Oh So Sinfully Delicious...

This week we decided to make cupcakes. It was kind of a bittersweet event because this week is Ana’s last week living with me (Ann) before she’s off to her new home. Ana loves, loves, loves cupcakes! Just utter the word and it will totally make her day. For the past four months or so, we’ve talked about cupcakes, eaten cupcakes at cupcake bakeries, watched TV shows of people making cupcakes, but we’ve never actually made our own until now. We thought that this week we would play it safe and use a simple recipe, and voila, Cookies and Cream cupcakes became our recipe of choice. Not only are these cupcakes easy to make, but are great to make if you feel upset and need to let out some stress - there’s serious cookie crushing involved. You’ll have fun making them - we promise!

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

The recipe that we used to make the cupcakes comes from Patricia Scarpin’s blog, Technicolor Kitchen; Her recipe is actually a cake recipe which she got from a book called Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun –to-Make Cakes that Taste as Good as They Look! by Kaye Hansen. The ingredients and directions are taken exactly from Scarpin’s blog. The changes that we made to the recipe are written in italics.

Ingredients

170g (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 ½ cups (300g) sugar

4 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 ½ cups + 2 tablespoons (370g) cake flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

A generous pinch of salt (optional)

1 cup + 2 tablespoons (270ml) milk


Yield: Two dozen cupcakes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180⁰C/350⁰F.
2. Line two muffin trays with paper cups.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
4. Using an electric mixer, or in our case a bowl and a wooden spoon, beat the butter and sugar at high speed until light and fluffy. Add the yolks and vanilla and beat on medium speed until fluffy.
5. At low speed, add the dry ingredients, alternately with the milk, beating until incorporated.
6. Take about 10-15 Oreo cookies and using a knife, remove the cream, and please do not directly lick the cream off the cookies…after all people will be eating them. Place the cookies into a freezer bag, and using a rolling pin, mallet, or any other object used to whack stuff, bang on the bag until the cookies are crumbs.
7. Add the cookie crumbs into the batter and mix at low speed.
8. Using an ice cream scoop, fill muffin trays.
9. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Or check by poking one of the cupcakes with a knife, if there isn’t any batter on the knife then it’s ready.

Cookies and Cream Icing 

450ml (very cold) heavy cream

3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a bowl of an electric mixer at high speed, whip the cream, sugar, and vanilla until stiff. This can also be done by hand with a bowl and whisk.
2. Scoop in an icing pipe bag, and decorate your cooled cupcakes. Sprinkle the remaining cookies onto of the cupcakes.

Ann’s Thoughts

So when we decided to get the ingredients for this cupcake recipe, I volunteered to get the cake flour. The brand that I always buy is Brodie XXX Cake Flour, which also contains baking powder and salt. The thing is that because this is the only cake flour that I buy I’ve always assumed that all cake flour has baking powder and salt, so when Ana and I were mixing the ingredients together I mentioned that it was kinda funny that we’re already adding more baking powder when the cake flour already has baking powder. Ana gave me this look of shock and exclaimed “The cake flour already has baking powder?! I had no idea!”

Well apparently cake flour doesn’t normally have baking powder and salt added. I just checked online, and what makes cake flour, well cake flour, is that it contains low wheat protein which make it more fluffier than all purpose flour (I Wiki-ed it.) So here we were with a batch of cake batter with double, maybe triple the amount of baking powder than we needed. I don’t know, but we’ve got some issues with baking powder (see last week’s post). Despite that, I was more confident in this recipe, and ya know what? They turned out really good, as you can tell by the lovely pics taken by Ana, and they tasted even better.

Ana’s Thoughts

This week things worked out pretty well. Even our little mistake turned out to be a good one. I have to agree with Ann, I think the extra baking powder made the cupcakes even better =). I can say that because I’ve already made this cake once with the exact amount of baking powder and the result was a dense and heavy cake, plus I didn’t mix crushed Oreos into the batter. Not that it was bad, don’t get me wrong, it was delicious and I think I ate fiv…more slices than I should have =O but this cupcakes..oh my…so light and airy and with bits of Oreos throughout the batter... Pure heaven! The whole process was pretty straightforward and simple, and the final result was so, so good. What are you waiting for? Run for the kitchen and do it right now! I bet you have all the ingredients in your pantry. ;)

See you next week!


Receita em Português:
Nós retiramos a receita dos cupcakes daqui. A única coisa que modificamos foi acrescentar os biscoitos na massa e assá-los em formas de muffins. =)