Edible Memoir

What a magical number two can be. Two days to a weekend. Two celestial objects that fetch the day and night. And who can refuse tea for two. Well my niece, let’s call her B, just entered the terrible twos and we almost didn’t get to celebrate with her, but it turns out a b-lated birthday celebration with cupcakes and a bit of magic can be twice as good as any.

Crammed full of familial birthdays, April usually tires me out by month’s end. Every weekend beckons annual celebrations and sweet treats. And this year, B’s mother asked me to bake birthday party cupcakes for one of those weekends. She requested vanilla cupcakes, vanilla frosting, and my discretional decorations without the knowledge that there were pre-bought unicorn cupcake toppers in waiting. Embracing my inner baker, I began dreaming of decorating cupcakes, (they say once you start dreaming in a language, you’re practically fluent, and since baking is definitely a language … wink, wink). My dreams were decorated with cupcakes laughing on rainbow sprinkled clouds, singing in puddles of buttercream icing, and dancing in raindrops of food color. For the sugar-little lifestyle I lead, it verges on the edge of nightmarish, but that’s another matter entirely.

Anon, I came to the decision that the cupcakes needed to be multi-colored, I hopped back onto the 60’s & 70’s tie-dye trend that so many Zennials believe they began (yes, I was part of the early 2000’s tie-dye fad), oh to be so young and naive. Initially planning a grand total of five colors, approximating the colors in a rainbow. The cupcake-tin’s smaller size cured me of that nonsensical idea, and I came back to my senses around three colors: Orange (B’s favorite color), Purple (I believe the color exists somewhere on a non-existent unicorn, I mean this isn’t Scotland), and Green (come on, did you really think I wouldn’t add my favorite color). Groovy baby. I rummaged the internet for the best vanilla cupcake recipe and there was a clear winner, Preppy Kitchen’s Moist Vanilla Cupcake Recipe, which inspired, and was adapted for, the following attempts. (There is no affiliation with the aforementioned website or recipe) Wanting to avoid any tie-dye mishigas, the hereunder story occurred prior to the proposed party.

Once upon a 2 a.m. time, there was a warm oven, six cupcakes awaiting creation, and one Bakester’s will to manifest birthday magic for the Unicorn Princess, B.

Considering the bakester wasn’t baking for a party, this time around, she cut the recipe into thirds. With one-third of the edible elements gathered, she creamed the sugar, butter, and vanilla extract until floofy. And muttered, “I’m not sure if that’s a technical term, but it is now.”

The recipe suggested to separate the yolk from the whites, feeling un-wasteful & uninspired by egg whites that evening, the Bakester just dumped the whole egg into the creamed batter. So to correctly balance the moistness in the cake, a bit of the sour cream element should have been omitted.

As she exclaimed, “I’m a self-proclaimed baking rebel!”, she added more sour cream than necessary, or so she led us readers to believe, as she didn’t use any measuring utensils so we will never know.

After pouring in the last the wet ingredient, milk, the dry ingredients were added all at once, and in a great flurry, the surrounding counter was covered in a thin film of white powder. The Bakester began the arduous task of whisking, ’twas a tricky task, as she didn’t want to over whip the mixture but the elements needed to be fully incorporated. She needed to find the magical sweet spot, you would say.

Properly incorporated, she divided the batter into three bowls, and slowly introduced a different food coloring to each. Satisfied with the results, the Bakester spooned globs of batter into six cupcake-tin liners, layering each color as she reached the sixth liner. In that warmed oven of 350°F, she baked the cupcakes for 15 minutes, until a toothpick no longer dragged batter out of the cupcake. Perfectly spongy, floofy, and fit for a princess, the Bakester exhaled in relief and inhaled that magical goodness.

With the recipe bookmarked and the alterations noted, the Bakester was ready for the next stage of the birthday cupcake quest. And this first batch of cupcakes lived happily ever after … in everyone’s tummy.

1/3 of the Edible Elements

You might think my decision to shave the recipe down by 2/3 is inane, but there’s logic behind my chaos. I always look at the eggs in a recipe and depending on how many there are in the initial recipe, so 3 in this instance, you split the recipe into variables of the total number of eggs, so variables of 3. Variables of the total number of eggs, you heard it here, using mathematics in baking, how novel. The following measurements are approximate, in decimal point, crazy, and totally not required.

• Sugar -.33333 cup; I actually used the correct amount
• Butter – .25 cup or more
• Egg – 1
• Vanilla Extract -.33333 tbsp or more
• Milk – .167 cup
• Sour Cream – .167 cup or more
• Flour – .555556 cup
• Baking Powder -.5 tsp
• Baking Soda – .083 tsp
• Salt -.08333 tsp

Fast-forward to the birthday party weekend, we find out that the fully-vaccinated, live-in grandpa has been exposed to Covid and is exhibiting symptoms in B’s household. Covid crashed the party and attempted to ruin the magical unicorn festivities. Measuring the health and safety of the situation, we forwent the party and settled on a post-covid-testing day to celebrate with the little one. A week or so after the unexecuted birthday party, we snatched her up for birthday activities, unicorn presents, and of course, cupcake baking & consumption. For a newly-minted two year old, she already has a knack for baking, and bonus she gets to test every ingredient before and after it’s mixed into the bowl. The butter and sugar were sufficiently tested and fault-free.

By no means would I call myself a professional baker, so it was a bit of the blind leading the blind situation, even though she’s two and has better eye-sight than me, but I digress. We stood, her upon a stool and me upon my short stature, and filled my KitchenAid mixer with the edible elements (you need a hands-free mixer when baking with a toddler, and obviously you should listen to me and all my motherly experience and knowledge).

As B and I both enjoy a fairytale or two, we followed the loose guidelines set by the Bakester above. However, mesmerized with the KitchenAid’s whirling functions and possibly two much butter and sugar added by my toddler sous chef, the batter became over-whipped and was the incorrect texture. I wished on some birthday magic to force a rise in the oven, but alas, ’twas not meant to be. In an un-surprising twist, the cupcakes were deflated (however they still tasted scrumptious), the buttercream was severely rushed (not my best work, I have to admit), and no photo evidence of the fiasco was secured. Anyways, the unicorn present (the deflated toy, pictured above) and some birthday gardening, sufficiently distracted me from my failure (I think I was the only bothered with the imperfect cupcakes, it helps when one of your critics has been alive for less years than I’ve been single).

Overall, the experience was only half-cursed. I haven’t attempted cupcakes, miniature cakes, or cake-y substances in a cup of any kind, since the deflated tale, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with this latest adventure. I can truly say life has been shaping up into one big Brother’s Grimm fairytale because what dynamic story doesn’t include some conflict and failure, it’s not like I have a fairy godmother to help a girl out.

Two Be Continued…

Citation

Kanell, John. “Moist Vanilla Cupcake Recipe”, Preppy Kitchen. July 8, 2020. April 2, 2021. https://preppykitchen.com/moist-vanilla-cupcake-recipe/