Sunday, June 28, 2009

How to ice a cupcake


Great tips on how to prepare the piping bag with icing as well as basic 'how-to' for icing a cupcake. Useful for real baking novices. :)

Lemon Cupcakes to die for~





So. Today I was in charge of lunch for my church small group. This taking-turns-to-make-lunch tradition had started before I joined the group so I was thrown into the deep end with my non-cooking self...nonetheless, I've decided to take full advantage of this chance to cook for about 18 people and practise my baking. So I tried out my slight variant of Martha Stewart's Lemon Cupcake recipe...the result? Amazing! I know I should be more modest about my cupcakes but they really were really yummy!! Yum~ Yum~
So without further ado, here's my beautiful recipe:

Ingredients:

3 Cups of self-rising flour
230g softened unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 Cups of caster sugar
4 eggs (room temperature)
1 Cup of whole milk (close to room temperature)
2-3 Tablespoons of lemon zest
2 1/2 Tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to about 190 degrees Celsius. Line your pan with paper cupcake liners. Sift flour and salt.
2. With an electric mixer cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time. (Crack the eggs on a separate bowl first so that you can fish out any shells) Beat each egg until fully incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
4. Beat in zest and vanilla.
5. Add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of milk and lemon juice. Mix until the mixtures are just combined. Do not overmix as that will create very tough cupcakes.
6. Fill the cupcake liners only three-quarters full.
7. My oven baked for about 17 minutes. To test if the cupcakes are ready, insert a toothpick in the centre of a cupcake and the toothpick should come out clean. Or push down on the cupcake - if the bread springs back up right away, they are ready.
8. Let the cupcakes cool in the pan before taking them out to put on a cooling rack.

**Use the upper part of the oven
**Turn the pan around half way through the baking to ensure even baking
**If baking with one pan, ensure that the pan has cooled down before putting it back in. I used two baking pans and put the remaining one in the fridge for it to cool down faster.

Frosting:
Ideally, you should use buttercream frosting or cream cheese frosting. But I didn't think buttercream frosting would have done well with a Korean crowd, so I decided to improvise and create a lemon whipped cream. They went very well with the lemon cupcakes and I think it was quite well received by my Koren friends.

Lemon Whipped Cream Icing

Ingredients:

2 Cups Heavy Cream (I used fresh cream which I found is virtually the same thing) - make sure the cream is cold
3/4 icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)
1 1/2Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. At low speed, beat cream in a chilled bowl until it begins to thicken
2. Gradually add the icing sugar and lemon juice
3. On high speed beat until soft peaks form.

*If the cupcake is to be served hours later, they must be refrigerated because of the frosting...or did everybody know that already? Apparently, the whipped cream does not do well being out for too long
**For baking novices (like moi) 'beat until soft peaks form' means beat until you can create a soft, stable peak when scooping the cream - (I had to look up what this meant. :P)

Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy~ Ahhhhhhhhhh..............

Friday, June 19, 2009

A Mother's Fight Against....Great Food!

I found these interesting clip and article about a mother who is fighting against schools to ban cupcakes or any other 'great' treats from the classrooms. I found myself rolling my eyes just reading/listening about her. Even in New Zealand we are not allowed to hand out candies or cupcakes at school but no one goes crazy if that 'accidentally' happens occasionally. But this woman is a whole other story. She's not just a typical mother wanting her kids to eat healthy snacks.
Here is a video clip of her interview and here's a written interview with her by the Observer.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

No One Puts Cupcake in a Corner - home of IronCupcake:Milwaukee


(Above photo from the article link below)
Here's a link to a fantastic series of cupcake disaster photos posted by an accomplished baker - a great relief for ordinary bakers like me that the worst does happen to the best of bakers. :)
No One Puts Cupcake in a Corner - home of IronCupcake:Milwaukee

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Article Link: The Quest for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Here's a New York Times article on the Quest for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. Food journalism. Loooove it! :)

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Creamy Rice Pudding Recipe! Mmmmmm......


This recipe was trialed TODAY and OMG, OMG totally awesome! I looooove rice pudding and used to live on rice pudding in the summer in LA - they had great choices of rice pudding in the LA mega supermarkets... In New Zealand, they don't seem to be very popular as the only ones I could find were canned rice pudding. Yuck~! And they taste as bad as they sound, too.
Anyhoo, homemade ones are far superior to any of the supermarket puddings so here's the recipe I tried out today!

***This recipe is from allrecipe.com***
Ingredients:
  • 140g uncooked white rice
  • 475ml (2 Cups) of milk
  • 65g white sugar
  • 2g (about 1/2 tsp) of salt
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • (optional) 110g golden raisins
  • 15g (about 1 Tbsp) of butter
  • about 1/2 Tbsp of vanilla extract
Directions:
  1. In a medium saucepan, bring 1 1/2 cups of water to boil. Add rice and stir. When the water boils let it boil for a couple of minutes than reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes occasionally stirring so the rice doesn't stick too much to the pot. (You can cook the rice in a rice cooker if you have it. But make sure it is freshly cooked rice.)
  2. In a new saucepan, combine the cooked rice, 1 1/2 cup of milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy, constantly stirring so the rice doesn't stick. This should take about 15-20 minutes.
  3. Stir in the remaining milk and beaten egg and raisins(optional). Cook for 2 more minutes, stirring constantly.
  4. Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla.
  5. Serve warm or chilled.
*Substitutes for low calorie pudding: Skim milk instead of whole milk (the taste quality does go down quite a bit); Splenda instead of sugar (you'd have to use 1/3 of the amount); margarine instead of butter or eliminate butter entirely