How to Make and Decorate Cupcakes | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell

[Music] hi i'm erin jean mcdowell and welcome to this episode of bake it up a notch where we are talking all things cupcakes i think cupcakes are just so much fun for so many reasons but of course just because they're a great way to get creative with fillings frostings toppings and decorating it's really going to be such a fun episode as always we're going to talk about the equipment that you need we're going to talk about some of the different methods for making cake batters that make great cupcakes we're going to talk about filling and finishing techniques and of course all that good decor stuff too and as always we're going to show you where things could go wrong and how to fix it if this sounds like something you're interested in or if you've loved past episodes of bake it up a notch do me a favor and please like and subscribe so you can be made aware as new episodes become available let's get baking [Music] you really don't need a lot of special equipment to make cupcakes but the equipment that you need a lot of it is really fun so i love to talk about it as always we're going to start with the mixer there are a lot of different types of cakes that are used to make cupcakes some can be as simple as mixing in a bowl with a spatula some might require the creaming method where we would use the paddle attachment of the stand mixer and some might require the foaming method where we would use the whip attachment of the stand mixer depending on what the recipe is again some cupcake recipes can definitely be made by hand even with the creaming method you can sometimes make those by hand so you don't necessarily need a mixer but i typically am using a mixer paddle or whisk attachment to make my cupcakes of course you can also use an electric hand mixer that works great for most of those types of cakes as well then a few other things of course you're going to likely need cupcake pans or muffin pans as they are sometimes called there are lots of different types of materials i typically use metal pans and sometimes i'm looking at non-stick surfaces but i also sort of like to collect different kinds of pans because they'll have slightly different sizes some cupcake pans have straighter sides some are more tapered so you kind of can just look for what you like best and what works for you while you don't have to use cupcake liners or muffin liners paper muffin liners are a great addition to your cupcake pan help make it easier to clean the pan help make it easier to unmold the cupcakes all of those things are wonderful and while we're talking about liners let's talk about what my favorite are to use which are these freestanding paper liners when you use these you actually don't need to use a muffin pan you can just put these right onto a baking sheet and fill them my favorite are these which are typically called brioche liners or attempt liners they're typically used to make a specific shape of brioche but i think they make really great fun festive alternatives for cupcakes and whenever i bring cupcakes in these people are always kind of like oh look how cute they are because of the little fluted edges so it actually makes it really simple because you can bake more than 12 at a time if you want just put them right onto a baking sheet then we've got our hand tools of course you could be using a little offset spatula for applying frosting and also maybe smoothing the cupcake in the pan a little bit we've got trusty silicone spatula which we're going to be using for scraping the batter making sure we get all of that batter into our muffin pan cupcake pans and then one of my most used tools for cupcakes we've got the ice cream scoops or the cookie scoops as they're called in this house i like to use these to fill uh muffin pans because it helps me make sure i'm getting the same amount of batter in each cavity a quarter cup or this is sometimes called a number 16 size scoop is the exact perfect size for a standard cupcake pan and that's what i use the most but sometimes i'll use the smaller guy because i might be using multiple batters or trying to get kind of a striped or swirled effect and i might be putting a few different things in at a time and i would use something a little smaller so that's why i've got both of these guys here then of course for finishing i love to finish cupcakes with a beautiful swirl of frosting on the top so i've got my pastry bags here along with some larger piping tips and that is important while you can use smaller ones on a cupcake it's those big tips that are commonly used for making the frosting and those classic swirls on top of cupcakes and finally we've got one last little thing or big thing as it were so this is of course just a sheet tray and on top of it i also have a bakery box this is because one of my favorite things to do with cupcakes is make these big boxes or kind of displays of cupcakes i typically do it in a bakery box like this but a couple of times when i've been making a lot i've even just made them on a baking sheet and i separate the cupcakes with parchment paper i'm going to show you how i do this later and it really is just one of the coolest things in the world to arrive at a picnic