THE GREAT VANILLA CUPCAKE EXPERIMENT I

I suddenly felt an urge to launch into this whole discourse (or drama, whichever you wanna call it) about baking, so those who aren't interested, just skip this whole post, will ya? I'm saving you a lotttt of pain and here, coz if you're not into baking, you won't know nuts what I'm yapping about.

I gotta hand to this special friend of mine, for making me realize that the best things in life are the simple things. I wanted to send her some of my cuppies to sample, and I was quite taken aback when she told me her that vanilla is her favourite flavour. I mean, aren't we all crazy about chocolates and other exotic flavours; lemon, cinnamon, cardamom, to name a few?

And here is this girl, who has traveled to almost the entire globe, who has probably tasted the finest food at the fanciest places and experienced different kinds of culture, settling for the most modest and plainest flavour I know.

"But.. but it's so easy! This is not challenging at all? Are you sure you want JUST vanilla? Not strawberry vanilla? or cherry vanilla?"

"Yup," she said with certainty. "I'm pretty sure. Plain vanilla."

"Alright then, and I'll make sure it'll be the best damn vanilla cupcake I've ever made!"

And so, I felt really good about this because I couldn't believe how easy it was to please this girl. This is easy peasy, I said to myself. And then I changed my mind. As I started visualizing and planning the baking, I broke into cold sweat, and thought, OMG have you forgotten? Have you forgotten your first ever vanilla cupcake? Don't you remember how easy it was to screw up the simplest recipe like Nigella's fairy cakes? Huh? HUH? Easy peasy senang kacang konon, now eat your words.

Frankly, to some degree, yes, it's easy to bake the Grande Dame of all Cupcakes. You can close one eye, tie one of your hands to your back and you can still come up with a decent batch. It's not if you have a certain standard to your cupcakes, which I admit I don't have any prior to my conversation with my friend.

Since I found out that I enjoy baking so much, and have gone through many failures and deflated bakes, I've subscribed to this belief that, there's no way am I gonna like what I'm doing if I keep obsessing about the tiniest details to achieve perfection. Just bake the best you can, decorate the best you know how, and eat it. If you screw up, don't worry about it. Let the rubbish bin eat it.

Then I thought, what if I can be better at this, with a little bit of effort and research? Learn a little bit more about the art and science of baking (ah, what am I talking about? I've no idea when the science begins and the art ends!) and start troubleshooting for my errors? How on earth am I gonna come up with the 'best vanilla cupcake ever' if I'm still stuck in the rut with my very low standards?

Most importantly, I can't expect to move on to other types of cupcakes if I can't even get the basics right. That's it, I don't have to go for perfection, just get it - right. Now, that isn't too nerve wrecking, is it?

So as I'm mulling over this, I took some much needed action to start my Great Vanilla Cupcake Experiment. I bought the ingredients of the finest quality; real 100% butter instead of the generic butter spread I used to buy, and most importantly, vanilla prima and not the inferior vanilla essence. That's the best I can find, they don't sell pure vanilla extract here! Arrghh!

Next, let's talk about the recipes, shall we? The reason I always stick to Nigella's fairy cakes and Chef Conolly's recipes is they use the metric units measurements, so it's pretty idiotproof. I feel more confident of the measurements if I can actually see the numbers and the dials on the scale. It's most useful when want to know how much butter you need, instead of the other recipes I come across online that use 1 cup of butter or 2 sticks of butter? I mean, that scares the sh*t out of me, measuring butter with a cup! That's just plain crazy and too difficult for me, and just how much is a stick of butter anyway? Is the entire union of recipe writers plotting to confuse us, so that when we try the recipe and fail, they'll all cheer and clap their hands in glee? Why must you Americans defy the Queen so much and reject the imperial units, ah? Why can't you use the metric system like the rest of the world, ah?

Bear in mind, this was yonks ago when I first started baking (before I knew how to Google for answers), which lead me to swear off certain recipes that measures with cups. As part of the experiment and research in order to achieve the perfect cupcake, I found some useful sites that made the conversion easy for gundu ol' me. With that problem solved, I selected a popular recipe to try, not the BEST recipe, coz I don't have the type of flour needed.

One of the things that drives me crazy about baking cupcakes is that I can never seem to find the type of cupcake case or baking cups that I truly need, which is this one.


Can you help me find this cupcake case?

This cup, according to Chockylit, is called The Nut & Party Cup. Using this cup, you won't even need a muffin/cupcake pan to bake. It holds the batter on it's own so you can just use this along with your normal cake pan. For clumsy hands, it's easy to handle and best of all, you'll get an almost perfectly shaped cupcake everytime.

I've only managed to get this cup for the first ever 'menjadi' cupcake that I made, and since that, the stores here don't seem to have these in stock anymore so I have to settle with the ever popular plain white paper case. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the perfect size for my muffin pan, so all my cupcakes baked with this normal case look somewhat misshapen, and sad to say, according to my already low standards, NOT PERFECT.



Look at the first row of the photo series. This is how it looks like with the the white paper case inside the regular muffin pan. I baked it at exactly 20 minutes as stated in the recipe and it looks very golden and 'done'. I don't quite like my cupcakes so kembang like that, so for the next batch, I put the baking cup inside a cupcake shaped tin foil liner (which moulded white baking cup into the desired shape). That's how it looks like in the second series of the photos. I also reduced the baking time to 15-16 minutes, resulting to a softer and fluffier texture. I like. The size was also substantially reduced, resulting to a 'cuter' shape.

Great, I thought. Now how do I achieve a perfectly flat top cupcake? No matter what I did, whether I filled the baking cups with 2/3 batter or 1/2, my cupcakes came out either domed or pointy. You can still frost your cupcakes fine with a domed or pointy tops, but for certain artistic effects, a flat top cupcake is best and easiest to decorate.



So, I have no choice but to slice off the tops as suggested by some yahoo experts. My mistake was to not seal the cut-off tops with some melted jam or syrup. Even as I was careful while spreading the icing on top of the cupcake, some of the crumbs or flakes got in the way, resulting in a not-so-smooth surface. Does my blue thumb nail freak you out? Haha, relax, that's just food colouring, I don't have gangrene hor!

Here's a peek of my decorated cakes. For my lack of piping skills, I'm still perfecting the simple swirls before I can move on to creating more complicated patterns. I still have a lot to learn anyway.




Last but not least, I'm also finicky about the storage and transportation of cupcakes. I'm at my wits end looking for the perfect box to pack my cupcakes, especially if I want to send some to this vanilla loving friend of mine. I'm done with standard cake boxes, recyclable/microwavable containers and tupperwares.

I need .... this!

Any idea where I can get this cool carrier? I don't think I want to transport my cupcakes in my time-capsule-slash-organ-transplant-sia to parties and such.

As a conclusion, I find magnolia cupcakes taste nicer than my previous fairy cakes, which I find too oily for my liking. But what probably made such a big difference was the better quality ingredients. I won't know this for sure until I bake a batch of fairy cakes again this weekend to make a fair comparison.

Anyway, this is only chapter one of my search for the ultimate, most perfect vanilla cupcake. This also means that my friend would have to wait until I've carried out all my experiments before she can get her hands on my cupcakes. I won't rest until I'm satisfied with the outcome, coz truly my dear Nadia, you deserve only the best!

p/s: Oh yeah, comments, tips and further discussions about this are VERY welcomed!