Week 27: Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Good day cupcake friends! We have reached the end of my personal cupcake journey. For my final cupcake, I made Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. And you totes heard me right, NO FILING! Woop Woop! In general, these cupcakes were Simple Simon compared to my first two endeavors. The only thing I had to worry about was obtaining Almond Meal, aka Almond Flour, aka expensive ground up nuts. Luckily, Hy-Vee's fancy-pants Health Market section had just what I was looking for!

Precious Baby Cupcake

These little precious babies were, by far, the simplest cupcakes I had made! Thanks for finally providing me with complete baking instructions Ming! The cupcakes were super straight forward, which makes this post a little boring…

V. Legal Cupcakes

The most exciting part of my Vanilla Almond Cupcakes was their random shapes and sizes! They were like magic bean cupcakes, each with an individual personality, just like the members of Cupcake Club! I have had an awesome time creating cupcakes! I hope you have had just as sweet of a time reading about my cupcake adventures! Thanks so much for reading! <3 Sarah

Week 19: Blueberry Cupcakes with Maple Brown Butter Frosting

Reader, I did it: I baked the heck out of these cupcakes. I mean, things went seriously well. After the disasters I've had before, this was a very welcome surprise.

I can't put my finger on what, exactly, made everything go right. Maybe it's that I stopped trying to multitask while in the kitchen (read: cook dinner and bake cupcakes at the same time, or read textbook and bake cupcakes at the same time, or bake cupcakes while waiting for nails to dry, etc). This time, I focused entirely on the cupcakes, measuring everything precisely and reading the instructions carefully before taking each step. From the baking time to the measurements, nothing went wrong. Everything was right on in the instructions.

Things went so well with the baking that I decided to get a little creative with the frosting. I made a double batch (about 30 cupcakes) and frosted half with the maple brown butter as Ming recommends, and half with lemon frosting. I topped the lemon frosted cakes with candied lemons. I thought I could save a step by cutting the lemon slices into quarters before candying them; don't. Put whole slices into the boiling water, then quarter them when they are done. It works much better, and looks a lot nicer.

I really preferred the lemon frosting on the blueberry cupcakes. Maybe it's because I'm nostalgic for blue and yellow (the colors of my high school, law school and wedding). But after this round of cupcake baking, I have to say: Ming, you make a mean blueberry cupcake!

Week 6: Banana Cupcakes with Maple Brown Butter Frosting



Chelsey's cupcakes were so good,
they were bananas.

I chose these because I like banana bread, and I was intrigued by the frosting. As you can see  from my Cast of Characters photo, this used nice, simple ingredients that are usually in my pantry and fridge. I didn't have a lemon on hand and didn't want to go back to the store to buy one, so I omitted it. I figured that it was primarily invited to the party to prevent banana browning. The batter is super easy to make and comes together nicely.  



I've never baked anything at 275 degrees for an hour - I think of "low and slow" as a BBQ technique, not something for baked goods. But the cupcakes came out great and were nice and moist. I initially thought the step of freezing them for 30 minutes seemed unnecessarily fussy, but the cupcakes did seem to shrink a little after being in the freezer, and they were still moist even after being frozen. I think it probably was a necessary step.





Frosting in the making.



The frosting was good in theory. I like all of the component parts. But on the whole, I found it too buttery and too sweet.  The maple flavor isn't very distinct, so you get the sweet from the maple sugar but not enough maple flavor. The frosting made as directed is extremely runny, so I added powdered sugar. It would have been helpful to know that the frosting thickened up as it cooled, because by the time mine cooled it was like cement.

So, my take-away from this is that I would make the cupcakes again, although if I'm craving banana in super-carb form I'll just make banana bread. But I would use a cream cheese or even a chocolate frosting instead of the maple brown butter.



Cast of characters.

Baking the cupcakes "low and slow."