The KA Club: Cupcake Mania (XP)

My Kitchen Aid was working overtime this last weekend!!! Saturday was they day I was planning to make a bunch of cupcakes for a church bake sale tomorrow (and a little for me, of course!). I knew I had nothing planned, so I could dedicate most of the day to the baking. Typical me, I couldn't decide what kind to make, so I made 3 kinds of cupcakes: Magnolia's Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream, Strawberry-Balsamic with Cream Cheese Frosting and Boston Cream Pie from "Cupcakes!" a cupcake cookbook by Elinor Klivans and France Ruffenach.

Here are all my recipes spread out so I could try to work on them all at the same time.

I started all my prep work by making the vanilla custard for the Boston Cream Pie and the strawberry balsamic syrup.

Strawberry-Balsamic Syrup cooking on the stove:

The first batch of cupcakes were supposed to be the Boston Cream Pie ones. This was a recipe I got from "Cupcakes!", a cupcake cookbook I received from a friend for my birthday. It was the first time I made these cupcakes. They are filled with vanilla custard and topped with a chocolate glaze and sounded incredibly delicious.

Well, when they were cooled enough, I picked one up and looked at it. The thing didn't rise! It was a little 1" solid lump of cooked cupcake. There was no air, no fluffiness. Nothing. Erm... Not good. My poor little lumps are still sitting on the counter. I have no idea what to do with them or if I should just throw them. I still don't know what happened to them; I followed the directions to a 't', or so I thought...

I had the filling made already, so I decided to go ahead and make a full batch of the Magnolia's vanilla (which makes 24, I was going to half the recipe) and turn half of them into the Boston Cream Pie cupcakes. Not a problem.

Here is the end result. My cupcakes turned out quite well. I love the flavor of them. And I think they're cute. I have about 30 of them for the bake sale tomorrow and I'm keeping about 9 of them for me and my family.