Cupcakes are much easier than cakes to bake and transport, not to mention their little size makes them the perfect indulgence for just about any occasion be it birthday or anniversary or even weddings.
Despite their popularity, many cupcakes you find at the mall or provision stores have an awful texture and annoying aftertaste. I don’t need a microphone to tell you that homemade cupcakes are always better. You know the things entering into your food and you are able to eliminate the things you don’t like or reduce them.
Cupcakes are definitely the in thing now and of course I’d advise you to get into your kitchen and whip up a batch for you to indulge in but how about I give you some tips to ensure your cupcakes don’t only come out looking better than the store bought one, they would also come out tasting amazing.
The last time we talked about cupcakes, we talked in detail about cupcake faults (check post here) you might not have experienced any of the faults highlighted in the post but I’m pretty sure this post would help your cupcakes come out better.
NOTE: you can also check out this post on cake faults and remedies and this post on general baking tips.
- Use the best ingredients available: it’s not a secret that the better the quality of your ingredients, the better the quality of you baked goods. There is a reason why the store bought cupcakes taste the way they do; they obviously try to economize the ingredients whilst baking in bulk. Even if you are baking in bulk, ensure you use the best ingredients money can buy
- Bring your ingredients to room temperature: never ever use ingredients straight from the fridge/freezer. When they are cold, they won’t mix perfectly well with the other ingredients. Bring them down to room temperature by bringing them out of the freezer hours before you start baking and if peradventure you forget to bring them out and you need to start baking ASAP, drop you cold eggs in warm water; put your butter in a bowl of warm water or put it in the microwave in 30 seconds intervals till it comes down to room temperature; warm your cold milk in the microwave in 30 seconds intervals till it comes down to room temperature.
- Don’t over mix your batter: I can’t sing this enough, don’t over mix your batter. If you do that you’d mess up the whole thing. Over mixing your batter changes the texture of your cake and would land you the most annoying cupcake ever.
- Preheat your oven: this is quite self explanatory. Before you put your cupcakes in your oven, make sure you preheat your oven. Hat I usually do is to put on my oven before I go about mixing my cupcake.
- Take time to sift: sifting helps incorporate air into your mixture, helps eliminate lumps and dirt so make sure you don’t skip this step.
- Measure correctly: you are not cooking, you are baking. Cupcake isn’t a pot of food where you add spices till your conscience tells you is enough. Baking is science, if your recipe tells you one teaspoon of baking powder, do so and make sure you are using the right means of measurement. Check this post for a list of baking tools.
- Substitute with caution: don’t tell yourself that the sugar in this recipe is too much and you reduce it from 2 cups to ½ cup (that’s too drastic) when you are reducing an ingredient, know that each ingredient has its own function in order to give you a perfectly baked cupcake. So substitute with caution. Sugar isn’t just for sweetness; it also produces texture and moisture.
- Measure the quantity you are baking: nobody likes irregular shaped cupcakes or cupcakes that rise unevenly or even cupcakes of the same batch with different sizes. My point is use a means of making sure your cupcakes come out evenly sized. Whether it is ice cream scoop or spoon, just use anything to ensure evenness.
- Check the date of your ingredient: nobody likes the taste of expired ingredients in anything so take your time to check the date of your ingredients because if you don’t, you won’t only get a bad cupcake, you would have wasted a lot of money.
- Use high quality liners: if you read my last post on cupcake faults, you’d see where I highlighted the issues that might arise when you use bad liners. Your liners would peel off the cupcake giving you a sight that isn’t so pretty.
- Don’t peak: I know you are excited to see your perfectly baked cupcake so you might be tempted to open it whilst it is baking. Lemme tell you if you don’t already know, that’s a taboo in the baking industry. You don’t open your oven whilst your cupcakes are baking, allow the time stipulated in your recipe to elapse before you open it.
- Bounce back test or dry skewer test: your cupcakes need to be perfectly baked if not fault no 4 highlighted in the post about cupcake faults would happen to you. The best way to know when your cupcake is done is to either push a skewer through it(this usually leaves a hole in your cake) or the bounce back test (when you push you finger into the cupcake, if it bounces back then it is done, if it sinks then it need more baking time.)
- Don’t leave cupcakes in their pans: the heat of the pan continues the baking process and it might just give you an over baked dry cupcake. Gently remove your cupcakes from the pan immediately it comes out from the oven.
- Store properly: don’t ruin all your efforts by not storing correctly. Don’t store warm cupcakes and store in air tight containers.
Hope the tips highlighted ablove help you in one way or the other.
Cheers
Xoxo
Mackudos
KRAFTAHOLICS 