I Like to Eat Cupcakes... Not Look Like Them

Nope, this post isn't about cupcakes, or even baking (sorry). It's my second post about my, scratch that, mine and Bobby's upcoming wedding. Since I previously mentioned here that I was recently on vacation and while on that vacation I went wedding dress shopping with my mom, I thought it might be nice to share my tales on wedding dress shopping. And, if you don't think it's so nice, I promise there are many more cupcake adventures that will be coming your way. But right now, it's all about the dress.

Before we got to Florida my mom had arranged 3 appointments at bridal shops that I had chosen from a list she had sent me of shops in the area. Two in Jacksonville and one in St. Augustine where my parents now live in their (my) beach house. I hadn't tried on any wedding dresses before my appointments... except one. This one.

This is my mom's wedding dress from 1978. I know it's hard to believe since it looks so contemporary. My mom had told me I could have her dress if I wanted and asked if I'd like to try it on. I knew I wasn't going to get married in my mom's dress (sorry mom) but I was curious if it would actually fit. My mom is a small woman. I've probably got at least 3 inches on her and more than a couple pounds. She's a petite little thing whereas I am less petite and have a more athletic build. I truly didn't think the dress would zip up... but it did! Of course while I was basking in my glory and the fact that I fit in my mom's dress, she so nicely said that when she got married it was "hanging" off of her. Thanks mom.

But, I digress. I didn't really know what to expect with this whole experience, but I did do some research the day before by watching several episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" and taking copious notes (not really) while my dad, brother and fiance made fun of me. Typical. In reality my preparation included looking online and printing out pictures of what I was thinking of, deciding how much I wanted to spend, and making sure I was wearing cute underwear since I would be running around in it for most of the day.

Before we proceed I want to make it clear that you're not going to see the dress that I ended up choosing. That little secret is saved for myself, my mom and Diana, the woman who helped me try on all the dresses at the store where I purchased mine and also got to see me run around in my underwear all day. She was a lovely woman. I've decided not to show anyone my dress because I want it to be a surprise for the wedding and I don't want anyone else's opinion about it. Everyone only has to wait about 11 more months. If I can handle the wait I think everyone else can too.

On to Shop 1 and the first dress I tried on. I covered my face, not because I don't want you to see what I look like, because you can see my face in other posts, or if you look to the right, but because the faces I'm making in most of these pictures is not cute. These pictures are about the dresses, not me.

This was the style of dress I thought I wanted because I really liked the back. While a woman who was sitting in the store waiting for a friend told me she was going to cry when I walked out really liked it, I wasn't completely sold. It was more coverage than I wanted (I didn't want my shoulders to be covered). But, as I was told countless times by every woman who helped me try on dresses, almost anything could be changed.

Now for the monster dress as I so affectionately called it.

This is the style of dress I never in a million years thought I would want. It was strapless (strike 1), it was huge (strike 2) and I don't have a strike 3 because I really liked it. I loved how it fit me and was surprised that it was so flattering on me. I'm really not a fan of strapless dresses for myself. I just don't like the potential for armpit-area chub. It's not cute and on my wedding day I want to look way better than cute. I did try on several other dresses from this shop but had I decided on a dress from this shop, this would have been the one. There would have been some major chopping off of the train, because it was just way too much dress for me, but I really did like it.

Shop number 2! This was the first dress I tried on at our second stop and I thought this might be the winner.

It had straps like I wanted and it was a v-neck which I think is flattering on me. I liked the back, and it had just enough sparkle but not so much that I would look like a disco ball. This dress was the frontrunner until I found Maggie. Her name isn't actually Maggie, it's something different that I'm not going to tell you, but we'll call her Maggie since she is a Maggie Sottero dress. And that is all the designer information you will be getting. I was pretty much sold on her as soon as I put her on. She was perfect. There wasn't a think I wanted to change. But, just because you think you've found the perfect dress doesn't mean you stop trying them on! You never know what you could be missing, so you might as well try on a couple more just to be sure, so... I carried on.

Of course, even though I didn't like the dress with the keyhole back that I had tried on at the first shop I wanted to try on another one of the same style to see how I would like it and I came across the same issue.

