A week of bakeries, cupcakes and rediscovering a lost brownie recipe

Last week was cupcake week at work – not officially, though that is an idea… – one person brought in leftover cupcakes and this inspired another to make up a wonderful batch with rosewater meringuey icing. I did my part by going past a cafe that sells my favourite cupcakes in the world (they are only mini but perfectly decorated and they taste exactly like you’d hope pretty cupcakes will). But once you start the cupcake train, you just can’t stop it and my cupcakes would have all gone at the cupcake so it meant I just had to make my own.

Now, I haven’t ever had the greatest success with cupcakes, they’ve always been perfectly edible but just never hit the particularly high mark I set for cupcakes (except for my blissfully decorated little wonders, I can’t eat store bought cupcakes). It was suggested to me that what one needs is a Kitchen Aid (or presumably another good quality stand mixer) in order to get the required fluffy-ness for that sweet sweet sponge. I’d always done them by hand or I once tried a hand held beater and it wasn’t that great either. Fortunately for me, I was the happy recipient of a Kitchen Aid mixer quite a few birthdays ago but it was gathering dust at my parents’ due to lack of space. So I promised my dearly beloved that if he made some space for the mixer, I’d bake him something. Appealing to the stomach works every time – the record player found a new home and I got my little helper back again.

So to find a recipe – I ended up just typing in “best cupcake recipe” into Google and getting some amazing sites dedicated to the versatile cupcake. There’s a whole universe of cupcakes out there. Some of them completely blow my mind. Still when it comes down to it, my favourite cupcake is just plain vanilla sponge with a good vanilla butter icing.

(Way more than) 52 cupcakes highly recommended the Magnolia Bakery recipe (pdf) from More from Magnolia. Tried it out and was indeed very nice. The Kitchen Aid made a huge difference, I discovered textures that I’d never seen in my cupcake batter before. In the end I got a cupcake that was sufficiently cupcake tasting so I was very happy. I took them into work and they went down very well too. A word of warning, the icing is very sweet so I only put a light covering but if you want to get fancy 52 cupcakes’ Cupcake Queen describes how she gets those pretty pretty swirls:

It took a some practice, let me tell you!

Basically, I used a small icing knife. First I put a scoop of frosting on the cupcake so that it covers all the way to the side and flattened out on top. Then I put more frosting in the middle of the cupcake. Then I drag the knfe around in a wide circle (while rotating the cupcake in my other hand) that gets smaller in the center.

It makes at least 24 cupcakes but I got 33 out of it because my cupcake liners were a tad smaller. I also only used about a third of the icing so I might make another batch on the weekend. I’ve made a few small changes (made it metric and changed sugar to castor sugar and confectioner’s sugar to icing sugar).

Yummy but very sweet Magnolia Bakery cupcakes

Cupcake
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups castor sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line at least 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners. In a bowl add flours and stir to mix together. Preferably in a stand mixer, cream butter on medium until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat for another 3 minutes until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beating well after each addition. Add the flours in three parts, alternating with the milk and the vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overmix. However, don’t be too disconcerted if it looks like the mixture looks like it might curdle – it did with mine and I was worried I might have overbeat at the egg addition stage. I probably did with my excited reunion with my Kitchen Aid, but all the same they turned out perfectly fine.

Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners – don’t fill too high – 3/4 is generally suggested but I filled them to the top of the liner and it was fine. Bake in a preheated 180C oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove cakes from tins and cool on a wire rack. Top with the Icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
6-8 cups icing sugar (eek!)
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat butter with 4 cups icing sugar and milk and vanilla for 3-5 mins on medium until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar beating well after each addition (approx 2 mins) until the icing makes for good spreading consistency. I would recommend not using all of the icing as it is very sweet. You can tint it all colours of the rainbow but apparently pink is the most popular. I try to keep them additive free as far as possible and the plain icing is a pretty yellow colour from the butter. I had some fairy sugar crystals and balls in pink and lavender so I relented and sprinkled them on.

Since making them, the Cupcake Queen has moved to choosing this recipe from Billy’s Bakery as her favourite. That will be next on my cupcake making list I do believe…

Today, one of the cupcake making work friends made some tasty chocolate and raspberry brownies. So it reminded me of my perfect and brilliant simple Donna Hay recipe but I couldn’t find it anywhere (it was in the cookbook of a flatmate who has since moved out). I was stunned that I hadn’t noted it down on my blog anywhere. I did a search for Donna Hay’s brownies but to no avail, I got some very complicated ones that involved melting chocolate. I knew that wasn’t my baby, so I ended up having to ring up my old flatmate. I found it and I made them, the batter was like icing – way too sinful. They’re cooked and waiting to cool, the whole house smells of brownies. It might have to be breakfast as I’m about to nod off. I won’t make the mistake of forgetting to note down the recipe, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.