Since Chris got me Martha Stewart's Cupcake book for my birthday last month, I've tried 4 recipe's. Going forward I am going to write about each recipe by itself, and hopefully put up some pictures. For this post though, I'm going to just write about them all at once.
I started out with Marble Cupcakes. I made these at my parents house because I had family visiting that weekend. I followed the recipe just about perfectly, until it came to the part about how full each cupcake should be. I still am trying to figure out what they mean by filling each cupcake 3/4 full. I ended up with two extra cupcakes because of this. This recipe was a little bit of a challenge also because I've never baked anything that was marbled, so that was new, but it turned out alright. The thing that I liked from the start is that the recipe says they will bake for 20 minutes, and at 20 minutes they were perfect. That has been something that has frustrated me with baking, is that towards the end, you have to be checking the oven every few minutes. I iced these cupcakes with a very simple glaze. I didn't have enough powdered sugar, so it was pretty runny, and didn't look quite right. I'll get it right next time though.
Next I made Chocolate Spice cupcakes. They are served upside down, and then covered with chocolate ganache glaze and some candied ginger. They have a very interesting combination of flavors, but they were very good. I think on these ones, I still had trouble figuring out how full to fill them though. That's something I'll need to work on some more.
Right after the chocolate spice cupcakes, I made Banana Nut Cupcakes, with a caramel buttercream. I had some leftover banana's, so this was the recipe to try. It was very simple to make, and has roasted pecans to give it a little crunch. I had to roast the pecans, which I've never done before. It was pretty simple, you just lay them out on a sheet pan, and stick them in the over for around 10 minutes. You really have to watch them because towards the end of the time, they can burn, which some of mine did. Fortunately I roasted some extra pecans. The frosting for these cupcakes was a little more difficult the other ones I've tried. First you have to make caramel, and then add it to the start of the buttercream. It turned out alright, it could have been better, but I'm not sure I've made either caramel or buttercream before, so I figure this wasn't too bad. I also tried with this recipe to freeze some of the buttercream and some of the cupcakes. I'll take them out in another week or two, and see how they taste then. Stay tuned.
The fourth cupcake that I made was a Snickerdoodle Cupcake. The link to the recipe is here. The cupcakes themselves were pretty easy to make. The frosting was very difficult. The frosting is supposed to be like a meringue. You have to make a clear sugar syrup, and add it to the egg whites. I didn't have a candy thermometer when I was making this, so it was a little more difficult to keep track of the temp. They did taste pretty good, so I will have to make these again sometime.
I think I will make some cupcakes tomorrow, since I'm off from work. So vote for which you think I should make.
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