Last night I decided to go all Martha Stewart (minus the jail time) and makes some festive Red, White and Blue cup cakes. I liberally used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman (she has some awesome food!). I use the term liberally because her recipe calls for making an actual angle food cake. Well, for all of us baking novices (me) who do not have the required equipment (a cake pan), I dumbed down the recipe quite a bit. :)
I started with a box of angle food cake mix. You know the kind Betty Crocker makes. Yeah I'm a cheater! All I had to do was add water, throw it into the mixer and wallah, angle food cake batter. Then I grabbed my only cup cake tray I own, plopped some of the batter into cup cake liners, and threw them babies into the oven for 13-15 minutes.
Silly me forgot to take any picture of the above happenings, but here is the end result!
You have to be careful because the cake is super light and airy so it's pretty easy to squash some getting them out of the pan.
I mixed me up a little strawberry jello.
And then put frozen strawberries into the hot Jello mix. At first I was a little worried because my frozen strawberries were... well very frozen... but after about 10 minutes of stirring, breaking the giant frozen chuck o' fruit up, and waiting, it defrosted pretty nicely.
While I was waiting for my berries to defrost, I cut the middles out of the baby cakes. I used a sharp knife and made a circle around the outside ring and then dug the middle out. I saved the tops and just threw them back into the cupcakes for now.
I took each cupcake middle and filled it with the berry and Jello mix.
Then took the part I had cut off, shmoosh it down a bit, and stuck it back on top.
I stuck all of them in the fridge. I'll admit, at this point I was worried that the Jello was going to make the inside of the cups all soggy so that's why I did the fridge part right away. I'm not sure if this is a key step or not.
While the baby cakes were chillin', I made my own homemade whipped cream. This is probably the most domestic thing I have done to date! Sure you can go out and buy some Ready Wip, but I had to try it once, and I have to say it was pretty easy.
I threw my cream in the mixer with some sugar and beat it (beat it good) on high for a couple of minutes. Because I had never done this before I grew worried after about a minute. My cream wasn't getting any thicker. So I rushed back to the The Pioneers Woman's site and double checked I wasn't missing a key step.
That's when I read these words... "Don't give up on your cream"... so back to the mixer it was! This time after another minute it was beginning to thicken up and after 2-3 minutes it was perfect! And it tasted just like the real thing... boo yah!
I took the cakes out of the fridge and iced them. You can never had enough whipped cream, so of course I used every last bit I had made.
Then because I needed some blue with my red and white, I topped each one with some blueberries and plopped them back in the fridge to continue to chill.
The real test came this morning though...
Now, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I have to say it was scrumdidleyumpcious! The Jello berry mix had set up perfectly in the centers, the cake was so fluffy and the whip cream... well hello it's whip cream!
So would I suggest this recipe to fellow readers... uhhh yes!
Here's the recipe in a more condensed form.
Cupcakes:
1 Box of Betty Crocker Angle Food Cake Mix
Filling:
1 package (3 oz.) of strawberry Jello
1 package (1 lb.) of frozen strawberries
Icing:
1 pint of heavy whipping cream
2.5 tablespoons of sugar
Back on track to the 4th. I hope you all have great Wednesday off. I decided to capitalize on the opportunity and take Thursday and Friday off as well, so this will be my last post for the week. No worries, I'll be back next week in full bloggin' force!
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