Please don't mind my bra strap. Minus my bra strap I LOVED the back of this dress, it was exactly what I had wanted, but again, the front was more coverage than I wanted. I struggled between this dress and Maggie but in the end I decided that this dress would need a good amount of alterations to really change the front of it to make it what I wanted. And, after the alterations I still might not have what I wanted and I would have already spent so much money on it. Unfortunately I'm not able to buy 5 dresses like some brides (yes, that actually happens, Diana my bridal dress helper told me so) so I wanted to make sure the dress I ended up getting wouldn't need to be severely overhauled in order for me to be 100 percent happy with it.

Although I was fairly certain that Maggie was my dress, we did have one more appointment left and I wanted to go just in case this shop had something I liked better. Leave no stone unturned, leave no dress untried. Plus, it was a lot of fun playing dress up for the day.

Shop number 3 didn't have many options and I truthfully didn't think I would even find any that I wanted to try on. I didn't want to be rude since the owner had come in especially for us. So, I grabbed a couple dresses that I thought might have potential and were different from one I had previously tried on and headed to the dressing room. This was the last dress I tried on.

Had I not settled on Maggie this one would have probably been one I seriously considered purchasing. I thought it was very flattering on me, I just wasn't sure about the straps. They were a little too thick. I also wasn't sold on the bug, yes bug, that seemed to come with it. Notice the small black dot inside the blue circle. That's a bug in between the layers of fabric of the dress. How that got in there, I couldn't tell you. Had I noticed it before the dress was on my body I would have seriously considered not putting it on (I'm not a complete whimp). But, it wasn't until I was out of the dressing room and getting clipped into the dress that the shop owner said, "Oh my God, that's a bug." Yes, yes it was. Best of all... it was still alive. Call me crazy, but there are just some things that shouldn't be in wedding dresses. I'm going to be so bold as to say that live bugs are one of those things.

After our last appointment I was 99% sure that Maggie was my dress and she was just waiting for me to come get her. To make sure I was 100% sure I looked at the pictures my mom had taken over and over and slept on it. When I woke up in the morning I was still super excited about Maggie so I called the shop and asked if I could come pick her up the next morning. Normally you would order your dress and pick it up after the weeks or months it would take for it to arrive. But Maggie is a discontinued design meaning she couldn't be ordered and she was the only one like her in the store so I had to take her with me. It's like she was meant to be my dress.

Ginger and Molasses Cupcakes

I have baked with ginger before, but not fresh ginger. I've baked with the kind of ginger that's dry, comes from a small container and costs about $7 (why are spices so expensive?). Fresh ginger is not ground up and dry, it doesn't come from a small container and doesn't cost $7... unless you buy a lot of it. I will say that due to the amount of work fresh ginger requires I prefer the $7 container, but I was happy to finally try using fresh ginger in a recipe.

When shopping for this recipe fresh ginger was the only thing I needed to buy (hooray!). Though I'm a fresh ginger novice when it comes to baking or cooking with it, I know what it looks like and felt confident I could find it at Stop and Shop and not have to make a bunch of trips to various grocery stores. I was right. Yeah me. The recipe said to buy about 2 6-inch pieces of ginger to yield what I would need. I bought 1 large and 2 small pieces thinking it would equal what I needed. I probably could have weighed it to see if it was the number of ounces the recipe specified, but that would have been a smart decision. Smart decisions are things I don't always make.

When it came to prepping these ginger and molasses cupcakes I started with the ginger. First I peeled all the pieces and tried to remove the "nubs" to make it easier to peel. Then, I minced. I actually looked up the difference between mincing, chopping and dicing (love me some Google) so I would now exactly how small the pieces of ginger were supposed to be. I assumed mincing was the smallest because I didn't think having giant chunks of ginger in these cupcakes would be very good. I was right again. I am on a roll. And, in case you're curious in terms of size of the pieces of whatever you're working with, from smallest to largest it goes minced, chopped, diced. You're welcome. Back to mincing. It was fairly easy to do, some of the pieces of ginger were harder to chop than others, not sure why, but overall it was a pretty painless, though sticky process. In an exciting not normal turn of events my eyes proved to be great measuring cups this time around because I got the perfect amount of ginger that I needed for the recipe. Chances of that ever happening again... 1 in never.

