Courtesy Pinterest
The only thing better than two-ingredient cupcakes? Baking the cupcake of your dreams.
Last year, cookbook author Tessa Arias of the blog Handle the Heat gave us the ultimate guide to baking your perfect chocolate chip cookie — whether that be cakey, chewy, crispy — and we were forever grateful.
Arias has once again made all our inner pastry chefs do a happy dance with “The Ultimate Cupcake Guide,” which breaks down how small changes in the flour, fat and baking temperatures yield different results. (Domed or flat, rich or crumbly, soft or slightly chewy, etc.)
Arias used a recipe for basic yellow cupcakes as the control, and then tested how cake flour, extra egg yolks, sour cream, oil and a lower baking temperature affected the cupcakes. She used the same utensils, techniques and ingredients to make sure the results were as consistent as possible.
Here are some of her key findings:
For a soft texture: Use half cake flour, half all-purpose flour (using all cake flour produced too-dry and crumbly results)
For a richer flavor: Use one or two extra egg yolks
For a denser, moist cake with a slight tang: Substitute sour cream for milk
Some of Arias’ trials did not yield positive results. Lowering the baking temperature from 350 to 325 resulted in soft, tender cupcakes that were very difficult to remove from the pan, and when oil was substituted for butter, the cupcakes had a spongy, muffin-like consistency and a not-so-delicious flavor — the oil taste was very pronounced. Arias doesn’t recommend incorporating these two changes into your next batch of cupcakes.
Do you have any cupcake-baking hacks that you swear by? Let us know!
—Morgan Gibson
