Yellow Cupcakes with Oregon Strawberry Buttercream

On our last adventure we established the perfect yellow cake recipe. Today we expand upon our yellow cake and frosting combinations to employ a local, seasonal fruit whose existence is how I know God loves me: The Oregon Strawberry.

You may have been tricked by the grocery store into thinking that strawberries come from California, but this is a sham. The Oregon Strawberry is tiny, short seasoned, and packs so much more sweet sweet flavor than anything our neighbors to the south could ever produce. Enough of a rant about the wonders of Oregon strawberries and back to the subject at hand.

Analysis of the Cake
See previous entry and enjoy these photos of part of the process!

The Quest for Perfection includes perfect tools! I finally have a double boiler! All-Clad makes my heart skip a beat or two.

Egg and Vanilla mixture, getting heated up to just the right temperature!

Velvety smooth yellow cake batter. I may have sampled a teensy bit of the uncooked goodness...

Analysis of the Frosting
As always, the base of our frosting is an Italian Meringue Butter Cream a la Cake Love. After scouring all of my cookbooks for strawberry frosting, I decided that the strawberry puree found in The Cake Bible would be the first runner up in perfecting strawberry frosting. The reason: science. As to be expected by her previously underwhelming recipe, Martha Stewart's solution was to just put strawberries in a blender and mix it in the frosting. Sure, this will indeed give you strawberry frosting but my speculation is that the frosting will be somewhat lackluster. Other cookbooks had concepts similar to The Cake Bible, but did not incorporate quite as much science as I feel is necessary when involving berry flavor extraction and syrup creation. The Cake Bible, however, incorporates a much more complicated yet logical sequence for delivering a wham-bam punch of strawberry. The first step is to freeze the strawberries in order to begin breaking down the enzymes of deliciousness. The strawberries are then thawed in a colander over a series of hours. The sweet sweet juices collected below the colander are then made into a reduction while the remaining strawberry chunks are pureed in ye olde Cuisinart. These are all combined with a splash of lemon juice. This confection may then be added to the base frosting of your choice for a splendiferous delivery of strawberry.

I'm not sure if you can tell, but I kind of geek out over the scientific process of baking. Now, the breakdown:

The Yays

• Holy cow, this captures the essence of everything wonderful that is Oregon strawberries. Perfectly sweet, with a tiny hint of berry tang at the end and all of it encompassed by buttery goodness. 
• The strawberry puree freezes up to a year and can be thawed and re-frozen multiple times without damage to the puree according to the author. This excites me greatly as I will be able to enjoy a summertime treat in the middle of winter. That's a win all around!
• The frosting and yellow cake together are a heavenly dream come true and are a better interpretation of strawberry shortcake than actual strawberry shortcake. Amazingness times infinity. This is a winner for sure.

The Nays

• I did the frosting the night before the cupcakes and refrigerated it. Bad call. The consistency wasn't quite right even after re-warming the buttercream to room temperature. So, if crunched for time I would do it in reverse order (cupcakes the night before). This is not the frosting's fault.
• Last time I did a normal batch of frosting (4 cups) for the 18 cupcakes the yellow cake recipe yields and had copious amounts of chocolate frosting left over. In order to be less wasteful I did a half recipe (2 cups) of frosting but now have about 6 naked cupcakes. Something is amiss in measurement land so maybe next time I do yellow cake I should just do a double batch of cake.

Waiting to top off some cupcakes!

 Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord, we have a winner!

Yellow Cake with Dark Chocolate Frosting: Round 2

May is my birthday month and since work is preventing me from celebrating my birthday on my actual birthday, I decided to make my birthday cupcakes a week in advance. Therefore yellow cake with chocolate frosting, being the ultimate birthday cake/frosting pairing, was on the docket for this adventure. Also, having recently found my baking soul mate in Meg Ray, owner of Miette (the introduction to the book is an expanded version of my treat manifesto AND if I were to actually own a bakery Miette is exactly what it would look like), I was excited to try a recipe from her collection. So when I saw that she had a recipe for yellow cupcakes that she herself had spent awhile perfecting, I said to myself "challenge accepted."

What do you get when the frosting is too warm to pipe your regular way? A new way of piping!

Analysis of the Cake
 After the disappointing results from Martha's cookbook previously, I was one part skeptical of this recipe one part super anxious to potentially have a new found yellow cake recipe. And I have to say, I'm pretty sure my search for the perfect yellow cake recipe has ended.