The rest of the recipe was easy, except for one minor hiccup. Before going grocery shopping I checked my molasses supply to make sure I had the 2/3 cup that was necessary. I looked in the cupboard, and the jar looked to have enough molasses. Of course when it came to measuring out the molasses while preparing the batter it turned out that I didn't have enough. Using my perfect measuring-cup eyes I concluded I was a little less than 1/4 cup short. Crap. I was tired and now annoyed, I had already worked all day and I didn't feel like making a trip to the store for one thing. I did think about it for about a minute and then decided that being roughly 1/4 cup short of molasses was not a crisis and couldn't possibly make that much of a difference.

During the baking time I added 2 minutes to the total time since these weren't quite done after 20 minutes. When I poked them with the toothpick after 20 minutes I still had batter on the toothpick and the middles sunk in a little. After a little more time in the oven they were fine. When I tasted them I didn't notice anything missing due to the small amount of molasses that I didn't have. Then again, this was the first time I tasted them so I didn't really have anything to compare them to. Ignorance is bliss!

As many of the cupcakes so far in this project have been, these were topped with whipped cream. I made the whipped cream while the cupcakes were baking since it's so easy and put it in the fridge in a Ziplock bag until I was ready to frost the cupcakes. When it was frosting time I noticed that the whipped cream had become a little liquidy (may or may not be a real word) even though I left it in the fridge. I decided to re-whip it in my stand mixer to get it back to the consistency that I wanted. Worked like a charm and I was proud of my head's-up thinking. I did forget one thing. To garnish the cupcakes with the $7-container ginger before I served them and took their pictures. Next time I'll remember the garnish and I'll have the required amount of molasses... unless I forget.

Date-Nut Mini Cupcakes

Miss me last week? If you did, my deepest apologies. We were in Florida basking in the sun and sand (and also shopping for wedding dresses with mom... we have a winner!). But now we're back, and we're baking.

I don't know much about dates, but I do know they look like giant slugs. I discovered this when opening my recently purchased container of Sunsweet pitted dates. I was going to taste one since I've never had one before to see what they were like, but once I saw what they look like I couldn't make myself do it. To me they just looked like a giant slug or some other type of creepy crawly creature that I couldn't put in my mouth. Even after I chopped them up I couldn't make myself try one. All I could think about was how they looked in their original unchopped form. Not pretty.

I set my expectations low when making these date-nut mini cupcakes (recipe not available on Martha's website) because I didn't know how I felt about dates at the time I first read the recipe, and I'm not a big fan of walnuts. Since those 2 things were the main components of these cupcakes I didn't think they stood a chance. Truthfully I wanted to skip this recipe entirely and move on to the next one for that reason. And, because ground cardamom is $14 for a 2 oz. bottle which just seems utterly ridiculous. While I did briefly contemplate skipping the recipe, I'm not a quitter so I sucked it up, spent $21 on ground cardamom and walnuts and started getting to work.

As has become my practice I "prepped" everything before I started to really get to work. I chopped the slugs... make that dates, toasted the walnuts and turned on the tea kettle to start boiling water. My timing has become quite impeccable if I do say so myself. I have always loved mini cupcakes because they're cute, as are all mini things. But, filling mini cupcakes is not cute, not cute at all. There's no good way to do it. I didn't use my glass Pyrex measuring cup like I normally would because I knew that once I started pouring the batter into the liners I would almost have to immediately stop pouring since mini cupcakes are so small. Which meant that stopping the momentum of the batter would be difficult, the batter would probably overflow and make a mess. I wasn't willing to deal with all of that. So, I used a teaspoon and carried a small measuring cup underneath it to catch any batter that might fall. This wasn't the best method and I still made a mess, but it wasn't the worst method either.

These cupcakes were supposed to be baked for 15 minutes with a turn halfway through the total baking time. I started with 7 minutes, then turned the cupcakes and baked them for 7 more minutes. With the toothpick test I thought a little more baking time was needed so I added 2 more minutes and did that for the remaining 2 batches of cupcakes. In the end each batch was baked for 16 total minutes. The nice thing about making mini cupcakes is that I have 2 mini cupcake pans, so I could have a batch ready to go into the oven as soon as the batch before it was done. Eventually I will invest in a second regular-sized cupcake pan... eventually. Maybe I'll put one of the wedding registry!

For the first time in this project I didn't have to make a frosting/topping for the cupcakes. I almost didn't know what to do with myself. The recipe said to add creme fraiche to these cupcakes. Confession... I have no idea what creme fraiche is and I didn't Google it to find out. I assume it is French and in French it means fresh cream. I could be incorrect. As we learned earlier, I studied Spanish, not French in high school so my vocabulary is limited. Lo siento (I'm sorry in Spanish). I guessed that creme fraiche didn't mean whipped cream, otherwise Martha would have told me to make it. So from the picture in the book I took it to mean something along the lines of a Cool Whip. I'm sure Martha would gasp in disgust if she knew that's what I purchased (lo siento, Martha), but I didn't know what else to do. I taste tested the cupcakes without Cool Whip because I like a "naked" taste test to see how much the frosting/topping helps or hurts a cupcake. The cupcakes sans Cool Whip were good. Turns out slugs (dates) aren't too bad, and I didn't mind the walnuts that much. With a dollop of Cool Whip the cupcakes were slightly more delicious. Though Martha might disagree with me, I find absolutely nothing wrong with Cool Whip. It's delicious, and I could, and have eaten it by the teaspoonfuls. Judge me if your must.

Tres Leches Cupcakes

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, these pictures are not the best, that's what I get for not being patient and taking them when the lighting wasn't so good. There's only so much Photoshop and my Photoshop skills can do.

Tres leches... that means 3 milks for all of you non-Spanish speaking readers. For the first time in awhile I finally had a recipe where I didn't have to search for an ingredient I didn't have! It was nice for a change. Scavenger hunting for ingredients isn't always fun. My streak of reading through the entire recipe before starting to bake is still alive (the same cannot be said for the Patriots 15-game win streak against the Bills... go Bills!), even for a recipe as easy as these tres leches cupcakes (the link provided is for tres leches cake, that's all Martha had on her website).

I'm particularly proud that before I started baking I did all the prep work. I started melting the butter and while the butter was melting I separated the eggs that I had left out during the day so they were at room temperature. While the butter was cooling I used my beloved stand mixer to whisk the egg whites until they formed soft peaks and then whisked in the egg yolks and sugar. Once the butter had melted and cooled I folded that into the batter and then folded in the flour. At that point the cupcakes were ready to be baked. The recipe said to fill the liners halfway, and while I tried to do that, I think I filled them a little too full since after all the baking was said and done I got 5 less cupcakes than the recipe said I was supposed to. Oops. It could also be that I ate some of the batter... it happens.

I baked the cupcakes for 24 minutes with a turn halfway through the total baking time. The recipe said 25 minutes, but as I've stated before, my timer only works in whole minutes so I always go less because you can't un-bake something. While the cupcakes were baking I whisked together the tres leches so it would be ready to brush on the cupcakes when they were done. As soon as the cupcakes were baked to golden-brown perfection I took them out of the oven and immediately poked them with a skewer, make that toothpick. Because Martha told me to, I kept the cupcakes in the tins and brushed on the mixture. I gave each cupcake 10 brushes and then placed the cupcakes in the fridge for 30 minutes so the cupcakes could absorb the mixture. In hindsight I wish I had stopped at 10 coats per cupcake, but I'll get to that in a minute.

After the first batch of cupcakes had set for 30 minutes I took them out of the tins and baked the second, very small batch. When that batch was done I repeated the brushing process. Now that each cupcake had been given 10 coats of the tres leches mixture I continued brushing the cupcakes until the mixture was gone because that's what Martha said to do. I stopped after each cupcake had been given 20 coats because I didn't want the cupcakes to become soggy. They were already extremely heavy, and I also figured that since I didn't get 20 total cupcakes, I should account some of the mixture that I had left for that cupcakes that I didn't have.

