Sunday 26 February 2012

Weekly Bake Off - Cupcakes

I have a confession to make. A dire and dreadful confession...

Despite being an avid baker, I'm just not that into cupcakes. The rest of the world seems cupcake mad, and looking at the other beautiful entries on this week's Weekly Bake Off, I can almost see the appeal. They are lovely little things, but I can't quite get over the feeling that they're not for me. Cakes should be large and substantial, and fill a plate!

That's not to say I don't make cupcakes when the occasion calls for it. It just doesn't call that often.
That's why this week's bake wasn't a huge thrill for me - and with my preference for coffee or chocolate flavours outweighed by the necessity of following MB's recipe exactly, I wasn't terribly excited about the final product, which is why despite making these on Wednesday and having friends round to eat them on Thursday the blog post is only being typed on Sunday evening!

The bake was easy - throw everything in a bowl, mix, spoon into casings and bake. I'd misjudged how much icing sugar I had, so had to scale down my icing to about 1/3 of the quantity, but since the cupcakes were quite sweet anyway, I think a thinner layer of icing worked well.

Any baking book should have a cupcake recipe in it, but I'm glad this is out of the way now. Onto more exciting bakes!

(I made the Orange Scotch Pancakes (p127) this morning for breakfast - no time for a photo as they were scoffed almost as fast as they came out of the frying pan! Will definitely be making them again.)

6 comments:

  1. Those cupcakes look beautiful! I like the one with the perls, it's cute!

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    1. I think the pink sparkly sugar is my favourite - and they do it in purple too!

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  2. I'm with you on the cupcake thing, especially with the amount of icing they have on them. I am sure that when I was a kid (and when they were called fairy cakes) it was de rigeur to have a thin coating, not the huge amount they have now.
    Conversely, I managed to have too little icing on a cake that I made the other week. There is definitely a balance to be struck, I guess.

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    1. I wonder if our love/apathy for cupcakes stems from our childhood experiences of cake?

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  3. Each to their own - I can't resist a good cupcake. Whether it's piled high with icing, or there is just a thin layer - it doesn't make a difference to me! Love the picture, glittery pink sprinkles are one of my favourite decorations.

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    1. I do love the coloured sugar - purple in particular, but I was going for a girly feel to these initially - the icing was supposed to be pink for half, but a combination of a delicate shade, and overlighting/processing of the picture washed it out a bit.

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