cupcakes – The Pudding Queen

Sometimes I just get the urge to make something, something of a ‘cakey’ nature. I didn’t want to go over the top, because we end up eating what I make, and it’s not doing the waistline any good at all. I thought that a little batch of cupcakes might hit the spot, not too many that we’d be overwhelmed, but enough of a challenge to be worth making.

I call it a challenge because I don’t make them often and I’ve had some issues in the past with sunken tops and dried out middles. Could I improve? Also, the only thing I had in for flavouring would be cocoa, would it be moist enough?

So I found a recipe offering super-moist cupcakes, using oil in place of butter or margarine. I’ve had lots of luck with full-sized ‘sticky’ chocolate cake using this method, so that was encouraging. It made only 14 cupcakes, so not over-facing. Sounded like a plan.

The recipe (makes 14 or so cup cakes):

¾ cup/94 g all-purpose (plain) flour spooned and flattened

½ cup/41 g unsweetened cocoa powder*

¾ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)

¼ tsp salt

2 large eggs at room temperature

½ cup /100 g granulated sugar

½ cup /100 g packed light brown sugar

⅓ cup /80 ml vegetable, sunflower or canola oil**

2 tsp vanilla extract (essence)

½ cup/125 ml buttermilk *** at room temperature

* the recipe specifies not to use Dutch-process cocoa, a nice surprise as this seems to be the default cocoa in most North American recipes, although I have never seen it in our shops. I used Fry’s.
** I used sunflower oil
*** as usual, I don’t keep buttermilk in, but 1 tsp of lemon juice in a measuring jug, made up to half a cup with milk and left to stand after mixing did the trick. The recipe suggests whole milk but I used 2% (semi-skimmed) and it worked fine.

Preheat the oven to 350˚F/180˚C/Gas 4. Note that this has a very short baking time so I chose not to use convection (fan). Line muffin tins with cupcake liners and set aside.

Place the flour, cocoa, salt. baking powder and soda into a large bowl-it can help to sift the cocoa powder into the bowl. Whisk together to mix well.

In a second bowl, place the eggs, both sugars, oil and vanilla extract. whisk until combined.

Pour half of the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Add half of the buttercream. Whisk for a few seconds. It will be very thick.

Add the remainder of the egg mixture and the rest of the buttermilk. Whisk until just combined, but do not overstir. The batter will be quite runny.

Pour or spoon the batter into the liners. Only fill to half-way to prevent spilling over the sides, or the centres sinking. I found a ladle useful for this part.

Transfer the muffin trays to the oven for 18-21 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tins. Once the tins can be handled safely, remove the cupcakes to a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing:

American cupcakes are usually presented with a mound of buttercream icing, piled as high as the depth of the cake. It looks nice but, I think, can be a little sickly. Certainly the cupcakes I remember from children’s parties back in my childhood never had so much icing. I remember the height of sophistication was the ‘butterfly cake’ or the ‘top hat’, where a small circle of cake was cut out of the top of the cupcake, the resulting hole filled with buttercream and the removed cake piece either plonked back on top of the icing (top hat) or cut into half and set like wings into the icing (butterfly). I actually considered doing this, but in the end opted for just putting it on top. I think I have mentioned that icing is not my strong point, and I don’t own any icing nozzles or a bag.

I chose therefore to make half the amount of icing suggested by the original recipe. It’s almost a diet cupcake!

½ cup/125 g/1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature

¼ cup/20 g unsweetened cocoa powder*

1¾ cup/272 g icing sugar (powdered sugar, confectioner’s sugar)

1½ tbsp milk or cream (or as required)

Pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract (essence)

* this time it can be either standard or Dutch-process cocoa

This called for the stand mixer and the hand mixer, as previously, unless you really don’t mind standing there for 5 minutes or more, mixing buttercream.

Beat the butter until soft and fluffy. In the meantime combine the sugar, cocoa and salt in a bowl.

Add the cocoa mixture, vanilla and milk to the butter and mix on low speed. Note that, as usual, I had to swap to the hand mixer for this part as it is very stiff. Add a little more milk if necessary.

Using the stand mixer, continue to beat on medium speed for 5 minutes or more. Occasionally scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure that everything is combined. This makes a very light buttercream. Note that if you want to do the ‘big’ frosting, using an icing bag, double the above recipe.

