I heart cupcake cookies

Cupcake and heart sugar cookies

Not real cupcakes, but I had a great deal of fun decorating these, although the results are admittedly clumsy. I have two left hands, at best, but these were still fun to do, therapeutic with music and the aircon on. Have to perfect a sugar cookie recipe though. Tried these with the original amount of sugar, part icing, part granulated, and the dough was still hard to handle. It doesn't roll or cut well, and the cookies spread a great deal during baking. In fact, the cupcake shapes were unrecognisable, and to salvage them, I cut them after they were baked – hence the rough edges.

The hearts came out better, maybe because heart-shapes have more definition in the first place. I tried some designs from Cookie Craft on them.

Fun. I like that these are more project-like, with the various stages of icing, and more arty, with the colours and designs. I also love how easy clean-up is, the icing washes away with none of the horrid cling of buttercream since it's mainly sugar. And of course I love the excuse to buy more equipment! :)

Fantasy cupcakes v7.0

One-bowl chocolate cupcakes with rainbow buttercream

Cuspcake rating: 3.5

These looked much better in my head than they did in real life. Tried the one-bowl choc cupcakes recipe from Martha Stewart as I've read favourable reviews of them several times, and am still in search of a go-to chocolate cupcake recipe.

This one was easy, chocolatey and moist (it uses oil instead of butter) and was light and tasty – definitely a go-to in-a-hurry recipe. The batter was liquid too, which made filling the cups especially easy.

The rainbow buttercream was too soft, as my buttercream is wont to be, partly I think the new brand of butter I bought. The painting-the-inside-of-the-piping-bag method was fun though (although my hands were stained with food colouring for several days after!). Used animal biscuits to cover up the ugly piped cream (and uneven colours) but it was too soggy so they wouldn't stay up straight. Also wasn't able to get the chocolate teddy grahams I'd wanted, which I think would've been alot cuter than these plain zoo ones.

These were nice, and will use them in future for sure, especially in a pinch. They're crowdpleasers, but lack a certain something-something, will continue to look for the perfect choc cuppies...

Peanut buttercup cakes

Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling and peanut butter cream cheese frosting

Cuspcake rating: 4.5

Probably the longest title in the short history of my cupcaking. Nope, couldn't keep away from cupcaking this weekend after all. This recipe was from Good Housekeeping, by the way of one blog and another. I've realised that sometimes after bloggers change up a recipe, which is then changed up by someone else and so on – whether in the name of improvement or avoiding copyright infringement suits, who knows – isn't it as likely that the recipe will be worsened by all this as improved?

Anyhow, I tried to go back to the source for this one. I have a perpetual craving for Reese's peanut buttercups, which I can't get here, and was hoping these'd be better than the real thing. I mean, it's cake, right?

The peanut butter didn't shape up into balls at all, so i ended up dropping teaspoonfuls of it into the first layer of cake batter. Was left with not enough batter to cover the last two cuppies (bad conversion or over-enthusiastic heaping of heaped tablespoons?) so swirled them around and hoped for the best.

Seems like everytime I use my muffin pan I reach the same conclusion. Again, will I never learn? Once in a while it seems like it'd be nice to have pretty patterned cupcake papers, and not need to space souffle cups out, or guess at quantities (since everything's written for regular muffin tin sized cuppies), so I dutifully pull my muffin tin out, and end up with oddly lop-sided cuppies, with scrunched-up paper cups (why do mine seem too big for the tin somehow?), am desperately unable to rotate the tin, or to even remove it properly from the oven, almost drop a few and swear never to use it again.

Yet.

They looked lovely up till 15 minutes into baking (isn't that always the case?) and then started developing the cracked, rounded tops I always seem to turn out. Never beautifully rounded either. They just never look like they do in the books. Or do they just not, ever? Well in any case, I'm hoping its the oven and not me, as I've tried everything and the only common factor seems to be, well, the oven.

Will take them to work tomorrow, haven't brought any in for more than a month now. Would rather bake for appreciative kids than weight-watching adults, really. Report back then.

Update: Took them to my cousin's wedding instead, and the relatives were glad for them (several were peckish between the ceremony and the dinner). The cream went down particularly well, even a non-peanut-butter eater liked it. The cupcakes are best at room temp, when they have a nice, fine crumb and rich flavour, possibly a good choc cupcake recipe on its own? A winner! Next time I won't do them in the muffin tin, and I'll make sure the centres are properly buried, and I won't overfill the cups.

Tough cookie

Rolled sugar cookies with glaze

Not that these were tough at all, they were in fact fragrant, and tender. I think they're better the day after they're baked – they were moist and soft the day they were made, and then firmed up to become tender with bite, with a slight crust your teeth break through, and then a tasty, not-too-soft inside.

I've never met a sugar cookie I liked, so this was great, they do indeed deserve their allrecipes' name! They're something like those Danish butter cookies you grew up eating, but lighter, and with a chewier texture. Doubled the sugar and vanilla as some folk suggested on allrecipes, but found them too sweet in the end. Also really should have waited to cream the butter first before adding the sugar instead of mixing it all together, it just didn't seem like the dough came together quite like it was meant to (when will I learn?) Also this generic brand of sugar I'm using now may be having unpredictable effects on my baking (see also Fantasy Cupcakes v6.0!). Next time I think I'll try using confectioner's sugar (or grinding mine down fine) and stick to the original amount of sugar in the recipe.

