Ugly!Cake

A couple of weeks ago, I went to meet up with my friend Looby after her job interview. She was sitting in the temple that is Starbucks (I am so clichéd, ugh), drinking a hot chocolate and eating a strawberry cupcake. She said ‘the cake is ok, but try the icing’. She was right. The cake itself tasted like shop cake; just a basic and sadly bland vanilla. The butter cream icing however was made with real strawberries, and was really something. It had the little strawberry pips dotted through it, giving it this adorable, rustic look, whilst being pristinely piped.

I wanted to make my own!

So I scoured the internet, and found a recipe that suited on cooksunited.co.uk. The whole first batch I made with this recipe I threw out for the birds (see this post), which was a real shame, as that’s a hideous waste of materials. However, second time around, I ended up with some pastel pink, aromatic and incredibly light cupcakes. And the frosting… stuff you Starbucks, I can do better at home!

I had to mess the recipe about a bit, mainly with the cooking times and temps, and it is one I want to mess around with more, but this is what I did for the firstrun. Apologies now, and always, for my hideous food photography.

Strawberry Cupcakes
Makes 12-16, depending on how big you make your cuppies.

For the cakes:

100g fresh local strawberries, hulled and halved
1sp baking powder
180g flour
60ml milk
120g butter (salted or unsalted, depending on your preference)
200g golden granulated or caster sugar
1 large free range egg
2 large free range egg whites
1sp vanilla extract (not essence; you’ll thank me)

Preheat your oven to 170/150 fan assisted. Line your muffin pan with paper cases, or, if you are like me, line a baking tray with silicone cupcake cases.

In a blender, puree the strawberries. Try not to glug the delicious fruity goop down on its own. Be strong. Set it aside.

Combine flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Set aside.

With an electric mixer (hand or processor) cream the butter until fluffy and pale, then gradually add the sugar and continue to mix.

Add one egg and mix thoroughly.

Separate off your egg whites. Add them to the mix with the vanilla and blend/beat well until the mixture is well aerated and uniform.

Combine the strawberry puree with the milk. Marvel at your milkshake of awesomeness, but do try not to drink it. Add the ’milkshake’ into the wet mixture, mixing well.

Combine the wet mixture into the dry flour mixture about half and a time. Be careful not to beat too hard; you want to preserve the air in the mix from the egg beating. Continue until mixture is even in colour (pale, pretty pink) and texture.

Spoon out your mixture into your prepared cupcake baking receptacle(s). I made mine quite small, so it worked out to be enough batter for 16. The recipe is meant for 12 good sized cupcakes.

Bake for 15-18 minutes. Mine were a little more well done than I would have liked (I baked for 18), despite taking 7 minutes off the original baking time. If you are baking 12 large cupcakes rather than my 16, 18-20 minutes should be plenty. When done, the outsides will be prettily golden (darker if like me you use unrefined sugars), the insides fluffy and pink.

Allow to cool in pan/on tray for about 5 minutes, before removing to a cooling rack. Mine fell out of their silicone cases with ease at this stage.


For the butter cream and decoration:

I have never really understood why anyone would put salt in a confection. Salt liquorice excluded. And salted caramel. And sea salt ice cream for all you squeenix-ites out there.

What I am talking about is salt in cakes, biscuits, brownies etc. I don’t understand it. Why?

I grew up in a no salt household. My grandmother has a heart condition, and so my mother grew up learning to cook without salt. So when she passed the torch to me, naturally, I cook without salt. Now I am mostly grown, I love a little tiny pinchette of salt in the water when I boil wholegrain rice, or the occasional sprinkle on chips (though I much prefer cracked black pepper and Mediterranean herbs, a num num num). Salty takeaways are a rare and delicious treat. However, on the whole, I still cook without salt. I still live without salt.

I found a new recipe I wanted to try a couple of days ago, on Cooksunited.co.uk (I will post about the less fail version soon). The recipe called for 2 ½ tsp of salt in a cupcake batter. I’m a great believer in baking being alchemy, and I’m a gullible fool who doesn’t really know how strong salt is, so I merrily mixed it into the flour, and got on with the rest of the baking procedure. It was, whilst not difficult or really complicated, an involved recipe, so by the time I was mixing the wet with the dry, I had forgotten about that 2 ½ tsp of salt I had mixed in. So when I had popped the first half-batch into the oven, I tasted a bit of the batter.

