Tonight was the last night of true experimentation. Whatever I make tomorrow goes to the kids at St. Philip’s Academy for Read It All Up®, and that’s that. But tonight I went back to the site where I found the extremely delicious recipe for Secretly Healthy Chocolate Cake, and used her cupcake recipe this time. Unfortunately the peanut butter frosting is a no-no at St. Philip’s, so I had to look at other sources for the frosting. More on that later.
This time, Juliet was already in bed, and Nathaniel was around to help. He was also fresh from the shower, and shirtless.
(Both kids were shirtless when I got home from work tonight, as a matter of fact, and Juliet was standing on display in our front window happily waving at me on my way in.)
I used whole wheat white flour instead of mixing white and wheat, and Nathaniel asked if he could be the one to dump it into the bowl. Of course!
Then he dumped in the brown sugar.
He thought it was pretty hilarious that it didn’t fall out of the measuring cup when he turned it over.
He added the baking powder.
But then it was time for him to go to bed and I was on my own. I added baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and then the cocoa powder. The directions included cinnamon but the ingredients list didn’t, so I winged it and put in a teaspoon. I added just under half a teaspoon of espresso powder, too.
I whisked.
Then in a separate bowl, I added zucchini to yogurt (instead of applesauce), vanilla, and an egg white. That was fine until I took a second look at the recipe and realized that it didn’t actually specify an egg white, so I took out a second egg and this time just used the yolk. D’oh.
I whisked. Also, I spilled.
At this point I tried to pretend it wasn’t a gloppy zucchini mixture, because I find the idea so unpleasant. Instead I pretended it was a cucumber yogurt sauce for Indian food or some sort of art project.
I poured it into the dry ingredients.
Ew.
Once combined, however, it looked like chocolate batter, and that made me happy.
I poured it into the muffin cups.
While that was in the oven, I switched into frosting mode. I’d found a recipe today for Greek Yogurt Frosting, so I got out the Greek yogurt, powdered sugar, and vanilla.
Can I just tell you how boring sifting is? The powdered sugar took forever to sift and it reminded me of how boring it used to be to blow-dry my hair, which is why I stopped doing it years ago. It’s dull and repetitive and you can’t do other activities at the same time.
I finally got it done, and whisked it together.
Then, per the directions, I put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
The cupcakes came out of the oven, they cooled, I frosted, and added a few butterscotch chips for fun.
Sadly the butterscotch chips were the only fun thing about that frosting. The cupcakes? Delicious. The frosting? Too much of that yogurt twang. It’s better than yesterday’s, but it’s just not frosting. The word itself demands payoff in sweetness. Frosting isn’t supposed to be tart or dull or bitter, you know.
Tomorrow I make the real thing. Cream cheese, sugar, whatever. The cupcake will be healthy and the frosting will not, and all will be delicious, and hopefully worthy of a reading of The Bake Shop Ghost. I’m leaning towards the pumpkin cupcakes, and if I don’t do frosting, I might just sprinkle cinnamon & brown sugar on top and bake that up. Decisions, decisions.
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