So yesterday I thought I’d bake up some cupcakes — maybe even attempt to sell a few at our book-sale. Yes, we have an ongoing book sale in the yard this week as (oldest son) Daniel acquired several thousand used books from a guy who apparently buys old library cast off”s.
I decided to bake the Chocolate Butter Cupcakes (RHC pp 296-297) and I frosted them with Chocolate-Egg White Buttercream (p 302). Actually, I made one recipe of the Buttercream with dark chocolate and one with semisweet chocolate and since the cupcakes were particularly chocolaty, we decided that the second frosting was a better pairing as the cupcakes needed a tad bit of sweetness to bring out the delicious chocolate flavour.
I need to bake this recipe again a few times — the cupcakes weren’t ‘domed’ and didn’t have a perfect texture. I need to measure eggs by volume — I realized too late that I used the number of eggs the recipe called for, but I didn’t *measure* the volume of eggs. I had extra large eggs. And, though I used pastry flour, I wish I’d used cake flour. And unsalted butter.
Here are a few photos of the process.
I placed a small square of dark chocolate on the top of each buttercream frosting swirl. I smiled as I looked at the photo after I snapped the final picture… I hadn’t noticed that someone had eaten one of the cupcakes.
I knew I needed to continue the quest to bake the perfect cake when someone asked if this was cake-mix cake. I think today I’m going to make up a batch of cookies… for the book sale… I’m not ready to sell cupcakes just yet.
Cookies I’m sure about — I know how to bake great cookies — cakes… still elude me.
♥ love.
