Picture Perfect Cooking

In a previous post, I mentioned that Good Eats was my favorite show on the Food Network.  The host, Alton Brown, always makes the recipes interesting and entertaining as well as informative.  There were several of his recipes that I wanted to try, but one thing was holding me back…a food scale!  In most of his baked goods recipes, he measures by weight instead of volume.  Well, problem be gone!

C’s parents gave me a food scale for my birthday, so here is my first attempt at one of Mister Brown’s cake recipes.  He calls this “Gold Cake”, because it is a homemade version of “yellow cake”.  Don’t be fooled, the texture of this cake is much lighter than a box mix.  Instead of two 9 inch cakes, I decided to make cupcakes.  The cooking time is the same and the recipe will make 24 cupcakes.

The chocolate frosting recipe was one that I already had.  It is Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Frosting.  I used 3 different decorator’s tips to frost these just for fun. 

For the cupcakes:

3/4 cup butter flavored vegetable shortening

300 grams sugar (1 1/4 cup)

300 grams sifted cake flour (2 1/2 cups)

14 grams baking powder (3 tsp)

1/4 tsp salt

8 egg yolks, beaten

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare cupcake pan with liners (or use two 9 inch cake pans, greased).  Cream together the shortening and the sugar.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Slowly alternate adding the egg yolks and milk with the dry ingredients and mix until well combined.  Add vanilla and mix well.

 

 

Scoop about 1/3 cup of batter into each cupcake liner.  Bake for 18-20 minutes.  Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.

 

For the frosting:

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup cocoa powder

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

Melt butter and stir in cocoa.  Alternately add sugar and milk, beating on medium speed until the frosting reaches spreading consistency.  Add a little more milk or sugar to change the consistency if necessary.

 

 

 

I used a decorator’s tip on a zip top bag to frost these.  The first tip is a number 199.  Here’s what it can do.  Remember, decorating is really NOT my strong suit.  I like to do it for fun.

Then I switched to a number 29.

 

 

The final tip was number 5.

Yum!  I can’t wait to dig in to these.