These cupcakes were to be topped with whipped cream, which I have made several times up to this point with these rhubarb cupcakes and these blueberries-and-cream cupcakes. It is very easy to make and I like using a Ziploc bag to pipe the whipped cream on top so I did that again this time. I also garnished the tops with cinnamon (tigers love pepper, hate cinnamon... name that movie!). While taking the pictures for these cupcakes (which I'm unhappy with as previously mentioned) I gave them a taste test and they were too soggy for my liking. I wish I had stopped at 10 coats each. Even though that wouldn't have used all of the milk mixture I feel like they would have been more enjoyable. They tasted fine, I just wasn't happy with the consistency. Perhaps they would have been better if I had eaten one immediately after taking it out of the fridge. But, I wanted to bring the cupcake to room temperature for photographing purposes and Martha also said to serve them that way. Maybe she doesn't know everything (still love you Martha!).

Mocha Cupcakes

We already covered how I feel about coffee when I made these tiramisu cupcakes. I suppose however, that there is a difference between coffee and espresso, but I couldn't tell you what that is and I don't feel like doing my typical Google research to find out. I'm just going to plead ignorance and move ahead to baking mocha cupcakes (the recipe on MarthaStewart.com was not the same one from the book... sorry!). First order of business, get all the ingredients. The 2 most glaring items that I didn't have in my pantry, and I thought might require some looking into were espresso powder for the cupcakes themselves, and coffee extract for the frosting (which search I will detail later).

I assumed I would be able to get espresso powder in the grocery store and I was right. See, assuming doesn't always make an ass out of you and me like they say. Anyway, there were a few different kinds of espresso powder at the store and I had no idea which one I should purchase. Bobby had come with me on this particular shopping trip so I consulted with him and after some discussion I did what I always do, opt for the cheapest one. I'm saving for a wedding you know! And, I'm also frugal (sounds better than cheap). In reality, I'm not going to spend $12 for a canister of espresso powder that I'll probably never use again when I can spend $3 on one. I feel a lot less guilty about wasting $3 than $12 because as I already mentioned, I'm saving for a wedding!

For 2 weeks now I have read through the entire recipe before I started baking. Kudos to me! See, I'm learning. I also remembered to leave out the eggs before I went to work this morning so they would be at room temperature. I didn't however remember to leave out the sour cream so it would also be at room temperature. There are only so many things I can remember after waking up at 4:50am, and to leave out sour cream just isn't one of them.

First thing I did was brew the espresso in my "espresso machine" or what regular people like myself call a coffee maker. This may or may not be the correct way to make espresso, I truthfully have no idea, but I can tell you I most certainly was not going to be buying an "espresso machine" for these cupcakes. I don't drink espresso and I have more than enough kitchen appliances already. While my espresso was brewing I started working on the rest of the recipe giving the espresso some time to cool, though Martha never did say it was necessary. After mixing all the ingredients together I had to add the espresso-espresso powder mixture to the rest of the batter. I was thinking that the espresso powder should dissolve into the espresso, but it didn't, and I poured it into the batter. Mixing the espresso-espresso powder mixture into the batter made quite a mess. There was some minor batter spray that spread across the kitchen, as well as my white tank top. I have at least 3 aprons. You'd think I'd wear one of them... you'd think wrong. I was worried the batter was going to be too watery, but after a good dose of mixing it was okay. I baked the cupcakes for 22 minutes, turning them once halfway through the baking time.

After I had taken a break from baking the cupcakes I started working on the coffee version of the seven-minute frosting that was to accompany them. I have made this frosting before with these coconut cupcakes but I didn't like it with the coconut extract... way too coconutty for me. I was worried that I would have the same opinion of this frosting as well. But, before I could even worry about how the frosting would taste, I had to find the coffee extract to make it. I had a suspicion that Stop and Shop wouldn't have coffee extract. They do have several different extracts that I didn't expect them to have, but sadly, coffee was not one of them. I figured this would happen and was prepared to search online and order myself some coffee extract, which is precisely what I did. I did a simple Google search for coffee extract and picked the website that had the cheapest one. Of course I also Googled myself a coupon code so I could save a couple bucks. Just call me Miss Frugal!

