at Saturday, May 19, 2012

The Best Vanilla Cupcakes

I baked this in the very last minute before we head back to hometown for Mother's Day. Initially, I didn't plan to bake anything and thought of just buy a simple cake from the bakery or do without a cake. Since none of them in my family has sweet tooth and they dislike anything too sugary. All are very health conscious it seems. Last year when I made the mini fondant cake for mom's birthday, all ended up in my dad's tummy because nobody can take the amount of sugar from the fondant + chocolate cake + buttercream combo, including myself lol. 

At 10am in the morning, while I was comfortably lying on my bed surfing the net (didn't even brush my teeth yet lol) I came across this super easy recipe for vanilla cupcakes, which is named as the BEST vanilla cupcakes by the blogger. Since I stock up quite a bit on baking ingredients, I have all the things required for the recipe. Checked on the baking time required, 25 minutes. I can totally make this! 

So here it is, my version of vanilla cupcakes. 

The recipe calls for vanilla extract or vanilla beans. I only have vanilla essence which I bought from Bake With Yen and it is the slightly more expensive type. The one labelled as Vanilla Essence (France). I guess it is a little bit better than the cheapo ones? Obviously the vanilla taste will not be that strong if I only use the essence. I've tried it before and the taste was just blehh.. Luckily I had one dried vanilla beans left. So I added that into the batter along with my vanilla essence which I didn't measure according to the recipe. Just bantai only based on my instinct haha.. No regrets because the final product taste AMAZING!! 

I put the batter into 3 different types of baking tins/ liners just for fun. First is the heart shape liners which is super cute and pretty, the usual cupcake liners and a mini heart shape baking tins. The mini heart cupcakes are for mom alone because she is recovering from really bad gastric and have to be extra careful with food intake. I keep the cupcakes simple without adding any topping or frosting.

The second cupcakes design which is in normal cupcake liners (for our own consumption), I topped it with a dollop of fresh whipped cream and a tiny piece of peach. I love the whipped cream so so much. It is so light, not too sweet and it taste like vanilla ice cream! The combination is totally finger licking good!! No joke. Each time I have one of these, I can't stop telling how good it is. It is that good LOL.

Final design which is also the main character, is this small heart shaped baking tins/pans which I bought quite some time ago but didn't get to use it. Since it is Mother's Day, why not ;) The size is really small and only enough for 2 or 3 servings. Unless you are a very small eater. I shared this with my family which includes my auntie and cousin haha. Each of us took a bite since all of us were super full after dinner. Just nice because I hate keeping leftovers, desserts especially.

My last minute idea was to frost this cake with whipped cream and topped it with peaches. But hubby saw my frosted cake and said it looked ugly. What did he know *stares* So he suggested to cover the cake with ground peanuts. Since I was rushing ok la, I followed his idea. I think the cake looked uglier with the peanuts :s The most challenging part is how to place the peaches on top of a heart shaped cake. Hubby asked me to just cut the peaches into chunks and throw them on top :x This time I followed my guts, sliced the peaches then outlined the cake and assembling it as below. What do you think? Personally, I think it looks beautiful :D

Happy belated Mother's Day to all!!

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.