2013 is the year of cupcakes, highlighted with the popularity of several businesses such as Sonja's Cupcakes, Vanilla Cupcake Bakery, and Larcy's Cupcakery cafe, among many others. So one day, I said to myself, why not try to bake one?

It started with a poo-looking frosting on a chocolate cupcake, which was piped using a wax paper with a circle-shaped opening. Yes, it was during the time when cupcakes were a national craze (TV shows are even constantly showing how to make these small, pretty, and yummy creations) that I decided to try baking a batch of chocolate cupcake with a semi-complicated frosting (for a beginner, of course).

Although it literally looks like poo, the cake is soft and moist. It even tastes even better after hours of being stored in the ref! The frosting, which is made out of melted chocolate and buttercream, is not too sweet - almost with the taste of dark chocolate. My little cousin loved it!

 

I must admit, baking simple cupcake recipes are easy if you follow the instructions on the dot. The challenging part is having to invent something completely different to stand out from your competition.

And so, I challenged myself by baking some of our favorite flavors - lemon and carrot cupcakes. One day, with leftover walnuts from my carrot cupcake experiment, I made chocolate banana cupcakes with buttercream frosting topped with chopped walnuts. It's the cupcake that I made specially for my sister, who was down from dengue fever.

 

I also had the opportunity to share my baked creations with my boyfriend's friends. My ever-supportive boyfriend's balikbayan friend had just come back and he wanted something special to share during their get-together. So I baked carrot cupcakes topped with cream cheese frosting and chocolate cupcakes topped with buttercream frosting.

 





Making these cupcakes was the first time I felt so tired. I think I made over 40 cupcakes, which I did for most of the day. The culprit probably is the carrot cupcake, where I had to grate a lot of carrots and apple, cut nuts, and fold endlessly.

Nevertheless, I still continued to experiment. The next time, my sister and I finally managed to buy a bottle of green tea powder in a Korean grocery, so we can finally bake green tea cupcake. I also wanted to try a good friend's white chocolate frosting recipe, so I decided to make green tea and chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate ganache.

 

Needless to say, my white chocolate ganache failed and it became sort of a sticky, liquid-like frosting. The green tea cupcake was a bit dry but it still retained the yummy green tea flavor.

The next time I baked was a request by my boyfriend's friend, who wanted cupcakes for her baby shower. Since it was just chocolate cupcake, I accepted the task (not job, since it's free haha) and worked on it for a day. I made plenty of cupcakes that fit in a refrigerator. It was my first time to buy gel food color in mint green and sky blue colors. I'm not good with design so I just stuck with the traditional swirl frosting and topped it with white chocolates.

 

Chocolate cupcake is the easiest to make, so when my mom asked me to bake some cupcakes to give as a gift, I just assembled all the ingredients and worked on baking. The recipient of the gift is a girl, so I just used the strawberry food flavor to give it a pink hue. Again, I suck at designing cupcakes. Haha.

 

This year is a year that I fulfilled some of my hobbies. I even baked a lemon pistachio cake! Nyamnyam!