My First Made-From-Scratch Cupcakes!

I would like to say that my very first attempt at cupcakes from scratch went very well.  It was a fun experience, and I finally got to use some baking gifts I was given for my last birthday and Christmas.

I used recipes from The Cake Book by Tish Boyle.  The book was a gift from my boyfriend for my last birthday, and so far I have only made the chocolate cake (yum!) out of it.  Since I am still new at baking from scratch, I kept it simple for these St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes: Yellow Cake and Fluffy White Frosting (some dyed green!).  It goes like this --- my mom buys all the ingredients, I do the baking, and she gets to be my taste tester (obviously the most important role).  So, I made her buy me some Cake Flour.

Making the batter for the cake was fairly simple, since I had previously done a chocolate cake from the same recipe book.  The recipe was detailed and easy to understand.

I really need a new electric mixer.  I swear there is no difference between Speed 1 and 5...

 I filled a ziploc bag with the batter, cut the bottom corner slightly, and used this to fill my cupcake liners.  Much easier and cleaner than using a spoon, like I have been guilty of doing in the past...  Since it was a first attempt and I did not know how many the batter would make, the baking cups were not all filled equally (but now I know for next time!).
 

Mmm smelled delicious!

I think I let them “cool” for too long (wasn’t even that long, maybe an hour and a half?) but they tasted wonderful anyway.

Check out my sweet hot pink timer!

 Making the frosting was definitely the difficult part.  I purchased an Instant Read Thermometer especially for the frosting.  All the ingredients mixed well in the first stage, but I had a hard time heating them to the right temperature.  Directions said to put the bowl with all the ingredients (except the extract) in a pan of simmering water.  First, the bubbles were gathering underneath the bottom rim under the bowl, so it was moving around.  I decided to scrape the mixture into a pot and then returned it to the the pan of simmering water.  It still never reached the right temperature, but it is possible that I did not calibrate the new thermometer correctly.

With all that being said, my frosting ended up perfectly fine :)  I loved it and it looked very pretty when I used the green dye.  Another gift I got for Christmas... all kinds of cupcake/cake decorating kits.  I used the Wilton 1M frosting tip to frost my cupcakes.  This is also my first time using frosting bags/tips.  I really am new at this whole thing.  I can't wait to teach myself or take a class to learn more about cupcake/cake decorating!

Check out  Tish Boyle's blog: http://www.tishboyle.blogspot.com/