Delicious and moist - this cake is NOT a lie.

[plonq]

Yesterday atara demanded that I make cupcakes for her. Since she is not one to be disobeyed when she needs cupcakes, I set aside what I was doing and made an experimental batch of orange cupcakes. I later learned that she had only been joking, but not before they had cooled, and I was half done icing them.



Overall they turned out quite palatable, but there are a couple of things that I will do differently the next time I follow this recipe. The first thing can be summed up by the following exchange.

Me: "I had a bitch of a time getting these out of the cups. I broke two of them before I learned the technique."
atara: "Why did you remove the paper liners?"
Me: "... paper liners?"

The other thing I might change when I make these again is to add some orange food colouring to the batter and/or icing.

I had to improvise a bit as well because I discovered that we don't have any cake flour (or if we do, I didn't see it when I was looking). I got around that by fortifying regular all-purpose flour with some corn starch, and that seemed to yield satisfactory results. I ran an old orange we had sitting around through the juicer to give flavour to the batter. There wasn't enough juice for the icing as well, so I had to settle for frozen concentrate, but I added the zest from the original orange to give it some additional flavour and texture.

These turned out well in spite of me. I had just put the cupcakes in the oven, and when I turned back around to start cleaning up, I noticed that some of the important ingredients were still sitting on the table. I frantically rescued them from the oven before they could start to bake, and meticulously scooped the batter back into the mixing bowl so that I could add the rest of the ingredients.

Je suis désolés, sirs and madams, but dessert will be slightly delayed because le chef est un idiot.

In the end, I suppose it is results that matter the most and gosh darn it, these things are pretty good.

Comments

[azhdragon.livejournal.com]

cake flour? when I make cakes or cupcakes, I just use regular (self raising) flour like you buy from the supermarket, marked "Self Raising Flour". As opposed to, you know, Bread Flour. which is dearer, and comes in 10 kilo bags.

as for forgetting the paper liners ... d'oh!


orange and poppyseed is a taste combination that goes down well - as does passionfruit pulp in the icing mixture, though I guess you'd have to get that in tins at this time of year.

[atara.livejournal.com]

Actually, regular flour in Canada is not self-rising. You have to specifically buy self-raising (cake) flour, which is a bit more expensive than regular flour.

[aldisara.livejournal.com]

oh man now i want cupcakes, it's a good thing i have none of the ingredients to make them in my kitchen right now (and i'm not stupid enough to attempt the grocery store on superbowl sunday).

i thought the same thing when i saw these irish car bomb cupcakes on friday:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/car-bomb-cupcakes/

[warheart.livejournal.com]

Awww haha this is cute. I think there's a substitute for cake flour that's something like using a little less all purpose flour than the recipe calls for, mixed with a little baking soda. There are also silicone cupcake pans or liners that you can reuse instead of paper liners. They're pretty cool if you want the look of a clean cupcake with no liner, but you don't want to fight with the cakes.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

You need your own cooking show...


... so that people can learn from your mistakes! heh

[fuzzytoedcollie.livejournal.com]

I had to grin reading this, for I discovered the same hard way why they sold little paper cups for cupcakes.

I *still* remember having to clean out the cupcake tin (after soaking it for a while)!!!!