A sea of golden-yellow cupcakes, baked to perfection

The Yays

• These cupcakes couldn't have possibly baked any more beautifully than they did. Perfectly domed in the middle, perfectly golden  at the edges. Almost too pretty to eat.....almost.
• They had a completely new method of mixing that I'm curious to learn more about the science of and which I'm also fairly certain led to the perfect yellow cake taste of the cake. The process involved heating up the egg prior to mixing with the dry ingredients as well as heating the milk and butter pre-group mix. 
• The taste balanced itself extremely well with the strength of the dark chocolate butter-cream. It presented a buttery texture and mellow flavor to counteract the richness of the frosting, unlike the previous adventure in yellow cupcaking.
• The inside was delightfully moist, had the perfect crumb (not too crumbly, not too stiff), held it's shape well outside of the wrapper, and had a slight buttery after-taste on the tongue (and really, who doesn't like butter?) 

NOM!

The Nays

• The tops were a little on the crispier side, but I think this could have been operator error in over baking. This will be easily remedied the next time I bake these bad boys however. 

Overall Impression: OHMUHLORD we have a winner!

Analysis of the Frosting
See previous entry

Chocolate Cake with Mocha Frosting

So technically I have made this combination of cake and frosting before, but a) this was a new chocolate cake recipe and b) this frosting combo is so fantastic that it deserves an appearance on this blog and c) I learned via youtube a new way to frost cupcakes! So it's semi-new and semi-previously done before.

Bird's-Eye-View of the Finished Product! Yay newly discovered rose swirl!

Analysis of the Cake
The "Chocolate Butter Cupcakes" recipe was brought to us today by Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The author of this cookbook has also written The Cake Bible, a cookbook I own but have yet to try cake recipes from. So the bar was set pretty high, I mean if you are going to make a book that is self-titled the end all be all of baking then you hopefully know your stuff pretty darn well. So let's take a journey, shall we?

All ready to battle the heat of the oven!

The Yays 

• The technique used for mixing was vastly different from any other I have used before, and while I was skeptical it did make a lovely textured batter. Rather than creaming the butter and sugar as the first step, this recipe had you mix the dry ingredients then add the butter then add the egg/vanilla mixture. Future Hillary will continue to experiment with this mixing technique and possibly research the science of this method
• The texture of the finished product was quite delightful. The cupcake held its shape well out of the wrapper and it had a soft/melty texture on the tongue. Quite delightful, really.
• It had a nice, delicate chocolate flavor. Definitely a solid basic chocolate cake recipe that will be filed away as the current winner of overall basic chocolate cupcake recipe for the time being.

Way to hold your shape little guy!

The Nays

• Not a bold enough chocolate cake to be paired with the mocha frosting, a devil's food would have been better. But that isn't the cake's fault. I suppose in the future though I would still like to try getting more of a chocolate BAM from the cake. Regardless, if you paired it with any other frosting it still wouldn't lick that chocolate craving I would be seeking from a cupcake.

Overall Impression: Somewhere between Meh and Ohmuhlord. 
  
Analysis of the Frosting
Using the aforementioned Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting with some melted chocolate and the "Classic Mocha Espresso" recipe from The Cake Bible, the most perfect melding of chocolate and coffee in frosting has been discovered. And that is a lot coming from someone who doesn't like coffee or most coffee flavored things. But this one's definitely a winner.

Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord

In summary, we have ourselves a current winner in the category of basic chocolate cake, however that has not been officially sealed for all eternity. With the onset of Oregon berry season rapidly approaching (especially if we continue to have this lovely weather!), I foresee a further continuation of the quest for the perfect yellow cake paired with  strawberry buttercream frosting on the horizon. Stay tuned!

Yellow Cake with Dark Chocolate Buttercream Frosting: Round 1

As previously mentioned, the perfect frosting has already been discovered, so unless otherwise mentioned it's safe to assume that the base of the frosting will the the Italian Meringue Butter Cream from Cake Love with experimentations to the flavorings.

That being said, this most recent adventure involved yellow cake and dark chocolate frosting. Future posts will have better photo depictions, but since I didn't get the idea for the blog until after I had baked and given away these bad boys, this one picture will have to suffice!

Analysis of the Cake
The cake recipe was the "Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes" recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. Now, I already have kind of a beef with this cookbook (mainly that it touts 175 recipes for cupcakes when half of them are really just muffins and also that it appears to focus on the flashy instead of the quality) but the recipe seemed pretty simple and involved buttermilk, something I've found to be an indicator of a good cake recipe. But, overall I felt that the cake was rather bland and needed more of a robust "yellow cake" hurrah and was easily overpowered by the fantastic frosting.

