Another baking blog

On Sunday, with the low cloud setting in for the week, Mills and I decided to stay in and bake cupcakes. It's not something we do often, but having recently moved into a flat which hosts both a microwave AND an oven (oh the indulgence) we decided to make use of the facilities.

We had all the essentials as we had previously attempted cupcakes in the microwave in our old flat, and not with bad results either. It can be done - they're not the airiest of cupcakes, but they do the job. Anyway, so I did a brief perusal of the recipe books, found one that looked like it required minimal effort and we got to work.

First things first, deciding which bloody attachment to use on the hand beater. I usually go with the egg whisk looking-thingies first. But that didn't seem to be doing anything for softening the marg, so I switched them out for the swirley-looking attachments. That didn't do much either, but it did a splendid job of gathering all the marg in one lump around the swirly attachments. Back to the egg whisk thingies... and then I decided I was bored of that process, so we started adding the sugar and egg anyway. Then the flour. Now we're getting somewhere... once the cloud of floating powder had cleared enough to see the bowl, we realised our mixture was starting to look like dough.

Mills was in charge of the measurements of all ingredients. This is because I treat recipes and measurements as a hazy guideline, at best. For the most part, I use recipes as a bit of prereading inspiration and then I do what the hell I want - so I don't know if it even falls under "following the recipe". I substitute when I don't have a particular item (and am too lazy to go to the shops) and I use guesswork for amounts - which usually works out okay in cooking, but baking does not allow for the same flippant disregard. So Mills, being anal to the point of micrometres, is in charge of measurements when it comes to baking.

Right... Milk. I'm in charge of mixing (I always like to stir, no matter what the substance) and Mills is pouring...

And pouring...

And pouring.

And our mixture was rapidly becoming less like dough and more like porridge.

"This seems like a lot of milk," I shouted over the noise of the whirring hand beater. "Ja, it does..." he agreed as he tipped the last of a full cup measure into the bowl, adding "...and we've still got another two of these cups to go!"

I decided this needed some fact-checking. "How much does the recipe actually call for?"

"Seventy five mills," he casually replied, measuring out another 250ml.

I screeched to a halt. "SEVENTY FIVE? Or seven hundred and fifty?"

His eyes widened as his brain clicked from automatic to "oh shit".

I looked at our bowl of dough-flavoured porridge and decided a time out was required. After a regroup of our senses, we chucked it all out and decided to start again. This time, using just leeetle bit of milk.

We both commented on the fact that the mixture seemed very solid for cupcakes, but we were sure of the measurements this time so plodded on anyway. We portioned the blobs into the baking tray, put them in the oven... as recommended, for the time recommended. And then we waited - patiently. No opening of oven doors or any amateur mistakes like that.

When it came to taking them out, we noticed that the tops were definitely more crusted than we anticipated, but we plowed on with making our butter icing. Mmmm... icing sugar... good.

Finally it was time to ice our much anticipated cupcakes. A few sprinkles on top and... voila! C'est magnifique!
It was only on taking the first mouthful that I realised our "fairy cakes" were in fact a recipe for scones. And scones, it turns out, go much better with whipped cream than with butter icing.

Just something to keep in mind in future... scones are not the same as cupcakes.
Note to self.