PhDCupcaker

In honor of my friend Aaron’s birthday (my other friend Aaron – not the one I posted about here), I thought I should post about two cupcakes I made about a month ago. Since Aaron’s biorthday is today and I made these a month ago these were not made for his birthday. I made them for a mathematics education gathering we had and Aaron was nice enough to let me take his picture with them! I made two different cupcakes and since I had some issues with getting everything together I don’t have any good pictures of the cupcakes themselves. I actually forgot to take the pictures until I got them to campus. Luckily I had my little camera with me.

So, my first cupcake was a gluten-free vegan cupcake. This one did not present me with any issues. I cheated a little and used a mix for this one. I was going to make them from stratch, but since I am not a big gluten-free eater I wasn’t sure what I would do with all the expensive ingredients afterwards so I opted for Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake Mix. Since I wanted these to be vegan as well I followed the directions for using flaxseed and water instead of eggs and I used the vegan butter Earth Balance. The frosting was this vegan coffee icing that I found from the Gluten-Free Goddess. Unfortunately, I don’t have a close-up of this one, but here is today’s birthday boy holding one of each. The gluten-free vegan one is on the left (in Aaron’s right hand). As someone who hasn’t had many gluten free vegan treats I thought it tasted pretty good!

The one on the right that Aaron is holding is the infamous hi-hat cupcake. I don’t know what it was – the weather or what, but this one was impossible. I ended up having to make the meringue twice because when I tried to dip it the first time the meringue just slid off. I followed the directions exactly. I decided to use Martha Stewart”s recipe for these.  You can see it here. There is even two videos on the site explaining the process, but the videos didn’t help me much. I could not get the chocolate covered meringue to look as defined and high as the pictures. I was really bummed. Despite all my issues people really liked these. Here is one that I asked Aaron to cut open. We only had plastic knives though so it wasn’t easy!  :-)

You can see the meringue underneath the chocolate, but as you can see it doesn’t have the height I was looking for…. Oh well. Better luck next time with these ones. I think I’ll try them on a less humid day and see if it was me or the weather!

Thanks Aaron for letting me snap your pictures with these and have a VERY happy birthday today!