The Cupcake question
I know you're all burning to know how my cupcake dilemma turned out.
I spent hours staring at the cupcake tins with all of the ingredients stacked next to them. I toiled over elaborate computer simulations of cupcake physics and filled whiteboard after whiteboard with diagrams and calculations. I considered emailing my mom to ask her what to do but said "No! No, I'll solve this on my own." Finally I read the recipe and it said "Use paper cupcake cups or a light spray of non-stick spray on the tins." Wishing I'd read the recipe before pioneering the field of cupcake physics, I substituted a thin coating of vegetable oil for non-stick spray and poured in the batter.
Turns out the cups actually serve a couple of purposes. Besides adding some verticality (allowing the batch to make 24 good-sized cupcakes), it also keeps the cheesecake mixture that lives in the middle of the cupcakes from sinking to the bottom. Anyone who has worked with cheesecake will tell you that when cooked it is devilishly adhesive stuff, which is not an ideal situation when it's stuck to the bottom of a tin you are desperately trying to remove a cupcake from. Slightly less than half have a gaping hole in the bottom.
The texture of the outside of the cupcakes is also slightly off. They've got more of a muffin thing going on. So instead of making birthday cupcakes, I made fun-size chocolate muffins with cream cheese center.
They still taste good. I'm calling it a partial victory.
I spent hours staring at the cupcake tins with all of the ingredients stacked next to them. I toiled over elaborate computer simulations of cupcake physics and filled whiteboard after whiteboard with diagrams and calculations. I considered emailing my mom to ask her what to do but said "No! No, I'll solve this on my own." Finally I read the recipe and it said "Use paper cupcake cups or a light spray of non-stick spray on the tins." Wishing I'd read the recipe before pioneering the field of cupcake physics, I substituted a thin coating of vegetable oil for non-stick spray and poured in the batter.
Turns out the cups actually serve a couple of purposes. Besides adding some verticality (allowing the batch to make 24 good-sized cupcakes), it also keeps the cheesecake mixture that lives in the middle of the cupcakes from sinking to the bottom. Anyone who has worked with cheesecake will tell you that when cooked it is devilishly adhesive stuff, which is not an ideal situation when it's stuck to the bottom of a tin you are desperately trying to remove a cupcake from. Slightly less than half have a gaping hole in the bottom.
The texture of the outside of the cupcakes is also slightly off. They've got more of a muffin thing going on. So instead of making birthday cupcakes, I made fun-size chocolate muffins with cream cheese center.
They still taste good. I'm calling it a partial victory.