a party a potluck with this like impressive trey oh cupcakes and i rarely see people as excited about a big tall layer cake even when it's beautiful as i do when people their eyes just go when they see this big tray or big box of cupcakes so that's one of my favorite things to do with them i'm definitely going to talk about that later but i wanted to make sure to add that into our equipment portion because it's going to be a lot of fun when we dive in so that's all the equipment you're going to need now let's talk about some of the cupcake basics so the first thing i want to talk about is what exactly is a cupcake because in my mind pretty much any kind of miniature cake can be a cupcake and that means of course miniaturizing other things too like if you make cheesecakes in a little cupcake pan then you could kind of call them cheesecake cupcakes but there's really no hard and fast rule of what a cupcake is but for me a cupcake does include frosting it of course doesn't have to that's here i am i'm like it's a hard and fast rule just kidding no it's not it does not have to have frosting but that's how i view a cupcake is a cupcake is usually sweeter than a muffin but for example i might use my banana muffin recipe and bake it in a cupcake liner and everything and if i put frosting on it then i would call it a banana cupcake so that's just like an example of what i kind of define it as but of course really any kind of miniature cake is a cupcake typically fluffier cakes are the ones that are used for cupcakes because again we're baking in a smaller size so we want something that's going to be really soft but also a cake that can hold up to being baked individually hand held and also topped with a significant amount of frosting and i say significant because i'm pretty generous in the frosting world but within that kind of category of fluffier cakes there could be cakes made in kind of different ways so we could be using the blending method which is just mixing things by hand in a bowl we could be using the creaming method or reverse creaming method which are kind of based in incorporating the fat first and then adding the liquid ingredients or we could be using the foaming method where we whip eggs to get some volume into them and then fold in our other ingredients and that's sort of the structure of the cupcake but all of those cake recipes will work great to make a cupcake remember some foaming method recipes are a little bit drier naturally things like sponge cake or angel food cake so sometimes it's nice to pair those either with a little bit of a soaking layer some kind of filling in the center a little bit of jam some kind of additional moisture just to really make sure that it's a really pleasant cupcake experience denser cakes like pound cake can still be made into cupcakes but they might be a slightly different eating experience just because when you bite into a cupcake that's made with a fluffier cake the frosting and the cake kind of have a similar texture both light and airy and a pound cake might be a little bit denser that doesn't mean it makes a bad cupcake it just means it's a little bit different so i like to encourage you to think about what kind of cupcake experience you want when you're choosing the cake to bake now the eternal cupcake question comes up to line or not to line do we use cupcake liners or do we just leave them naked that really depends on kind of what look you're going for and also kind of what texture you're going for so when you line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners or when you use a freestanding cupcake liner it sort of protects the base and the sides of the cupcake from browning as much so then when you peel the liner away you've got really nice soft cake that hasn't had a lot of browning and the only browning has really happened on the surface of the cupcake sometimes i like that cleaner look of not using a liner and having everything kind of be one uniform color and texture on the outside but again this is especially ideal for cakes that are softer and fluffier on the inside you wouldn't want to make too much of a crust with something that has a more delicate interior structure like a sponge cake or an angel food sometimes some cupcake batters after baking are still gonna stick to the cupcake liner when you peel them away there's gonna be a little bit of like cake crumbs on the liner that's normal there's nothing wrong with it some people i think ask me in the past i've been asked do you need to grease the inside of the liners and of course you can but if you do that the paper is just going to soak up all that grease and you're going to end up with a very greasy looking exterior on the cupcake of course unfortunately that greasiness can also happen naturally whether you give your pan a little bit of a coating of grease or whether it just absorbs a little bit of fat from the cupcake batter itself while it's baking it is normal for those paper liners to sometimes absorb a little bit and it can change their color and their appearance so i also highly recommend looking for there's a lot of brands that sort of advertise thick cupcake liners or grease proof cupcake liners things like that and those can really help if you're trying to achieve the look of a certain kind of paper or effect on the outside of your cupcake so whether you opt to use a liner or whether you opt to bake it alone it really kind of depends on what look you're going for and the ease of eating it one of the other major advantages of using a liner is it makes the cupcakes a little bit more portable you can kind of pick them up easier without worrying about touching the edible part all of those things so there's a lot of pros but definitely there are lots of times that i just bake my cupcakes right in a greased tin my main piece of advice is to make sure that you also grease the top of the tin lightly sometimes cupcakes even if you're using a liner they'll get stuck to this portion of the pan kind of where the muffin top or the dome of the cupcake is it'll get stuck right at the edge so giving it a little bit of grease will give it a protective coating even when you're using muffin liners to make sure that your cupcakes unmold nice and clean every time i've included a lot of yummy cupcake recipes in this episode but if you ever want to bake a cake recipe as cupcakes bake them at the same temperature and just remember that the bake time is going to need to be a lot shorter you can look at other cupcake recipes as a reference for the timing just be sure to check them early and often i think that's all the basics that we need to cover for our cupcakes so i think it's time to get baking [Music] one of the easiest methods you can use to make cupcakes is the blending method in the blending method you're just mixing all the ingredients together in a bowl usually starting with the fat and the sugar mixing those together and then adding some of the other liquids and eventually adding your dry ingredients i'm going to do this with my banana cupcake recipe starting with the butter and mixing in the brown sugar [Music] i'm gonna add the eggs one at a time [Music] vanilla [Music] we're gonna add the mashed bananas two mashed bananas a little bit of sour cream or yogurt which i always put in my banana stuff i like that little bit of tang and finally our dry ingredients flour salt baking powder at this stage i usually switch to a spatula to make it easier to mix in those dry ingredients [Music] and finally some not so optional chocolate chunks [Music] the main key with the blending method is to avoid over mixing we want to keep our batter nice and smooth nice and evenly combined homogeneous but we don't want to take it too far which could give us some tough cupcakes now these cupcakes are ready to be portioned and baked let's talk about the creaming method this is one of the most common mixing methods that is out there for a lot of different cakes oil and butter cakes both in this method we start by mixing the fat the fat room temperature butter in this case you can actually mix it for a moment on its own and some recipes call for that so i'll do that really quick [Music] so now we're going to add the sugar we're making my vanilla cupcake recipe just my classic vanilla cupcakes made with the creaming method [Applause] now once we add the sugar the goal is to mix it until the sugar is fully incorporated and almost dissolved into the butter this is the process that's called creaming the butter should also lighten in color and be noticeably fluffier in texture it's going to take several minutes three to four minutes while it's doing that we can get some of our other ingredients ready just going to whisk my dry ingredients together i've got some flour baking powder a little salt okay once our butter is nice and fluffy and those ingredients are incorporated we're gonna add the eggs one at a time mixing each to combine [Music] it's also really important i like to scrape the bowl after each egg is added really really important because this is the first time you're really introducing any moisture into the mixture and especially loves to collect at the bottom of the mixer bowl so just really make sure you give it a good scrape after that first egg is incorporated before you add the next and in recipes that call for more than two eggs you're going to want to scrape like this after each egg is incorporated [Music] [Music] all right i'm gonna add my vanilla extract then the last thing we need to do is add our dry ingredients and our wet ingredients in this case it's buttermilk and i usually do that by adding a little bit of the dry ingredients then adding the wet then adding the rest of the dry a lot of creaming method recipes are like this and it's basically just to make sure that you get kind of an even mixture the batter can tend to break if you add too much liquid at once [Music] after the dry and liquid ingredients are incorporated the batter should be smooth really creamy looking and it'll be ready to portion and bake that's the creaming method now let's talk about the reverse creaming method which i feel like does not get nearly enough love but it really should because it's an excellent excellent mixing method and it's just as easy as the creaming method in the reverse creaming method you start by [Music] that are you on now the first step of the creaming method is to mix all the dry ingredients together in the bowl first so i've got the flour but here's the one you may not be prepared for also the sugar we're gonna put the sugar in there too [Music] then we've got our baking powder salt this is my white cake cupcake recipe so we'll first mix those ingredients on low speed just to combine just for a few seconds [Applause] [Music] okay then to that we're gonna add our fat our butter and what we're gonna do is we're gonna mix it until the fat is incorporated into those dry ingredients and like kind of looks like cornmeal almost it should be fairly incorporated mixed in pretty finely the way this mixing method works is by coating the fat with some of those dry ingredients it makes it less likely that the batter is going to break and i find that this mixing method is also great when you want to use trickier ingredients like fresh fruit or more liquid a higher ratio of liquid because again the fat is fully coated it just makes for a really really smooth batter and it rarely ever breaks so let's mix it in all right i think we're there our fat is incorporated in so i'm now just going to add the liquid ingredients to it and mix it until the batter is smooth [Music] once the batter is fully mixed nice and homogeneous and smooth it's ready to portion and bake so that's the reverse creaming method let's talk about the foaming method the foaming method involves aerating eggs with some of the sugar or all of the sugar of the recipe to allow it to get really nice and foamy you're typically looking either for peaks if you're using egg whites alone or something called ribbon stage if you're using whole eggs you want everything to get really pale and thick we're going to trap a lot of air inside and that's going to be part of how the cake gets its crumb structure and a little bit of that leavening that's going to happen in the oven so we'll start by adding our whole eggs that was quite a sound we'll whip them for a little bit until they get frothy then we'll add the sugar gradually and keep whipping until we reach that ribbon stage really pale yellow and thick all right our eggs are nice and whipped we're definitely at that ribbon stage and this is what you're looking for the ribbon it should be pale yellow thick and when you lift the whip out it should fall in a ribbon like that so now we can go ahead and add our dry ingredients now sometimes in the foaming method the dry ingredients are folded gently in that's when you're really trying to maintain a lot of height and that's especially common in recipes that are using the egg whites or egg yolks whipped separately things like chiffon cakes but in this particular case this is a fairly foolproof foaming method cake so i'm actually just going to add everything else right into the mixer with it to finish mixing these cupcakes some vanilla and i'm going to add about half of our dry ingredients [Music] adding a portion of the wet ingredients which in this recipe is whipped cream and we'll add the last of the wet ingredients here we've just made a foaming method cake no we just made a foaming method cake for cupcakes when the batter is thick smooth and creamy it is ready to be portioned and baked into cupcakes portioning cupcakes can be as easy as spooning or pouring the batter into your cupcake liners but as i mentioned i like to use an ice cream scoop so i'm going to do that for a couple of these here typically you don't want to fill your cupcake molds any higher than three quarters of the way full so that like i said a number 16 or a scoop that's about a quarter cup which is typically a fairly standard ice cream scoop is perfect for getting the pan full in the exact right amount but i also want to use this as an opportunity to talk about some of the effects and things that you can do before baking to kind of add different finishes or even decorative techniques to your cupcakes so let me scoop a few more here and i'll show you the first two the first two are basically kind of adding a different textural element at this stage before baking while the cake is still raw so the first one that we're going to do you can kind of sprinkle something textural on top of the cupcake something like crushed nuts or cookie crumbs or even a layer of chopped dried fruit and it'll kind of some of it might sink into the cupcake a little bit and some of it kind of might stay towards the top and just kind of create this sort of crust on the outside so i'm adding some chocolate cookie crumbs to the outside of some of these and then to the other one we're going to do kind of a filling technique so you can also fill cupcakes after baking and i'm going to show you that too but this is a little um ball of ganache which i guess some people would call a truffle and i'm just going to press that into the batter and you can press it in so that it's fully encased or you can kind of leave it poking out because the cupcake is going to kind of rise around it that's sort of up to you and what look you're going for but even if you can still see something like that you're stuffing it with after baking remember that the frosting is likely going to cover it sprinkling or filling cupcakes is just one thing you can do now let's look at some other pre-baked finishes like swirling and using multiple batters let me scoop this batter into the pan [Music] and i'm just going to spoon a little bit of jam into the center of each cupcake once we've spooned a little jam over the surface you can use a skewer to just kind of swirl it right into the cake this will make a pretty effect obviously on the surface of the cupcake a little bit but it'll also make a bit of a swirly effect when you take a bite onto the inside of the cupcake you can also do this swirly effect with two batters which is what i'm going to do next but you also don't have to swirl when you add something like this you can kind of just let it fall where it may mainly because cake batter is very liquid it has a lot of liquefiers in it things like sugar and of course actual liquids things like dairy and so forth so it kind of has this ability since cupcakes don't spread at all because they're contained it has this ability to kind of just swirl itself a little bit so what i'm gonna do is drop i've got two different colors of cake batter here and you can do this with by you know separating some of the batter out and adding some cocoa powder to it or dyeing it we've got these awesome rainbow cupcakes that we're going to show you later in the episode that have you know six different colors of batter and then you can just scoop the other color right on top of it and if you've got multiple colors you would just keep it going until you get to that three quarters of the way full mark one more little scoop for each so we end on the pink on the bright pink color so now once i've had got all my colors in that i want all my different batters i can use the same idea a skewer to gently swirl them together or you can kind of just leave them like this and they're actually going to look really beautiful and swirled after baking because the batter will swirl a little bit together on its own [Applause] these are just a few of the ways that you can add some finishes while you're portioning your cupcakes and get them a little bit of that extra flair before we bake them and now all these cupcakes are ready to go into the oven [Music] baking times and temperatures are going to vary drastically depending on the kind of cake batter you're using so the best indicator for doneness is to look for certain visual cues the first is by just gently pressing it with your finger in the thickest portion of the cupcake typically the center when you press it it should gently spring back when touched it should give a little resistance another indicator is the good old skewer or toothpick test just inserting a skewer into the thickest portion right in the center and removing it it should come out completely clean or with just a few moist crumbs after your cupcakes cool you can remove them from the cupcake pan and store them at room temperature i store my cupcakes at room temperature just wrapped really well or stored in an airtight container and they're going to stay moist that way for several days you can definitely also refrigerate your cupcakes some bakers like the like refrigerating their cakes for a portion of time overnight and they find that that makes the cake really fudgy this isn't just chocolate cakes it just kind of condenses some of the moisture of the cake and makes it really fudgy in texture when you take a bite some bakers really love that effect on certain styles of cake so you can definitely refrigerate your cupcakes too but at this stage especially unfrosted they really don't require refrigeration and you can just keep them at room temperature either wrapped tightly in plastic wrap or in an airtight container once your cupcakes are baked and cooled there are so many fun ways to decorate and finish them but i want to start with one of my favorites that i feel like is kind of just one of those things you can do to really take cupcakes over the top which is filling them after baking so that when someone bites into the cupcake there is another flavor another texture going on inside so i've got two kinds of cupcakes here i've got the strawberry rhubarb meringue cupcakes which we're gonna fill with strawberry rhubarb and i also have the banana cupcakes which we're going to fill with dulce de leche and frost with caramel icing so there's two different ways that you can kind of make room for the filling one way that i like to use is to take a large piping tip like the kind you'll eventually use to frost some of these cupcakes and just press it into the center of the cupcake and then you can remove the little piece of cake that comes out with it if necessary you can even do this a couple of times to make the hole a little bit bigger if you want and then we can just fill that with jam this is our homemade strawberry rhubarb jam now there's two different things you can do you can do it just like this and then cover it with frosting or we can do it this way removing our center filling it almost to the top of that and then taking some of the cake that we cut out and just pressing it back onto the surface to help kind of provide a protective coating so that jam isn't going to combine with your frosting later so that's one way to do it the other way is you can actually just use a paring knife to cut a little hole in your cupcake just be really careful and gentle i'm going to fill these with dulce de leche and then i want to show you how the frosting can completely protect the filling so you don't have to put the cake back on if you don't want to once you've got your filling of choice in we're just going to pipe starting right in the center so that we make sure to cover it and then moving out i'm going to cross these with kind of a rosette pattern but that frosting that we drop right in the center is really going to help cover up that filling and protect it from becoming exposed we don't want to expose the filling there are a few different ways you can frost your cupcakes some are simpler some are a little more difficult but they all put frosting on the cupcakes so they're all worth talking about i actually think one of the easiest ways to frost cupcakes is actually piping and we talk more about this kind of piping technique in our piping 101 episode of bake it up a notch but i'll show you again today some of the basics but let's start with something even easier even simpler something that i sometimes do is actually use an ice cream scoop not quite as full as when i filled it with batter and just use that to apply a round of icing to my cupcake at which point then you can kind of spread it the main reason that i like to do this is because it does allow your frosting to be equally portioned so you can really evenly portion between all the different cupcakes and also when you're using muffin liners or cupcake liners like this you can actually really use that as almost a guide running your spatula along those um to help smooth the edges and that's how you can get this really nice kind of mounded look of frosting that i really think some people really love and it looks great kind of topped with more sprinkles whatever you want you can get it as smooth as you want you can leave it a little swoopy and i sort of love that look you can of course also get that by just mounding some frosting on your cupcake manually that works great too and that's actually what we're going to do next we'll do a little technique kind of the signature spatula swoop for this you want to put a good amount of frosting right in the center of your cupcake then we're just going to use our spatula while turning the cupcake and you'll come back to the center and you can kind of make a little right in the center that's sort of that classic cupcake swirl let's do that again all right once i get even coverage i'm just going to take the tip of my spatula and rotate the cupcake kind of bringing it to a center swirl and if you're not happy with the first pass you can always just dab a little more on these kinds of swirls typically work best when you've got a lot of frosting like that so now we've talked about kind of easy ways of course you can also just grab some frosting on your spatula of course just apply it and spread it however you like you know a little swoopy a little bit um just like even coverage i find people who don't like a lot of frosting this is really the best way for them because you can really just use exactly the amount you need to cover the edge of the cupcake while not using too too much so that's lovely too but of course my favorite is always going to be piping i've got the rest of my filling in a pastry bag with a large star tip we talked more about this in the piping episode but what you're going to want to do is hold your bag directly over your cupcake and kind of keep it that direction as you pipe around and typically you want to move in kind of a spiral motion moving upward so you can kind of pipe a circle and then keep building upward until you get to the height [Music] whichever way you decide to frost your cupcakes this is the part where you get to add the good stuff before you start decorating and going crazy with all that fun stuff so get that icing on there however you like and you can use however much you want whether you're using a tip or a spatula or even an ice cream scoop there are a lot of ways to frost a cupcake one other easy way to glaze a cupcake i just said it right there is glaze it but that's not what i meant to say one other easy way to finish a cupcake is to glaze it and typically you can spoon a glaze on of course you could pipe it but if it's the right consistency you can actually just dunk it right into the glaze so just submerge it a little bit raise it up let any excess drip off a little bit then turn it upside down and your glaze might flow a little bit off the sides as it settles but that's what we like we like a flowy glaze so let's do it do a couple more [Music] glazing is a super easy way to apply a colorful or just simple finish to any cupcake we showed some different techniques for applying frosting but i also want to talk about some creative ideas like mixing multiple colors of frosting together the best technique i've seen for doing this is actually to put the multiple colors you want to use into pastry bags then pipe them onto a piece of plastic wrap you can roll up that little plastic wrap into a log put it into a fresh piping bag and then the colors are going to automatically swirl together as you pipe it looks really cool and it works great every time you can also apply multiple colors of frosting with a spatula using the spatula techniques we already discussed just kind of applying them at where you want and letting them swirl together naturally that can look really cool too when i first wrote my article about cupcakes for food 52 i included a little bit about drippy glazes along with frosting so the same way that we dipped a cupcake into glaze on its own you can actually frost the cupcake chill it and either dip or pipe glaze on top of it this also works great with the concept of cold snap topping which is basically chocolate thinned with a little bit of coconut oil so that it sets firm as soon as it's chilled this works great on the cupcake and i'm going to use them to decorate my hi-hat cupcakes today [Music] of course garnishes are one of the most fun ways to finish cupcakes sprinkles fresh fruit chocolate cookie crumbs pretzels i mean the sky is the limit just remember that some garnishes could affect the storage of your cupcakes ingredients that have moisture like fresh fruit could start to make the frosting or the cupcake itself deteriorate with time [Music] this mistakes happen section is a little bit different than some of our others because i feel like a lot of the mistakes that happen with cupcakes are really like tiny little details but they can make a huge huge difference and i think they're definitely worth talking about but the pro of this is that cupcakes are really easy and even if these mistakes happen to you you're probably still gonna end up with a delicious cupcake so that's the good news the first one is a problem that i talked about a tiny bit at the beginning um depending on the type of cake recipe or cupcake recipe that you're using um the cake can kind of um mushroom out at the edge kind of creating a muffin top as it were but those muffin tops often then brown more because they're in direct contact with the pan and sometimes they can get stuck to the pan and i have a good example here here's one that it happened to that even though it got stuck i was able to unmold it cleanly here's one that got stuck and it made the edge really really rough because i couldn't quite get it off cleanly and there's the same thing i took a little chunk out of it trying to remove these cupcakes so one of the ways that you can prevent this is by applying a thin coat of nonstick spray or grease to the surface of the pan before you add the muffin liners no need to do the cavities themselves if you're doing muffin liners and if you aren't using muffin liners and you're just going to grease the pan make sure you grease the surface of the pan too that's going to make it easy to remove those if this does happen to you the next issue has to do with pan filling but it's actually even easier to show this in these paper liners when you over fill a cupcake pan the cupcakes can kind of spread out and the edges can touch one another i mean you can even kind of have the same thing as we had here but just there they kind of grow together after they mushroom out it's easier to show it in these paper molds all of these these three paper molds got overfilled and as a result um the batter had nowhere to go before the structure was set and it overflowed or burst out in this case of this one it just kind of burst out the side where the seam was and the reason that it did this is that if the structure was allowed to set it should keep rising up and kind of create that cupcake dome that we all know and love but if it's overfilled there's too much batter in there and it's not going to be able to set the structure to create the dome before it would run runneth over so make sure that you're keeping your cupcake pans around three quarters of the way full or if you're using paper liners like this same thing three quarters of the way full maximum to make sure that you're not going to overflow the next issue is a little bit harder to show which is over baking it's really not something that you can see as well as you can taste an over baked cupcake is just going to be really dry so this is very easy to prevent cupcakes have a relatively short baking time so just make sure that you follow the recipe keep an eye on it and if you're not sure if you have an oven that typically runs hot or you have a tendency to things get a little bit too dark in your oven for whatever reason start checking them about five minutes before the recipe said um cupcakes can benefit from pan rotation in the oven midway through baking to make sure that all the sides are kind of getting heat hitting on them evenly so just kind of keep an eye on those typical baking things cupcakes are actually a really great thing to practice understanding doneness on because they do have a quick bake time the final thing i want to discuss is improper mixing so depending on what mixing method you're using whether you're using the creaming method reverse blending foaming this kind of stuff can happen with any of those methods and when you don't mix properly you know your batter can separate it might not dome as nicely as it should it might not have the desired texture because things are kind of not dispersed evenly and i have two cupcakes here from a batch that did not get mixed very well this first cupcake you can see kind of the mixing error on the base my guess is this is actually flour that wasn't mixed in appropriately and that's why it's sunk to the bottom and why it's white in this otherwise chocolate cupcake and then you can also see it here on the surface of this cupcake and i'm pretty