little wren » cupcakes

Canada Day Cupcakes

Little Wren — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:45:26 +0000

Ok folks, so I know it’s a week late, but I promise that doesn’t make these cupcakes any less yummy… or patriotic.

This year I decided to make some Canadian inspired cupcakes for Canada Day. I couldn’t decide on just one type though, so I decided to make both Red Velvet (red and white!) cupcakes and vanilla cupcakes with maple icing. Yum!!

I’ve decided that I can now only make cupcakes and cakes from scratch – anything from a mix just tastes wrong. To dress up these vanilla cupcakes I used maple icing (recipe can be found here). I put it in the fridge overnight (I’m a late night baker and ran out of time) and it got really grainy, I’m guessing because it was mostly sugar with little butter. I actually kind of liked the grainy texture, however if you’re after a smoother icing (as seen in bottom picture) I recommend making the icing right before you put it on the cupcakes.

I’ve never made Red Velvet cupcakes before, so naturally I went to the best. These cupcakes are from Martha Stewarts website (recipe can be found here) and were pretty tasty. Although I was disappointed with their lack of actual redness, I have been told that this is par for the course when it comes to red velvet cupcakes. After seeing the first batch I took out of the oven was lacking in the ‘red’ part of their namesake, I added more (and even a bit more) food colouring and it seemed to help. Regardless, Martha didn’t steer me wrong and they were delicious.

(the picture below is the result of adding pretty much a bottle of food colouring to the batter)

Oh! And thank you to Jen for helping me ice many of these cupcakes!

Easter Cupcakes

Little Wren — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:05:25 +0000

I seem to be on a Easter cupcake roll this year! First I made pink ombre cupcakes for the BFC Easter party, and then this past weekend I made chocolate cupcakes as a post Easter dinner treat.

I adapted this recipe from a cake recipe that has been eaten and enjoyed by my family for years – it is the cake that makes birthdays complete and occasions really feel like a celebration. I was originally going to make the cupcakes for a friend’s birthday, but ran out of time before the party (she had a cake though don’t worry!) and so the ingredients I bought wouldn’t go to waste, they became Easter cupcakes instead (since there’s usually a lack of chocolate at Easter and all…)

Both the cake part and the icing are made from scratch, so this was no easy feat, luckily I made sure my mum (the baker of almost all cakes previous) was on hand to help put out any fires that arose (figuratively thank goodness). It turns out that I’m a messy baker, especially when baking from scratch in a small kitchen, and in the interest of not completely ruining my phone or camera there aren’t really any pictures of the baking process. To make up for it, I shall share my most favourite chocolate cake (and now cupcake) recipe with you all.

Chocolate Buttermilk Layer Cake

Bake at 350 F (180 C)

35 minutes to make one 9 inch layer cake

18-22 minutes to make cupcakes (this recipe makes about 32 cupcakes when I did it so I imagine you can to half it!)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (sifted)
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk (or yogurt – if neither is available, then you can add milk to 1 tbsp vinegar to make 1 cup; let stand for 10 mins)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup boiling water

Grease two 9 x 1 .5 inch round layer pans; line with wax paper. Grease wax paper and dust with flour; tap out excess flour.

(For cupcakes, cupcake liners work just fine)

Sift flour, baking soda and salt in to a bowl.

Combine oil, buttermilk, cocoa, sugar, eggs and vanilla in a large bowl and mix well.

On a low speed with electric mixer, or by hand, add flour mixture to cocoa mixture, alternating with boiling water beginning and ending with the dry mixture (aim for at least 5 alternations according to my mum) do not over-beat. Batter with be thick. Divide batter evenly between pans.

Bake for times outlined above, or until (cup)cakes spring back when lightly touched with your fingertip.

Cool (cup)cakes in pan for 10 minutes. Loosen around edges, turn out, and peel off wax paper (if necessary). Cool completely. Fill and frost with rich chocolate frosting

Frosting

1 package (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate pieces
1/2 cup evaporated milk (though, you can use normal and it will taste just as good)
3/4 cup butter
2 1/2 cups icing sugar

Place chocolate pieces, milk and butter in top of double boiler. Place over hot water, stirring until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

Whisk in icing sugar. Place double boiler top in a bowl filled with ice cubes and water (if you don’t do this, it will take about 15 – 20 minutes of beating to get the icing to the right consistency). Beat with an electric mixer until mixture lightens in colour, begins to lose its sheen and is of good spreading consistency. Don’t give up as your beating – the lightening takes 5 to 10 minutes and is well worth the effort!

Pink ‘Ombre’ Cupcakes

Little Wren — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:55:17 +0000

looks yummy from the outside...

...but everybody knows, it's what's inside that counts!

It’s been far too long since I blogged! I have been meaning to do this post for about a week now, but have been busy with the Easter party, birthday celebrations and, oh you know, life. Anyways here are the pretty pink (almost) ombre cupcakes I made for the BFC Easter Party! To up the pink factor I used the cupcake liners I made before. Just like the liners before them, the cupcakes didn’t turn out quite like I thought they would (I’m not sure if I’m liking this trend that seems to keep happening) but they looked pretty – and tasted yummy – all the same!

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to make the cake batter from scratch, so a box mix had to do. I just followed the instructions on the box, divided the mixture in to three bowls, added different amounts of food colouring to make the varying degrees of pinkness and then scooped them in to the cupcake liners from darkest to lightest, baked and voila!

I would however recommend doing a dark bottom, medium or light pink middle and a plain top. As you can see the two lighter pink shades just kind of blended together and so it didn’t really look ombre… hence the quotation marks in the title.

A few tips:

I would recommend leaving the most batter in the plain or lightest batter colour bowl, because it’s far easier to just make the batter darker rather than lighter. Trust me.

Try to find a thicker cake mix – it makes things much easier when trying to layer the colours. I used Betty Crocker French Vanilla mix for these pink ones and it was thicker than the plain ‘White Cake’ mix, which I used for the disastrous purple ones (not even going there) and the pink ones actually look like they have layers.

Although there was one success story…

Julia got the best one of the bunch! If you look closely you can see all three colours – yay!