birthday cake cupcakes.

The momfuku milk bar cookbook is to me what Willy Wonka's chocolate factory is to chocolate fanatics. It's a playground of wonderful ideas that never cease to excite me. Like seriously, blueberries and cream cookies? Cereal milk panna cotta? Ritz crunch? And did I mention, the most festive looking birthday cake ever? Confetti never fails to add to the party atmosphere, I swear. And dedicating a whole cake to those sprinkles is like a dream come true to me!

As much as I wanted to follow the recipe in the book, it was way too complicated and cumbersome. Instead, I decided to take a basic vanilla cupcake and throw in some sprinkles into the batter but I stuck to the accompanying birthday cake frosting and addition of birthday cake crumb(!). If you would like to view the original recipe, please head over here.

By the way, this is by no means my favourite vanilla cupcake yet. I've gathered a few potential recipes and I'm planning to bake them all and do a comparison. This one is just one of them. Although, I must say that this recipe has already lost some points on the looks scale because after baking, the crust is rather moist and sticky. Rather unappealing, if you ask me.

Having said that, the cupcake was really moist and wasn't crumbly in the least, which is typical of cakes made using the reverse-creaming method. I would like the cake to have a more open crumb, meaning fluffier. There was a very strong vanilla flavour which I felt was a bit too much. It would be better if the vanilla could be toned down and the cake have a slightly more eggy and buttery flavour. Or something like that. Truth be told, I'm not exactly sure of what I want in my ultimate vanilla cupcake. I guess I'll know it when I eat it. Which I know, isn't very helpful but...

The birthday cake frosting was glossy, light and fluffy. It melts on your tongue. Unfortunately, it's quite sweet. Not the sweetest frosting I've ever had but it could potentially put off some people. There's not much I can do about it, since it is a icing sugar based buttercream.

Cupcakes are so adorable! I should really make more of them.

Confetti Cupcakes
makes 16
adapted from Cupcake Project

1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
1 3/4 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk
sprinkles, as much as you want

Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

In a small bowl, combine sugar and seeds from the vanilla bean. Using the back of a spoon or your fingers, rub them together to infuse the vanilla flavour into the sugar.

In another bowl, combine the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add in the sugar and mix until uniformly combined. Cut in butter until you achieve a fine crumb texture.

Whisk together eggs, sour cream, oil and vanilla. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture until just combined. Gradually add milk until just combined. The batter will be quite liquid. Stir in sprinkles.

Divide the batter among the paper liners and bake for about 14 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Birthday Cake Frosting
makes enough to frost 16 cupcakes

I did not follow the recipe exactly. Firstly, I replaced the shortening with butter and secondly, I omitted the salt and citric acid. That's because I don't think there's a need for salt in frosting and I didn't have any citric acid. I guess the use of shortening is to make the frosting appear whiter but shortening isn't so appealing to me. If you're concerned about aesthetics, stick to the original recipe. I already knew that my frosting wouldn't be as white as it should be as I didn't use a clear vanilla extract.

P.S. Isn't baking powder in a frosting a little weird? Why is it in there?

1 stick butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 ounces cream cheese
1 tbsp glucose
1 tbsp corn syrup
1 tbsp clear vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups icing sugar
1/2 tsp salt
pinch baking powder
pinch citric acid

Combine the butter, shortening and cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream together on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

With the mixer on its lowest speed, stream in the glucose, corn syrup and vanilla. Beat on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes, until the mixture is silky smooth and a glossy white. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the icing sugar, salt, baking powder and citric acid and mix on low speed just to incorporate. Crank the speed back up to medium-high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes, until you have a brilliant stark white, beautifully smooth frosting. It should look just like it came out of a plastic tub at the grocery store! Use the frosting immediately, or store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.

joanne chang's blueberry muffins.

The recipe for the perfect muffin has always remained elusive to me. I want a muffin not just superior in taste, but also have that big crunchy top we all covet. At least, I've made my life a bit easier by not specifying the type of muffin top that I like. Muffins can rise two ways- mostly upwards, almost like a mountain, and upwards and sideways, so that they look more like gently sloping hills. As long the top is crunchy, I have no complaints. But I don't want the crunch to come from sprinklings of coarse sugar before baking or streusels, I want the natural crust muffins develop from baking.

