I dun bake cakes!

[matgb]

On Monday evening. miss_s_b did, with a fair bit of help from Shrub and me, bake cupcakes. A sign that I'm getting naturalised is I'm now in the habit of calling them buns (mostly, admittedly, because Shrub gets confused otherwise). SB was in charge on Monday, because I'd not baked cakes for years (and years and years), and simply lack confidence in the kitchen.

It's not that I can't cook (granddad was a chef, I grew up around farms), more that, generally, I couldn't be arsed. But, y'know, I do enjoy cooking, so I'm trying to build my confidence up.

I learnt how not to do it

Anyway. I learnt lots on Monday. Specifically, I learnt how not to do it, and that, if in doubt, use less mix in the bun case, not more, which was SBs preference.

So, with us having eaten them all by this evening, I decided to cook some more up. Theoretically SB was going to be in the room with me making sure I didn't mess up, but that would've meant getting out of bed and that just wasn't going to happen.

I quartered the recipe

Given that we'd a) made far too many and b) they'd all overflowed the cases on Monday, we decided to quarter the recipe to make just 12 (ie one tins worth). So, from memory, I quartered the recipe.

Except that I mixed up the cake recipe and the bread recipe. So when I quartered a 800g of flour and weighed out 200g, I was actually measuring out the exact same amount of flour as we used on Monday.

Ah well. We now have a nice sponge cake as well as 126 cupcakes. I did cook 12, but, y'know, they were fresh and looked tempting. Shrub likes them too.

The sponge cake is still cooling, SB's made some buttercream icing to use as a filler, some of which is already on the buns.

Eat the mistakes

This cooking larks a lot easier than some people make it out to be y'know. As long as, y'know, you're prepared to eat the mistakes.

Nom nom nom.

Comments

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

You didn't tell them about the butter!

And yes, the mistakes are very tasty, and NEXT time we make buns they will be DIVINE.

[matgb]

That's because it's a long rambly post and my mistake just added to the flavour. And mixing time. A lot.

But, y'know, mistakes.

[js84.livejournal.com]

Cupcakes sound rather American. I'm not sure what I'd personally call them. Probably just generic 'cakes'.

Learning not how to do it is the most helpful thing you can do to make it well next time. Some of the best things I've cooked have been down to not doing them as well before.

[matgb]

It would appear you didn't do my poll from when Jennie and I firstt discussed cupcakes:
http://matgb.livejournal.com/252000.html

94 comments. Don't think anyone thought it an Americanism. Muffins sound American, cupcakes are just cup sized cakes.

[js84.livejournal.com]

Oh whoops. That's where all the discussion's going down.

[silentgreeneyes.livejournal.com]

Yes I know wikipedia isn't the be-all and end-all of sources but..


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupcake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bun

*hides in the corner, sees argument continue*

[matgb]

See? Wikipedia agrees with me, I must be right.

Although for some reason SB will accept the term fairy cake, but insists it's a type of bun, not cake, as cakes are bigger. Despite us having baked a cake and a pile of "buns" with the exact same mix...

[aliannurai.livejournal.com]

nom nom nom next time you can make muffins as they ARE ment to over flow! NOM NOM NOM!!