at Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Pumpkin Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting for Early Thanksgiving

Didn't notice that Thanksgiving is just few days away. Made this pumpkin cupcake two weeks back when I impulsively bought half of a pumpkin from the supermarket. Even since then, it had been sitting in the fridge because I had no idea what to do with it. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin cupcake, pumpkin pie... too many ideas = no idea :/

At the end, I resorted for this simple pumpkin cupcake because the man in my house doesn't like anything too cheesy or too complicated. Basically he doesn't like sweet dessert *Booo....*

Pumpkin Cupcake (recipe adapted from Sweetopia.net and Martha Stewart)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

2 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin purée
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 cup butter (melted)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with paper liners.
2. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, into a medium bowl.
3. In a larger bowl, whisk together the eggs, pumpkin purée, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and melted butter. Add the flour mixture and stir until combined.
4. Divide the batter among the muffin tin and bake for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe adapted from Nasi Lemak Lover)

150g cream cheese, at room temperature
40g butter, at room temperature
70g icing sugar, sifted

*I omitted the lemon juice and lemon zest

Method:

1. Beat cream cheese and butter till light and creamy.
2. Add in icing sugar and mix well on low speed.

at Friday, December 09, 2011

Mini Vanilla Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

My granny is very particular in food, especially desserts in any kinds. That's because she herself is a very good cook, not so much of a baker but she makes amazing nyonya desserts. We all know that the only cake she likes is pandan layered cake so I used to go to an old bakery at SS2 to get her one. That's the only shop that sells really good layered cake and some other traditional sponge cakes. That's when I got addicted to simple vanilla sponge cake with white chocolate. Recently, the shop closed down and I can't seem to find any other traditional bakeries that sell the same kind of cakes anymore. In order to satisfy my cravings (again) I had to bake some my own. Of course this is nothing compared to the one I had before :(

Also, this is my little effort for hubby's belated birthday. He doesn't like sweet stuff so I omitted sugar for the frosting and also reduce the sugar for the cake.

Recipe for vanilla cupcakes is adapted from Cupcake Project. I didn't follow the recipe entirely because I didn't want to spend for vanilla beans without testing the recipe first. Probably it's because of that, the cupcake didn't taste that much of vanilla. The texture is good when it is freshly came out from the oven. Very soft and light. It looks pretty too. I left the cake on the table uncover for the night and the next morning, they are sweating! Obviously it is due to the humidity :( There's a reader suggested to double the butter and omit the oil, try to reduce the liquid, which could be an issue if the weather is humid. I will try to do that next time.

I must say that this recipe is a keeper if use vanilla beans and make some tweaking here and there to avoid sweating. It's very easy and fast to make. The preparation time is only about 20 minutes and baking time around 15-18 minutes.

Frosting is adapted from Diana's Dessert but again, I didn't follow the recipe completely. I omitted the sugar and added unknown amount of milk to get the desired consistency. And I didn't add that much of butter to the frosting. The end result is still pretty good but I will use better quality white chocolate next time to enhance the chocolaty taste.