Week 2: Eton's Mess Cupcakes

These cupcakes were so summery, they deserved a hot-pink plate!

Hi cupcakers! I'm Kate, and I'm so excited to be doing this cupcake challenge. For week 2, I made the Eton's Mess Cupcakes—yellow cupcakes with whipped cream, meringue and strawberries on top. I was really looking forward to making this cupcake because it includes two of my favorite things—cupcakes and meringue—and it would give me an opportunity to use my new icing gun to make the meringue chips. Yay!

So, I set about baking. I wanted to make a double batch so I would have enough for the club members and some leftovers for workplace scavengers. With that in mind, I doubled the flour, the baking powder, the salt, the sugar, the vanilla, the butter. Oh, it was so much butter. I started to think that these cupcakes were going to be yellow just because they had so much butter in them. I mean, I was really putting my hand mixer through its paces just trying to cream all that butter. But, the recipe was easy to follow and I popped the doubled batch of cakes (all 34 of them) into the oven. I set the timer for a half hour and started on the meringue.

But something was wrong. After 20 minutes, the cupcakes were brown. On the verge of burnt. I started to think that Ming had led me astray.

After they cooled, I tried one. I noticed that the paper liner was really, really greasy. I figured I must've greased the muffin tin before I put paper liners in the cups. I get so frazzled in the kitchen; I would do something like that. I ate the cupcake. It tasted good. But it didn't taste right. I couldn’t figure it out.

The recipe made a lot of meringue.

Suddenly, as I was finishing up the meringue, it hit me. If I was supposed to double ½ cup butter, that means I was supposed to use 1 cup. One stick of butter equals ¼ cup, right?

Wrong. I'd put four sticks of butter into the first batch of cupcakes. I'd doubled all the ingredients except the butter. I'd quadrupled the butter. No wonder they tasted delicious but somewhat off. No wonder they looked like they'd been sitting on a pile of grease.

Since I'd used four sticks of butter in the first batch, I now had zero sticks of butter in the house. It was 9:00 at night. Imagine my dismay. I was going to let the whole club down.

The first batch. Six sticks of butter were harmed
in the making of these cupcakes.

Cue my husband, Mike. He goes to the store for me while I try to get my meringue chips to look like they're supposed to (note: my "chips" looked more like beans). The day—and recipe—is saved.


After the whole buttery mess, everything went fine. The cupcakes were really, really tasty. They were kind of a new spin on strawberry shortcake, and would be perfect for a summer party. If I were making them again, I'd be sure to measure twice and cream the butter once. I'd probably also use a different meringue recipe because I couldn't quite get the meringue to peak right. I usually use this recipe for meringue, minus the chocolate chips and walnuts. Also, the doubled recipe of this cupcake made about 30 cupcakes when made correctly. And the cake was pretty spongy inside. But, I loved them, and can't wait to try the next 31 cupcakes!