Ice the cupcakes. I did this by placing a blob of buttercream on each one and then spreading it using a palette knife. Decorate as liked (vermicelli, choc chips, a cherry, whatever takes your fancy or you have in).

The cake is certainly nice and moist, the buttercream is chocolately and light, and the amount, I think, is enough without being overfacing. A nice, simple recipe with a good result-can’t beat that!

I had a sort-out of the freezer a couple of days ago, and came across no less than 4 frozen bananas. If a banana is getting towards the state of ‘no return’, I pop the peeled banana into the freezer for use in baking or for making a banana molasses mush that attracts moths! Mark, my husband, moth-traps during Spring, Summer and Autumn and has had an amazing number of different species, photographed at our outside lights. There are some moths, however, that don’t come to lights and a smelly, sticky banana-flavoured mush is just the thing to attract them. Still, it’s a couple of months before he’ll be trapping again so I thought I’d use the bananas for baking.

I also had half-a-jar of mincemeat left from Christmas, sitting in the back of the fridge. now, mincemeat does last a long time but, once the jar is open, I don’t like it to wait too long. Maybe some sort of banana/mincemeat cake would work? I didn’t want to go for banana bread again, instead I wanted something with a cake-y texture and, maybe, even something that could be made into cupcakes? We are trying to reduce the amount of cakes, etc., we are eating (hence the reduced number of posts for this blog) so perhaps cupcakes would freeze well and be able to be brought out when needed?

I went on line and found a recipe for Banana Cake, I think from Australia. That might work, I’d just make a few minor changes and hope for the best. The cake was supposed to be made in a 20 cm (8 inch) cake tin but I decided to go for cupcake liners in muffin tins. now, I make very few muffins or cupcakes, so I was a bit surprised to find that I own no less than three 12-place muffin tins and 2 packets of cupcake liners! Where did they all come from?

The recipe called for butter, but I decided that I’d sub in soft margarine. It also wanted soft brown sugar, but I had that pesky yellow sugar to use up. It also wanted buttermilk, so I made my own with 2% milk and lemon juice (see Celebration Time-Double Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake for instructions on how to do this). I’m not avoiding buttermilk recipes any longer!

The Recipe:

125 g/4 oz/ ½ cup soft butter or margarine
195 g/7.5 oz/ 1 ¼ cup soft brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
125 g/ 4 oz/ 1 cup self-raising flour
63 g/2 oz / ½ cup plain (all-purpose) flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
3-4 mashed bananas (about 1 ½ cups/375 ml)
125 ml/ ½ cup buttermilk
½ jar mincemeat

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F/Gas 4. I used 350 F convection, as this would save me from having to rotate my muffin trays once they were in the oven.

Cream together the butter or margarine, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla until light and fluffy.

Creaming the butter, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla extract

Add the two eggs, one at at time, beating between each addition.

Mix together the flours and soda in a separate bowl, preferably sift or whisk to ensure a good mixture.

Add the flours, banana and buttermilk, in batches, beating lightly between each addition. Fold in the mincemeat and mix through. Transfer spoonsful to the cupcake cases. My mixture made 30 cupcakes. Place in the oven to bake.

Now, the cake was supposed to take 1 hour to bake, but it clearly wasn’t going to take as long for cupcakes. They are cooked when a skewer comes out clean, so I checked after about 20 minutes. It actually took about 25 minutes for these cupcakes to bake.

I left them to cool on a wire rack, before packing them in plastic tubs to freeze (the layers separated with parchment paper).

It was remarkably successful, the cakes were light but with a bit of a sticky feel from the banana. The mincemeat added a spicy finish and took off some of the banana flavour (I’m not a fan of overly banana-flavoured things). It used up the bananas and mincemeat very nicely. I think they will be nice, warmed with custard, or maybe with a light lemon-flavoured glace icing. I took a couple out of the freezer this morning and they took only a few minutes to thaw and they made a nice, light, after-lunch sweetener. I shall have to accumulate more frozen bananas!

Tag: cupcakes

Just for Fun-Chocolate Cupcakes

Serendipitous-Banana Mincemeat Cupcakes