Bobby and I went away for a couple days (to look at wedding venues) and when we got back my coffee extract was happily waiting for me on the front porch. The fact that we were away and doing fun things like looking at wedding venues made the wait that much easier. I digress. So, with the coffee extract in hand and after some rest from baking earlier in the day I could start and finish the coffee seven-minute frosting. Like last time, making this frosting was a bit of a process and yielded way more frosting than needed for the amount of cupcakes I got from the recipe (22). But, the most surprising thing of all was that I didn't hate it, even with the coffee extract. I thought for sure this was going to be a repeat of the coconut seven-minute frosting, but it wasn't. Meaning, I could actually eat the cupcakes once they were frosted. Hooray for me, not hooray for my waistline.

Zucchini-Spice Cupcakes

My earliest memory of zucchini is from my very early childhood when I used to go to my babysitters, and for lunch one day we had to eat raw zucchini. Of course, we were given other, more delicious food during that meal, but all I remember is the zucchini and how I wanted to gag when I had to eat it. Lovely visual I provided for you. Needless to say from that point on, I have had no interest in eating zucchini... raw, cooked or otherwise. About a year ago I tried zucchini bread for the first time, hesitantly of course, and I have to say, it was very good. So, when it came time to make zucchini-spice cupcakes I figured they had a chance of being tasty.

I was not expecting it to be so difficult to find zucchini. I figured it'd be right there next to the cucumbers or squash and that would be that. I was wrong... kind of. I made several passes through the produce department trying to find zucchini with no luck. There were several kinds of cucumbers, there was yellow squash and green squash, but no zucchini. Stop and Shop failed me... not the first time. The other grocery store in town, Price Chopper is less than 5 minutes down the road so I decided to make a stop there to see if they'd have any zucchini. I figured at the very least I could get a loaf of bread that they sell, that I really like and haven't had in awhile because I don't normally shop there anymore (Stop and Shop is closer). Again, I stalked the produce department with no luck. Nothing was labeled zucchini, but I was becoming suspicious of the "green squash" that looked an awful lot like zucchini. Then I thought maybe the freezer section would have frozen zucchini, and while not ideal, could still work. No luck.

It was then I decided I would give the produce department one last try, but before I did I was going to use my trusty iPhone and do a little Google research to see if there was another name for zucchini that may be living in the produce department. I didn't find that much that I didn't already know. So, as a last-ditch effort I mustered up all my courage and decided to just ask an employee of the store. I honed in on a nice young gentleman and asked him if the store had any zucchini because I wasn't having any luck finding it. He said yes (wahoo!) and led me to the zucchini a.k.a. green squash. I still wasn't completely convinced that this was the right thing, but I wasn't going to drive 20 minutes to Whole Foods and I wanted to make the cupcakes today. I grabbed 2 "zucchini" and headed to the checkout line.

This is the most efficient I have been with a recipe to date. I read through all the ingredients and the steps to make sure I had all the prep work done before I got started so I knew what I was in for. First, I grated the zucchini using my food processor. The recipe calls for 3 cups of grated zucchini and I came up just shy of 3 cups. I didn't care. I wasn't making another trip to the store. If I was a little short, I was a little short. Once the zucchini was grated I started preheating the oven so I could toast the walnuts. I figured by the time the oven was warmed up and the walnuts toasted I would be ready to fold the walnuts into the batter... and I was! Go me.

While I was pouring the batter from the mixing bowl into a large measuring cup (if the batter is more liquidy I like to pour it into the cupcake pan from my large glass measuring cup, it's less of a mess) I spotted some larger chunks of not-so-grated zucchini and pulled them out. I didn't want someone to bite into a cupcake and get a chunk of zucchini. I know these are zucchini cupcakes, but they're not supposed to be chunky zucchini cupcakes.

