Golden Delicious Cupcakes

I’m definitely too new to cooking and baking to be inventing any of my own recipes, but I have to admit I have one recipe I consider to be mine. It isn’t mine at all- I got this recipe for red velvet cupcakes from the Food Network website. It’s listed under Bobby Flay’s show but I’m not sure if they’re actually his cupcakes. But, either way, over time they have evolved into MY cupcakes, and they are now Golden Delicious cupcakes. Here is why:

The first time I made these cupcakes was with my very dear friend Caroline. We had both just been getting into baking, and at the time we only had a chocolate cake under our belts (Beatty’s Chocolate Cake from The Barefoot Contessa: At Home). We both love red velvet cake so we decided to try the Bobby Flay recipe, only without the red food coloring. They came out pretty well despite the fact that we kept getting teaspoons and tablespoons confused and having to scoop out excess baking soda, etc. My housemates loved them, but since they were skeptical when presented with non-red Red Velvet cupcakes we decided to start telling people that they were Golden Delicious cupcakes.

A few weekends later my housemates were throwing a very small party at our house, and at about midnight Andrew decided he wanted cupcakes. I won’t lie to you; we were pretty drunk.

What I neglected to mention earlier is that Bobby Flay’s recipe is described by weight, rather than measurements. So instead of say, 2 cups of flour, it calls for 15.5 oz. When I baked the cupcakes with Caroline, she looked up the conversions as we went along and we didn’t bother to write them down, so Andrew and I had to start from scratch. No problem! We are college students! We can totally do math!

…we were wrong.

I’ve saved the conversions Andrew came up with, and they still make me laugh. What makes this especially funny is we were trying to halve the recipe:

7 ¾ cups flour

5/8 tsp salt

5/8 tsp baking soda

5/8 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ cups vegetable oil

13 tablespoons sugar

5/8 cups buttermilk

1 ½ eggs

Look at this thing! SEVEN cups of flour with less than a teaspoon of salt and baking soda? What were we thinking? Also, we completely forgot about the apple cider vinegar and vanilla which the original recipe called for. I also think Andrew and I trying to figure out how to halve an egg was the highlight of everyone’s night. Needless to say, our cupcakes did not turn out well. They were dry and bland, even though we only used a little bit of our ridiculous mixture of flour when we realized it was far too much for the liquid ingredients we had. The next day I realized we’d made a terrible mistake, and I still had all this leftover flour mixed with cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. So I scooped out about 2 cups of the mixture, added a full teaspoon of salt, baking soda, and cocoa powder to it like a sane person, and used two WHOLE eggs in the liquid mixture since our earlier cupcakes had been so dry. Batch number 2 turned out pretty decent.

Over the past few months I have been making these cupcakes pretty frequently, and I’m actually ashamed to admit that for the first four batches I made I was still measuring out 13 tablespoons of sugar. We don’t have a tablespoon measure, only a half tablespoon, so it took me four occasions of counting out 26 spoonfuls of sugar before I decided that, maybe, I should convert the measurement into cups instead. But anyway, eventually I worked everything out to a pretty stable recipe which I had the good sense to write down- including a recipe for cream cheese icing that I came up with all by myself! (It only has four ingredients so I can’t really be THAT proud.) The last time I made these (last week), I decided to look up the Bobby Flay recipe and do the conversions again, and I was delighted that our recipes were almost identical (his calls for some water which I never bother to add). Through trial and error, I worked out the same proportions as a professional cook! I rule!

So, here is my Golden Delicious cupcake recipe:

Ingredients (cupcakes):

~2 cups flour 1 2/3 cups sugar

1 ¼ tsp baking soda 1 ¼ cups buttermilk

1 ¼ tsp salt 3 eggs

1 ¼ tsp cocoa powder 1 ¼ tsp apple cider vinegar

1 ½ cups vegetable oil 1 ¼ tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350, of course.

First I mix together my flour, baking soda, salt, and coca powder. You’re supposed to sift these things, I know, but I’m lazy and I don’t have a sifter. They still turn out just fine.

Then, in an electric mixer you’re going to blend the oil, sugar, and buttermilk (which I shake before opening). Once they’re nicely combined you can throw in the eggs, vinegar, and vanilla. Then with the mixer on low, add the dry mixture a little bit at a time until the batter is at the consistency you’d like. I usually end up using all of it. Make sure you don’t over mix! That’s supposed to make the batter too tough.

Then, you know, pour it into a paper-lined muffin tray, and pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Ingredients (icing):

1 stick butter ½ cup powdered sugar

1 oz packet cream cheese 1 tsp vanilla

Whip all that stuff up in an electric mixer! I like to microwave my butter for about 15 seconds before I mix it with the cream cheese so that it incorporates better. Then I blend together the butter and cream cheese, and then I add the sugar and finally the vanilla. Delicious!

You should make these and give me credit for the recipe.

And on a totally un-related note, I saw this invention on Parks and Recreation last night and the idea is absolutely hilarious to me. I hope someone actually creates a DJ Roomba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt0wBL2GGlA