Cupcakes and misadventures

 

This weekend was truly a weekend of misadventures! We had a going away party for very very dear friends and I decided to be quite ambitious and make 2 dozen cupcakes and the 6 inch cake that I saw on the Not So Humble Pie blog (because I aspire to be at her caliber of cooking one day).  I planned ahead the recipes: the usual Chocolate Cupcakes (recipe here) and for the 6 inch layer cake, red velvet with cream cheese frosting and of course the fondant.

The chocolate cupcakes came out perfect as usual. I needed a new frosting since my buttercream tends to melt at the slightest temperature above 60 degrees. So I made this new recipe I got from a friend that includes shortening to prevent the 'Wicked Witch of the West in Water' syndrome that my recipe has. After making it, well, it tasted good but I really felt like it needed something.

Buttercream Icing (that doesn't melt into oblivion)

1 cup shortening
1 cup butter, softened
7 cups powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
4 oz raspberry jam (optional)

Combine all ingredients and mix well with an electric mixer. Tint to desired colour.
I tinted the icing a really pretty shade of raspberry pink and it just looked like it should taste raspberry pink too. So I dumped half a jar of raspberry jam into the frosting and voila! just enough raspberry-ness. I love when stuff like that happens.

 When the chocolate cupcakes were frosted and looked lovely, I moved onto the cake.
Again, the cake batter was remarkably easy to make. I used a recipe from an old issue of Cook's Illustrated magazine for both the cake batter and the frosting.

Red Velvet Cake
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp red food colouring
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour desired cake pans.

 
Whisk flour, baking soda and salt in  a bowl. In another bowl, whisk together buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and eggs. In a small bowl, whisk together cocoa powder and food colouring.

With an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add a third of the flour mixture. Beat until incorporated. Add half of buttermilk mixture and beat until combined. Repeat with half of flour mixture and buttermilk mixture and then the rest of the flour mixture, beating well after each addition. Add cocoa mixture and beat until everything is well combined. Scrape into prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Cool the cakes in pans for 10 minutes then carefully turn onto a rack to cool completely.

Beautiful, rich colour!

While my little cakes were baking, I made the frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting
(adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
4 cups confectioner's sugar
16 oz cream cheese, softened and cut into 8 pieces
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

In an electric mixer, combine butter and sugar and beat until fluffy. Add cream cheese and beat until well combined. Beat in vanilla and salt. 

I ended up with WAY too much! Even after I frosted the whole cake, layers and all, I still had a ton leftover. So.... I made more cupcakes. Before I get to that though, I'll keep going with the adorable little cake. It is so cute.

I split each cake in half with a knife, spread each half with cream cheese frosting and started layering. I applied a crumb coat of frosting to the entire cake, which turned out to be way to thick, but whatever, and then moved onto the fondant. A friend recommended that instead of making the fondant myself (an easy but time-consuming process),  I should buy the 'Duff's' fondant sold at Michael's Crafts Store. It's actually very tasty as opposed to the usual revolting tasting stuff that you can buy; I'd recommend it.

I was too busy assembling the cake to remember to take photos of assembling the cake, sorry.

Here, I hit my first snag. Due to the tiny-ness of my kitchen, I don't have ample counter space to roll out enough fondant to cover the cake. Due to the fact that I had been cooking all afternoon and my kitchen does not contain a window, it was very hot which makes fondant a bit sticky and overly soft. After much trial and error, I finally ended up rolling out the fondant on an unrimmed cookie sheet sprayed with oil and, holding my breath, lifted it off the cookie sheet and draped on the cake.

Oh they make it look so easy on TV. It's not, they lie. First, the fondant ripped in a number of places. Second, I used too much frosting for my crumb coat, which I said before, so the frosting was oozing a bit out the sides. Third and possibly because of second, the cake was not the smooth perfection it should have been. It was too late though. So I covered all the ripped sections with cute little flowers made of different coloured fondant and called it a day. Well, not exactly. I still made vanilla cupcakes that night.

I love the colour of this batter! It's so gorgeous.

I've been meaning to try out a few vanilla recipes and what a better time than 9 pm with the kitchen a sheer disaster. Yeah, why not. So here is where my second misadventure started. First, let me say the one should never, ever put two types of flour right next to each other unless they are easily distinguishable. Bread flour is not the same as all purpose flour despite looking EXACTLY the same. I ended up using two cups of bread flour and one cup of all-purpose flour in a recipe that actually calls for 3 cups of cake flour!

 
By the time, I realized my mistake it was too late so I baked them anyway. It turned out okay though. Mike said that they tasted like sugar cookies instead of cupcake but that's not bad, right? To lighten the density of the cupcakes, I used my filler tip to fill each cupcake with a dollop of strawberry jam.

Then I tinted the frosting a pretty purple and piped it onto each cupcake to cover the hole. With some sprinkles and a fondant heart, cute and perfect looking. I did whip the frosting into oblivion while trying to tint it the correct shade of purple so it was very light and fluffy, not a bad thing at all. Between the jam and the light frosting, they managed to balance the density of the cupcake, so that oops did manage to work itself out.

Vanilla Cupcakes

3 cups flour, all-purpose (or 2 of bread flour and 1 of all-purpose if you want the sugar cookie taste)
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

Beat sugar and butter in a mixer until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk to sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.

Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

And then comes the party, the third and final catastrophic misadventure...the chocolate cupcakes tipped in their carrier and the frosting fell off.

I ended up having to re-frost them with just a butter knife and cover them in sprinkles because there wasn't time to worry about re-piping the frosting into pretty shapes. I almost cried; it was terrible. Everybody thought they tasted good which is the point I suppose, but still...