Cupcake Wars! Four Dark Side of the Force ways to Heaven......

I am trying to find the perfect cupcake (chocolate of course people!). The cupcake with the moist but dark, rich, flavor that seemingly sucks you into a torrent of passion so deep--it freezes you. I kid you not. I did not find it. But on the other hand I did find 4 recipes, which I noted looked worth my time. As I knew myself, and the enmity I had within myself, for myself, I knew I had to make all four recipes the same day. Had I made but one or two a day I would have consumed every last one and had none left for side by side comparisons.

I made these in my mini cupcake maker, my thought being I could bake a lot faster, and save energy (not mine). Now the mini cupcake maker had been beckoning me ever since I laid eyes on it. Here was something that could justify small batches of cupcakes every other day or so. Had I made batter for one cupcake and turned the oven on for that, it would have damaged my penny pinching sensibilites. I could make fewer trans fatty treats, they'd be fresh and I'd save money! Well so far the machine passes for me. It DOES make cuppycakes in five minutes. I also think it makes them rise extra well, compared to the oven. Downside was cleaning and taking the actual cupcakes OUT. All in all, I DO love this little baby cuppycake maker. ONWARDS!

The four recipes I slaved over till midnight were,

1. Better than **X cupcakes



2. Ina Garten'sBarefoot Contessa Chocolate Cake



3. Double Layer Chocolate



4. Cook's IllustratedDark Chocolate

The Double Chocolate was the gummiest of the four. Though they had a good taste. I'm wondering if they were'nt made for cupcake machines (the tightly closed machine really makes cupcakes rise due to the steam that forms inside). It also had highly pointed domes.

Ina Gartens recipe produced the spongiest cupcakes and a slight gumminess (again machine?). They were soft, but the taste was the least liked of the four recipes.

The better than _ _ _, l don't want my blog flagged as a porno site, I'm omitting THE word, ok?) had an average taste. But better than Ina's. The texture was avergae.

The Cooks Illustrated
had the best chocolate taste. It had a grainyness to the texture that I was not thrilled with, almost a very fine powdery crumb. It was moist and had a fall apart in your mouth softness.

In conlusion, I shall be making these again, this time asking for taste testing help from family. Last time I ate all 40 cupcakes by myself (For gods sake! ----They were mini's!) .

Homemade frosting-- And It Feels SO Good

Unfortunately, I had to take my frosting pic after rushing to my nephews house with a cake made in under 2 hours. I had to take my mom with me to pick up someone for the birthday party,( to hold the cake), transfer the cake from her lap to the new lap and of course have dad follow us to take her back home- all in super video "fast forward button" mode. Whew! Maybe I should have taken pics of the birds and the squirrels chipping away at the cakes cooling outside in the snow?? I kid, I kid- except for the part about the cakes cooling in the snow.....

Well since I had no frosting in the house, and was too lazy to go to the store (you'd know this is you've read my previous stories!), I made my own. My first attempt 4 months ago produced a grainy and sugary fluff. This time, I followed the recipe properly (did I just admit to not following the recipe last time, darn it?!) and produced a light fluffy. Now this will not be my it frosting. Reason: Taste. I have eaten similar tasting frosting on professional cakes before and thought them a 'cheap quickie' (nothing dirty), not loveingly made my gentle hands and quality ingredients. This is not to say the frosting was a dud, it was not. It was creamy and light (mmmm), it piped very well and held its shape reasonably. I have to admit I put less sugar than called for though. DARN! Did I just admit to NOT following the recipe again?!!!! I should just stop my commentary.

• 1 cup shortning (butter flavored preffered)
• 1 cup room temperature, softened unsalted butter
• 8 cups confectioners sugar
• 2 TS vanilla
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 Ts Wiltons butter flavor

Mix on high until it starts to get light and looks a bit fluffier than when it first started. It will not get fluffy at this stage, just a bit more puffed than before. I used the whisk attachment on my new KitchenAid birthday gift, rather than the mixing paddle which the recipe called for.

Whisk or mix on high for 5 minutes, or until your frosting is light and fluffy. Now pay attention, I used only about 6 or 7 cups of sugar, not wanting a super sweet frosting. My frosting had mixed reviews, while one kid thought it was pretty sweet, another complained about a "buttery" taste to it. Now I don't know about you, but buttercream being my favorite type of frosting- I had better taste some freakin' butter in it! I and the other guests thought it was actually pretty good. Not "super duper", "amazing", "x on the beach" type stuff - but for an easy frosting that piped well- and tasted pretty good, it was a "make again".

The quickie cake I made is pictured below, be nice, it was a quickie. And the purple lines on top are not an X like my sister thought, but it was supposed to be a basketball!

Floral Cupcakes and Self Pride

You hear of many people, who cannot afford it, organizing and setting up their own weddings or receptions. Well, my sister was one of them, and I sold her on the idea that we could make our own desserts worthy of any five star bakery. And that was without any decorating experience-- I am sort of hypnotic. I suppose you can judge for yourselves, based on my pictures, whether as first time cupcake floral engineers we did a praise worthy job or not. And yes, I think we did.

The cupcakes themselves were made from box mixes, neither of us having much experience with scratch baking. The icing was Wilton's from the fabric and craft store Jo-Annes. Now we discovered that your regular grocery store frosting tubs will not make such flowers, nor will they stay their shape. In order to save our pockets we tried the tubs first. The end results were globs of frosting on our little cupcakes, petals melting into petals and creating yummy gobs. We wanted flowers not yummy gobs. We tried every experimental thing we could in order to make use of our cheaper grocery store tubs of frosting. Adding cornstarch, adding meringue powder, confectioners sugar, even flour. In the end we decided to save our money and buy icing instead of experimenting with vast quantities of grocery store butter cream.

Now to make one thing clear, the people we learned out techniques from, were using homemade butter cream for the flowers. I do not know whether the brands we chose, the outside temperature, humidity, or even us, were responsible for the store tubs not working.

Now you ask, how did we learn to make these flowers? YouTube of course! The vast beautiful video encyclopedia of our time. I originally came upon this crazy amazing thing called a cupcake basket, where flower cupcakes were propped onto sticks and stuck into a foam filled clay pot. Amazing! And not as easy as a video makes it look. In the end, with our time crunch (we made the cupcakes fresh, the day before the reception) we decided to just serve the little 'flowers' as is. Simply search for flower cupcakes, in youtube and study the videos. You can practice on little saucers first, this way you can scoop it up and reuse it. Scooping it off of a cupcake will give you iceing with cupcake crumbs!