cupcake(s) of the day

- January 7 -

Don’t have any buttermilk!?

- June 1 -

That’s okay! I personally have never bought buttermilk. You can make it at home! So if a recipe calls for buttermilk, don’t worry that you’ll have to make a trip to the store. Just use one of the following methods:

Lemon (or White Vinegar) and Milk 

In a 1-cup measuring cup, add 1 Tablespoon of fresh lemon juice or white vinegar.  Top the lemon juice (or white vinegar) with with skim, low fat or whole milk.  Stir and let sit for two minutes.  After two minutes, your milk is both acidic and curdled.  Perfect!

Yogurt and Milk

Mix 3/4 cup plain yogurt with 1/4 cup of milk.  Stir and make it a quick substitution for buttermilk.

Milk and Cream of Tartar

Mix 1 cup of milk with 1 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar.  To ensure that the mixture doesn’t get lumpy, mix the cream of tartar with 2 Tablespoons of milk.  Once mixed add the rest of the cup of milk.  Cream of tartar is an acid and will simulate the acidic environment of buttermilk in a pinch.

(via)

Easy box-mix cupcakes for those with dairy/egg allergies:

- May 28 -

Just take the box mix and add a can of cream soda, mix it up, bake according to instructions, frost, and serve!

Cupcake will be extremely soft and fragile, keep this in mind when decorating.

Tip from heathersweightloss

- May 25 -

- May 23 -

hunkerondown-deactivated2011070 asked: I'm an aspiring baker and a cupcake enthusiast, who has actually never baked anything in her life. Is there anything that a beginner *has* to know before starting? (And does using a handheld whisk instead of an electric one hugely affect the outcome?)

Thank you very much!

To answer the handheld whisk vs electric: it depends on the recipe. There are some recipes you can get by completely using a whisk (like this one for chocolate gooey cupcakes or martha’s one-bowl chocolate cupcakes)

An electric mixer comes in handy when you need to cream butter (which is beating the butter until it becomes smooth and creamy), something that just can’t really be done with a whisk. If you are using box mixes to make your cupcakes, you can usually use a whisk (or even a fork!) to mix it all together.

Some tips for cupcakes:

• when you are creaming butter you can just let your mixer go for as long as you want to make it creamier and better.
• after you add the flour, you have to be careful when mixing because mixing/beating too much will make the cupcake more dense and harder.
• check your cupcakes with a toothpick, when it comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs on it, it it done (unless the recipe states otherwise).
• typically you should allow the cupcakes to cool 3-5 minutes in the pan and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool.
• always let them cool completely to room temperature before frosting, otherwise your frosting will melt!

- May 19 -

popcultureexpertt asked: i really love the rainbow cupcakes recipe! thanks for posting it,but do you know if we can just take basic white cake mix and put the food coloring in and it will still have the same effect?

heck yeah you can! definitely a great idea if you’re a beginner and/or you want to get some rainbow cupcakes out fast.

just make the cake batter according to the instructions, and then you can just add your food coloring and go from there! neat! :]

- May 15 -