Say It With Cupcakes

What present do you get  for the person who has everything, or the person you need to give something to but don't really know well enough to chose? If what you want is something personal, thoughtful and made specially with them in mind, then  it's time to think cupcakes.

Right now it's 'end of term' and several teachers in the past week have recieved a gift box of cupcakes all tied with ribbon and personalised for them ~ and it's a pretty safe bet that's a gift they'll always remember. 

And talking of gifts .... cupcakes can be themed for any occasion. If you think of each cupcake as an individual canvas, just waiting to decorated, the the possibilities are endless. Of course you can also add names, messages, models or photos to your cakes, the list of potential cupcake toppers is really only limited by your imagination.

Just take a look at the french themed cupcakes to the left. They were made as a bit of a joke present for a 40th birthday boy who lived in France. Each one is different, from cheese to wine to frogs to snails - and he loved them (as did all his friends and family who apparently scoffed the lot before you could say Oh, la la).

So the next time you have something special to say, or someone special to say it to why not be a little different and say it with cupcakes.

Flat as a Cupcake

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is how to get cupcakes to come out of the oven with a flat top, rather than something that resembles a miniature volcano. Without fail, the answer to this connundrum lies in building a good relationship with your oven ...

Oven temperatures are not an exact science, in fact rarely does the temperature on the dial match the temperature in the oven ~ and the differences can be extreme. My current oven cooks around 10C above the stated temperature, my Mum's is at least 20C above. The upshot of this is that while a recipe calls for a temperature calls for 180C cooking temperature the actual temperature your oven is cooking at may bear no relation.

This gives rise to a challange, but one that is simple to resolve using either of the following methods:

1. Invest in  / or borrow an oven thermometer and measure the temperature in your oven.

2. Trial and error, if your cakes are getting burnt or rising more than you'd like, or if they're not cooking in the stated time turn the temperature of your oven up or down 10C and see what result you get, then keep experimenting until you get the result you want.

Of course just because you have discovered the optimum temperature for flat topped cupcakes doesn't mean you shouldn't turn the heat up occasionally. After all there aren't many things that beat the crispy crunch of those volcano like cupcake tops, still warm from the oven.