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Category: Cupcakes

Time for some gnash – white chocolate ganache that is – Operation Buttercream

November 21, 2024
| by MaMa Dolson
| Comments Off on Time for some gnash – white chocolate ganache that is – Operation Buttercream

I’m enjoying Operation Buttercream, especially because the bride and groom are both very reasonable people. The groom has expressed few strong preferences about the wedding but he does like white chocolate. Hence white chocolate cupcakes are on the menu.

The test bake submitted to the couple for approval is a vanilla cupcake with a filling of white chocolate ganache, a topping layer of the same and white chocolate buttercream icing. My thought process – it’s difficult to make a recognisable white chocolate cake. White chocolate is cocoa butter, sugar and milk. It doesn’t have any cocoa solids in it. As a substance or flavouring it disappears when incorporated into cake batter. A simple vanilla cupcake with a ganache centre will showcase the white chocolate. A thin layer of white chocolate keeps the cake fresh as well as adding flavour.

White chocolate buttercream will hopefully give the best combination of flavour and ease of piping. A full piped rose of white chocolate would possibly send guests into sugar shock.

The cupcakes are this recipe – perfect vanilla cupcakes. High level overview of method – make the cupcakes, cut out a small hole in the centre, then fill and top with white chocolate ganache, make the white chocolate buttercream and ice. Working with white chocolate is straightforward if you’re gentle with it. Buy good quality white chocolate – I use Callebaut cooking chocolate. Don’t use ordinary white chocolate chips they have stabilisers in them.

I found a useful gadget for cutting a uniform hole the centre of the cupcakes. It’s a cheap plastic thing but it doesn’t need to do any heavy work so it works fine.

Recipe – White chocolate ganache filling

The ganache needs to cool so make it about 30 minutes before you want to use it. If you’re making the cupcakes the same day, they need to cool completely as well.

Ingredients

  • 175 grams white chocolate
  • 60 mls heavy cream

Method

  1. In a small glass or plastic bowl combine the white chocolate and the heavy cream.
  2. Heat in the microwave for 1 minute, then let the mixture sit for another minute.
  3. Stir until smooth, then cover the ganache with plastic wrap and set it aside to cool.
  4. Once cooled, pipe the ganache into the cupcakes. Then pipe a thin layer on the top of the cupcakes. Tip: Pipe all the centres first and then the top layer. This allows the filling to cool and provide a firm base for the top layer.

Recipe – White chocolate buttercream icing

Ingredients

  • 85 grams white chocolate
  • 60 mls heavy cream
  • 225 grams unsalted butter – room temperature
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 tsp fine salt (1g)
  • 450 grams icing sugar

Method

  1. Combine the white chocolate and heavy cream is a microwave proof bowl. Heat in the microwave for 1 minute, then let the mixture sit for 1 minute. Mix until combined, then place the bowl in the fridge to cool for 10 minutes.
  2. Beat the butter at a medium speed for 1 minute until smooth and fluffy. 
  3. Add the white chocolate mixture to the butter, then add the vanilla and salt. Beat on medium speed until well blended. Tip: If using a stand mixer, make sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl well. The chocolate mixture will settle to the bottom.
  4. Add 1/2 of the icing sugar on a low speed. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed with a rubber spatula. Tip: Throw a tea towel over the top of the stand mixer, it reduces the cloud of sugar in the air. When well incorporated, add the remaining sugar.
  5. Beat on a medium speed for a couple minutes until the ingredients are fully incorporated.
  6. Adjust the consistency of the icing – add heavy cream a tablespoon at a time if too thick and if too thin, add icing sugar a heaping tablespoon at a time.

Notes on this test bake

  • I used titanium dioxide powder to make the icing white. My intuition was that the powdered food colouring would blend better with the white chocolate buttercream. It worked well so will stick with it. I used about a tablespoon for the icing for a dozen cupcakes.
  • Buttercream icing (all types) needs to be made in a mixer. But I have started ‘finishing it’ in the food processor (found in a Youtube video). Makes more washing up (one of my personal dislikes is washing up the food processor) but it reduces air, smooths out the buttercream and allows for minor adjustments of colour and texture.
  • I experimented with a Russian piping tip but got blobs of icing rather than flowers. This may need practice.
  • I don’t discard leftover icing, I keep it in the fridge and take it out to practice or use for experimenting with colours and shapes.

Thank you for reading the blog – let me know if you have questions or suggestions.

Operation Buttercream – Hunt for the Perfect Vanilla Cupcake

October 18, 2024
| by MaMa Dolson
| Comments Off on Operation Buttercream – Hunt for the Perfect Vanilla Cupcake

Difference between left and right? 15c of oven heat.