I've had the Flour Bakery cookbook for almost a year now, yet it did not occur to me to try the muffin recipes inside. It wasn't until a search on the internet for the best muffin recipe which led to the exact same recipe in the book that I decided to try it out.

I like the fact that the recipe produced muffins with mushrooming tops, the up and outwards kind, but it wasn't the ideal recipe yet. Perhaps it was due to my substitution of ingredients. I swapped the melted butter for oil and cut down on the sugar. Also, instead of 1 cup each of whole milk and sour cream, I used an equal amount of buttermilk. I've always felt that butter will dominate over the delicate flavour of buttermilk and 1 1/3 cups of sugar for 12 muffins seemed overly excessive. hindsight, I should have kept that same amount of sugar. Even though its only for 12 muffins, each of those muffins are huge! When I quartered the recipe, I filled the muffin holes to the brim to get 3 so the same amount of batter could easily have yielded 4 slightly larger than regular muffins. In the end, because I reduced the sugar, I felt that the muffins were not sweet enough.

As I used oil instead of melted butter, I could taste the buttermilk in the muffins. But I realized that I wasn't looking for the slight tanginess in my perfect muffin. I would prefer a bit of egginess and perhaps a bit of butteriness too. I would definitely give this recipe another shot and swap only half the melted butter for oil.

I was mostly disappointed with the non-crusty tops the muffins ended up with. Even the other two muffins I managed to brown had sad soft crusts. I'm not very sure why this happened. Not enough sugar? From the use of oil instead of butter? Anyone knows?

These muffins are lighter than most muffin recipes but are still a little dense, especially after cooling. I'm eyeing this other recipe which looks rather promising. I think I'll give that one a try too.

Big Blueberry Muffins
adapted from the Flour Bakery cookbook
makes 12

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cup sugar
10 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup whole milk
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs + 1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 cups blueberries or any other berries

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a 12-hole muffin tin.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large bowl. In another bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, melted butter, milk and sour cream. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix until just combined. The batter should be lumpy. Fold in the blueberries.

Divide the batter among the 12 muffin cups, filling them all the way to the brim. Bake in the center of the oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and centers set. (Mine took only 18 minutes.)

chocolate peanut butter cup cookies.

It looks like I've hit the dreaded and unavoidable writer's block. Well then, I guess the pictures would have to speak for themselves!

These taste like Reese's peanut butter cup in cookie form, really.

A whole bunch of salty-sweet love packed into a cookie.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
adapted from here

1 1/2 cups + 2 tbsp all purpose flour
6 tbsp Dutch-process cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp coarse salt
3/4 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
2 cups coarsely chopped peanut butter cups, divided

Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking sheets.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add the egg, vanilla extract and milk. Blend until smooth. Stir in the dry ingredients until just incorporated. Fold in 1 1/2 cups of the chopped peanut butter cups.

Divide the dough onto the baking sheets, spacing each ball of dough 2 to 3 inches apart. Gently press a few pieces of the reserved peanut butter cups into the top of each. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

matcha macarons.

mango ginger chocolate muffins.

I had some frozen mango puree and I was wondering what I could do with it. I didn't want to make just typical mousses and panna cottas so I thought why not use it in muffins? A mango muffin with actual mango puree and not just chunks sounded like a novel idea.

I searched online and I came up with a grand total of 0 mango muffin recipes using mango puree. All of my searches only had mango cubes folded in at the end. I decided to just wing it, taking a banana muffin recipe as a base and adapting it by replacing all the banana puree with mango puree.

I was a little disappointed, that's for sure. After baking, the muffins lacked any mango scent and the mango puree was indiscernible. All that's left was a caramelized sweetness somewhat similar to brown sugar but more complex. It's nice, but its completely different from what you would associate with mango.

On the bright side, the muffins were fluffy and the additions of candied ginger and dark chocolate complemented each other really well. Now there's some food for thought for your next batch of chocolate chip muffins.

Because the recipe didn't quite work out, I shall not post one. However, I bet the original banana muffin recipe will be a great hit!