Cupcake Adventures

'Cupcake day' was what today was all about .. some hours later and a dozen web pages later here I am happy satisfied and a little proud that I came up with some colorful cupcakes – lon g hours but worth the wait. It was day of trial and error but I am happy with the end result – 32 cupcakes later I am smiling like a jack ass hahaha … anyways 30 of those cakes are making a trip to Malaysia tomorrow for my grandma and I hope she likes it – I made her one with her name on it .. and little flowers on it .. I even made a mei lan the panda cub cupcake though i think she looks cuter than my version of her.

I ended up making two kinds of cupcakes the first one was ‘white chocolate cupcakes’ I like this particular one because I never ever thought of using coconut milk in making cakes and this recipe calls for it and it was really yummy – it had a different taste to it I think this will be a regular recipe for making whole cakes too will have to recommend it to mom .. The other cake I made was Martha Stewarts Moist Devil Food Cake… I have tried making it before but a different recipe and I simply love it .. The moisture and the softness of the cake just melts in your mouth and with chocolate ganache icing you cant go wrong …

For the frosting I experimented with 3 kinds .. butter cream frosting( icing),, fluffy white frosting & chocolate ganache frosting(icing).. Seeing that I didn’t have much decorating materials so I had to get creative with that I had .. I made some extra colored sugar to add more colors to the cupcakes . I think my mistake was not buying the things needed earlier – I didn’t realize shops selling baking goods closed on Sunday I guess assuming isn’t a good thing .. well anyways .. I browsed over a dozen websites to get recipes for the frostings – but I ended up doing those three. I think I have no favorite in that department – they all serve a different purpose in terms of frosting the cupcakes – different textures

Some of my cupcakes did not come up to the size I had hoped but they raised up none the less not too the top but close enough but the frosting was there to cover for that. One of the recipes called for the batter to be filled up only a quarter way up to the cupcake cup but I didn’t follow it instead I added more but it still wasn’t enough …. Lesson learnt next time at least 2/3 of the way up .. But when I really look at it I think it all depends on the type of cake recipe that is being used .. all in all the cakes turned out ok and for once I forgo the devil food cupcake and had the white chocolate cake instead tee hee … I think even my cupcake moulds are not the right size. The orange/yellow ones fit my pan really well but the brown ones didn’t so I had to fill the batter n push it down into the pan the weight of the batter helped in that so it doesn’t look so weird . If you noticed some of the cupcake cups are falling away from the cake well that was the reason …

For those who are keen on making these delicious cuties here are some of the links of some of the webpages that I went to get recipes and ideas …

Fluffy white frosting(pic below) http://www.recipezaar.com/210508

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting (pic below) http://www.recipezaar.com/168186

Chocolate Ganache Frosting(pic below) http://www.baking911.com/recipes/chocolate/ganache.htm

Those are the pages that served in as my constant companion on my cupcake adventures. Another site I would recommend for great information on everything baking is Baking 911 at http://www.baking911.com the site obviously speaks for itself it teaches you everything you wanted to know about baking, how to troubleshoot, explanations on why some cakes turn out they way they do and they even have classes. Love that site really helpful ..

After frosting all those cakes I really cant tell which is white chocolate cupcake and which is the devils food cake lol I guess it will only be known by the first bite – quite the mystery isn’t it these little cupcakes .. I messed up on some of the cakes decorations – they didn’t come out quite the way I wanted them but tis ok when you try to make different designs in one batch it would probably screw up but im sure in time ill get more ideas and it wont be so bad …

All in all it was an adventure it was exhausting but a whole lot of fun I would actually do it again try out new things and have more decorating items. I wanted to make sugar flowers and what not but I didn’t have the time and the right ingredients for them. Next time too I think I would like to do a ‘royal icing’ for the cupcakes and maybe try the savoury ones. Im so excited . Even though I am satisfied with what I have done the true test will come tomorrow when I bring them over to nanas – so wish me luck .. and on that note I leave ya’ll with a slide show of my cupcakes entitled 31 cupcakes .. enjoy ..

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