sure this is sugar that wasn't mixed in properly because i can actually feel on my hands the granules when i touch it and that's something that can happen if the sugar isn't um when you start adding the liquid ingredients and if the sugar isn't creamed well enough it might still kind of have some physical clumps in there and what's going to happen when that sugar hits the oven is it's going to melt and kind of react very differently than it would if it was fully incorporated into the batter so make sure when you're mixing your cupcakes the most important thing is that you scrape very well scraping your bowl especially getting all the way to the bottom throughout and also that paddle or whisk attachment make sure that your if there's anything kind of clumpy or extra on there that you're scraping it really well so that everything is becoming homogenous one consistency one texture one color that's the goal with cupcakes but even if any of these mistakes happen these are honestly all going to be still very tasty cupcakes the only one that i would be less excited about eating is an over baked cupcake but you could still even if you pile enough whipped cream on that i'm pretty sure i would still think it was delicious too so cupcake mistakes can still be delicious but keep an eye on these things and you're going to have your prettiest cupcakes yet i love making cupcake boxes a few years back a friend invited me to a birthday party and i told her i would bring dessert i came into the party which was outdoors carrying this huge box of cupcakes and assorted colors and flavors and the look on everyone's faces the crowd just went wild it made me feel so incredible that i've loved making cupcake boxes ever since and my assistant katie and i make them all the time just for fun we'll pick different themes it's just honestly a blast you can build them in a box like this like you can get at a baking supply store or really any box you have around your house will work too and you're also going to need strips of parchment paper if you don't want to do it in a box like this you can also do this same technique on just a baking sheet and kind of use that as your platter to display the pastries on when we start i usually start by placing one of these pieces of parchment towards the end these parchment strips sort of serve as protection between the cupcakes keeping the flavors separate without needing to use like fancy cupcake dividers or anything you can just use the paper you kind of fold let it kind of curve around the cupcake and then you nestle the next cupcake in fold that paper around it nestle the next cupcake in and you'll just keep going starting a new piece of paper as needed as you kind of fill this box with cupcakes i'm going to keep putting cupcakes in this box separating them with the parchment paper strips weaving it in and out until the box is full with as many cupcakes as i can fit inside [Music] thank you so much for joining me for this episode of bake it up a notch where we talked all things cupcakes this has been such a fun and yummy episode there are so many fun recipes in this episode so let's just kind of go over all of them really quick because they're so delicious and yummy right here we've got my strawberry lemonade cupcakes it's strawberry cake lemonade frosting swirled with strawberries we've got white cake cupcakes with a berry mascarpone whipped cream frosting these are strawberry rhubarb meringue cupcakes topped with toasted meringue we've also got here just plain vanilla cupcakes with a plain vanilla icing and a nice fruity glaze let's see what else oh right here here we've got my peppermint hi-hat cupcakes that's a devil's food cupcake with peppermint meringue and chocolate dip banana cupcakes with dulce de leche filling and caramel frosting we've got vanilla cupcakes also with that mascarpone berry whip and he these are cookies and cream cupcakes and they actually have a whole chocolate cookie in the bottom these are rainbow cupcakes and they're just vanilla cupcakes that we've dyed to be all the colors of the rainbow and remember all of these delicious recipes are available on food 52. if you decide to make some cupcakes and get creative i would love to see what you're making tag me at emic dowel on instagram or tag food52 and use bake it up a notch be sure to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode and also leave us some comments and questions we love getting them and we might even incorporate one of your questions into a future episode thanks for joining me and as always happy baking gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme that cake [Music] you

Channel: Food52

Views: 536,386

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, bake it up a notch, erin mcdowell cupcakes, erin jeanne mcdowell, how to fix dry cupcake, baking techniques, how to make cupcake batter, easy frosting technique, best vanilla cupcake recipe, easy chocolate cupcake recipe, homemade cupcakes recipes, how to frost cupcakes, cupcake decorating, glazing how to, cupcake glazes, cupcake fillings, cupcake fillings recipes, how to make cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcake recipes

Id: aSZnWmhSyZ4

Length: 45min 12sec (2712 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021