Cupcakes -- trickier than they look

The other week my friend E asked me to help her out with a baking task – she was hosting a wine and tea party and she wanted to serve pretty little cupcakes for dessert, and also offer some as take-home gifts.

E had sussed out cupcakes at several bakeries, and whilst they looked and tasted lovely, at between £2 and £3 per cake, the price was a bit of a sticking-point. E and I concurred that this was far too much to pay for baked goods (she needed at least 20 cakes), and we vowed to see if we could bake our own for less.

Now, I’m fairly handy round the kitchen (I make up for my lack of craftiness with a few smooth culinary moves) and in fact, I can usually bake with some degree of skill. But I caution you now, dear reader, cupcakes are NOT as easy as they look. In fact, sometimes you can do everything right and, well, those cakes just won’t rise. But more on that later….

I pulled recipes from the aptly named ‘Cupcakes!’ cookbook. We would make vanilla cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes, and then one huge batch of cream cheese icing, which we would split into smaller batches and flavour with lemon, chocolate and so on. We gave ourselves four hours to bake and ice (we needed all of it) and a bottle of white wine to soothe frayed nerves if things got dicey (ditto).

Here are the recipes we used:

Vanilla cupcakes

2 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup canola or corn oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. In a large bowl beat eggs and sugar for about 2 minutes; add in oil and vanilla until blended. Gently mix in the sour cream, followed by the dry ingredients.

Once the batter is smooth, fill cupcake pans to about a finger’s width below the top of the liner, and bake for 23 minutes at 180 (gas mark 4).

Chocolate cupcakes

3 ounces or 28 grams unsweetened chocolate, chopped into pieces

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup sour cream

½ cup water

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or bain-marie and then set it aside to cool slightly. Sift dry ingredients together and set aside. In a large bowl beat butter and sugar for about 2 minutes; mix in melted chocolate, eggs (one by one) and vanilla. Mix another minute and add in sour cream. Add in half the dry ingredients, then the water, then the rest of the dry ingredients, mixing everything in at each step.

Once the batter is smooth, fill cupcake pans to about a finger’s width below the top of the liner, and bake for 20 minutes at 180 (gas mark 4).

Cream cheese icing

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

6 ounces or 170 or so grams cream cheese

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups confectioner’s sugar (we needed more though, as we added lemon juice to some)

Just mix everything together, then set aside smaller bowls to flavour with lemon or melted chocolate.

And our creative variation ingredients…

juice and rind from 1 small lemon

hundreds and thousands (both chocolate and coloured)

almond flakes, chopped and toasted

1 large Dairy Milk bar, melted

The afternoon started off well enough, with all ingredients accounted for and the initial measuring and mixing going off without a hitch.

Cupcake batter -- and it looked so good...

Things, however, got complicated when we discovered that one of the two ovens we planned to use had no rack in it. “No matter,” we said, “Let’s just sit the pan on the bottom of the oven.” We did so and within minutes detected a distinct burning smell. Lo, oven racks have a purpose: our cakes had burned on the bottom, failed to rise, and needed to be binned. Fail.

Cupcake disaster! Into the bin...

It wasn’t all vanilla-flavoured trouble, though – the dozen and a half that went into the other oven survived and went on to cool in anticipation of being iced.

Vanilla cupcakes -- some of the lucky ones

Over in chocolate cupcake territory, I am ashamed (yet compelled by journalistic integrity) to report heavy losses. Somehow NONE of our chocolate cupcakes rose! It was as though a spell had been cast on them (or, as I privately contend, my baking partner had neglected to add some key leavening ingredient).

The chocolate cupcakes tasted great, but looked awful – in fact, too awful to photograph. We dubbed them crater-cakes, which prompted us to wonder what would happen if we filled them with molten chocolate. (We had started on the wine at this point.) We melted a Dairy Milk bar in the double boiler, poured chocolate into the six or eight cakes that retained any structural integrity, and backed away slowly while they cooled. E tells me they held shape and were delicious. I remain doubtful.

Back to the surviving cakes… once they were cooling it was time to make icing – a messy business if ever there was one.

Making icing

The icing was delicious – we insisted on trying it several times – and we made a couple of variations, one with lemon and one with chocolate. (In case you have ever wondered, whilst lemon and chocolate are lovely flavours, they don’t do well on the same cupcake.)

Once all the icing was ready, we set out plates with decorative bits like almonds and hundreds and thousands and prepared to ice and decorate.

Everything you need for a knockout cupcake

Here’s a little tip on icing and decorating: rather than sprinkling bits onto your iced cupcakes, instead dip/roll the iced surface in the bits, holding onto the paper end of the cake. Better coverage and less mess!

Here are the finished cakes, all decked out in delicious icing and fabulous toppings:

At last, the finished product -- some very good-looking cupcakes.

Total spent: The ingredients came to a grand total of £20.38, which, had all gone well, would have come in at roughly 51p/cake. Alas, we sustained heavy losses in both the chocolate and vanilla departments…

Total saved: Even considering the Darwinian nature of the day’s baking (mis)adventurtes, we still saved a packet, as the top bakery price was £3/cake. That means we saved £2/cake at least, so, given that 20 cakes survived, that’s £40. E tells me the cupcakes went down a storm, too, so from considerable wreckage I would say we managed an impressive result.

Planning a bake-off? Partial to cupcakes and have a recipe you’d like to share? Or maybe you know what I did wrong with the chocolate cakes? Feedback is welcome!