BLECH. It was like strawberry scented sea water.

Baking didn’t improve it. Delicious frosting didn’t improve it. There was nothing for it.

These cupcakes were fail!cakes.



Seriously. Utter fail.



Don’t pity them. They brought it on themselves. They had the audacity to smell delicious too. *weeps*

I followed the recipe to the letter, and alas, fail occurred. I have little doubt that it’s happened to every baker worth his or her flour streaked hair in their time. In fact this one was a multi!fail. The cook temp was too high for my oven, even when I had factored in fan assistance and a little for the fact my oven appears to be powered by THE FIRES OF HELL. Also, the cook time was too long, and of course, as afore mentioned, the poor beleaguered cupcakes tasted like undiluted miso and my perfume.

What can we all take away from this fail?

Generally;

1) Be prepared to fail at baking from time to time. No one gets it absolutely right every time. For serious.

2) Baking might be alchemy, but there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. Be prepared to edit recipes pre bake, based on common sense and experience.

3) Practice makes perfect. Never expect perfection from your first try at a recipe; give yourself time and ingredients to try again before it’s needed, if necessary.


And specifically, regarding salt;

Maybe I’m a heathen. Maybe I should be butchered in my bed for suggesting this, but I don’t think you don’t NEED, in my albeit limited experience, to put salt in nearly all sweet recipes. And most savoury ones too. It’s better for your health, for one. At most, a little sprinkle of sea or table salt is more than enough.

If you need to use salt, or want to, table salt has a much stronger flavour, and a much more ‘manufactured’ taste compared with sea salt. I wouldn’t use more than the minute-est sprinklette of the former in any sweet recipe, as it is even quicker to over power.

My top tip for getting around the risk of over salting, whilst using salt, is to use salted butter. Cut the salt out of the dry ingredients of the recipe all together. Salt is a taste enhancer; I’m led to believe its contrast with the sweet in the confection makes the flavours really pop. Unless you are making salted caramels or sea salt ice cream, lightly salted butter will give you that edge of balance whilst stopping the salt content from getting too high and too cloying on the palate.

But, to be honest, heathen though I may be, just don’t bother. Save it for your tatties.

Well, I’d best go and start writing up the slightly more successful version of the cupcake story. And see if the local wildlife fancies a salty sweet snack…

Please guys. Learn from my salty fail.

Gosh I’m hungry.

First post! Ololol!

Enough of that. I rather suppose I had better introduce myself.

My name is Natasha. I'm a twenty-something year old writer, baker, rat wrangler, unicorn protection specialist, dreamer etc based in north west Kent, UK. I have a serious sweet tooth and a passion for creating, whether that be the written word, mediocre artwork, or generally rustic and magically delicious cakes and confections. My dream is to own a chocolate tempering machine. And perhaps, you know, have enough money to live on. And world peace. And stuff.

The reason for creating this blog is mainly a selfish venture. I love to write and I love to bake, and any combination of the two is rather like mustard and roast beef, cheese and chocolate, peas and barbeque sauce; self indulgent and utterly perfect to me. Being that I am, like most graduates since 2008, perpetually looking for work or only working part time, I have plenty of time (and not always enough money, sob) to indulge my hobbies.

I pondered holding off creating this blog until Christmas, as December is like my NaNoWriMo for baking; lebkuchen, cranberry sauce, sugar cookies, brownies, mincemeats various, cakes, yule logs, mince pies, peppermint concoctions and pretty much anything and everything else, every day, for 24 days. phew. However there is no time like the present, and since summer is party season, I've been busy bakering and, you know, fattening up my friends. It makes me feel good about myself. Ohohoho.

I'll be posting recipes I'm enjoying or ones I've tweaked to what I consider perfection, as well Learn From My Fail photos and anecdotes. As the blog title suggests; I have a long way to go in the world of baking.

Hope to see you all around. Later Days!

Nx