Cupcakes!

Knowing my love of cake, my mum bought me the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook a month or so ago. The actual Crabapple Bakery, which was in Melbourne, went out of buisness last year, but I'm sure that's no reflection of the quality of the cakes in the book!

I thought I'd work my way through the recipes in the book and post photos and reviews as I go.

First off is the quintessential Vanilla Daisy Cupcake. This is a rich recipe, calling for four eggs and a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Not surprisingly it makes a lovely dense moist cake. Just make sure you use the full amount of vanilla or your cakes could be left tasting a little "eggy". The recipe calls for baking them at 170 degrees (centrigrade), however I found this left some of the cakes a little underdone, so 180 degrees for 18 minutes, worked better for me. I got 19 cakes out of this amount of batter.

I iced the cakes with my own recipe for Cream cheese frosting:

60g cream cheese

30g butter

2 cups sifted icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

enough milk to make into a smooth icing

colouring as desired (I didn't bother).

DH pronounced these the best cupcakes he has ever eaten, which is high praise as he makes a mean cupcake himself (yes, I do have the best husband in the world :) ). They really are good cupcakes, and I will use this as my stock standard vanilla cupcake recipe from now on.