I'm Going to Give Myself Cavities

     So,..I ended up with a real hankering for making cupcakes. I should tell you that while I enjoy the occasional sweets, I prefer salt over sugar in my diet. If you told me that I could only choose to either eat salty foods or sweet foods for the rest of my life, I'd pick salty.

     This particular baking episode was brought on by me making a pumpkin pie for my aptmate's "Oktoberfest" celebration - no alcohol, just fondue and sweets. I followed the Paula Deen recipe that  has rave reviews. I must say..I got really freaked out. If you know me, then you know that I'm not the greatest of bakers, no matter how much I love doing it. Usually my stuff comes out weird. So when I saw how liquidy that pumpkin pie filling was I really panicked and was close to crying for fear of having ruined an event. The filling was also magically 2x the amount that I needed, which really confused me since I followed the recipe to a T, except maybe skimping out 1 oz of pumpkin mash (they only come in 15 oz cans!). The result- something my aptmate called "Pumpkin Pudding". I was horrified to say the least. I dumped the rest of the filling straight into cupcake tins and baked them alone. BUT, the next day, after refrigeration, I tried the pumpkin pie for breakfast, and it was absolutely delicious!!! I love it so much more than the storebought pies because there's a strong pumpkin flavor there. I could probably do without so much sugar, but still, sooo much better than storebought. I read the reviews online and many people say that there was a lot more filling than needed. Supposedly this is because of the different depths of pans that everyone's using. Apparently the store pie pans that have the crusts in them already are much more shallow. Whew! So it wasn't me!! And the pudding texture- well this is supposed to be a lighter pie, but now I regret not fighting my aptmate harder. I know that the pie needs time to set, but she just wanted to dig right in to a warm pie. GOSH! Making it seem all like my fault.

     So that's what started my pumpkin pie craving all up again. And now I want to bake it again, except this time, to make it less liquidy and a denser pie, I might cut out the half and half, or just use half, cut out the butter (it's pumpkin mash, it won't be too dry), and maybe a couple eggs. And the attempt after that, I might even cut out the cream cheese (gasp!). But I do prefer a denser, less custard like pie, plus cream cheese is a lot of Calories.

     But onto my baking expedition yesterday. I got a hankering for baking cupcakes, that coupled with my strong desire to still try out the chocolate icing from Cakes to Celebrate Love and Life  drove me to madness- well almost. So I pulled out a box of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix- it was on sale this week- and went to work. Making cupcakes from scratch is a little more time consuming, and it was late, so I just went with the box to make sure. Plus my roommate loves yellow cake. 

     The result? I had to make the chocolate icing with granulated sugar cuz I forgot I used all the powdered sugar up last time...I tried to blend the sugar smaller, but yea..,no dice, don't try it. It was terrible. The flavor of the icing itself was heavenly, I'll definitely do it again when I get some powdered sugar. Definitely. Remember, granulated sugar in icing = no. It might work as a sub in certain other uses, but don't try it in frosting.

     Duncan Hines is great, it gives a denser cupcake than some of the other ones. I hate biting into a cupcake and finding that it's so fluffy that the cupcake falls apart. Cakes, I like fluffy, but not cupcakes. There's something about eating a cupcake and being upset at how it doesn't satisfy you because there's like nothing there.

And pics, 

Cupcakes: Test Drive- Martha Stewart vs Wendy Paul vs Cakes to Celebrate Love and Life

So remember how I had bought a bunch of cupcake books and did a first look review thing? Well I've actually made a few now and can start reviewing for real!

