Vanilla Cupcakes (Oh! I love them.....)

After my happy experiences with the Blueberry n Banana Muffins and the Mangoes n' Figs Muffins, I decided to learn cupcakes. Both Rj n' me, we love vanilla cupcakes. Ok, I stand corrected, he loves it more than me. We used to buy them often before, but he turned sugar conscious a while ago n' we stopped buying them. I baked these babies n' he is begging for more on most days. Ever since I tried them the first time, I have made them twice again after that. That's how good this recipe is.





The recipe source? Ria's Collection. If you check her blog, on the homepage it self, you will see these oh! so pretty vanilla cupcakes she had baked recently with a friend. I had visited her blog to check out another recipe, but I saw these n' fell in love instantly. I just had to try them, n' the cupcakes comes out perfectly. The texture is just great. I didn't use the chocolate frosting, that will go well with this, just coz we like them plain. The lesson I learned from it? Find a reliable source for good simple baking recipes n' I can get over my fear and have good results. I haven't changed the recipe much, I have just reduced the amount of salt by half from Ria's recipe. With this I learnt the simple n' yummy basic cupcakes. My sincere thank you to Ria for sharing such a nice recipe.



Ingredients:
(Makes about 16 cupcakes if you are using big cupcake liners)
1. All purpose flour: 2 cups
2. Baking powder: 2 tsp
3. Salt: 1/4 tsp (omit if you are using salted butter)
4. Castor sugar: 1 cup
5. Unsalted butter: 1/2 cup (room temperature)
6. Eggs: 2nos
7. Milk: 1/2 cup (room temperature)
8. Vanilla extract: 2 tsp

Method:

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F. Keep the cupcake trays also ready by placing the cupcake liners in them.

Step 2: Sift the dry ingredients (Flour, Baking Powder and Salt) together, if possible, thrice.

Step 3: Cream the butter and sugar for 3 mins.Add in the eggs one by one and beat it will for 1 minute after each addition. (I'm guessing the time is mentioned coz we need to get the consistency right, I loved that bit of precision in the recipe. Great for an amateur like me.)

Step 4: Next with the motor running,add the sifted flour and milk alternately starting and ending with flour.By now the batter should be light and fluffy.

Step 5: Spoon it into the cupcake liners, about 2/3 rd's full, which will be about 2 1/2 tbsp.

Step 6: Bake for 20-25 mins or till the top is lightly golden brown in colour and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. (it took mine only about 20mins)

Step 7: Remove from the tin immediately and let it cool completely before frosting (if you opt to frost it).







Honestly, I loved this recipe n' it helps me produce great results. In a span of 3 weeks, I have made this three times. Having guests at home helps. :) Happy cooking!!! or better still Happy Baking!!! :)

Mangoes Figs n' Walnut Muffins

I have been missing from here since a while now. Just having been having some issues with time management. Have been having people over at home n that has kept me off the Internet n' in the kitchen or out shopping with them. :)....I wonder how many awesome recipe updates I must have missed out on of my blogger friends out here. Well, I hope to catch up on that in couple of days...:) After my big proclamation about learning to bake in my kitchen itself. I have been kinda doing well in the baking department. I'm guessing it has something to do with the great recipes I have found. I'm gonna do 2 small posts today.









I'm baking something again today n' I'm looking forward to it already. The first post are these muffins. The Blueberry Banana Muffins I had done had come out so well I wanted to try some more. Just to make sure it wasn't fluke n' that I did have a great recipe n' some amount of skill to get it right. Why this combinations? I'm not too sure, I just went with things I like n' I had with me in the kitchen. With this second batch also coming out really well, I'm comfortable with my muffin recipe n' would substitute the fruits with anything in season n' know that they will turn out well. I have used the exact recipe from the Blueberry Muffins recipe here. The only change is I have used fresh ripe mangoes, along with some chopped figs n' crushed walnuts for sprinkling on top instead of Blueberry n' Banana. With this I salute my Muffin Recipe. I made 15 muffins using this recipe.

