I will always remember how I celebrated Children's Day when I was still in primary school. On the eve of Children's Day, we would gather in the school hall for assembly and watch a Children's Day Concert put up by fellow pupils from the various performing ECA (back then it was known as ECA, extra curricular activities) groups. At the end of the concert, all of us would stand up and sing along to some songs, songs which I have no idea why these were chosen to be sung as a way to celebrate Children's Day. What were some of those songs? Di Tanjong Katong and Chan Mali Chan were two songs we sang every year. Imagine I sang these two songs for six years on two occasions each year, National Day celebration and Children's Day celebration! ^_^ It may not had made much sense to me back then, but now hearing these songs warms the heart because now I had categorized these as my childhood songs. Every time I hear them, I'll always recall how my school hall looked like and remember a fuzzy happy feeling: the anticipation of Children's Day celebration we would be having back in our classroom. The final one hour on the eve of Children's Day was always reserved for a little in-class party. This precious one hour was set aside by our form teacher for all of us to celebrate with games and food. I would always request Mum to make something for me to contribute as party food. And Mum would always make pandan chiffon cake for me to bring along. So when my girl requested me to bake something for her class party on the final day of the school term, I agreed without hesitation. We toyed around a couple of ideas before finally deciding on cupcakes and cookies. Cookies and cupcakes are not difficult items to prepare and most importantly, relatively easy to handle, that is for my girl to carry them to school without too much worry of damage.
I have a couple of cupcake recipes that will make 12 cupcakes with roughly 3 inch diameter in size. But I think that would be a little too big for children, especially when they would be having other nibbles and snacks. So I decided on converting a butter cake recipe that I always liked to use into cupcake size. I didn't want to use the usual 3 inch diameter paper cupcakes casing that I always do, so I got hold of some souffle cups that are 2.5 inch in diameter and 1.5 inch in height. Since I'll be using a new cupcake casing measurement, a test-drive was necessary.
Test-drive
On the day that I tested out this recipe, I halved the original butter cake recipe and that produced 8 souffle cups of cupcakes. But I think I filled the cup too much and some of the cakes overflowed (that means I could get more than 8 cupcakes for a halved portion). See the picture below, the cupcake on the forefront, to the left side of the cup. That's where the batter flowed out. The butter cake recipe I used applies egg separation method, so that was probably why the batter overflowed. For this recipe, I added orange zest, since it was intended to be orange flavored cupcakes, and I also added about 1.5 tsp of strawberry jam as filling. I didn't have much expectation, just the hope that these cupcakes would turn out tasting acceptable. But much to my surprise, the combination of butter, orange and strawberry actually tasted great. The sprinkling of chocolate rice also added another layer of texture (the chocolate rice remained slightly crunchy) and flavor to the cupcakes.
We had these cupcakes for breakfast the following day, and the kids loved this combination too. However, the strawberry jam filling did not stay at the middle of each cupcake even though I made it a point to put in the jam near to 2/3 full position. I suppose the jam is simply too heavy and upon heating up sank to the bottom. But at least these did not sink all the way to the bottom!
Actual race
Having done a test on taste, appearance and quantity, I felt more at ease and confident of producing 30 cupcakes for my girl's party. 30 cupcakes may be just a piece of cake (what a pun here ^_^ Not intentional!) to many people, but to me, this is not an easy feat. It meant that I have to be prepared to make at least 2 batches, maybe 3 batches in case one of the batches failed for whatever reason, throughout the day. Just to recapitulate on the calculation, halved portion of butter cake will probably give me 10 cupcakes using the souffle cups I bought. That means whole portion of my butter cake recipe should give me 20 cupcakes. That means if everything goes well, I just need to make 2 batches, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. And to cut the whole story short, that was exactly what I did. Which was pretty lucky for me as all the cupcakes behaved well (meaning I did not overfill each cup), no overflowing, no shortage of strawberry jam or chocolate rice (^_^ I worry too much, I am getting to be a hypochondriac!). The only problem I had was with slightly deflated cupcakes. The two pictures below are actually the same, but I was just toying with them with a photo editing software. I love how the cupcakes had rose, such smooth dome they had. But unfortunately, these cakes sank a little after removal from the oven. But again, fortunately, the reduction wasn't too much as the top of each cupcake still stay near the rim of the casing.
Once the cupcakes were completely cooled, my girl and I spent about an hour packing them into little cookie bags together with some butter cookies I made in advance. While the packing job was very tiring (we did that after dinner, around 8pm), it was actually very satisfying to see my bakes neatly allocated and packed in cute looking bags, ready for 28 children and 2 teachers to enjoy. I wondered if my Mum had felt this way more than 20 years ago when she put her pandan chiffon cake into a container for me to carry it all the way to school to be shared with my classmates and teachers.  |
| Cupcakes and cookies, all packed and ready! |
 |
| Same picture, just toying with my editing software. |
 |
| My cupcake peeking out at me! |
Orange flavored cupcakes
Makes 20 souffle cups measuring 2.5" diameter, 1.5" height
Ingredients
Group 1
250g salted butter, I tried a new label called Gold Leaf
85g caster sugar
200g cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 egg yolks
1.5 tsp orange flavor
Zest of 2 oranges
2 tbsp low fat yoghurt
Group 2
85g caster sugar
4 egg whites
Filling
Strawberry or raspberry jam
Method
1. Preheat oven to 160deg C.
2. Make sure butter and eggs are at room temperature. Sift cake flour and baking powder together and set aside.
3. Beat butter and caster sugar from Group 1 until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the egg yolks one at a time, making sure that each yolk is well beaten in before the next addition.
5. Add the orange flavor and orange zest and beat until well mixed.
6. Fold in the flour mixture, spoon by spoon, until all are used up and well mixed into a smooth batter.
7. In a clean bowl, process Group 2 in the following manner. Beat the egg whites until foamy, add the caster sugar and beat until soft peaks form.
8. Add 1/3 of egg white mixture into butter batter in Step 6 and fold until incorporated (or no streaks of egg white is visible). Fold in the remaining egg whites until well incorporated and smooth.
9. Gently fold in the 2 tbsp of low fat yoghurt until well incorporated (i.e. no streaks of yoghurt is visible).
10. Fill each up with batter until about 2/3 full, drop in gently 1 tsp of preferred jam and top with batter until 3/4 full.
11. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes! (November 2011) hosted by Min of Min's Blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment