The cloud cupcake turned out to be a vanilla cupcake (nothing wrong there so far) with an Italian meringue style frosting. The vanilla part of the cupcake with the jam is quite good. A nice base for other frostings in future. Swirling the jam at the top of the cupcake did make it look really awful and pimply. If you don't frost it, it looks terrible. I suggest swirling the jam into the middle of the cupcake so it looks better if you don't plan on frosting it. I also used some guava paste for some of my cupcakes and that worked really well too. The guava gives such a fantastic flavour.
The frosting part looked good but I didn't really like. The raw egg white smell came through still and just made it taste bad. It also made the cupcake way too sweet. I went to so much effort to pipe the frosting that I didn't want to scrape it off. Well, fate as it turns out, did it for me. As I had loaded all the cupcakes into containers to put into the fridge, I stacked two containers atop each other while I tried to transfer it the one metre from the bench to the fridge. You can see where this is going right? Well, the top container slipped and instead of letting it fall, I tried to catch it, which meant the second container in my hands flipped over. So all the frosting went everywhere. Usually I would be so angry, but I just laughed this time since it was so funny because the frosting wasn't good anyway.
Cloud Cupcakes
From Australian Women's Weekly Bake cookbook
INGREDIENTS
90g butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp strawberry jam
1/4 cup caster sugar, for decoration
pink food colouring
Frosting
1 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites
METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line 12 hole muffin pan with cases.
2. Beat butter, extract, sugar, eggs, flour and milk in bowl with electric mixer on slow. When ingredients combined, beat at medium until mixture changed to lighter colour.
3. Divide batter into holes. Put a bit of jam on each and swirl into cupcakes using skewer.
4. Bake for 20 minutes. Turn out cakes onto rack to cool.
5. Place extra caster sugar into sandwich zip lock bag. Put a few drops of pink food colouring and rub colour into sugar.
6. Make frosting and spread onto cupcakes. Sprinkle with coloured sugar.
FROSTING
1. Stir sugar and water in small saucepan over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolved.
2. Boil, uncovered, without stirring for 5 minutes until syrup reaches 116C. Remove from heat and allow bubbles to subside.
3. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form.
4. With mixer operating, pour in hot syrup in thin stream. Keep beating on high until mixture is thick and cool.
Ah the slips and flips of cooking. I've done similar woopsies:)
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, eggwhites (or yolks) almost always retain some sort of plain egginess when cooked, except when masked by other flavours.
I'm not sure that I would ever have recognised the likeness of a jammy vanilla cupcake to a pimple but the comparison seems perfect... and gross. :-D
ReplyDeleteOnwards and upwards, Thanh! I know there's a better frosting recipe somewhere out there for you.
Duncan, it was a classic woopsie. The whole container went flying and there I was in slow motion trying to catch it.
ReplyDeleteI guess I could have masked the egg whites with more flavour, but it still made the cupcake too sweet, so I will find another frosting.
Cindy, you must have been blessed with good skin during your teens. I, on the other hand can definitely tell you what pimply skin looks like.
Onwards and upwards indeed.