Ingredients:

1. All Purpose Flour (Maida): 3 cups minus 2tbsp
2. Baking soda: 1tsp
3. Baking powder:2 tsps
4. Heavy pinch of salt
5. Caster sugar: 1 cup
6. Vegetable oil: 1/2 cup (or half a cup of melted butter) *
7. Egg: 1no
8. Yogurt (plain n unflavored) : 1 generous cup (throw in extra if you want)
9. Mangoes(ripe n fresh):1 and a half cup
10. Figs (chopped): 1/2 cup
10. Vanilla Extract/Essence : 1tbsp
11. Softened Butter, for muffin tins (I used the cupcake liners so didn't need this)
12. Caster sugar (optional): for sprinkling on top.
13. Walnuts (crushed): to sprinkle on top

(* to my horror I saw that I didn't have enough Vegetable Oil with me. So I used melted butter instead. They say that while mixing the wet ingredients as mentioned in Step 3 below, one should take care while adding the hot butter to eggs. What I did was I added butter n' then added yogurt before adding the eggs n' I was safe.) This is what I had done for the blueberry recipe n' I did the same this time around too.

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 180° C.

Step 2: In a large bowl sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Step 3: In another large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla essence, egg, and yogurt.

Step 4: Add the dry ingredients (I sifted it in little by little) and stirring to a count of 10.

Step 5:Add the mangoes and the chopped figs, to mixture and stir 3 times. (At this point I got a little worried, coz the batter looked really different from anything I have ever baked. But I decided to proceed as instructed.)

Step 6: Add mixture to well-buttered muffin pans or like I mentioned the Cupcake liners. Sprinkle some walnuts on top and press down lightly. Sprinkle a little sugar over top. (Brown sugar can be used instead.)

Step 7: Bake 20 to 25 minutes and allow to cool completely.

Blueberry and Banana Muffins

Let me start today's post by giving a heartfelt thank you to all who have left me a comment on my previous post. I will try the recipes you have taken the trouble to recommend to me. :) Here is my first post from a small series of Baking goodies I want to do this month. I had never made muffins before. I have eaten them a few times. But seeing these blueberries in the stall pushed me to buy them. I have heard on countless occasions how these are filled with anti oxidants, that pushed me a little too. I bought only a 100gms (what with the being so expensive in Bangalore n all that), that left me with very few recipes I could actually try. The first classic things that came to my mind were these Blueberry Muffins n' a Blueberry Compote on pancakes. But Rj doesn't like Pancakes n' I would've had to finish the whole thing on my own...how can that be interesting? That left me to choose these Muffins.






I really didn't know muffins were this easy to bake. An ingredient lead me to choose the dish, but boy am I thrilled with the results or what? So this is the first baked dish I taught myself. :) I will shamelessly say, what helped me the most is the fact that I didn't make any changes to measurements of the base ingredients. (normally i'm always keen on that coz I don't want too many baked things on my table) I got 15 baked muffins with measurements and there are only 3 left. :( If nothing else at the end of my baking journal, I will be overweight at this pace. :) But even that daunting thought is not killing my spirits. :) So, here you go. The recipe is adapted from here.






Ingredients:

1. All Purpose Flour (Maida): 3 cups minus 2tbsp
2. Baking soda: 1tsp
3. Baking powder:2 tsps
4. Heavy pinch of salt
5. Caster sugar: 1 cup
6. Vegetable oil: 1/2 cup (or half a cup of melted butter) *
7. Egg: 1no
8. Yogurt (plain n unflavored) : 1 generous cup (throw in extra if you want)
9. Blueberries (fresh):1 cup
10. Banana (chopped): 1 cup
10. Vanilla Extract/Essence : 1tbsp
11. Softened Butter, for muffin tins (I used the cupcake liners so didn't need this)
12. Caster sugar (optional): for sprinkling on top.

* to my horror I saw that I didn't have enough Vegetable Oil with me. So I used melted butter instead. They say that while mixing the wet ingredients as mentioned in Step 3 below, one should take care while adding the hot butter to eggs. What I did was I added butter n' then added yogurt before adding the eggs n' I was safe.

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 180° C.

Step 2: In a large bowl sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

Step 3: In another large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla essence, egg, and yogurt.

Step 4: Add the dry ingredients (I sifted it in little by little) and stirring to a count of 10.

Step 5:Add blueberries and the chopped bananas, (reserving 1/2 cup of blueberries for later), to mixture and stir 3 times. (At this point I got a little worried, coz the batter looked really different from anything I have ever baked. But I decided to proceed as instructed.)

Step 6: Add mixture to well-buttered muffin pans or like I mentioned the Cupcake liners. Sprinkle remaining berries on top and press down lightly. Sprinkle a little sugar over top. (Brown sugar can be used instead.)