The dough was extremely sticky and soft, which made it hard to roll (lucky I read Cookie Craft before starting, and utilised their handy rolling tips) and cut, and even harder to transfer nicely to the baking sheet. I recognise this might have been my fault, so will give the recipe proper another shot before changing anything else. They also spread alot more than I expected (they needed more than a half-inch between them, and my medium cutters turned out cookies the size of the large ones! Not cute), and also rose more than I thought, and the tops of many of them cracked slightly, perhaps because I left them in too long?

The glaze I tried (also from allrecipes) didn't colour as intensely as I'd hoped, the colour was somewhat translucent. It was a good initiation into cookie decorating though, since it was as easy as dip and twist. I was going to pipe designs on them, but changed my mind and just sprinkled them vigorously instead.

All in all, the glaze plus the cookies with added sugar was waaay too sweet, but I couldn't stop eating them anyhow, and polished off all the extra cookies, iced and un-iced! These are going to cupcake's school tomorrow (yes, I needed a break from cuppies, and wanted to try something new), hopefully the kids like them as much as they seem to like the cuppies!

Fantasy cupcakes v6.0

Yellow butter cupcakes with chocolate-egg white buttercream

Cuspcake rating: 3

Was most delighted to get my hands on Rose Levy Berenbaum's new book (when am I not delighted to get my hands on any new book?), and keen to try some recipes. Picked the first Baby Cake recipe, Yellow Butter Cupcakes, as I love butter cake and haven't done one yet, and well, it was first in a very short list of recipes.

Was very interested to try her reverse method of mixing batter, and while I was doing it, was really excited about it, as it seems to be far less mess (none of that creaming, and less splashing), and resulted in a lovely batter which tasted fantastic off the spoon. She also bakes at a slightly lower temp and a lower rack position than all the other recipes I've tried.

Believe I followed the recipe to the best of my attention, but somehow the cakes turned out each with crooked tops, which appeared to be caused by a large air bubble trying to get out of the cooked top of each cuppie. And then the cake batter under that hole seemed undercooked. Not sure what I did wrong, was rather disappointed, but the cakes still tasted great.

Opted for the chocolate-egg white buttercream, to offset the vanilla cake. It was easier to do than the recipe sounds, and the texture of the buttercream was perfect. A bit rich, perhaps because my dark chocolate was too dark, but still yummy. Finger-licking good, even in my overheated, frosting-averse state.

Topped them off with marshmallows, which looked comically huge on the tiny cuppies, but I thought would do well to cut the richness of the chocolate, and my little cupcake loves marshmallows. :)

Fantasy cupcakes v5.0

Dad's brownie cupcakes with vanilla buttercream

Cuspcake rating: 2

Finally got around to trying dad's brownie recipe as a cupcake, only I used part self-raising flour, and, well, let's just say it works better as a brownie recipe! It was too sweet, and rose too much then sank. Also created that crusty top that works on brownies, but not in little portions, somehow. Back to the search for the perfect chocolate cuppie then!

As for the vanilla buttercream, used the Primrose Bakery one again, but managed to botch it up. Really must stop trying to skip steps. Seems ridiculous to botch up a recipe I've used before. It tasted good, but was runny, and if you looked closely, looked like it was separating. I made up for it with extra gumpaste flowers and star sprinkles.

Nonetheless, I was rewarded for my sub-par efforts by the sight and sounds of my favourite 5-year-old licking and yumming her way through her cuppie :) Kids. Gotta love 'em. And I guess it proves the theory right that kids like anything sweet, soft and damp.

Fantasy cupcakes v4.0

Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Cuspcake rating: 5

My weekly baking for the kids, and after tossing ideas around in my mind all week (caramel cupcakes? malted cupcakes?) I hit on the perfect idea – red velvet cuppies. They were my first – and worst – attempt (see entry #1, and my misunderstanding of butter measurements), and I think it's about time after about 20 different recipes that I try them again, isn't it?

Have collected quite a number of red velvet recipes to date – from chowhound, cupcakeblog, various books – but decided to try the repressedpastrychef one, since it looked easy and I don't have shortening.

The batter didn't taste too great off the spoon, but the cake turned out fluffy and moist, with a fine crumb, and cocoa-y and sweet enough (the batter tasted of salt and baking soda). The baking soda aftertaste is a little stronger than I'd like (or perhaps its the colouring, it's something artificial, anyway), but I'm sensitive to these things.

The cream cheese frosting recipe looked a little wrong to me, so I added more sugar, and used more butter to replace the shortening I didn't have. It turned out fluffy and cheesy, and in combination with the cake – heavenly. Amazing how the sum of the parts is so much greater than the whole. Red velvet should not be eaten on its own. And although people say cream cheese icing is all wrong for Red Velvet cake – well, traditional or not, it's yummy!

(So yummy I had to stop myself eating all 6 extra minis at once – and I've really been suffering cupcake fatigue and have a splitting headache to boot!)