Sunday, April 25, 2010

Baking Adventure #21

The weather in Atlanta lately has been amazing. Picture clear blue skies, a slight breeze, 78 degrees and sunshine from dawn until dusk. After all of the rain we had from fall through early spring, the nice weather has been a true blessing.

With that being said, we had a pretty gnarly storm come through and wash away all of the pollen late Friday night through late Saturday night. As a result, Saturday brought a day of errands and Lifetime movies on the couch (every girl loves to indulge in these from time to time, don't judge me). Since there was no avoiding the 100% chance of rain forecasted, an Avatar movie night was planned for the evening. Neither my friend nor I had seen it before and we decided to get creative and have a blue-theme to our snacks. He supplied blue corn tortilla chips and salsa, and I whipped up something yummy... *big surprise* Any excuse I can get to bake and be creative, I'll gladly take! What baked good went with the blue theme, you ask?


AVATAR BLUE(BERRY) CUPCAKES


Of course! I used a simple white cake mix purchased back in February at an Amish market in Ohio as my base. [This was cheating a little but I was baking at midnight Friday night, mind you, and felt like experimenting with additions and not the basic mix itself. Next time, the white cake will be derived from scratch as well.]

As part of my experimenting, I added fresh blueberries, a touch of lemon juice, and blue food coloring (to half of the cupcakes). Tip for folding in fresh blueberries: toss them in a little bit of flour to keep them from settling on the bottom of the batter prior to baking.

Once the batter was to my liking, I spooned it into the cupcake liners.

Then baked at 375 for approximately 15 minutes (or until the tops were firm) then let cool completely.

While the cupcakes were cooling, the experiment continued... Cream cheese frosting is my ABSOLUTE favorite of all the frostings, but I wanted this to also involve blueberries. So I made the frosting according to my usual recipe (cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and powdered sugar) then added the blueberries I had crushed... This sounds good in theory, no? Unfortunately, the resulting frosting was a bit runny (SERIOUSLY, runny frosting is becoming my arch-nemesis when it comes to baking!)... so I decided to wrap up the cupcakes and stick the frosting in the freezer overnight to firm up... Not the best idea. The next day (once the frosting thawed) it was back to its original consistency and just altogether not worthy of the "Pint-Size Baker" stamp of approval.

Thus, after a few choice words with myself [you know you talk to yourself too], I scraped the frosting off of the few cupcakes already frosted, dumped the entire bowl into the sink, and started over from scratch. Let me back up a little... after sticking the frosting in the freezer to set over night, I stayed up until 2am researching how to make frosting thicker. There aren't many tips for thickening cream cheese frosting; however, I did find a minor tweak suggestion and went to town on the new frosting and what do you know... IT WORKED! This batch ended up being my best yet in terms of consistency! Check out the final product below:



[Trying to improve my presentation skills... What do you think?]

And that's it for now folks! Baking Adventure #23 has already been determined but I need a #22 for next week. Please leave your recommendations in the comments section! I'll select one and bake it next week for you.


2 comments:

  1. How about something with no sugar for your diabetic friend,eh? =)

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  2. Butter tarts! They're the one thing I love to eat but have never tried making myself.

    ReplyDelete