The second instalment of Operation Buttercream: we hunt for the perfect vanilla cupcake (think Victoria sponge), research colour and fancier flowers and get some decisions from the bride & groom.

The Perfect Vanilla Cupcake

I’m using vanilla cupcakes as a base for the Strawberry Champagne Cupcakes and the White Chocolate Ganache Cupcakes. I want a recipe that uses ordinary ingredients – ordinary flour, butter, milk, eggs, sugar. Not so keen on buttermilk, yoghurt, heavy cream, applesauce and the like. The cupcakes should keep easily 3 to 4 days, being moist and have an even crumb. Extensive research and a couple of test bakes later – I’ve found it. Only nine ingredients but with more elaborate preparation requirements, worth it.

Baking under exam conditions, I was reminded that my oven bakes hot. I’m using foil lined cupcake cases and this also concentrates heat. I used the suggested oven temperature and that resulted in the cupcakes on the right hand side of the photo. If the oven is too hot, the outside of the cupcake bakes more quickly and forces the batter in the centre up into a dome. Second test bake I reduced the oven temperature to 170C and got the smooth surface on the left.

Recipe – Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 150 grams plain flour (not self rising)
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking powder 
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 2 eggs medium to large
  • 150 g caster sugar (or granulated)
  • 60g unsalted butter cut into cubes, can be straight from the refrigerator
  • 125 ml full fat milk
  • 2 tsp top quality vanilla extract
  • 1.5 tsp vegetable oil 

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F (160°C fan) for 20 minutes before starting the batter. Place shelf in the middle of the oven.
  2. Place cupcake liners in a standard muffin tin. (makes 12)
  3.  Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.
  4. Heat the milk and butter until the butter is just melted. I do this in a saucepan because it then stays warm. You can also do this in a heatproof bowl in the microwave. If using the microwave, start with 1 minute and then 15 second bursts, you don’t want the milk to boil.
  5. Beat the eggs on medium high speed for 30 seconds. Keep the mixer going, add the sugar over another 30 seconds. Turn speed up to high (I used 8 on my KitchenAid) and then beat the eggs and sugar for 6 minutes. It won’t turn into meringue but it will increase in volume and lighten in colour.
  6. Incorporate the dry ingredients. After the eggs and sugar are whipped, scatter 1/2 of the flour mixture across surface, then beat on low speed very briefly, no more than 10 seconds. Stop, incorporate the remaining ingredients in the same way. Take a look at the batter, beat only until you can’t see any flour. Don’t beat out all the air you just beat into the eggs & sugar.
  7. Pour the still warm milk & butter into the empty flour bowl. Add a generous ladle of batter to the mixture and hand whisk until smooth. This ‘tempers’ the warm milk and butter and means your butter won’t ‘curdle’ (split). Needs to be whisked until smooth and foamy.
  8. Turn your stand mixer onto it’s lowest speed and slowly pour the tempered milk and butter in. Beat for 15 seconds. Turn the mixer off. Scrape down the sides and the base, the batter should be very smooth.
  9. I pipe batter into the cases. This needs my largest blue piping bags but it reduces waste and gives more control over filling. If you do by hand, use an ice cream trigger scoop. Fill the cases to about 2/3 full. Don’t overfill, you get convex surfaces.
  10. Place on the middle rack of the oven; bake for 20 minutes. Check temperature of a cupcake in the centre of the tin, should be above 95 degrees. Cupcakes will be golden and your thermometer will come out clean.

Colour and Fancier Flowers

Natural buttercream colour.

I will never be a professional standard ‘cupcake decorator’ but am moving on from the basics. A couple of things I was looking for in this next decorating test batch; whiter buttercream, sharper edges on the flowers and getting colour effects with piping. I also want to buttercream to dry out a bit as it’s piped for longevity. Back to the internet we went.

Natural buttercream icing is butter, icing sugar, vanilla and just enough water to make it firm yet pipable. It tastes great but it’s naturally pale yellow rather than white. Here’s a video on making the buttercream wedding white. Essentially you dye it white. I tried two methods, white titanium powder added to the icing sugar and white gel professional standard food colouring. The gel food colouring produced better results and gave me sharper edges on the piped flowers, so we’re sticking with that method for the white icing. The pure white icing is for the carrot cake cupcakes.

Gaining confidence from making icing white and my ease of piping the large roses – time to add some colour. There is a long video from Cornel on colours and piping bags. There are a number of colours and techniques I didn’t need but I watched it through and made pages of notes. There are other techniques to get 2 different colours in the piping bag but the method of putting a stripe of the contrast colour along the seam of the piping bag and filling the rest with the main colour seems intuitively correct and simple to me. It’s a bit difficult to see but the top left cupcake with the green edge is my favourite. I piped the centre rosebud in pure white then all of the rose petals with the green edge.

Decisions from Bride & Groom

A couple of decisions I was looking for; shape and design of the cupcake cases, accent colours based on the bride’s flowers and attendants gowns and sign off on the first two decorating designs. I’m not going to share those yet – will keep you in suspense until the wedding.

Notes on this test bake

  • I’ve got some help lined up for the big event – so for washing up, making basics, filling piping bags, etc. But it will be good to have a lot of certain things:
    – piping bags both for the cupcakes and of various strengths for the icing, I can see going through 50 or so with ease,
    – palette knives, straight and pointed. Probably 10 straight ones and 3 pointed ones. Having more will reduce the temptation to wipe and re-use, which creates risk for colour pollution, it would be easy to ruin a large batch of white with a little bit of blue or green,
    – piping tips, Wilton 104 and leaf tips
    – will investigate Russian piping tips, I think may work very well for the white chocolate ganache.

Think pink for the next instalment. And yes, my hands are sore.

Operation Buttercream Commences

September 26, 2024
| by MaMa Dolson
| Comments Off on Operation Buttercream Commences

This blog post, and I suspect all other on Project Buttercream will be a bit different. There are recipes but the blog is primarily about the project itself.

I do like a project. There should be self help groups for people like me. I’ve agreed to do the cupcakes for a 100+ guest wedding. I’m very fond of the bride and I’m a good baker, but this may have been a moment of insanity. I’m usually serenely confident in my abilities…. but then I had a reality check.

The Davinator and I were invited to lunch at the parents of the groom. I made a dozen strawberry champagne cupcakes, I iced them in 3 different patterns and used 3 different types of decorations. Somehow dropped the box with the cupcakes on the driveway when we arrived. We had two choices at that point: shove the box back in the car or carry it in and face the music. We went for the latter. They tasted great and I was asked ‘well did you take photos of them’. No, I hadn’t because I had the cupcakes, didn’t I?

I started having anxiety dreams about the cupcakes. I decided I needed to do something about it. The Davinator has a saying ‘until you have a written down plan (including a spreadsheet) it’s just a concept’. Thus Operation Buttercream was born. I started a plan and I enlisted some helpers. There’s a folder on my desktop for the electronic documents.

Test baking under ‘exam conditions’ is a key component of Operation Buttercream. There are only so many cupcakes the Davinator and our family and friends can eat. The church next door has a big coffee morning once a month and they agreed to accept some test cupcakes. The first test bake of Operation Buttercream was go.

The first recipe put to the test is Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Buttercream Icing. Cupcakes iced as flowers are very on trend now, so I chose two test icing patterns: a rose and a magnolia. Youtube is full of ‘how to’ videos on icing patterns: I watched several videos by Cornel, good reminders on piping bags, which icing tip to use and an icing recipe that is most stable. The recipes for the carrot cake and the icing are below. I’ve made lots of notes as I went along broadly separated into the cupcakes and icing.

Notes on the cupcakes

  • I made a double batch of a recipe that should have made 24 cupcakes. It only made 22. I didn’t spill or overfill the cases, so I will need to factor the shortfall in for planning purposes. Will include the actual recipe below. Not sure if I want to plan to make another single batch to fill out the numbers and have extras for ’emergencies’. I piped the mixture into the cases: it gives better control on filling and keeps the tins tidy.
  • I used strong white flour as it’s what I had on hand. I need to acquire an 18k bag of all purpose plain flour.
  • I used melted butter instead of vegetable oil from the original recipes. Most carrot cake recipes use vegetable oil but I think butter or a natural oil like coconut oil is preferable if not trying for vegan or dairy free.
  • I hand shredded the carrots and then rough chopped them for the best texture.
  • I used stiff cases for the cupcakes, not the standard pleated ones. I think this will help with standardising the quantities, easier handling during the icing phase, uniform shapes and holding up to transportation.
  • Pondered and went with ‘no nuts’. For a big event like a wedding, better not. Even though a home kitchen will never be free of nut traces best to avoid nuts.
  • Questions for myself: do I need some extra bowls for my KitchenAid stand mixers. Oh, I forgot to mention I bought a secondhand one off Facebook marketplace and had the Davinator give it a service? Probably yes, two additional bowls. Also some more silicone spatulas and scrapers. What about covers for the bowls? I don’t use a splash guard and I think covers may be more trouble than they are worth.

Carrot cupcake recipe

Makes 22 -24 cupcakes

Ingredients

  • 330 grams plain flour  
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 240 grams melted and cooled butter
  • 400 grams packed light or dark brown sugar
  • 4 medium eggs, at room temperature
  • 160 grams Greek yoghurt, full fat, unsweetened or flavoured e
  • 2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 400 grams grated and coarsely chopped carrots (about 3 – 5 large carrots)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 175°C. Line 24 cup muffin pan or 2 x 12 cup pans with stiff cupcake liners.
  2. Melt the butter and set aside to cool.
  3. Prep the carrots. It’s annoying but I hand grated, then rough chopped the carrots for the optimum texture. I top and tail the carrots then make a decision on whether to peel. Use your judgement on this one – supermarket carrots seldom need peeling but farm stall carrots can have lots roots and dirt.
  4. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg together in a large bowl. Set aside.
  5. Whisk the cooled butter, brown sugar, eggs, yoghurt and vanilla extract together until combined, and then whisk in the carrots.
  6. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold or whisk together until completely combined. Batter will be slightly thick.
  7. Pipe the batter into the liners, filling only about 3/4 full to avoid spilling over the sides. Bake for 21–23 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

All of that took me about 90 minutes from start to finish including the washing up. That, as it turns out, was the quick part.

Notes on buttercream icing

  • Carrot cake traditionally has a cream cheese icing. I’m did buttercream instead. First, properly made buttercream will not go off, it never curdles or refuses to smoothly incorporate with the butter. I’ve made good cream cheese icing – but it’s only when working with the cheapest cream cheese, so I think it’s the artificial ingredients that produce the smooth outcome.
  • The buttercream needs to ‘keep’, needs to be soft enough to pipe but smooth enough to hold shape once piped. That means keep it simple: butter, icing sugar, vanilla and gel based food colouring.
  • Disposable piping bags are crucial. And the challenge is to not overfill them; the more icing, the more force to pipe, especially the first cupcake or two.
  • About 20 minutes into the piping I decided that I’m going to buy more piping tips of the ones that I need for the designs. That way I can fill multiple bags and keep going, there’s a real ‘groove’ to doing the roses I found. Here’s the tutorial for making the roses – I did them all white the first time. Wilton 104 piping tip for the rose.
  • The magnolia design required 4 different piping tips, 1 for leaves, 2 for petals and a third for the centre and 3 colours: green, white and yellow. Here’s the tutorial for making the magnolia. I adapted the design so that it did not overhang the cupcake – makes transportation easier I think. It was easier to execute once I had the hang of the last ring of petals for the yellow centre. Logistically more difficult but I think less skilled. Food for thought. Used Wilton 104, Ateco 126, Jem 123 and Wilton 21 piping tips.
  • I made two batches of icing per the recipe below and it easily provided enough for 22 cupcakes. Including the 3 colours: white, green and yellow. Only 21 of the cupcakes made it to the coffee morning; the Davinator and I ate one of the roses. For quality control purposes, obviously.
  • Making the flowers required more time and energy than I anticipated. Also, seemed to tense up my back. But I was – to a degree – learning on the job. Having an assistant to fill piping bags and help with the washing up and various tasks will help.

Buttercream recipe

Ingredients

  • 300 grams room temperature unsalted butter
  • 680 grams icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1 or 2 teaspoons water

Method

  1. Beat the butter in your stand mixer for at least 5 minutes. Stop the mixer and scrape the sides once or twice. The butter will change colour – lighten and take on a lovely texture.
  2. Add half the icing sugar and beat to incorporate. Then add the other half and do the same. Be prepared for a fine cloud of icing sugar to settle over your work area.
  3. Add the vanilla and one teaspoon of water plus any necessary food colouring. Beat, check consistency. It should be quite stiff, just barely able to pipe.
  4. No dairy beyond the butter means it will keep better.
  5. I’m not going to explain how to do the flowers – it needs to be seen and then practiced. Be prepared for sore hands.

Other random thoughts

I did an ingredients list for cupcakes and for icing and also a list of allergens and a nut warning. I made little cards with a picture of the cupcake and ‘carrot cake cupcake’ on them. I transported them in sturdy white boxes that I got from Cake Craft. Boxes always come flat packed so it’s a good idea to prep them, including getting spaces for holding the cupcakes punched through at a point in the process when your hands are clean.

Watch for future instalments.

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