Adventures in Baking: Tim3P0 Learns Cupcakes!

So, I know this is supposed to be a cookie blog. But it was just a cupcake kind of a night around here. My lovely husband is on a quest to learn to cook and bake more proficiently, so tonight we made Nutella Swirl Cupcakes. We tweaked a recipe we found online, and picked out a frosting we found paired with a different cupcake recipe.

As we began mixing, it became clear that this recipe required some adjustment. The batter seemed much too thick, so I consulted a few other cake recipes, and decided to add some milk. It also turned out that the yield of 10 cupcakes was a vast underestimation. We did 12, and some of those were overfilled. I'd say it would be safe to expect about 18 cupcakes from this recipe. Also, they took longer to bake than the recipe suggested (this may be due to the overfilling). Our amended recipe follows:


10 tbsp butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup



Preheat oven to 325F. Line 18 muffin tins with paper liners.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until combined.

Fill each muffin liner with batter. Fill about 3/4 full.
Top each cake with 1 tsp Nutella.

With a toothpick, swirl the nutella into the cupcake, folding it into the batter.

*note: A self respecting chef never wastes perfectly good batter ;)



Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until surface is resilient and a toothpick comes out relatively clean.

Set the muffin pan on the stovetop to cool, unless you're feeling particularly fancy, in which case you can use a wire rack or other schmancy cooling device.

After they've cooled awhile, make your frosting. We took ours out of the oven just as Craig Ferguson came on, and started the frosting after he read emails and tweets (assmöde). Incidentally, we are both very geeked to see the robotic fruit of Grant Imahara's labor in a few weeks, but I digress.

Ahem.

Back to the frosting.

The recipe we found said it was a bit generous for a dozen cupcakes, so went with a 3/4 recipe. It was still too much for 12, but I think it should be just about perfect for 18, so I will give you the amounts we used. Also, we substituted milk for the cream (not for any caloric reasons; we just didn't have any cream in the house).


3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup heavy cream (or milk)
toasted hazelnuts for garnish (optional)

Combine all ingredients except cream/milk and garnish. Mix on low speed until creamy. A paddle mixer is probably best, if you have one, but we used a regular old hand mixer and it worked just fine. Add the cream/milk and mix on high until smooth and velvety.

This is a really beautiful frosting.




Frost and garnish as you see fit.

Now it's time to nom some cupcakes, beyotches!
See you next time, when maybe we'll actually make some cookies, you know, for this cookie blog :)