Why Cupcakes?

It has been sometime since my last post and I have still been hard at it baking at least three cupcakes a week, so I apologize this post may be a little long.  This chilly Sunday morning has been a good one to gather up my thoughts and ask myself honestly, why cupcakes?  Over the last ten years or so the gourmet cupcake world has exploded with shops popping up everywhere, catering companies, and food trucks even hopping on the wagon, so after a successful college career and a successful post college job, why cupcakes?  When I was a kid I was a baker.  When I was a teenager I was a baker.  And now that I am an adult I still remain a baker.  The only catch in being an adult baker is your not as cute as a kiddie baker and reminding everyone being a baker isn't about being a millionaire. Being a baker makes something inside of you feel like a millionaire.  I don't know if it is the little kid in a  in all of us but something about seeing those little perfectly individual cakes makes us forget about adult worries.  When I hand someone a cupcake I am handing them a smile and a feeling of nostalgia.  That is the reason behind the cupcakes, not the fad or the cupcake trucks, but the feeling.

With all that sentimental explanation out of the way, lets get to the meat and soul of this bad boy blog.  The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of butter and sugar.  I am entirely certain that I have bought more butter in the last couple weeks than my entire life combined, and can I just say it feels damn good.  If the secret to true happiness is butter, than Ms. Paula Dean is sure on to something.  The baker inside of me loves to emerge somewhere around 5-6am.  My first official cupcake delivery started with the normal 5am rush of excitement.  I got up and was convinced that the collapses in my batters were in the past and I had to push forward and really discover how these little lovelies rise and transform.  The batches for the delivery were pistachio with white chocolate or cinnamon meringue, non collapsing chai tea, and cracking down on the perfect chocolate.  To begin with I finally got to make my first batch of flour.  Pistachio flour was the result, and can I just say I never ever thought something that green could be so tasty.  The batter for the pistachio cake was significantly different from all of my other batters, it was hearty.  Like cornbread and chili hearty.  The cakes came out perfect little domes, no collapsing in the oven or in my heart.  Riding high I knew something special needed to go on top of these.  I whipped up some white chocolate buttercream.  Sticking with my patterns of the past I had a glitch.  I let the melted white chocolate cool TOO much and when combined with the twelve sticks of butter in Beatrice resulted in a tasty frosting with chunks of chocolate instead of a smooth finish.  Piping on the cakes may not have been the best but boy were they tasty.  However, I need to revisit the pistachio flavor. The double flour made them VERY dense.  So on the FF scale, flavor OUT OF CONTROL! Fluffiness, defiantly needs some work. 

I have already detailed the creation of chai tea cakes so I will not go in to the details of that, but I did finally figure out how to stop those suckers from collapsing.  A little more flour and baking powder and they domed just like the rest of them.  I believe the secret in the phenomenal flavor is to brew your own chai tea curdle it with apple cider vinegar as well as blend the chai spices from the pantry.  The tea mixture adds an explosion of flavor along with a moistness that is necessary for the FF factor.  The thing I will give a good bit of detail was my discovery and love of meringues.  Last weekend everything was topped with meringue.  You start with whisking egg whites and sugar in a double boiler for ten minutes or so and then transferring them into Beatrice for another ten.  It is an extremely time consuming process but if you have an automatic mix master machine like my lady it is no problem at all.  After allowing the egg whites to whisk to room temperature you then SLOWLY add tablespoons of butter one at a time letting them blend very slowly.  When all the butter is added you leave it to blend,blend, and blend.  Note, if your eggs are not room temperature make sure you brew another pot of coffee and feed the dogs because you are in it for the long haul.  After I finished laundry, showered, and made butternut squash soup my meringue was done!  The result is well worth the wait because it is creamier than anything you could ever find in Julia Childs' house.  I added cinnamon to the frosting wanting to just add a hint of spice, but of course with my extreme cooking skills, I took the whole lid off and ended up dumping a large amount in to the bowl.  That ended up being the best, and brownest, mistake thus far.  The frosting rocked!

Deciding that was enough for the first delivery I packed them up in my cupcake carrier, Wilton is a genius, and started the trek to the bank.  I was all smiles as I went through my drive-thru coffee shop and gifted the ladies with a smile and a cake.  I arrived at the bank and set up the cupcakes on a vintage looking cupcake tier.  The kindergarten feeling came back, but a different kind of feeling.  It was the adult feeling.  The feeling of you leaving your child at kindergarten on their first day.  I was sending my pride and joy out in to the world to be enjoyed and also judged. I wasn't sure if I was ready to hear the reactions to my hard work, but I had to let them go. If I didn't, how would I take my cupcake dream to the next level? If I didn't, how many days would I have to run to burn off eating four dozen cupcakes?  I left them and thanked the employees for humoring me.  A couple dozen more cupcakes, another batch of meringue, a thank you card, and I felt great about giving the gift of a sugar butter rush on a Friday!

The past two weeks has been a culinary exploration and also a little bit of self exploration.  In the end, I am not quitting my day job.  But, I am good and convinced that I have a future littered with cupcakes and smiles.