Cupcakes. What was once reserved for birthdays in elementary school are now fashionable and cutting edge. Cupcake bakeries are popping up everywhere, and cupcakes tv shows are filling tv lineups. Does this mean cupcakes suddenly taste better, too?
Don’t let your previous memories of dry, tasteless cupcakes thwart your view of what a cupcake can be. How a baker bakes a cupcake has everything to do with how it tastes. If a regular-sized cake can be amazing, so can a cupcake.
Creative Sugar
Along with crazy cakes, cupcakes have had a design makeover, too. The flavor and taste of a cupcake is extremely important in its overall appeal, but the look is almost just as important. Use sugar, butter, and all those other not-so-healthy ingredients to make visual masterpieces on top of those luscious morsels of cake.
Finding a Good Recipe
Before you make a cupcake, you must have a good recipe. It doesn’t matter if you use a regular cake recipe and bake it into cupcake form, it just has to be good, really good.
I don’t recommend using box mix unless you have a great recipe to adjust it and make it better. Box mixes are good, but they aren’t great. Many recipes from scratch aren’t all that difficult compared to the box mixed, so you might as well make them taste better.
Watch the Oven!
I feel like a broke record sometimes, but there is just something frustrating about ovens. You need them because they bake cake, cupcakes included. However, if you leave them in there too long the oven will destroy them. Do not over-bake cupcakes, or any baked goods for that reason. They will be dry, crumbly, and hard. Even just a few extra minutes in the oven can pull out a considerable amount of moisture.
Frosting
I always use real buttercream frosting on any kind of cake I make, unless I’m being super lazy and use a can of frosting instead. Don’t be super lazy like me. Trust me, your cupcakes will taste a lot better if you skip the lazy can. Whether you make chocolate or vanilla, it doesn’t matter. Buttercream is the way to go.
How to Make Cupcakes for Any Event
Cupcakes can be used for any occasion including birthdays, graduations, weddings, showers, retirement parties, office parties, and lazy weekends. Search online and you’ll find lots of different creative cupcake ideas, but I highly recommend using your own creative prowess to come up with your own designs. Design doesn’t directly affect flavor, but I think they do affect each other.
Now that I’ve planted the idea that cupcakes are amazing in your brain, take that inspiration and start baking. Be simple or extravagant, just make them amazing!
