Rising to the cupcake challenge

The stakes were high and so was my confidence as I prepared to make my giant cupcake masterpiece.

There is a bit of a story to the cupcake tins. They were a suggestion of the EA to the GPB and seeing as Martha had her car broken into that day, they seemed the perfect online purchase for a cheer-up surprise present. (Surprise, it didn’t turn up ‘til three weeks later and you had to go collect it from the post office before they returned it to the sender.)

Back to the cake. Deciding to keep it simple, the recipe choice was easy – Chocolate Cake 1 – ‘a simple recipe a child can make’.

Even my photocopy of Mrs Betty’s recipe book reveals how well-worn chocolate cake page 83 is, many words have been re-written in after sticking to page 82 – testament to the recipe’s status as family favourite.

Having baked this cake hundreds of times as a child, I knew there was no way I could go wrong.

Taking Martha’s advice, I decided to double the recipe, figuring that I could always make another cake with any leftovers.

Revisiting this recipe proved simple enough for Betty to make, though beating out 200 strokes with the wooden spoon (the method instructs ‘do not use electric beater’) did take its toll on my left shoulder!

Into the lightly greased silicone bakeware and into the oven, all was looking good for a perfect result.

The first sign that things weren’t right should have come when the cakes weren’t ready on the buzzer.

The second, when the cakes started crumbling when I lifted them.

The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, ninth … etc. was when the smoke alarm went off – again and again and again … although snothing was even anywhere near burnt! Rapid tea-towel flapping under the alarm ensued, with quick darts to close doors, open windows and turn on the exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom to clear the air … and when all that failed I gave up and removed the batteries. Grrr.

Turning the cakes out of the moulds turned out to be a complete disaster, leaving almost a quarter of the cake stuck to the mould.

What should have been a perfect swirly, cherry-worthy top was instead a crumbly mess, resembling instead one of the rocky mountains. And to top it off (pardon the pun) the brilliant tip from Martha to sit the silicon bakeware in a biscuit tin (for ease of transport in and out of the oven) had overheated and burnt the bottom of the cake (cheap Safeway tins will do that I have now discovered).

The pressure was on to make a big save in the decoration.

Figuring that traditional was the way to go, the only filling it could be was raspberry jam and cream. Remembering to buy full cream instead of light (it doesn’t whip) I was on a roll filling the cake. Until I realised I had quite a lot of cream left over. What to do with it. Now I do love cream, but even that was a bit too much for me to eat! My brilliant plan was to create another layer of jam and cream lower down in the cupcake (like you would a sponge cake) which successfully used up all the cream.

 Now it was time for the decoration. I still had a tub of my very own chocolate fude frosting leftover, which I applied liberally all over. A dusting of rainbow sprinkles and a cherry on top and we were close … it just needed a little something … and raiding my gift-wrap box came with the perfect adornment – a pink ribbon. Now I should mention here that this was to be my friend Josh’s birthday cake, so to ‘masulinise’ it, I wrote ‘Happy Birthday Josh’ in blue glitter. Perfect.

Transportation proved a slight drama however. Remember that extra layer of cream? Well it turns out that wasn’t quite so stable in the car … however a quick cleanup and reposition of the ribbon before arrival meant no-one ever know the difference.

The final challenge was in the cutting and serving – it was basically a mess. Turns out cupcakes really aren’t meant to be shared.

The verdict:

Effort: 6

Presentation: 9 (for the cherry on top)



Overall, a cool idea, but probably not worth the trouble.

Betty x

PS. For all my firefighting friends out there – I did replace the batteries in the smoke alarm when the non-smoke subsided. Cakey bakelicious does not endorse the taking out of smoke alarm batteries and we recommend photoelectric smoke alarms … only working smoke alarms save lives!