Baked up a batch of Vanilla cupcakes from J's recipe on Tuesday night, modified a bit by swirling nutella through half the batch, and creamy peanut butter through the other half. Choice of flavour was determined by TS's addiction to all things chocolate, and also my sister and her husband's requests for a repeat of Hari Raya's creations. Cakes were beautiful. Flat on top for easy frosting, moist and delicate crumb. Good taste, I used a lesser vanilla paste than the recommended madagascar bourbon (which has alcohol) but thought the result was passable.
Some step-by-step pictures below, not professional quality I'm afraid because my lazy boyfriend shot them with our Canon IXUS. I guess since he was pre-occupied with making dinner (yummy noodles, see right – Noodle King brand instant noodles means no worries about fresh noodles going bad in the fridge, and always available. They are not fried in palm oil, and so compared to maggi mee, very healthy! He stirfried garlic and sliced chili padis, then added fresh shitake mushrooms, baby kailan, marinated prawns, and some chili fishcake. Sauce made of seasoning that came with the instant noodles, halved because we’re eating them dry not soup, coarse black pepper, and a great bottled chili from Malaysia. Will try to post a picture of that product soon.) I'll cut him some slack this time...
Sifting the caster sugar, not very exciting but an essential step. Was a bit surprised at how much sugar was called for, but the end result was not too sweet so glad i wasn't tempted to experiment.
My Kenwood Patissier mixer. Was so very tempted to buy a KitchenAid instead, they really do look lovely and the choice of colours is fantastic, but they are also twice the price of my final choice. Almost went for a refurbished one from Amazon.com, but decided to try out something cheaper first. We ordered the 9-speed hand-held KitchenAid mixer, and were so excited when it arrived. Plugged it in, turned it on, and (literally) in a puff of smoke it died. Yes, we forgot to account for the voltage difference in the US-made product. Poor hand-held mixer has been sitting in the boot of TS’s car since, once in awhile we mutter about trying to get it fixed. Bought the Patissier from ParisSilk, it only comes in Red or Cream, but it works well and have not had any problems yet (it’s only been three months).
From top-left, clockwise: Love these stand alone cases, they look much more Pro than the flutted paper cases I think, and they eliminate the need for cupcake/muffin pans. I bake in a Baby Belling, which is only big enough for one shelf to be baked at a time, so laying these out on a baking tray lets me get a lot more done each time. I buy them from SunLik trading along Seah Street, they’re a lot cheaper there than anywhere else, but also available from Gim Hin Lee and Phoon Huat. Batter-filled cases, weighed out 50g per cupcake because wanted nice flat tops and a uniform appearance. One teaspoon of nutella on top of each cake. I swirled the nutella through, but it actually sank to the bottom during baking, so next time I think I’ll leave it on top and hopefully it will end up nicely in the center of each cake.
The baked cupcakes and two types of frosting. Notice the nice flat tops! Frosting recipe is ridiculously simple, just a bowl, a spoon, icing sugar and 35% cream. The peanut butter one was flavoured by just mixing some of the spread through (amount titrated to intensity of flavour desired) and then thinning to spreading consistency with a bit of milk. The chocolate one had cocoa substituting for some of the icing sugar, then a bit of nutella mixed in as above. Important to press clingwrap down on the surface of the icing during storage, to avoid a “skin” forming.
The finished product. I really liked the colour scheme, the hearts and flowers are ready bought edible decorations and I only included them because bought a ton the last time I went to SunLik and now have to try and use them up. Forgot to get squeezy bottles (GREAT tip learnt at J’s cooking class, eliminates the need for messy piping bags when doing geometric designs) so dribbled the icing from a sppon instead. End-result is not so polished, but quite arty-looking I think!
Most importantly, I had feedback that the cakes were delicious, so I will definitely be repeating the recipe, can’t wait to try out new decorations, now all I have to do is find someone to eat the end-result…
To try out vanilla cupcake recipes, look here, I don't want to post J's recipes since they were given out as part of the class.
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