg C oven for about 20 mins.
6. Muffins are ready when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
7. Remove from oven and let them cool in the tin for 5 mins.  Remove and let them cool completely on a wire rack.
8. To make the yogurt topping whisk in the icing sugar with the vanilla until it becomes a little thick.  Place in the fridge as it will be easier to spread later.
9. Once the muffins have cooled spread with topping and top with shredded toasted coconut.

Raspberry frosting

Whisk remaining 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon peel in small bowl. Spoon half of icing over 6 cupcakes. Whisk 1 tablespoon raspberry jam into remaining icing.

Saturday Munchies 13 - Blue Orange Cupcakes

After staring forlornly at the Christmas-themed cupcake display at the Crystal Jade Cakery for way too long last week. I decided to check out the hype.Guess what, went to two libraries, and only managed to borrow one book on cupcakes (on the other hand, I was able to borrow three very lovely Chinese books on patisserie baking. Nice.)

Luckily for my cynicism. I had already checked out some recipes on the Internet. I decided on the Lemon Cupcake  and the  Butter Cream Frosting [both recipes from CupcakeCreations]. After buying the ingredients (and later realising I forgot to buy lemons, and then that we had lemons in the house after all), I got down to baking cupcakes. I tweaked the recipe somewhat, first using metric system and then, the practice taught by my Home Economics teacher who kindly gave one-on-one lessons to a lonely geek during recess. This practice was to separate the egg whites and then whisking them to a thick foam and fold them in, together with the flour, into the creamed mixture. While happily folding, I realized I forgot the lemon rind, so I swapped with orange rind...

As for the butter cream, I only added blue coloring to the recipe, which turned out a very fun color. 

Orange Cupcake

Ingredients

90g softened butter

90g softened cream cheese

2 tsp finely grated orange rind

90g superfine(castor) sugar

2 eggs

68g all-purpose (plain) flour

45g self-raising flour

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160oC.

2. Separate egg yolks from egg whites. Whisk egg whites into soft peaks

3. Beat the butter, cheese, lemon rind, sugar and egg yolks until smooth and creamy.

4. Sift the flours. Add the flour gradually to the cheese mixture and beat on a low speed, until just combined.

5. Fold egg white into mixture. Divide the mixture evenly between the cake cases. ( I even weighed them!!!)

6. Bake for 25 minutes until firm to touch.

7. Allow to cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.