Posts Tagged green tea cupcakes

Zen Baking

October 10, 2009 at 5:05 pm · Filed under Cupcakes ·Tagged ,

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Green Tea Cupcakes with a Surprise Frosting

I’ve forgotten how therapeutic baking can be. Lately I’ve only been baking to fulfill orders, which can be quite stressful for the obvious reasons. Baking for yourself or for loved-ones is a totally different story.

Today, instead of working on my laptop and checking papers, I decided to take the load off by spending some quality time in the kitchen. I have a date with my college girlfriends tonight so I decided to make a dozen green tea cupcakes for them.  Making those didn’t take very long and I was still in the baking mood so I considered making a recipe I’ve ignored for quite a while.

Remember that pound cake I made before? Well, for some reason, I could never make it again. All my succeeding attempts were all failures and I just chose to resentfully  keep this recipe until I felt brave enough to try it again. I guess all I really needed was the confidence because it turned out just like the first one. Who knew ovens could smell fear?

Although today was really supposed to be spent working, I’m glad I took the time off to do something I really enjoy. I’ve been feeling so overworked lately that all I do when I’m done is sleep (oh, and maybe have a beer or two).  After today, and what I can imagine to be a good night with the girls, I should be ready to take on more work. The next week will be quite hellish and I think it was really important for me to regroup. So here’s to a week full of deadlines and hopefully a disposition that will help me breeze through it.

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Silicone Cups and Green Tea Cupcakes

May 7, 2009 at 6:11 am · Filed under Dessert ·Tagged ,

img_5020Either I did something wrong or these silicone baking cups aren’t as good as they claim to be. Silicone cups are supposed to be non-stick but it sure didn’t seem that way when I was trying to remove my cupcakes.  Even after cooling, my cupcakes were so difficult to remove that I had to use a butter knife to help release them from the cups.  Am I supposed to serve the silicone cups like I would with normal paper cups? That doesn’t sound too wise, especially if you bring the cupcakes outside your home because you’ll probably end up misplacing them or finding them in the trash.

Another thing was that I noticed my cupcakes seemed to dry out on the outside and had a slightly hard crust. Although it was still very moist on the inside, I didn’t like that there a bit of a crunch when biting into the cupcakes.

So the verdict is: paper cupcake liners are still better than silicone cups. They keep the cupcakes moist, are easier to remove and are disposable.  Will I give my silicone cups another chance? Maybe, but next time, I’ll probably put paper liners also. These silicone cups are good because you can bake a little more than a dozen and not consume too much space in the oven. You can easily just add another cup on your cookie sheet and not consume that much space. They’re practical that way. I’d probably try them out with a muffin recipe and see if they still stick. And if they do, they might end up as a kitchen décor.

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Now on a more positive note. I have been wanting to make green tea cupcakes and I was finally able to do it with the help of  Elinor Klivans, the author of Cupcakes! which is a wonderful recipe book given by my sister, G.  Added with a little ingenuity and voila -  the fluffiest green tea cupcakes! I used her recipe for a basic yellow cupcake and tweaked it by adding milk with green tea. I made this by steeping three green tea bags in milk. I would have used powdered green tea but I couldn’t find any. Nevertheless, the cupcakes did have the taste of green tea that was not too over powering. This was definitely the silver lining behind today’s dark baking cloud.

green tea cupcakes with buttercream frosting

green tea cupcakes with buttercream frosting

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