Just So Vanilla...

The last couple of weeks has been filled with mixing, baking, experimenting...unfortunately not a lot of blogging.  So I have some catching up to do.  Which means you'll see several posts over the next couple of days. 

Anywhoooo...for my KupKake Kick-off...
(that was for you A-frame; imagine the "k"s backwards)

...the concept was pretty straightforward: create an amazing vanilla cupcake.  The idea was to keep it simple and get the basics perfected.  Once that's done, then we can bring on the fancy.  Sounds easy, let's do it!! 

Yeah right.  Nothing I do is simple!  First of all, I have been obsessed with researching cupcakes: reading blogs, websites, university white papers on the science of baking, kitchen tested recipes, moist cake, extracts, spices, frosting, butter, and the list goes on.  I knew from my studies that the texture had to be perfectly moist, not too dense and not too spongy.  As well as texture, the flavor must have the WOW factor.  You know how on all the foodie shows, they talk about "elevating" the ingredients?  Making it better, yet somehow keeping it the same.  Well being the cockeyed optimist that I am, I was determined to elevate my vanilla cupcakes.  I can have no ordinary vanilla cupcake.  Mine will be special.  Unique. 

Little.  Yellow.   Different. 

The first attempt was during the week prior to The Great Baking Extravaganza, which was also pre-blog, and I made a batch of vanilla cuppity cakes.  I should have called them poopie cakes because they were terrible.  They were dry and the frosting was SALTY (remember the comment about my learning why it's important to use UNsalted butter when the recipe calls for it?). 

The second attempt, now deemed The Great Baking Extravaganza (or The Annual FatFest as my husband called it) was all planned out.  It was Saturday and I was going to bake all day long in the pursuit of the perfect cupcake.  I was so excited that I neatly placed everything out on the counters grouped in dry ingredients, wet ingredients, supplies, and so on.  I took pictures and posted them on Facebook.  I know - I'm a dork.  Which means you have to relive the moment with me.  I included the pics below as a sort of cyber-reinactment.   
   

Dry Ingredients















Wet Ingredients















Supplies













  

So with all the ingredients & supplies and a hot cup of coffee in hand, I was ready to rock and roll.

The first Saturday batch was from a reciped on the Cathlin Cooks blog (great blog BTW).  Although Cathlin loved it, I found it to be too spongy and it almost tasted like cornbread.  Could have been the buttermilk I used, but I followed the recipe so not sure.  I'm sure it was me and not the recipe, but I wanted to try something different anyway.  Then I remembered that my pre-blog "first attempt" cakes would have been good if they had only been moist. 

Based on my aforementioned scientific research, a moist cake requires the proper amount of fat.  Protein, aka eggs, adds structure, but can dry out the cake.  The fat messes with the structure of the cake, but adds moisture.  Too much fat and your cakes will look like your bottom - saggy and lumpy.  Just as in all of life, its all about finding balance.  So I decided to go back to the Joy of Baking recipe (aka "first attempt") and make some adjustments.  I replaced one egg with 1 container of Activia Vanilla yogurt and used half and half instead of milk.  I also doubled the amount to 1/2 cup. That did the trick and the result was moist, lovely vanilla cupcakes.  The texture was still a little dense, but the best of all batches so far.

Now about the flavor.  Remember that my goal was to elevate the vanilla.  Even though I had used both vanilla bean as well as organic Madagascar pure vanilla extract, my vanilla cupcake was just.... so vanilla.  Not so easy-peasy after all. Even though I used the fancy ingredients and twice the amout of vanilla, I didn't quite achieve the flavor that I had hoped for.  It was good - just not great.  And as the day wore on, I also discovered that one can only taste-test so many vanilla cupcakes in a day.  So flavor elevation will be reserved for another day.

With a so-so vanilla flavor and being in the mood for lemon something, I made a homemade lemon custard to fill the cakes. The final result was a Vanilla Cupcake with Lemon Custard Topped with a decadent Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting.  Not so bad for the first go 'round.
                                                               

                                                                                  

By the end of the day, I was exhausted.  I was also excited and still obsessed.  Too many cupcakes, sugar buzz and my head spinning with ideas, I had to remind myself that alhtough this is one step in my plot to take over the world, they are still  just cupcakes. 

Watch for more on Frosting Gone Bad, Chocolate Disaster, and Just Call Me Spice Girl.  Until then, happy cupcaking!

And she's off!!!

Off and baking, that is.  Not "off in the head" as some of you might have suspected.  Well, that is debatable I suppose.

So..........I've decided to come clean.  Go public.  Share with the world that I am addicted.

"Hi, my name is Tara and I am obsessed with cupcakes."

Totally obsessed.  I can't stop thinking about them, dreaming about them, researching them, reading the millions of other blogs about them, and - to my husband's dismay - talking about them.  So I am on a quest; a personal mission to make the best darn cupcakes ever.  Okay, maybe not EVER.  I mean, come on... 

All I know is that my brain is swimming with information on how to make the moistest cupcakes, the bestest frosting; which butter is the best butter for baking, and what is the best brand of extract.  And can how exactly do you use vanilla bean; and oh! how to make your own buttermilk.  Who knew?   So all the information is there and my evil plan to take over Kauai with my cupcakes is all mapped out - I even have my little marketing scheme.  There's only one key thing left to do:  Make the darn cupcakes. 

And when I say "make cupcakes" what I mean is that I need to learn how to make cupcakes.  And what I mean by that is that I sort of need to learn how to bake.  Don't get me wrong:  I can throw a cake mix together and whip out the old Betty Crocker canned frosting.  But to make the kind of oh-my-gawww-this-is-the-most-amazing-cupcake-ever kind of cupcake will take a little more expertise than I currently possess.  Such lofty goals.

A lot of you bakers out there have a long lineage of bakers or granny's recipes and what not.  I'm not one of you.  I don't have heartwarming stories of baking with my nana or secret family recipes.

Please pardon this emergency broadcast message (aka a note to my mother):  Dear Mom, Please don't be offended by this paragraph. You're a great cook and baker and I only wish I had been more interested in all this when I was younger!! I WILL be using your recipes and I'm going to say that they're secret even if they're not LOL. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Okay, so no baking with nana or Martha Stewart, blah blah blah...Seriously folks.  I just learned the important difference between unsalted and salted butter (which led me on a quest to understand butter in general and I can't wait to search the island for this French or European butter that I've heard tell about.  But I digress...) I don't have any of that, but I do - for some reason unknown - have a total passion for the pursuit of the perfect cupcake.

I wondered the other day why this has hit me now.  I know that the whole cupcake craze has been going on for awhile now.  I'm slow, I know.  But why cupcakes and why now?  I think I figured it out. 

They're small.  Some of them are tiny.  I can fit them in one hand or even between a finger and thumb.  They are accessible, do-able, not overwhelming and maybe not really that lofty after all.  They're really just cupcakes. 

Just cupcakes.  I love it.