Friday, October 26, 2007

Something sweet and simple

Cupcakes! It started off when I was doing a St John's duty at the Baby expo two weekends ago. There was a cake decorator there and she was selling cupcakes. Since my sponge cake didn't turn out as good as it had looked in the oven when I was making my nephew's cake, and the cupcake was suppose to have used "sponge", I bought one just to taste the texture of it. Their vanilla sponge looked good because a cadet and another adult with me had purchased one each, but mine, which was a caramel cupcake wasn't as soft as I had expected. So I got home and started searching for good-looking cupcakes (no, i don't mean guys, either)!

But it seems that most cupcakes uses a recipe that is not much different to a pound cake recipe. My pound cake recipe works for me everytime, so I decided to give it a go. Thanks BeeChoo YiYi for giving me this recipe.

Pound Cake Cupcakes with Pistachio Buttercream Frosting



Ingredients:

4 oz butter
4 oz sugar
4 oz superfine self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp fresh milk
chocolate emulco

Method:
  1. Cream sugar and butter until thick and creamy.
  2. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
  3. Add vanilla essence and milk.
  4. Sieve in flour and baking powder.
  5. Fold the flour into the butter mixture.
  6. Scoop out half the mixture into another mixing bowl and stir through the chocolate emulco until thoroughly combined.Fill muffin tray half full.
  7. For small muffin trays, bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 15 mins or until skewer comes out clean.
  8. For regular muffin trays, bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 20 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

Pistachio Frosting

Ingredients:

125 gm butter
1 egg white
70gm icing sugar
30ml fresh milk
60 pistachios blendered into pistachio meal

Method:

  1. Cream butter and half of the icing sugar together.
  2. Mix the remaining icing sugar with the milk.
  3. Continue creaming the butter while slowly adding the milk, beating well after each addition.
  4. In a separate clean greasefree bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.
  5. Fold the egg whites into the butter mixture.
  6. Fold the pistachio meal into the butter mixture.
  7. Buttercream frosting is ready to be iced onto the cupcakes.

Note: Half of my mixture is mixed with 1 tsp honey, and explains why some of the frosting is white.

No comments: