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.

Mee Bandung Muar...

...in Bangi. If you have a craving for Mee Bandung Muar, here's a place you can get the near to original Mee Bandung Muar. Mee Bandung Muar basically is yellow noodles with thickish prawn based gravy, with prawns, fresh tomato, mustard leaves and a partially cooked egg. It's hot, sour and sweet at the same time. The highlight of the meal is the softly cooked yolk which oozed out it's golden yumminess (Don't I sound like Nigella!)

This stall or 'gerai' is at the food court near the traffic light opposite Permata (the PETRONAS training centre) in Kg Dato' Abu Bakar Baginda, Bangi.

My Husband had the Mee Bandung that wet and cold evening. It was so good that we decided to bring back one bungkus for my mother to see what her comments would be. She had it for her dinner and not a sound came from her during the meal (which is a good sign). Mak is a food critic especially the local delicacies. So silence is indeed GOOD!

I am not actually a real fan of Mee Bandung (not partial to yellow noodles), so I had the sup tulang (without the cili padi). It was nice and hot with 3 chunks of sizable bone with meat. Lots of celery, which I liked. I didn't have heartburn after that, so I can say it was a MSG free meal.

Highly recommended and I would definetely drop by there for a meal when I am in the vicinity.

Brownies

Just to show you that the quality of ingredients does make a difference.

These brownies were made from compound chocolate. Compound chocolate is made from cocoa and palm oil. The palm oil replaces the cocoa butter. If you eat compound chocolate it usually will leave an oily residue in your mouth akin to eating shortening. The price of compound chocolate is very cheap RM15.00 to 20.00 for 1.5 kg. However, what happens is that the brownies become cakey (having texture like cake) after baking even though I followed the recipe that supposed to produce Fudgy Brownies. The chocolate taste is very mild and the brownies are mediocre.

I will post a picture of brownies made from Valrhona Bittersweet Chocolate (RM95/kg) and you will see the difference! Taste wise using real chocolate (where the ingredients contains cocoa and only cocoa butter) it is richer, fudgy and luxurious.

Keep Posted!

Postscript: Well, to see the brownies using Valrhona, check out the brownies in http://www.panidolce.wordpress.com.

Spice Cake Doughnuts

I made these yesterday. The recipe was from the The Baker's Dozen Cookbook: Become a Better Baker with 135 Foolproof Recipes and Tried-and-True Techniques.

Made it in smaller 1 1/2 inch doughnuts and covered it with icing (confectioner's) sugar. I didn't have shortening, so I used margarine.

I failed to follow the 1st cardinal rule of baking: Read the whole recipe before starting. So I put the whole 2 cups all purpose flour in the bowl with the rest of the dry ingredients before realising that I had to reserve 1/4 cup for later. I did manage to salvage some of the flour but I have to remember next time to properly read the instructions before dumping everything together.

The recipe was quick. Didn't need to refrigerate the dough like another recipe I tried. Fried the lot and let it cool before rolling it in sifted icing (confectioner's) sugar. I did think it was a bit doughy. I think, in my next attempt, I will try to lessen the flour a bit, let the dough be slightly more wet, and refrigerate before cutting and frying.

Overall a good attempt and a worthwhile recipe to try again.