Martha Stewart - I tried the Triple Citrus cupcake

     I think the fact that I only made half the recipe vs the whole thing (if it tastes bad I don't waste so much) caused half of my problems. The cupcake was disgusting. It was indeed a heavier cupcake as others have said due to all the eggs, but that wasn't the problem. The problem is that the cupcake is bitter and too sweet at the same time. The bitter I take full responsibility for. I put in the amount of citrus zest to be for the whole recipe. So I thinking cooking all that amount made it bitter. The sugar though...was wayyyy too much. It was sickening. Maybe mixing the zest with the sugar first would have changed something. like candying the peels or something. I dunno. It was so disgusting I didn't even bother making the icing. No sense in wasting more things since I didn't have a cupcake to put it onto. And it was just so bad that I'm not gonna bother putting a picture up. I still really want to try the ginger and molasses, but now I'm scared. I think I might just find a different recipe online.

Wendy Paul: 101 Gourmet Cupcakes in 10 minutes: Pink Lemonade


     The pink lemonade cupcakes just sounded so cute that I had to make it. Overall the cupcakes were really adorable. Some notes on the cupcake first. The cupcake itself turned out a bit dry. This could be due to a few things. I think we might have left them in the oven for a couple minutes too long. The bottoms were a bit more browned than they should have been, but from the top, when we poked it, it almost appeared undercooked. I think it being a white cake might have added to it's dryness or rather made it more susceptible to being dry. I used the Pillsbury White Cake Mix. Maybe I should've stuck with Duncan Hines, neither was on sale, so I just grabbed one.

The couple drops of food coloring suggested made the most perfect light pink ever. I was considering making them pinker, but I love how it's not so pink that you don't want to eat it for fear of too much food coloring. I'll be keeping the same amount of food coloring for that.

They don't look that pink in the picture, but that's my camera's fault.

Then came the icing. I urge you all to follow the recipe. I caved in to a friend's whining and put in less powdered sugar (less than half as much) and ended up with an icing that tasted like butter. I don't mean with a slight butter flavor, but it legitly tasted like butter. Gross. But she liked it and whined when I tried to put in more. Another problem with doing that is that when you mix it together, it will start to separate. So we had a tray that looked like they had doo doo on it. For the second batch of icing (when you put in less sugar, you also don't have enough to go around), I just dumped in the remaining sugar. I can't say how much that was. At least the same ratio as the first, if not more. We beat it on high, so at least this time, it didn't separate. If I had to do it again, I would put just a little more lemon juice than the recipe calls for to get that little kick. But this time, I added way too much and the icing ended up tangy on the way too sour side. 

But people seemed to like them and think they were ok (I was too embarrassed to take them in to the function by myself because I think these were a disaster taste wise but I'd already promised cupcakes and there wasn't time to make another batch)

I put edible silver hearts on them. I was looking for the silver balls, but I think these work better anyways. Our piper needs more practice -___-;;

Cakes to Celebrate Love and Life: Chocolate Cupcake

I used an online converter to calculate how much butter I would need since it was in grams. The batter was indeed very watery looking, such that I was skeptical if it would even be able to produce a cupcake. When I did it the first time, I looked at the dry ingredients and thought that it didn't look dark enough- I love dark chocolate and wanted it to be darker. So I added more cocoa powder. Big mistake. Once you add in the wet ingredients, it turns pitch black. Thus...I ended up with a very dark cupcake which leaves your mouth dry on account of the excess cocoa powder. I also somehow ended up with enough batter for 24 cupcakes even though I halved the recipe..but being the dumb butt I am, I decided to just fill each of the 12 higher..and ended up with the below. I tried it a second time following the correct cocoa powder ratio but then it was really runny and looked like chocolate milk. So I added a bit of flour..which totally didn't mix in and just floated to the top in small chunks. I hid it with icing. It tasted much better though. I used Hershey's special dark powder because I couldn't find dutch process cocoa powder at my grocery store and this said its a blend of normal cocoa and dutch process.

I really liked this recipe. It wasn't too sweet or anything. I think I'll make it again. I never got to try the icing though, so I can't say how that went.

Overall, hate martha stewart's, want to try the pink lemonade ones right again, and love the taste of the chocolate ones most- because they aren't too sweet at all.