The Yays

• Baked nicely, a little golden brown on the edges just like you'd want
• Held it's shape well when unwrapped, not too crumbly (there's nothing worse than either of those things)
• The unbaked batter was fantastic
• Good amount of sweetness

The Nays

• A little bit on the drier side. This recipe used cake flour and all-purpose flour which I'm highly skeptical of because some of the best cakes I've baked were from recipes that used all-purpose flour. I think somehow the gluten content of the conflicting flours was the culprit
• Underwhelming taste, could have had more oomph

Overall Impression: Meh
I just have a gut feeling a better recipe exists out there. It's not horrible, but it definitely does not qualify for "ohmuhlord" status

Analysis of the Frosting
For the frosting I took the chocolate additions from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes recipe for Dark Chocolate frosting and added them to the Italian Meringue base. Using a combination of cocoa powder in boiling water and melted semi-sweet chocolate chips the result was fantastical. The frosting retained all of the wonderful things about the Italian Meringue but had a nice rich dark chocolate finish.

Overall Impression: Ohmuhlord
This one is a definite winner and will be recorded in my personal cookbook I am building.

In summary, there still exists a quest for a better yellow cake and my suspicions of Martha Stewart's focus on the flash rather than a good tasting product were partially confirmed. 

Pre-Established Perfection

Awhile back, a major element of this journey was established: the perfect frosting. And holy cow is it good.

The Italian Meringue Butter Cream found in Cake Love is pure perfection and let me break down why.

Consistency
When properly created, this frosting is stiff enough to hold its shape when piped onto either a cupcake or cake, yet buttery enough to capture that perfect "melt in your mouth" deliciousness that a good butter cream should.
Frostability
This recipe for frosting is super easy to pipe. Not so thick that you are squeezing the living daylights out of your piper of choice (classic bag or newfangled mechanical) and not so thin that it just kind of goops out. 
Buildability
Suggestions are given in the cookbook for ways to alter flavor and taste of the frosting and they are definitely a good start. However, what is awesome about the base of the frosting recipe is that it gives you a solid foundation to expand some creative thinking and come up with your own experimentation.
Taste
I have never made a frosting recipe with a base of powdered sugar and enjoyed it. Because of the too sweet taste of powdered sugar frosting, I long maintained that canned frosting was good enough. But then....I made this one and realized that this actually beats out canned frosting. By quite a bit of yardage. Not too sweet, right amount of buttery love this frosting tastes a-mazing.


It took me a couple of times to really understand the zen of creating this frosting as it can be a little tricky perfecting the meringue portion of the recipe. Where I really struggled the first couple of times was beating the four sticks of butter in enough so that there weren't any surprise tablespoon chunks of butter spread on my cake.

So, since it has been established that this is indeed the best frosting base the journey of frosting in this blog will be the new creation of different flavors to go along with the frosting base and honing in on the perfect concoction to get each desired flavor.
 

A Treat Manifesto: Taking Treat from "meh" to "Ohmuhlord"

If there is one thing that I can't stand about dessert these days, it's that everyone focuses on making things gimmicky (800 flavors of mediocre ice cream!) and flashy (a dry cupcake filled with a different flavor than the frosting!) rather than perfecting the basics and delivering a high quality treat. Portland is extremely guilty of this crime. This results in desserts that are impressive at first, but at the core don't even taste very good. After too many experiences where I left describing the treatery as "hit or miss" I have made it my mission to find the perfect recipes for treats.

I've been baking for years and years but mostly focusing on perfecting the technique of baking. Now that my  skills have been honed, it's time to focus on finding on the creme de la creme of recipes to produce. This blog is a chronicling of my adventure. It begins with building a repertoire of perfect cupcakes/cake and frosting. I'll start with the basics (chocolate cake, yellow cake, etc) and work my way towards the more complex/fancy.

Treat Beliefs:
-High quality, fresh ingredients make for a better final product
-Understanding the science of baking is critical for success
-Establishing a good quality base of the basics before moving outwards to the fancy/gimicky/flashy
-Don't you dare fill a cupcake with anything other than the frosting on top. This is a one-way ticket towards taste overload. Seriously it's not that big of a tasting space so why complicate it with three competing flavors?
-Find lot's of people to give your treats away to after baked. Your pancreas will thank you.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride!