baking 101

lately i've been baking cupcakes regularly once a week. call me bored (i am!) but baking is so much more fun to do than doing house chores. heehee. i usually end up with a dozen of the regular size and about 2 dozen of the mini size. that's a LOT, so i usually gave half to my hubby's colleagues in the hospital. they love free food (who doesn't? :P).

today i decided to bake just because i have a few items about to go bad so i search the internet and came up with this:

banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting.
(image taken from marthastewart.com)

i took the cupcake recipe from marthastewart.com. hubby may not like her but her team came up with the best cupcakes recipes so i decided to make their cupcake. besides i have a lot of buttermilk in the fridge that i need to use before they go bad. but i made some slight adjustments with the sugar. the recipe uses light brown sugar, i only have dark brown so i just use it instead. made no difference as far as i can tell.

there's a twist though. when i pour the buttermilk directly onto my mashed banana, one 1/3 cup was good. the next two was .... STALEEEE!! oh my dear fairygodmother.... the buttermilk has gone sour. apparently it expired aug 7, and today is ....... aug 14!!! a WEEK!!! i had no choice but to continue using the stale buttermilk, hoping that i won't cause any food poisoning. thankfully once i mixed them with the bananas (which were so ripe they almost gone bad) you couldn't smell the staleness.

and i didn't put in the pecans because i didn't have any. i was going to put chopped almonds (which i have plenty, and have had them for quite a few months now.. :P) but because of the buttermilk fiasco i forgot to put them in. oh well.

after 20 min in the oven the cupcakes turned out really well. i'm so glad. was still a bit anxious about food poisoning though. i kept imagining the worse case scenario where all of my hubby's colleagues got food poisoning because of my cupcakes.....

now the frosting. i didn't use marthastewart's caramel buttercream cause i can't understand the directions. and beside i still have some heavy cream i want to use. so i use the recipe from allrecipes instead. but i substitute the sugar with splenda sugar blend. AND i reduce the measurements (the recipe calls for 4 cups sugar, which means 2 cups of splenda..). i only use 1 cup splenda and it's already sweet enough. i also put a bit more of the heavy cream because the buttercream was a bit too thick for my liking. it turned out really good.

i did end up with more frosting than cupcakes though. maybe because i didn't pipe it so i didn't use as many i would've (i don't like too much buttercream on my cupcakes). you may want to reduce the measurements and just make 3/4 of the recipe if you're like me. or you can put the frosting in an air-tight container and put it in the fridge/freezer. i can use it again next time.

well, so far i've eaten two small cupcakes and i gotta say, other than the deliciousness, i haven't got any stomach ache or diarrhea yet. so maybe (just maybe) it's safe to eat. but let it be a lesson for me.... never buy buttermilk... ever!! i'll just use a substitute. or make one myself. hmph.

oh btw, since yesterday was friday the 13th, i've read about myths about baking / cooking on fri 13th. apparently you shouldn't because everything you bake/cook will fail. what's this? why? i've never heard such a ridiculous thing before. i made some bbq pork yesterday and it turned out well.