Sunday, October 24, 2010

Falling behind for Fall

AKA: Experiment Failed.

I know that I've fallen behind in my blogging. I've had plenty of ideas, and topics, but not inspired to write for some reason. Which led me to push through and post a blog for fall and re-commit myself to one blog a month. 

Experiment:
Witty pun and successful recipe. 

I wanted to make a Fall inspired recipe and use a fun pun of "falling behind for fall" whilst creating a successful recipe.  

Results:
Witty pun? Eh, failed or success dunno. 
Delicious successful baking recipe? Definitely failed. Of course as always I tasted my failed experiment, not once, but twice. 

 What did I decide to experiment with? Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter and boxed cupcakes. I really wanted to make a cupcake filled with pumpkin butter and topped with pumpkin spice icing. Where did the experiment fail? Where I initially thought it would. But went ahead anyways.
I tend to do this in life. Despite my better judgement, I will sometimes act on impulse. My better judgement was that the pumpkin butter would be too heavy and sink through the cupcake, or mess up the batter and not allow it to rise. The batter rose, but the filling fell through. In hindsight, I shoulda carved out the center of the cupcake post-baking then added the filling. But that ran into the problem of icing. Icing would not have looked good with a gaping hole in the cupcake stuffed with filling.

 Hmm, dilemma dilemma. 

Maybe I should just stick to tried and true recipes?

If you want to fail like me, or attempt to improve upon it, here ya go:



  • Heat oven as directed by cupcake mix, I set mine for 325 F because I use dark muffin tins
  • 1 box of yellow cupcake mix
    • 1 1/4 cup water
    • 1/3 cup oil
    • 3 eggs
  • 1 jar of pumpkin butter
  • Greek yogurt or cream cheese to mix with pumpkin butter
  • 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • pumpkin spice to taste
Top View: See all the pumpkin spice goodness?
So close....




Mix cupcake batter as directed, put in muffin cups. 
Mix 1 part pumpkin butter with 1 part greek yogurt. I didn't have any plain cream cheese, so I used greek yogurt which I find to be a good substitute when cooking. 
Add dollop of pumpkin butter mix to cupcake batter.
Bake as directed
While baking make icing. Mix sifted powdered sugar with 1 tbsp milk and pumpkin spice to taste.

Let cupcakes cool, then drizzle with icing. 



Argh, pumpkin filling at bottom :(

2 comments:

  1. I've got a super easy muffin base recipe that can be tweaked, and it's thick enough that stuff doesn't sink to the bottom!

    1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    3/4 cup white sugar
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    2 teaspoons baking powder
    1/3 cup vegetable oil
    1 egg
    1/3 cup milk
    1 tsp vanilla extract

    Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
    Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and vanilla and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture.
    Bake for 20 minutes.

    You can customize all sorts of stuff in these suckers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks! I will try and post results. I want to work on my piping skills too. We'll see how that goes....

    ReplyDelete