I baked the cupcakes for 20 minutes, rotating them halfway through the total baking time and they came out perfect. Naturally I gave one taste test soon after it came out of the oven and they were good. It turns out green squash and zucchini are the same thing, or at the very least they can be interchanged. I'm still not really sure. All I know is the cupcakes turned out to be delicious. The only thing I would change if I ever make them again is the walnuts. I would choose to omit them the second time around. They're not terrible, I just know I would enjoy the cupcake more without them. The cream cheese frosting I have made before to accompany these carrot cupcakes and while it is delicious, it still didn't help to mask the taste of the walnuts.

Recently I've started sharing the cupcakes I've been making with our neighbors (in addition to co-workers) because I figure it's a nice neighborly thing to do and you never know when you might need a favor. Plus, these particular neighbors are very good to us. I had taken them a few cupcakes for their family, and a couple days later the wife, Diane, came over with 2 huge zucchinis in her hands and asked if I'd like them to cook or bake with since I had just made the zucchini cupcakes. I said sure, thanked her and told her I'd make her some zucchini bread in the not-too-distant future. In my head I was thinking where were these bad boys 2 days ago when I was driving all over town looking for zucchini! Only in my world do things like this happen. But now, if I ever need it, I've got a whole freezer-sized Ziploc bag full of grated zucchini waiting for me in the freezer.

Blueberries-and-Cream Cupcakes

I'm finding myself caught in the same conundrum (I spelled that right on the first try!) I was when I made the banana pecan cupcakes. Though the fruit in this case is a blueberry as opposed to a banana, the question remains the same... when does a muffin become a cupcake? I'm still going to maintain what I said before, that it's the frosting that turns a simple muffin into a cupcake. But, in the instance of these blueberries-and-cream cupcakes (no link on marthastewart.com) they were much more cakey than your average muffin. This could mean it's more than just the frosting that transforms a muffin into a cupcake. Jury's still out.

I still haven't learned to read through an entire recipe before I start baking, but in this case, it didn't matter. This was a fairly simple recipe, nothing too tricky involved. I was surprised though, that I didn't have to toss the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter (like I did with these chocolate chip cupcakes) to help them "float" in the batter so they wouldn't all sink to the bottom. But, I didn't. Turns out blueberries are less dense than chocolate chips, who knew?

Like I said, nothing too tricky about these cupcakes, the batter was done relatively quickly and ready for the oven. I filled the liners about three-quarters full and for the most part was happy with the size of the cupcakes when they came out of the oven. Only a few were a little larger that I normally like, and they were all flat. Not the rounded beauties that I strive for. Martha said to bake these cupcakes for 25 total minutes with a turn halfway through the total baking time. Since my oven timer only works in whole minutes I baked in 12-minute intervals and the cupcakes came out perfectly, with a lovely golden hue.

While the cupcakes were baking I made the whipped cream that was to accompany them. Normally I wait a little while to give myself a baking break before making the cupcake's topping, but since whipped cream is very easy I found the energy to get everything done at once. It took less than 5 minutes (thank you stand mixer with whisk attachment) and it was done. I put the whipped cream in the fridge to keep cool while the cupcakes continued baking, and then cooled.

The last time I made whipped cream was for these rhubarb cupcakes and for those cupcakes I piped the whipped cream onto the cupcakes directly from the Ziploc bag I stored it in. Since I liked how those cupcakes turned out so much I did the same thing with these cupcakes. Unfortunately my piping this time around wasn't as good as the last time. I think I cut the hole in the bag a little too big this time. The cupcakes looked fine nonetheless, just not as good as the rhubarb cupcakes. Like the rhubarb cupcakes these cupcakes also got a little garnish, naturally blueberries would make the most sense and that's precisely what the garnish was. I had a good amount of blueberries left over, turns out my eyes are not very good measuring cups, so I liberally gave each cupcake 4 berries. I thought 5 might be a little overkill. The garnish on top definitely gave these cupcakes a little something extra, but my favorite part of these cupcakes was the blueberries that you can see through the cupcake liner. Like a pretty little secret.