Thursday, January 1, 2009

Giant Cupcake

For Christmas this year, my parents got me a cake pan in the shape of a huge cupcake. So we had to try it out for Christmas dinner (yes, I am a little behind on posting). We made a white cake with chocolate frosting. I had been looking for a go-to white cake recipe, and this could be it. It was very moist, with a light crumb and not too sweet. The chocolate frosting was good as well, I would just like it to come out darker without having to use food coloring. Any suggestions?


White Cake (from Baking Bites)

1 cup milk, room temperature
6 egg whites
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter (6 oz), softened

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Grease two 9 inch cake pans with vegetable shortening, line the bottom with parchment paper, grease the parchment paper and flour the pans.

Combine milk, eggs whites and extracts in a small bowl with a fork. Set aside.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in an electric mixer and mix at slow speed with a paddle attachment. Add butter. Continue beating at slow speed until mixture looks like wet sand (If you’re doing this by hand, sift the dry ingredients together and rub in butter).

Add all but 1/2 cup of milk mixture and beat at medium speed for 1 1/2 minutes. Add remaining milk mixture and beat for an additional 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl if necessary. Do not overmix.

Divide batter evenly between prepared pans and gently shake to smooth batter. Bake 30-35 minutes, until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. (I baked the large cupcake for about 25 minutes, with the bottom piece for about 6 minutes more than the top)

Let cakes cool in the pans for 15 minutes then invert onto racks to cool completely before frosting. Unfrosted cakes can be frozen for 1-2 weeks.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1 1/2 cups Confectioners sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp meringue powder

Mix the sugar and cocoa powder together (making sure there are no lumps). Add the butter and milk, and mix until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes or so. Add meringue powder and mix for 30 seconds more.

3 comments:

AmyRuth said...

How cute. I've seen those pans around and always thought they were so whimsical and fun. Great job. I made regular cupcakes during the holiday. Had to make additional icing and used hand mixer with beaters the 2nd time rather than stand mixer with padle. The later was darker which leads me to believe there was more air whipped in with the beaters on the hand mixer. I used exact same recipes. Weird. Hope that helps.

Nora said...

Cool! it look really great!

Check out my bolg at:
Norasworldofbaking.blogspot.com

Comments immensely appreciated!

Shop TV Products said...

Love these Big Cupcake Molds.
Played with it and have some pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/greshkolyna/sets/72157617189432560/

So much fun!