{"id":299,"date":"2009-03-02T14:49:17","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T19:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/?p=299"},"modified":"2009-03-02T14:49:17","modified_gmt":"2009-03-02T19:49:17","slug":"cupcakes-for-jeremie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/2009\/03\/02\/cupcakes-for-jeremie\/","title":{"rendered":"Cupcakes for Jeremie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeremie's<\/a><\/p>\n

I take birthdays very seriously. I wanted to make a nice birthday treat for Jeremie to have with his friends at the office but I wasn’t quite sure what to make. At first I was thinking layer cake, but I thought it would need to feed a lot of people and making a big enough cake would be difficult to transport. Who knew that we’d have a snowstorm on March 1? So then I started thinking about cupcakes. The one downside of cupcakes, in my thinking, is that there’s no great way to write “Happy Birthday Jeremie” on them. Then a couple of days ago, the little cookie idea came to me. <\/p>\n

\"Jeremie's<\/a><\/p>\n

I was going to make a yellow cake recipe from Baking Illustrated, but there were two things about it that I wasn’t thrilled about: 1) it calls for a lot of butter, and 2) the recipe only makes 12 cupcakes and I didn’t want to double it, never having made this recipe. A last minute conversation with Jodie steered me towards Martha Stewart’s Cooking School: Lessons and Recipes for the Home Cook<\/a>\"\" which I had forgotten to check for a recipe. I decided to go with her yellow butter cake recipe. It made 42 cupcakes, which is a lot, but we brought about 30 in to the office and I can pop the rest in the freezer. I used Martha’s recipe for easy chocolate buttercream, but I used more cocoa and about a tablespoon of heavy cream to help it all come together. I baked the cupcakes the day before but I didn’t pipe the frosting on until just before leaving the house.<\/p>\n

For the little cookies, I used my Mom’s recipe for Hanukkah cookies, a tried and true winner when you need a frostable cookie. <\/p>\n

Frostable (Hanukkah) Cookies
\n1 cup sugar
\n1\/4 cup butter
\n1\/4 cup vegetable shortening
\n2 eggs
\n2 1\/2 cups flour
\n2 tsp. baking powder
\n1\/4 tsp. salt
\n1 T. orange juice
\n1 tsp. vanilla<\/p>\n

Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs. Beat.
\nAdd dry ingredients. Add liquids. If dough is a
\nlittle wet, add more flour. Roll out on floured
\nboard. Bake at 375 for 6-10 minutes on ungreased cookie sheets.
\nMakes 5-6 dozen.<\/p>\n

Because I made such little circles, I baked at 350 for 5 minutes and I always use a silpat. <\/p>\n

Was this time consuming? Yes.
\nAre they delicious? Yes.
\nWorth it? Oh totally.<\/p>\n

A PSA: I realized I didn’t have enough powdered sugar for the frosting at 10:30 on a Sunday night in a snowstorm. Not good. I checked the internet and found several suggestions on how to make your own powdered sugar. The gist of the stories is: combine 1 cup of granulated sugar with 2 tablespoons of corn starch in a coffee grinder or food processor, whirl for a minute or so and voila, powdered sugar. Well, let me tell you, what I got was indeed powderier than granulated sugar but it sure wasn’t powdered sugar. I added some more cornstarch and whirled again, but no dice. I used it in making the buttercream frosting because I was out of options. The frosting was tasty but grainy, as you would expect when using granulated sugar. So, if you run out of powdered sugar I do not recommend trying to make your own at home. Maybe it would be passable if you’re making cookies or something baked, but it doesn’t cut it for frosting.<\/p>\n

That is what I get for not checking my staples. Now I’m out of granulated sugar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I take birthdays very seriously. I wanted to make a nice birthday treat for Jeremie to have with his friends at the office but I wasn’t quite sure what to make. At first I was thinking layer cake, but I thought it would need to feed a lot of people and making a big enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangeparade.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}