Birthday Cupcakes, Exams and Frosting Failure

I should’ve bought more flour for the frosting (but at least I made buttercream)

So this was another week of baking and because this is obviously a baking class but our school isn’t the all written exam type and no I don’t go to Culinary School but for the midsem examination for baking class we had a choice to bake whatever our heart desires or just in general bake whatever we want because I don’t know who does or could bake that far (I really don’t). Well the teacher adviced us not to go too ambitous for baking class like baking a cake because the class is just starting out for baking (That’s why he said not to go too ambitious for this whole baking class.)

I started planning what I wanted to bake (I originally thought of baking a pie) but that didn’t work out too well (not the idea of baking the pie) but I figured it’s best not to start baking and dishing out pies well that’s another one of those very ambitous thing I’m doing since baking a pie is too much. Then I started thinking of baking tarts because it‘s smaller than pies and could be made in batches and they’re also healthier since there’s fruits in pies and tarts. I don’t know if I have any scientific evidence to back the “if fruits in deserts are healthier” so I’ll just leave it at that.

Then my mom wanted me to bake for a friend as a birthday gift but her birthday from last week is two weeks from now and unless the teacher decides to campaign for Leni Robredo or get stuck in the mountains for another two weeks or so. I’ll also be going to Borracay the following week (a beach in the Philippines which takes a very long plane ride and will be staying for four days) so I won’t be baking if teacher doesn’t assign any baking homework since I’ll be out and if I bake on that week then the week would almost end or for some people (Sunday is considered another week already) then maybe I’ll post a blog that’s on another topic that’s maybe unrelated to baking or vacation (unsure yet about how to go about this.)

Then after that week alone I’ll go back to baking on that week but teacher might be back from his long break from not baking and give us another bread to bake with. So its’ better that I send the gift on that week instead of waiting for another two weeks. The week before that week the teacher discussed what we’re baking and gave us advice (I was originally going to melt chocolate to make the cupcakes sweeter.) But he said no to melting or even modifying the only reason why I’m doing it is to make it sweeter without the carrots but he complained about things halfway through I didn’t want to takeup everyone’s time so I didn‘t argue about melting milk chocolate and my thought process was held back and was very stagnant.

So I just left the room without saying my reasoning he also complained that I shouldn’t be modifying the recipe. In the end the only thing I modifed was not adding carrots and frosting (which is just adding food coloring, flour, and cornstarch) but I eventually ran out of flour anyways. Thankfully teacher doesn’t grade the way we make frosting so I can modify it by however I want it). By Thursday I started baking because that’s the dedicated time to start baking so I got up at eight started at nine and then get all the ingredients mixed them and then start putting them in the oven. I realized that the cupcakes needed to be baked for twenty five minutes instead of fifteen.

So most of the baking cupcakes fluff was in the oven time and then by four o clock I

started frosting them but we ran out of frosting. While making the frosting my dad was supposed to only put three drops of food coloring but the food coloring spilled and it ended up being a reddish brown. Also while making the frosting the whole thing ended up watery so my dad insists we add butter but adding butter didn’t do anything so I told him to add flour instead. It worked the frosting is stabilized now which isn’t too terrible thankfully the second batch of frosting turned into the light brown color I wanted. I just used flour for the frosting to stabilize and it works but we end up rushing the frosting cause it to literally melt and doesn’t look appealing like the cupcakes I bake.

The cupcakes had this sweet but not too sweet feeling (I’m just going to guess this is a signature style of mine already) but I wanted it a lot more sweeter than what the recipe had so I couldn’t because the teacher already disapproved my modifications and the defense argument fell slowly upon my lips. He argued that the cocoa powder gives it a chocolate flavor but it doesn’t give the overly sweet feeling I wanted. The following week I showed my cupcakes to class (without frosting) because that was a failure. Then he said it was great because ”chocolate is supposed to be bitter.” Also he tells that marketing lies behind anyone’s back and chocolates like cadbury aren’t chocolates at all they’re considered candies (not actually chocolates). He also provided an example of a sugar free pancake syrup when its not actually sugar free and we all got a laugh of it.

Looking back at the day I baked it wasn’t too bad ”I’m starting to get more cofidence that my baking skills are fine.” Thankfully the cupcakes were delivered to my friend who’s having a birthday celebration the following week and I sold some cupcakes to the store. The next thing I’ll be baking got to be the Garlic Bread. Thankfully no frosting when baking the garlic bread.