Step 7: Bake 20 to 25 minutes and allow to cool completely.

They came out so well, I looked at them and I could cry with Joy. I just couldn't stop smiling. Rj was at work n' I took some to my cousin Seena, who is passionate about baking. I just had to get her view on them. She liked them too n I was ecstatic. When Rj came home, he was balled over with the texture n' the fact that I used blueberries for the muffins. :) All in all I feel like a Happy Baker! Happy Baking!

My-Baking-Baby Steps- Please recommend a Baking Recipe

Anyone who has added me as a friend on FB would know my Baking woes, I have updated it there often enough. I could always say, you win some you loose some n' just quit trying. But I just couldn't do that. I have almost never had a craving for sweets, cakes or cookies. But Rj is a die hard fan of anything sweet, he has the mother of all sweet tooth so to speak...lol..;)

So anyways, truth be told, i'm scared of baking. I have had so many of my baking efforts flop on me in the last 2months. Yet I see so many people doing it effortlessly n' successfully. If you have faced baking problems like me, you will know how irksome it really is. Do you guyz remember, Arundhuti from My Saffron Kitchen, gave me this book, Sanjeev Kapoor's Cakes and Bakes. It's a really nice book, but I still managed to goof up. If you have gone through my blog, you will know how big a Sanjeev Kapoor Recipes fan I'm. Along with Aru, I also, wanted to give a special thanks to Namitha from Collaborative Curry n' Maria from Maria's Menu too, who have listened to me patiently and answered my queries, whenever I have talked to them about baking. :) Ria from Ria's Collection was telling me yesterday, to go easy on myself and to relax and try again after a while to find my baking mojo back. But I was scared what if I loose track n' loose my steam. So she has recommended a few of her simple cakes recipes for me to try out. :) Thank you so much gal.

Madhuri from cookcurrynook, another established Baker like the others I have mentioned here, is a really good friend now. She takes bulk orders for baking, (how awesome is that, right?) knows so many digs in and around Bangalore where you can go pick up baking goodies n she is on first name basis with so many renowned chefs. ;) That's how cool she is. We attended this 'Active Foods' workshop in Taj Gateway Hotel, Bangalore organised by Food Lovers Magazine. It was an awesome experience and Chef Naren Thimmaiah shared with us a lot of tips and recipes on healthy cooking. I had a wonderful experience, all thanks to Madhuri (who told me about it in the first place) and Food Lovers Magazine. :)

Coming back to the topic of baking, Chef Naren served us a Molten Chocolate Souffle with a Florida Orange Reduction. It was divine, to say the least. Sitting there I said to myself, thats what I will try first. I promptly tried it. It flopped on me, literally. It rose well enough in the oven, but 5mins after taking it out from the oven, it shrank to half its original size and tasted bad. :(...Here is a picture, just so you can get an idea. I also tried a Red Velvet Cake recently, it turned out as hard as those Red Angry Birds from the game Angry Birds....:( I tried a sponge cake to make Jam Rolls n it rose n' rose while baking in the cake tin n' had this smell of eggs after baking...eeks.. It was horrible. Let's me not say anything more. But anyways you get the picture. Having said that I should also say, I have successfully baked, a simple chocolate cake, a Marble Cake, a Chocolate Carrot Cake, a Banana Bread n' a Chocolate Mud Cake before.










The contradictory part about this is the fact that the first time I baked, I was in my 8th Std in school. I used to make Butter cookies, learnt from a summer holiday workshop my mom sent me to. My grandmom, her sister n' one of my aunts are all really good at baking. I still remember how proud my ammachi was when the butter cookies I baked turned out well. I used to have fun distributing them too. :).But after that, I don't think I baked anything till we went to Bahrain. I have been told on countless occasions that practice is key in baking n' also follow the recipe to the last drop of the batter.

This post is dedicated to me and my Baking Efforts. I have decided I need to conquer this worry I have about Baking. This July, I'm planning to challenge myself and try to bake something or the other over the coming 2-3 weeks, lets say 4weeks. More like a baking class for myself, where the cook and the student is one n' the same. :) I realize this post is too long, so i'm highlighting this para for you. It would mean a lot to me, if you could recommend an easy but yummy baking recipe from your blog (sweet or savoury) to help me get better at baking. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. :)