White Cupcake

I have to confess that I am a Martha Stewart Fan. I was introduced to the housekeeping maven by my sister when she returned from the States, years ago, with Martha's Living Magazine.

I am a clutter freak. My style of decoration is what I describe as "Creative Clutter" and what my husband describes as "Sepah Hell". 'Sepah' means Clutter in Malay, so at least we agree on one word in the discription of my Interior Design Style.

Therefore, reading the magazine, was like the light at the end of the tunnel. The style, the ideas, the tips and all was like heaven sent. Of course, even after years and years of buying her magazines and books, I have yet to be "Martha"ed. Actually far from it. I doubt I would achieve the 'perfection' that I see so seamless and easy for her ( you have to agree that she could do that with all those assistants that she has!).

Anyway, the least I could do is try out recipes from her book Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. First let us talk about the White Cupcake.

What is White cupcake?, you ask. White cupcake is cupcake made from white cake batter. You shake your head and ask again, What is White Cake? Well, over there in the States they have a variety of cakes, White Cake, Yellow Cake, Chocolate Cake and its derivatives and the list goes on. So what is the difference? I can say the difference is of course in the colour. A White cake is white and a Yellow cake is yellow. The whiteness of the white cake is due to the fact the cake is made without the egg yolks, the Yellow cake is made with whole eggs and sometime additional yolk added.

Ok, so back to the White cupcake.

This time I made sure I read the recipe more than once. Mise en Place, meaning everything prepared prior to starting the process. Preheat oven? Check! Line cupcake pan? Check! Sift dry ingredients? Check! Butter, room temperature? Check! and so on. The batter was light and of course lighter-coloured than the normal batter made with whole eggs and yolks. One thing to remember is that make sure that I beat the butter and sugar until really light and fluffy. As you can see this is the photo of the baked, uniced cupcake.

I took a bite and decided to take a photo of the crumb, to show how light coloured it is. The crumb is dense and light coloured. You can see the fine holes that make it really nice and light.

The final product. I didn't have any strawberries to make the strawberry buttercream but I had extra swiss meringue buttercream in the fridge. Viola!

My verdict: Excellent recipe. It turned out very well. My children loved it. The cake was a bit too sweet, I may lessen the sugar next time. The crumb is light but dense and moist. It adhered well to the cupcake liner and was not a bit oily. Definitely something I can imagine making again.