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The first cupcake experiment!
June 12, 2008
Yesterday I baked a batch of almond, ricotta and raspberry cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting, from the recipe here. Thanks so much to the owner of that site for all the recipes to choose from!
I only used raspberries, no blueberries, and no colouring in the icing. They turned out pretty fabulous!
Here are the baked cupcakes:
You can kind of see one in the back is a bit smooshed, it has too many raspberries in and I couldn't get it out in one piece! It still tasted fab but 0 marks for presentation.
And here are the iced cupcakes:
They are neat but nothing spectacular - I need to get one of those icing bags with the tips to make it look fancier.
Half eaten cupcake:
To make the testing more useful, I took 10 to work, and made people fill in a form to mark the cupcakes against various criteria! Everyone seemed very much into it, and took it very seriously!
Here are the returned forms:
Even one of the partners at work filled one out, and took it very seriously indeed, taking 5 minutes out to talk to me about his responses afterwards! It was great, there were lots of useful comments.
Here are a couple of sample forms:
The cupcake scored highest on average for taste of cake - this was 9.1 out of 10.
The highest overall scoring card got 99% of the available points, and the lowest got 71%. The average mark, for all scorecards against all criteria was 8.5 out of 10 - not bad!
The biggest point of contention was the frosting. Some people felt there was too much and it was too sweet, while some wanted even more. I thought there was too much when I was making them - I used all the frosting the recipe made, and I would never normally put that much on a cake - maybe that's the american style of baking? Since I plan to use the recipes on that website again, I will always decrease the frosting to 1/2 - 2/3 of what is recommended.
Everyone agreed the frosting was a bit soft - probably my fault as I used half fat cream cheese, it was all there was in the shop!
I will try another recipe next week!
Posted by jen at June 12, 2008 09:25 PM
Comments
They look absolutely delicious and what a great idea to have the testing done at work.
Posted by: Katy at June 12, 2008 11:36 PM
This particular American loves frosting, so yeah, could be an American thing. ;)
Posted by: Melissa at June 13, 2008 01:34 AM
Try this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/500-Cupcakes-Cupcake-Compendium-Youll/dp/1569065977/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213375609&sr=8-2
I made a big tower of cupcakes for my daughter's christening - white chocolate and raspberry, and rum and raisin. Both were absolutely delicious, not overly sweet ( I just used white chocolate/cream as a "frosting"). I'm repeating the rapberry and white chocolate ones this weekend for our NCT 1 year get together.
Posted by: raker at June 13, 2008 05:49 PM
I've made a lot of cupcakes in my time and the ones in "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World" are the best I've ever made or eaten. I'm not a vegan either:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-1569242739-0
They have a range of cupcake recipes from basic chocolate or vanilla to really exotic like pistachio rose or margarita (with tequila and a hint of salt!)
This page has some photos:
http://www.theppk.com/vegancupcakes.html
The vegan cream cheese frosting is de-freakin-licious.
Posted by: Melissa Winter Weiss at June 13, 2008 06:15 PM
My mouth is watering just looking at those cupcakes
Posted by: Alyssa at June 13, 2008 07:56 PM
Yes, in America, cake, cupcakes, and cookies are frequently treated as platforms for icing. Just from looking at yours, I would skip the icing altogether. Does that make me anti-American?
Posted by: Abby at June 14, 2008 12:30 AM
I felt inspired by your delicious-looking cupcakes and tried out the recipe myself : Here!
Posted by: Kristin at June 14, 2008 03:38 PM
Oops, link didn't work.
http://ossianknits.typepad.com/ossianknits/2008/06/cupcakes.html
Posted by: Kristin at June 14, 2008 03:39 PM
Ahem. Having made muffins for 40 odd years (some odder than others) I never frost muffins. Part of the allure is the texture of the top and frosting softens that. Cupcakes need frosting, muffins no.
Posted by: swanknitter at June 15, 2008 12:44 AM
I love the idea of getting them marked although I think you are very brave to submit them to such close inspection. My sister made fairy cakes for my wedding, which people seemed to like very much, particularly later on in the evening.! We found Jane Asher's webshop to be really useful for getting decorations and loads of cases (not just for weddings!)
Posted by: Victoria at June 16, 2008 10:38 AM
I've been meaning to say that you don't really need a cake bag thingy. A ziplock plastic bag with a corner cut off works really well too!
Posted by: Kristin at June 16, 2008 07:28 PM