I-scream Cupcakes

I vowed to stay away from them for some time, but I couldn’t do it any longer. I was like the trite little moth that was lured into its lusty flame. What I am referring to is the lure of the cupcake; I could no longer resist. Besides, I do think I have sufficiently abstained from baking or eating them for long enough. Although I do thank myself for going on a self-imposed cupcake sabbatical; it would not have allowed me to explore other avenues in baking. But like Dorothy once said, there’s no place like home and I somewhat regard cupcakes as my culinary home.

The cupcake is where I really started to love baking and these are where my roots are. Who knew a foray into cupcakes could metamorphose into a full blown obsession with food, and in particular desserts. So come to think, I really have the humble cupcake to thank. So thank you cupcake, I will be forever grateful. So here is my tribute to the cake that instigated a passion. I made these earlier last week but never had the time to post about them properly.

I had seen these ice cream cupcakes in various food blogs when I first started blogging and thought that they would be too hard to make, despite reassurances on every recipe that they were dead easy. My confidence in baking then was at an all time low. I had only baked cupcakes in paper cases, so deviating to other containers proved a little too advanced for me. Now that my confidence has been incited, and my latent baking skills have now been uncovered, I decided it was time to make them. This was just one of these things that I needed to mark off on my mental checklist of things I must do and i'm glad I did.

The cake is Ginger Buttermilk and the frosting is orange meringue, I think these two flavours go swimmingly well together; just like the proverbial house on fire. And at first they look a little bit too cute and “made-up” to eat, but after you get a whiff of them, you will not be able to resist. My aunty took some home and sort of forgot to eat them. I know what you're thinnking, how could a cupcake or more so eating these cupcakes accidently slip your mind, but nonetheless it did. However she did mention that even a day later the cupcakes were still good. I wouldn’t recommend keeping them for too long, but I don’t think this will be a problem for these cupcakes.

Ginger Buttermilk Cupcakes
(makes 8 cupcakes)
adapted from this book

½ cup plain all-purpose flour
½ cup self-raising flour
¼ tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
90g unsalted butter, softened
½ cup firmly packed light muscovado sugar
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 egg
¼ cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 170°C. Prepare 8 ice cream cup cones.
Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and mix, set aside.
In another bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add maple syrup and egg and beat until combined. The mixture will appear curdled at this point.
Add buttermilk and beat until batter is smooth.
Sift in dry ingredients in two batches, making sure not to over mix after each addition.
Pour two tablespoons of batter into each ice cream cone. Make sure you do not overfill the cones as the cake will rise during baking.
Place cones onto a baking tray and carefully transfer to oven.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the tops have just risen, creating perfectly round mounds.
Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
Ice the tops of the cake with meringue frosting (recipe below).
And bake in the oven for 5 minutes at 160°C, until meringue is lightly browned on the edges.

Orange Meringue Frosting

1 cup caster sugar
¼ cup orange juice
2 egg whites

Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until sugar is completely dissolved.
Boil uncovered without stirring until the syrup reaches 116°C, about 5 minutes (use a candy thermometer).
Remove from heat and allow the bubbles to subside.
Beat egg whites in a dry bowl until soft peaks form.
While mixer is operating, add hot syrup in thin streams beating on high speed for about 10 minutes or until frosting is thick and cool.