Alana
Today’s episode of baking-in-shambles is brought to you by my clinical group’s last day on our current hospital unit. The way my program works, we alternate between classes (labs and seminars for two weeks) and clinical practicum (hospital for two weeks). My group is at the end of our first clinical block, and we will be switching to a different unit for the remainder of the semester. The nurses on our current unit were awesome over the last two weeks. They were very helpful and understanding that this was our first experience in the hospital, so as a thank you we are all bringing in something for this evenings shift. What an excellent excuse to bake (I don’t get many of those these days).
Note the red background, it lures you into a false sense of security that this cupcake will indeed be red velvet…
PYSCH!
The recipe I used was out of Heather Baird’s (aka Sprinkle Bakes) book, but this one is mostly the same (not exactly).
Oh, hi blue cupcake
Heather mentions that the trick to getting the perfect blue colour is to use a dab of violet colouring. I tried it, but I don’t think it worked as well as it could have (I put in way less blue than she did). Her online recipe says 1 tbsp of royal blue gel, but I only used 1 tsp (the book says ½ -1 tbsp and lazy-Alana saw the teaspoon first). I figured it was better to start with less and be able to add more later, than add too much and be like, “EFF”. I didn’t find adding the violet colouring made that much of a difference, and I definitely added more than what Heather described as a “dab”. Who knows.
Tea mug matches the cupcakes! 😀
You can see that the colour of the batter pre-oven is pretty true to the colour of the cake post-oven. I suggest playing with the colour until you get one you like, because it will probably stay more or less the same.
On another note, to make the cream cheese icing fluffy you really need to beat it (as inspired by the King of Pop, naturally). The icing doesn’t pipe well otherwise, it’s too creamy. Anyway, off to do some patient research before evening shift starts! Happy baking 🙂
… Now they’re pink? Whaa?
Chateau Gateau 