Butterfly Cakes, S1E1-Showstopper

It's a tiny cupcake, with wings! What could go wrong?

When selecting butterfly cakes, I thought it was a fun twist on what was essentially a tiny American cupcake. I've made cupcakes before so I thought this would be easy...nope. I went in with a little too much confidence. Just check out how my first batch turned out...

Now, in my defense the recipe I found online said to beat all ingredients in the batter for several minutes, which is ultimately incorrect and why they collapsed in on themselves. Had I been more familiar with cake batter in general, I probably would have known this. Tossing 36 little cakes and starting over was not fun.

That frustration aside, the beginning of this bake was a very big moment for me. I got my scale! I never want to measure flour by the scoop and level method ever again. This makes so much more sense, it's incredibly accurate and FASTER. What are we doing, America? Get on board with grams, please. I also found my self-rising flour. Making my own by adding the baking powder is simple enough, but it's a nice step to skip when using recipes that call for self rising.

So after this batch collapsed in on itself. I decided to find a different recipe online and to switch things up entirely, I went for a chocolate fairy cake recipe. I found a lovely looking one here. I once again substituted the eggs with my go-to Bob's Redmill Egg Replacer, which is soy based.

A short note on egg replacers. I actually baked these months ago, and since this bake I've experimented quite a bit more with other store bought egg replacers. Finn's latest elimination diet has him eliminating soy, so sadly my go to replacer is on hold. Instead, we've been using a tapioca starch based replacer. With every egg replacer I find the size of my bakes to be shrunken versions of egg containing bakes. This "shrunkeness" is even more evident with the tapioca starch replacer, and for my cookies, I find that the Bob's gave them a nicer, chewier texture. So once we are off this elimination diet, and assuming soy isn't one of his triggers, we will for sure be switching back to Bob's. 

Getting back to these fairy cakes, I'm pretty happy with my end result. I overbaked some of the batches slightly, which made cutting the tops out a bit difficult. I was able to achieve one good batch and snapped a few photos of my best ones.

So, in the end I didn't achieve all 36 mini cakes. After baking 72 fairy cakes in total, I decided to call it a day and keep my one good batch and move on to Biscuit Week.

Yay!

Recipe Time. I tripled the below measurements, this recipe will yield 12-18 fairy cakes.

Cakes:

60g unsalted room temperature butter

80g brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg replacer method

60g self rising flour

30g unsweetened dark cocoa powder (you can use regular cocoa powder, I just love the dark stuff)

2 tbsp milk

Buttercream:

226g unsalted room temperature butter

230-300g of powdered sugar (I like it a little less sweet than most)

1tsp vanilla extract

I eye adding milk. Anywhere from 2-4 tbsp does the trick.

Preheat oven to 355 F and either grease a muffin tin or add cupcake liners to a tin

Cream the butter & sugar together in stand mixer for a minute or two. Slow the beater down and add the egg replacer (or egg) along with the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowel, whisk the flour and cocoa together. Add half of this to the mixer and beat until just combined. Add the milk, beat until just combined and then add the remaining flour mixture and again beat until just combined.

Scoop mixture evenly into your prepared muffin tin and cook for 8-10 minutes.

Let sit for 2 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Once cooled, you cut a shallow round piece off the top center of each cake. Set these parts aside and cut each circle in half to give you your wings. Fill the voids in the cakes with your buttercream and top with two halves of cake, resembling butterfly wings. Dust with powdered sugar.

You can also add jam. I was in no mood to make homemade jam after my baking fiasco, but next time I make these I will add a homemade jam to my list of things to prepare.