Psychedelic Cupcakes

If everything is going according to plan, Betsy and I are landing in Amsterdam today and so I thought it would be appropriate to make some psychedelic food.  Turns out not only were these cupcakes delicious, but they would be super fun to make with the little ones also.  Not that I have any little ones, but if I did, I think they would enjoy these guys.

I got this recipe from a good friend who happened to be a previous pastry chef at a very prominent DC bakery.  This is a recipe he came up with for  a wedding cake actually, but let me tell ya… it makes really good cupcakes.  Super light and fluffy but still rich and flavorful.  Awesome stuff.

Vanilla Cake (Thanks Chris!)

Base mixture:
- 226 grams butter
- 348 grams sugar

Dry stuff:
- 348 grams cake flour (very important. I tried this recipe once with pastry flour and it didn’t work at all.)
- 4 Teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 Teaspoon salt

Wet stuff:
- 1 Cup Milk
- 1.5 Teaspoons vanilla extract (or brandy or some other flavoring)

Meringue:
- 284 grams egg whites (about 8 eggs)
- 70 grams sugar

Step one is just creaming your butter and sugar together.  You should end up with a light and fluffy mixture after a few minutes of beating.  I use a hand mixer for this, but if you have a stand mixer, obviously you can use that.  I guess also a whisk would work, but it’s gonna take some time.

To really get baking right, I think it is pretty important to weigh ingredients.  It’s the only way to make sure everything is perfect.  Digital scales are really inexpensive and I use mine for all kinds of things.  Here are some common conversions though if you want the above recipe in Cups.

Mix all your dry ingredients together and all your wet ingredients separately.  Then slowly add your dry and wet ingredients to your base mixture of sugar and butter.  Start by adding about 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then add half the wet ingredients, then half of the remaining dry ingredients, the rest of the wet ingredients, and then the rest of the dry ingredients.

So you start with dry ingredients and you end by adding dry ingredients.  You’ll end up with a batter but it will be very thick.  That’s okay though, because we are about to add a large quantity of meringue to the batter.

The Meringue. Separate the egg yolks from the whites.  Do this one at a time and then add the white to the rest of the whites.  If you get even one tiny speck of yolk in the whites, they won’t whip up due to the fat in the yolk.  You’ll end up with a bunch of yolks that you can use for a yolk omelet or something.  Just joking, but seriously you could make about 2 gallons of hollandaise sauce.

All you need is the whites though.  Start beating these with your hand mixer until they are very fluffy and forming light peaks, then slowly pour in your sugar.  After a few more minutes of beating, stiff peaks will form.

With a spatula, fold the meringue into the previous batter mixture.  It will lighten substantially and be velvety smooth.  Fold it slowly and take your time.  You want to keep as many of the bubbles in the meringue as possible.  Be gentle here people.

Now of course you could just bake this as is and it would be delicious.  But I took a few tablespoons of the mixture in a few different bowls and added some fun colors to them.  I used the gel coloring rather than the liquid.  The liquid would really change the consistency of the batter.

My idea was to put the colors in the middle of each cupcake and then swirl them around a bit.  So I did a layer of white batter in each cup, then randomly poured the colors in each cup.

Finally I topped each cupcake off with more white mixture and then used a butter knife (or toothpick) to gently swirl the mixture.  Just make two or three swirls.  If you do more than that you will combine all the colors too much and end up with a purple filling.  Not as fun.

Bake these guys at 375 for 20-25 minutes.  When they come out of the oven they will be puffed up, but as they cool they will calm down a bit.  And yes, you want to let them to cool completely before you do anything with them.

I’m not going to post the instructions for the frosting I made here.  I used the exact instructions and recipe from Dyann Bakes.  Her 1:2:3 butter cream worked out perfectly.

After the cakes cooled I frosted each of them pretty generously.

I brought these guys into work one day (because Betsy made me take them out of the house) and they were very quickly devoured.  Not only were they really fun, but also very tasty.

Whether you do the colors or not, try out this cake recipe.  It is killer.