Learning 2 Bake from Scratch – LVII

Halloween Cupcakes

These were super experimental. I’ve never made cupcakes before. They were also hardware store style baking: Repeated trips to the store were necessary.

I have two muffin pans at a dozen muffins each. I thought one and half layers of a layer cake would fill both pans, hence the four-batch mis en place. The idea behind that is that the chocolate batter is old-school soda-and-acid. Mixing it and letting it sit while the first batch baked would have consumed all the leavening. That batter style needs to be mix-and-bake. Lesson learned: Batter for three layers will make two dozen cupcakes.

On the subject of soda-and-acid, that recipe called for buttermilk. Finding decent buttermilk is difficult; I didn’t want to go to the store, yet again; and the orange batter is actually orange flavored (not just colored). So, why not use the orange juice for the acid? Lesson learned: Don’t be afraid. It turned out great – more probably would have been better.

You cannot tell from the picture, but they’re marbled. Two parts chocolate to one part orange. I’ve never made a marbled cake before. Chocolate in first, followed by half as much orange. I swirled them together with a chopstick. Lesson learned: Don’t be afraid. It was easy.

The cake recipe was from the Oreo Cake. I grated an orange’s worth of zest into the white cake and used the juice in the chocolate cake. Trip to the store: I had only green food coloring. It took rather a lot of yellow (with just a bit of red) to make orange. Lesson learned: Don’t be afraid. I worried about the orange; I think two would have been better.

The frosting recipe is vintage/heirloom, which is to say “old”. It was given to me by someone (in the crochet group) who said, “no one has been able to make this right since grandma died.” I took that as a challenge. The recipe:

Buttercream Frosting
From: Jo

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
cream together

1 cup sweet milk
3 Tbl flour
boil together then add to butter/sugar mixture

The obvious potential problems: Not sufficiently “creaming” the butter and sugar, which leaves the frosting gritty. Not sufficiently cooking the flour, which leaves an unpleasant raw flour taste.

The first batch of cupcakes did not get frosted because the first two batches of frosting were miserable failures and I didn’t have time to try a third. “sweet milk” is not “sweetened and condensed milk”. I burned the first batch. The second batch came together OK, but it tasted awful – and was gritty. I took naked cupcakes to the Toastmasters meeting. I brought none home; apparently people like sweet muffins.

While I was Toastmastering, The Laird looked up “sweet milk” and it turns out that it was a term used for just “milk”. He went to the store and bought some whole milk. This morning, that frosting turned out fine. The boiling flour/milk mixture, which is quite thick, melted the butter and dissolved the sugar. After some time in the ‘fridge, it piped fine.

I still want to do another batch. “Whole milk” is not really whole milk. Aside from being processed to death (ultra pasteurization is nice for storage, but it does affect taste), half-and-half is closer to from-the-cow milk. Next time, half-and-half instead of whole milk. I also want to try higher fat content butter. In the freezer, we have some Amish rolled butter that I use for pie crusts. I’ll use that (or Kerry Gold) next time. I’m torn about powdered/confectioner’s sugar. The hot milk did solve the grit issue, but I may give that a try, too. I’m awaiting Jo’s verdict on the taste before making any changes.

Speaking of piping, I obviously need practice. Conveniently, The Laird sent me a not-so-subtle signal by buying (on yet another trip to the store) both paper and silicone cupcake cups. I can only assume that means he wants more frequent cupcakes. Since they are reusable, they don’t seem like the sort of thing one uses when baking cupcakes for others.

Someday, baking will not be an adventure. I can’t decide if I’m looking forward to that or not.

Updates: This is number 57, not 56. Also fixed a dangling prepositional phrase.