🧁🧁🧁🍫🍫🍫Claire's Crazy Bakes and Kitchen Hacks - Chapter 37: Learning How to Use Fancy Baking Stuff and Upside-Down Top-Deck Cupcakes 🍫🍫🍫🍰🍰🍰

You'd think by now my life revolves around cupcakes! Well, with my big old oven being out of commission for a while I haven't been able to bake, and we've suddenly been hurtled into birthday season. I was given this cute little oven to help me out and it's really been awesome! It does mean you need a little extra patience because you can only bake one tray at a time, but it bakes perfectly every time!

This time it was @lex-zaiya's partner and her best friend's birthday. I wanted to make something different and exciting but I honestly changed my mind about ten times as to what I was going to do. It was only while I was already baking the cupcakes and making the vanilla buttercream icing that I decided to just dump 300g of cocoa straight in there! And the result was DELICIOUS!!

I did note that I hadn't written down my vanilla cupcake recipe in my family recipe file, so I did that before we started baking. I need to make some pretty dividers and add some more recipes to it so that the kids can experiment. It's something I want to share with them and pass down: the magic and joy of creating in the kitchen. Cooking should never be a chore. I've been there before and I'm delighted that it never feels like that anymore. We are a whole family and that means there's always help and lots of love.

Heavens knows I needed the help while trying to figure out this contraption, which was a birthday gift from ages ago. I love my old trusty piping bag... ok that's a lie. I hate it. 100% loath it. The last nozzle I used got stuck (so I can't change it) and all the icing likes to ooze out of the back so I just end up covered in icing, and while that may sound delightful, it's really not.

So thank you @zakludick for helping me to figure out that I didn't have to manhandle the plunger and I could actually just use the trigger. In my defense, the instructions were confusing, ok... don't laugh at me. The only thing I really did battle with was how to clean out the icing that somehow got BEHIND the plunger while piping. How did that even happen? The back part behind the plunger doesn't unscrew (I tried, and even looked for YouTube videos). I eventually got it right with soap, hot water and pumping the plunger, and shaking the device so that all the icing that was trapped basically dissolved. I'm sure there's a better way, and one day I'll figure it out.

Overall, the piping was a lovely easy process with my new contraption, and now that I know how it works, my next batch will be neater. I had some pretty star sprinkles left over from various kiddies' birthday parties and, of course, edible glitter!

So not only did they taste delicious, but they looked spectacular too!

Thank you @matthew-williams for being my baking assistant and @aimeludick for helping me with the icing!

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vanilla cupcakes
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Check out my vanilla cupcake recipe here 👆. Note that this time I replaced the ordinary sugar with castor sugar because of its fine texture. The idea is, that the vanilla cupcakes be as light and fluffy as possible, and this definitely made a tangible difference. I also added 300g of cocoa to the icing, which gave me a milk chocolate-tasting icing. Not as dark as I would make it for chocolate cake, but enough to contrast and compliment the light vanilla cupcakes.

They truly were a delight!