Cupcake Catastrophe

Since the cheesecake seemed to have not gone so well, I thought I would try making some nice, easy vanilla cupcakes. Ha, easier said than done.

I used my new silicone cupcake cases from the Baked and Delicious magazine to which I've subscribed, and I used their recipe too. The first hiccup was when I put in one too many eggs, as I forgot I was meant to be halving the ingredients due to only having 6 cases. But that was easily resolved, I just put in a bit more flour.

Since we have a halogen oven, a regular cupcake tray wouldn't fit, so I popped the cases into a pyrex bowl, thinking this would be fine (even though it only held 3 so I had to do it two batches). However, the silicone cupcake cases need support otherwise they just kind of flop out and don't allow the cupcakes to take a nice, normal form. So the first 3 were demented, and burnt, as the halogen oven seems to be hotter than a regular oven (even though I put it on 190C, just like the recipe said).

So for the second batch I put the cases into some ramekins, for baking mini cheesecakes or sponges in, and that helped with the form, however the fan in the halogen still made them rise up in an odd fasion, causing there to be a random growth on the sides of the cakes. I also turned the temperature down this time, to 175 so they wouldn't burn on top again. When the time was up I inserted a skewer and it came out clean, so, thinking they were cooked, I let them cool.

I then made the icing, putting far too much red food colouring in so that it came out as an angry, vivid red rather than a pretty spring pink. Oh well.

When I went to ice the cakes, it turned out the second batch had gloopy, uncooked bottoms. Brilliant. So of the first batch there were two that had cooked without burning. I had already thrown the burnt one away thinking i'd soon have 3 perfect ones after the second batch.

I had two. And some crappy icing. Nevertheless, I iced the two I managed to save, and they look fine (apart from the weird growth and mishapenness).

So here they are. Angry red food colouring and all.