-Lesley Boone

Sometimes all it takes is a little cupcake to cheer a person up. 

Today I needed a little cheering, so I made some cupcakes.

Despite their different colours, they’re all the same flavour. Butter cake with Almond/Orange icing.

I realized today that our local county fair started today. The Clark County fair, where I got my start in baking.

You see, back when I was an itty bitty little girl, my mom, my sister and I used to spend weeks and weeks in the kitchen during the month of July, In preparation of the baking booth at the Clark County fair. We’d all enter at least 5 entries each year, mostly jneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comust to see what ribbons we could win, but it was also pretty cool when we ranked high enough to get a little money for our hard work.

I remember entering all sorts of goodies. Zucchini bread, spice cake, coconut macaroons, buttercreams, pound cake, cheesecake, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies… My mom always entered the specialized contests, like the decorated dummy cakes and the bread contests. My sister was in 4-H, so she had her own contests amongst the other 4-H’ers.

We’re going to try to go to the fair this coming week, so I might have photos from that if we end up going. In addition to that, I’m going to try and re-create some of those recipes that I made way back when. We’ll see. I’ve got a few of the actual original recipes on hand, and a few other ones that I’ve tweaked over the years.

And I still have that huge 5 gallon drum (with about 4 gallons still in it) of dessicated coconut, so.. coconut macaroons might just be something I have to make next week!

Also, I’d like to apologize for the lack of photos this week. We had a little family crisis (still in the midst of it, actually) so all extra activities were sort of shut down over the end of the week. I’m still dedicated to posting as often as I can, but things might be slow for the next week or so.  Please bear with me.

Also, My husband managed to eat my tarts and my ice cream BEFORE I could take photos of it. I’m thinking I need to get some post it notes and stick them to everything I make with a little note saying “Haven’t photographed yet” so it doesn’t happen again. Like I said though, we had a bit of an issue this week, so I didn’t mind so much, I’ve been sort of bogged down with other things.

Please keep The Muffin household in your pleasant thoughts and good graces over the next days and into the coming weeks. I’d really appreciate it.

Until then, I’ve got some cupcakes to give to my upstairs neighbours.

I’d like to say I used a different recipe, but I didn’t. I was kind of depressed today, so I figured some cupcakes would cheer me up, and I used one of my old family recipes.

Here it is-

Buttercake

1/2 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees. Prepare your muffin tin with paper liners (or you could grease a cake pan)

Cream butter, and gradually add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add flour mixture alternately with milk and flavorings to creamed mixture, beating after each addition until smooth and light. Fill each cupcake paper about 3/4 of the way full. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Allow to fully cool before icing.
Orange Almond Buttercream-

1 cup butter
6-8 cups powdered sugar
1/4- 1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons almond extract
2 teaspoons orange extract

Cream the butter in a large mixing bowl. Gradually add 4 cups of the powdered sugar. Add more if the mixture is not crumbly. Stop when the mixture looks like pie crust dough. Add 1/4 cup of the milk and all of the flavouring extracts. whip on high speed until the mixture fluffs up. if the mixture looks too soft or liquidy, add the remaining powdered sugar by the cupfull. If the mixture looks too crumbly, add the remaining milk a tablespoon at a time.

Store the mixture at room temperature. Makes enough icing to cover at least 24 standard sized cupcakes, generously.

And there you have it. Simple cupcakes with a simple flavour, but still very delicious.

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:06 am and is filed under August 2007, The Cupcakes!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.