When you have a light, fluffy cupcake it’s a joy to eat and admire, with a delicious buttercream topping!! But not sure if you have suffered from cupcake baking. Argh 😤 the amount of things that can go wrong!! Sunken…. over spillage…..over risen….unequal sizes…… square 😫
I thought I had cracked a good cupcake. But having recently moved to Spain. Everything seemed to go wrong. From not being used to the temperature of my new oven, to not understanding Spanish when buying my cake mixture. After wadding through the Spanish supermarket, with my Google translate at hand. I finally managed to crack a cupcake in Spain 😝.
I have pulled together some top tips to help:
1. Test one out in the oven first. This will help you decide on, how much mixture to put in the cupcake and how long to bake them for.
2. Do it on a low temperature. Around 150 degrees celsius for big cupcakes and mini cupcakes I do it on 140 degrees celsius fan oven. This avoids the cupcakes baking on too high a temperature. Preventing the cake from forming a dome or cracking.
3. It’s so easy when you have all your ingredients on the table to mix up baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, especially if reading it in Spanish. This is super important not to mix up. Too much bicarbonate of soda, can give you a funny taste in your cake. As well as the cake rising too quick.
4. If you don’t have a cupcake baking tray, I tend to double up the cupcake cases. Or you can buy cupcake cases that are lined with grease proofing. They prevent the bottom of the cupcakes having an oily bottom and prevent the cupcake falling over in the oven. Plus it helps keep the shape round. No to square!
5. I use baking parchment on the tray the cupcakes cases sit on. Again this helps remove any of that greasiness you can get when baking cupcakes.
6. To ensure all your cupcakes are the same size. Precision is created with a digital weighing scale to weigh out the mix. In a medium size cupcake holder I tend to weight out 42g and in a mini one I weigh out about 30g. Remember your mixture will rise and you don’t want it to over spill.
7. When placing the cupcakes on the baking tray. Do not put them too close to each other. They need space to do their thing.
8. The most difficult thing to avoid, is not opening the oven door. Just sit and relax with a cup of tea. Avoid opening before 10mins of being in the oven. Otherwise you will have sunken cupcakes.
When you get this right it’s such a joy!! And then you get creative and add other things to your cupcakes. Like yummy ferrero rocher.
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