Suddenly Cupcakes

Suddenly I got a hankering to make cupcakes. I hadn't made any for decades. In those days I needed a special cupcake tin and little paper things to keep them from sticking. When I "purged," threw things out before the crew came to renovate my kitchen, those old pans were sent off.

Don't worry, I didn't get upset that they're gone when I decided to make cupcakes.  Now it's much easier to make them. You can buy self standing disposable aluminum or paper mini-tins.

Theses disposable baking "tins" are the perfect size for cupcakes and not very expensive. I used the aluminum ones, which have been waiting patiently in the closet for years next to the paper cupcake tins. I placed a bunch on a large baking tray and poured in the cake batter.  

"What batter?" You're probably wondering.

I used my super easy TNT one-bowl cake recipe. I've been making it for almost half a century, and nowadays I barely measure. I added chocolate chips to the batter and decorated them with colored sprinkles. Honestly, you can't get easier than that!

Maybe I'll bring some to THE GAME for the kids and grandkids. Yaala Big Blue!

Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake, Like No Other

The other day I had to replenish my cake* supply. I bake a few cakes and freeze all but one. As usual I did a version of my very simple, basic cake. It really is the easiest cake to bake and very amenable to variations. For the basic recipe, click above on the embedded bold links.

My plan was to use perked coffee I had put in the fridge a few weeks ago for the liquid, but it didn't look usable. I had thought it would go perfectly with chocolate chips. It would be a bit more sophisticated than just the vanilla.

Then I got another idea. I added some instant coffee and some of the morning's leftover coffee grounds from the French Press.

The cake was absolutely delicious. There are three more in the freezer!

*I bake with 70% extra fine ground whole wheat flour and brown sugar. Besides the health value, I think it has more flavor than white flour and white sugar.

"Handmade*" Cake

When I found myself with the grandkids on a Thursday afternoon, I decided to "kill two birds with one stone" and do some of my Shabbat preparations with them. I also loved the idea of baking in my daughter's nice big oven. So we made cakes.

I used my fantastically easy no-fail basic cake recipe to which I added chocolate chips.

The youngest of that crew was very enthusiastic about helping, so I took advantage of the opportunity. We also did some basic math in English, since there are lots of numbers when baking cakes:

"We need 10 half-cups of flour. Two were from the now finished bag of flour, so how many more do we add from the full bag of flour?"

Even though the Second Grade had started barely a week before, she could calculate it all in her head. NO FINGERS!

We made 4 1/2 cakes. And I guessed the temperature correctly. If there's a dial, cakes generally do well when the dial almost points directly down, just slightly cooler. The "display" showed it as 270 degrees centigrade. Then I double-checked by googling on my phone. The numbers on my oven haven't been visible for years.

When the cakes were finished, we served the small one as a treat to all the kids. I just had a couple of "crumbs" to sample. Calories! Even though, rather inexplicably, most of those grandkids aren't noshers, it's hard to resist a cake straight out of the oven.

Once the cakes had cooled sufficiently, I packed up three, leaving my daughter one for Shabbat. The grandkids reported that the visit was fun.

Why is this post titled "Handmade*" Cake? Very simple. My granddaughter had never heard of mixing a cake by hand before. She called it "handmade." My daughter uses a mixer, and I don't. Of course, you can certainly mix the cake batter with an electric mixer, but I haven't had a functioning mixer for decades. It's just another thing to wash after baking, so I'm not interested. This one-bowl cake comes out perfectly fine when mixed by hand.