Saturday, August 09, 2008

Joycelyn Shu’s Cupcake Level 2 Workshop

C says:

Finally, after almost a year (argh, time flies!), they finally conducted Joycelyn Shu’s cupcake Level 2 workshop. Unlike the previous class, which had very basic vanilla and chocolate cupcake recipes and focused heavily on marzipan decorating, this was the opposite. We were taught a basic buttery cupcake recipe, and variations based on different flavoured melted butters.


The four that we made in the class were (clockwise from top):

Lavender cupcakes with white chocolate and lavender frosting
Chai tea cupcakes with white chocolate and vanilla bean frosting
Earl Grey tea cupcakes with white chocolate and orange frosting
Lemon cupcakes filled with lemon curd, topped with meringue

Because this base recipe uses a different technique, where melted butter is slowly emulsified into the egg, flour and cream mixture, rather than the typical creamed-butter-and-sugar technique, the result was a pretty dense but very moist cake, more suited to smaller bite sizes than full-on cupcake sized.

My favourite was the lemon. I tend to be a bit wary of lavender-flavoured foodstuffs in general, and the tea-flavoured ones were quite complex and sophisticated, definitely not for kids. I like that the recipe is just a base, and we can get creative with different flavour variations depending on what we infuse the melted butter with. I’m quite keen to make the lemon ones again (any excuse to use my blowtorch), and I want to try a coffee variation too.

A says:

I don’t like cupcakes so I can’t really comment.

1 comment:

Cynthia said...

wow i normally dont enjoy cupcakes too because in sydney, it usually comes with a thiiiicck layer of icing. bleah. these look incredible though, esp the mini lemon meringue!