Penguins in the Cold

For my 4^th blog post I decided to use the inspiration of the cold outside for my cupcake and create penguins. The skill that I tried to master while baking these cupcakes was not only creating odd shapes with other treats but dipping the whole structure into melted frosting to create a sleek coat. Even though I did not exactly succeed as you will soon see, I will most likely try this technique again because even though it was messy it was fun!

A

To start I made box-mix lemon cupcakes, while the cupcakes were in the over I got to work on fixing the donuts that I had bought to create the body of the penguin. I need to shape and carve the donut so they would not fit on the cupcake (they were originally too large) but also so that when a doughnut hole was placed on top of the donut it would at least somewhat resemble a penguin. Carving the donuts was difficult because they were so crumbly, if I were to do this again I would try to begin with smaller donuts so I wouldn’t have to carve them in the first place. Then after the cupcakes were frosted with white frosting and I had placed the carved donut on top of the frosted cupcake, I put a smear of icing in the center and stuck in the doughnut hole. When that step was completed, I roughly frosted the outer edge of the shape to create a more solid structure (See picture A). After this whole process all of my creations went into the freezer for about 10-15 minutes. This is a very important step, Hello, Cupcake! the book which I am taking the recipe from talks about why the step is important, “Once the whole structure is finished, place it in the freezer to chill until the frosting is firm. This step is crucial to prevent the construction from coming apart when they are dipped in slightly warm frosting.” (18)

B

I find that multi-tasking while baking can be very effective in not only time management but to also make sure that the time allotted for each task is carried out effectively.  With this said, while the penguin cupcake structure were chilling in the freezer, I spooned a whole can of chocolate frosting into a microwavable measuring cup and microwaved it about 20 seconds. After stirring the frosting, I put it back in the microwave for 10 seconds at a time until it was the correct consistency. What is the correct consistency you ask? Hello, Cupcake! explains a method on how to know that your melted frosting not to thick, “You can check the consistency by running your finger through the frosting on the back of spoon. It should coat the spooned smoothly by be thick enough to hold the edges of the pattern of your finger.” (19) In simpler terms this means that if you dip a spoon in the frosting it should coat the spoon but when you run your finger along the back of the spoon, it will leave a path. Another important tip that I have for you, is to work in small batches like 4-5 cupcakes at a time, while the rest of your cupcakes stay in the freezer. This allows all your cupcake structure the same opportunity to stay together under the slight warmth of the frosting. When you are ready to dip, grasp the cupcake by the liner and dip it up to the very edge of the liner, and be sure to cover the entire cupcake. Then pull the cupcake straight up and let some of the residue frosting drip off until place the cupcake right way again. After you dip the cupcake place your pre-cut yellow Starburst beaks into the head of the penguin. Next place 2 of your already sliced chocolate wafer cookies/flippers on either side of the bird creating a general bird shape. (See picture B) When you are done with a batch place it back in the freezer and continue until you are done with all the batches.

After another pop in the freezer for another 10 minutes to set the frosting, I added additional decorations to bring my flock of penguins to life and voila! I had created a little army of penguin though many of them were very misshapen as I had never done this sort of thing before, I still thought they looked pretty cute. J

Expectation

Reality

Have you ever tried really hard to bake something nice but it turns out kind of ugly?

Thanks for reading, Sierra Foster

For Further Reading: Richardson, Alan, and Karen Tack. Hello, Cupcake! New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Print.