My Baking Wishlist

I picked the worst time to start a baking venture.  My life has been crazy busy with the day job.  But have no fear, recipes are coming.  It is my birthday weekend after all. 

I recently took inventory of everything I had and realized I needed to start collecting baking supplies. 

In yellow please....source

Mini Pie Molds....Source

 

 

 

 

Mini and regular cupcake pans....source

You cant have too many of these....source

Source

Tomorrow I will have a new recipe up.  Fingers crossed it works!

Starting with the Basics: Yellow Cake and Chocolate Frosting

Officially I have started baking for the purposes of creating FTLOB into something bigger.  Yesterday I sat down and tackled the basic of the basics: yellow cake. 

I could have started with all the crazy, delicious flavors I wanted to start with, but at the end of the day yellow is the most common. 

For this recipe I decided to halve it because we cant eat that many cupcakes.  But either I didnt fill my cups up enough (which I think I did) or one full recipe makes 40 cupcakes. 

Recipe for yellow cake: Makes one cake of 22-24 cupcakes (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

4 cups + 2tbs of cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted room temp butter

2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 large eggs room temp

2 cups buttermilk, well shaken

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter or line pan with parchment paper (or cupcake liners)

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl.  

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.  Then add vanilla.  Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until well incorporated and scraping sides.  

At low speed, add buttermilk until just combined.  Your mix looks curdled and very liquidy.  Dont worry

Add the flour mixture in three batches mixing until just covered.  The key is to not OVER mix.  

Fill your pan and bake 30-45 mins ( I would start checking around the 25 min mark)

While those were out cooling, I decided to make a chocolate frosting.  Who doesnt love chocolate and yellow cake?

Recipe for Chocolate Frosting: (I also halved this) (adapted from Crazy About Cupcakes)

6 tbs butter, room temp

2 tsp vanilla

3 cups confectioners sugar

3/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Hershey unsweet)

1/2 cup milk (use as much as you need to get your consistancy)

Cream butter and vanilla together in a bowl.  Better yet, dont run out of vanilla.  I did.  In separate bowl, combine sugar and cocoa.  Add dry ingredients to butter mix.  Then add milk slowly while mixing.  Add as much or as little as you need.  I needed more than what it called for. 

Mix mix mix.  

Here is the final product:

For me, I am not into towering frosting that takes over the cake.  BUT I also like frosting that holds its shape.

Verdict: Its time to invest in a KitchenAid Stand Mixer and an oven thermometer.  I personally do not like working with confectioners sugar for frosting because its way too sweet.  A mixer would have come in handy here because the frosting needed to be mixed for a long time.  It fell flat. 

An oven thermometer would have been nice because until I can buy an oven I know will work, I am stuck with a 30 year old apartment oven that does not heat well.  The outsides of the cupcake were a little too done, while this inside was moist. 

They were still really good!

I am going to start experimenting with different techniques on how to make the perfect moist yellow cake.  Not bad though for the first run.

The Truth About Eggs

Apparently I haven't been using my eggs correctly in all of my years of baking.  Shame shame.

The past few days/weeks I have been reading a lot about baking and when using eggs in your recipe, they are supposed to be at room temperature.  I feel like I should have known that. 

What is the difference in final product between straight from the fridge eggs and room temp eggs?  I have never (knock on wood) had a disaster when taking my eggs straight from the fridge, but if you warm your eggs up, you have a better batter.  Your chances are higher that air will incorporate better than cold and your batter will rise.

Lesson learned.  I guess that just means I will have better batter from now on.

(Tip: short on time and cant warm your eggs? Take warm water and warm for about 15 mins).

Baking Lesson:  Never skip out on using eggs in your recipe if they call for it.  I did that once (because the recipe said to use something else) and the cake fell apart.  Eggs are your structure. 

Happy Baking!

Welcome to For the Love of Baking

Thanks for stopping by!  I am finally taking the plunge and making my baking hobby into something a little more serious.

For a few months/about a year or so I have been saying over and over that I want to open a little cupcake shop.  Right now it seems like the market is saturated with cupcake shops, so while I still want to open a shop (one day) I think my focus will be more than cupcakes.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.  I plan on taking my time to really learn how to bake.  I KNOW how to bake, but Im nerdy and like to know the physics behind it.

I hope I can learn and share new recipes and techniques with you.  My goal is to make a darn good dessert, start an at home bakery and then open a storefront.  

Welcome to For the Love of Baking!!

Comments/criticism/praise/orders/high fives are always welcome...in fact they are highly recommended!

(I know it looks messy around here...Im still making tweaks.  Soon it will look nice and polished!)