Week Twenty-Four: Birthday Cupcakes and Strawberry Shortcake

(The strawberry shortcake recipe this week came from “Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook”. The cupcake recipes were cobbled together from a couple of online recipes.)

Once again, I got sidetracked from posting by an illness.

Just as I was getting over my allergic reaction from last week, I woke up Thursday with a raging earache. I ended up going to Urgent Care (again) and finding out that it was Swimmer’s Ear. I got some ear drops and Vicodin (!) and went home. The next morning I woke up to a small fire burning in the other ear as well. Yup. Swimmer’s Ears. I’m doing much better now. Between the drops and the Vicodin, I’m feeling much happier.

My plan last week was to bake two cupcakes for a friend’s birthday that were inspired by flavors of ice cream available at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams. I wasn’t planning to bake the cupcakes until Thursday morning and then I was going to frost them Friday night before the party.

On Sunday, I got a real urge to do some baking. I started flipping through the “Martha Stewart Baking Handbook” at work and stumbled on the strawberry shortcake-variation baking powder biscuits. They looked amazing and pretty easy. So I decided I would make those for dessert that night.

The biscuits were super simple and consisted of sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and butter. Once the dough came together, it was rolled out and I cut out my biscuits. While they baked, the strawberries were mascerated in lemon juice and sugar:

I also whipped up some Vanilla Whipped Cream:

In just a few minutes, the biscuits were ready:

The biscuits were cut in half and the shortcakes were assembled:

Delicious. Oh man, I could eat this every night! The strawberries were very sweet, which was good because the biscuits and the whipped cream were not overly so. Mmmm mmm.

On to the cupcakes!

A few years ago at Comfest, Jeni’s unveiled their Root Beer Float. It is quite possibly the most amazing thing ever. It’s a deceptively simple combination of Frostop Root Beer and Honey Vanilla Bean ice cream. So good. When I thought about what cupcakes I wanted to make that would capture the essence of Jeni’s, I knew I wanted to make a root beer cupcake. Jeni’s most popular flavor is the Salty Caramel, which I actually don’t like. For some reason, I can only taste the salt and not the caramel. But who am I to question the tastes of the masses? I had to make a Salty Caramel cupcake as well.

I didn’t take many photos of this process, as my ear was killing me while I was baking them. But I do have some photos of the completed cupcakes:

The Root Beer Float Cupcakes were frosted with a Honey Vanilla Bean Buttercream frosting (delicious!). The Salty Caramel Cupcakes were topped with a caramel frosting that never quite thickened up the way I wanted it to. It turned out tasting pretty good, but I wish it had had a little more height to it. To make up for the lackluster presentation, I drizzled some caramel over the tops, put a caramel candy on each one and then added just a pinch of fleur de sal. That salt was amazing. It provided just the right amount of salt to a really sweet cupcake.

They were a big hit at the party. The guests seemed to be evenly split between which was their favorite:

I definitely want to make the Root Beer Float Cupcakes again. The Salty Caramel Cupcakes were awesome, but they were a lot of work. The Root Beer cupcakes were much easier. Yum!

This week I’m working on two different things. Tonight I made my first pizza from scratch. On Wednesday, I plan to make French Almond Macaroons. More on both of these later this week.