It was my friend's birthday (Happy Birthday, Scott!), and him being of the male persuasion, I was having trouble thinking of an appropriate gift. Clothes, cologne - all so overdone!
Then it hit me that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (as if that's not an overdone cliche, haha). So I decided to make him cupcakes! The entire process, from choosing a recipe to collecting the ingredients, making them, and garnishing for the final presentation, got me hooked onto this baking business.
So I thought I'd share my first adventure in cupcake-making. Before this, I'd only ever baked simple cookies, but I was about to become a trailblazer in my family's legacy of non-baking culinary traditions (like, we don't even own a spatula, I had to go out and get one).
(Read the following blurb if you want to know how I made them, otherwise, feel free to ignore and skip down to the pictures!)
The recipe I used is from the Betty Crocker website, although I made my own cream cheese frosting using this recipe, because the icing in a tub scares me. The modifications I made were:
- I used light cream cheese and No Name cake mix. Worked great and I felt less guilty feeding them to my dear ones :P.
- The cupcake recipe calls for one teaspoon of the cream cheese filling per cupcake. I used one tablespoon by accident (TEEHEE), but they turned out great that way.
- I added the filling after filling the liners halfway with cake batter, whereas the website says to fill the liner to the top and then add the scoop of filling. I wanted to play it safe and make sure the filling sank to the centre. Which it did. Yay!
- For the frosting, I doubled the ingredient quantities, but used 3 cups of confection sugar and 2 tsp vanilla extract for the double batch. I didn't want the icing too sweet or too cream cheesy...
- I used mini chocolate chips (semisweet).
My experience is summed up in the following pictures. Enjoy!
Yes, I confess, I used cake mix from a box (No Name variety, at that), but they were still my little babies. And I was a proud mommy.
I pretty much had to buy everything in this picture (except the toaster oven :P) because my family has no sense of owning baking supplies, haha.
Added the frosting (used a piping bag with star tip).
Final product! Ended up with 24 cupcakes, and I only got to eat one. That, too, my friend sacrificed one of the ones meant for her so I could try my own product. These were definitely gobbled up. *Tears of joy and gratitude.*
I put the ones meant for Scott in a cake box with cupcake insert and topped it off with manly candles.
I know, he is totally spoiled.
Last but not least, a HUGE shout out to Miriam for pretty much showing me the ropes of what I need to bake and providing me with the essentials.
