Saturday, August 30, 2008

Creamsicle Cupcakes

I decided to make some simple creamsicle cupcakes this weekend. There lots of ways you can make these (last time I made homemade marshmallow topping using this recipe), but I was feeling kind of lazy this time. And to be honest, my main motivation was to work on getting one step closer to finding the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe (If I ever find it, I'll be sure to post it!). I'm definitely getting closer.

These cupcakes turned out really delicious. For me, a good cupcake should have three qualities: Fluffy cake, Frosting that is either light and fluffy or deep and rich, and amazing flavor. I managed to pull off all three with this one.

For these cupcakes, I used the recipe for golden cupcakes from the book Crazy About Cupcakes and added 2 Tbsp orange extract and about 1/2 tsp orange rind to get a light creamsicle flavour. It's definitely one of the best cake recipes I've used yet. It manages to make a dense, cakey cupcake that is still light and fluffy.

The frosting is a vanilla buttercream, also with orange extract added (I think about 2 Tbsp, I just went by taste).
I split the frosting into two parts and coloured half orange using Wilton icing colour. To get the swirl effect, you add the frosting to the icing bag one spoonful at a time, alternating between colours and pressing the spoon to opposite sides of the bag as you go, so that you have an icing bag that is full of orange frosting on one side and white on the other. You get the best results by adding small spoonfuls, especially at the narrow end of the bag. As usual, I just used a Wilton 1M tip to make big swirls.

Luckily the recipe made three dozen because they've been disappearing fast!!

4 comments:

judith said...

Beautiful! As usual... you should have a shop. I know... that's what they say about my knitting, what I'm trying to say is "top notch work." Rivals the professionals.

Unknown said...

Yum.

I've actually bought the ingredients for your cake balls only I'm using orange cake and vanilla candy melts. Should be delicious!

Jacki said...

Thanks jomamma! I'm not sure I'm organized enough to open a store though :)Do you post pictures of your knitting anywhere? I checked your blog and couldn't find any.

Jennifer, let me know how they turn out! Do you have a good orange cake recipe you'd like to share? I don't have one!

judith said...

I have not put any pictures of my sweaters on my blog yet. I have one that I will buy buttons for and finish out this weekend, then I'll post a picture of it.