The show must go on

So it’s been a while huh. I’m noticing there’s a pattern with these blogs where I always open them with an apology for my absence. No ones reading anyway so screw it.



I have been a baking machine. Ever since I decided that I was entering the show every weekend was devoted to testing out different recipes, different flavours, decorations and icing. Everywhere I went I foisted cupcakes on unsuspecting friends and work colleagues. It started with the Crabapple bakery cookbook, I tried their vanilla cupcake recipe and it was pretty damn good, though I have to admit that I found their quantities gargantuan. I’ve yet to get to try one of their cupcakes but I can only assume that they must be at least half icing because their butter cream icing recipe stated that it was enough to ice 24 cupcakes but for me it always seemed enough for at least 48.
Then I discovered Cake Deco in flinders arcade in the city, dear god I could bankrupt myself in there. They have stuff you would never even have thought existed for cakes.
All kinds of decorating equipment, different shaped tins and a million different sugar decorations. I shied away from the sugar decorations thinking that, although the rules didn’t stipulate it the spirit of the competition would kind of frown on commercial decorations.
I made the usual leap from vanilla to chocolate but thought they were a little boring so tried Musk and Rose flavorings. They were surprising and did well with the work mates who divided pretty equally in terms of which were their favorite. Personally I favored the musk, which was a turn around on 24 years of having an aversion to it after my grandmother, who had dementia, bombarded us with musk lollies as kids, you remember those musk necklaces and watches that you used to be able to get at milk bars, she gave us millions of those and for years I could just never look at a musk lolly but in cupcake form they come up pretty well.
It was around this point that I started to hate cupcakes and began dreading having to make them, but make them I must.
After finding the rose and musk flavours a little too cloying and sweet I decided to try for something fruity so passion fruit was the next experiment, passion fruit icing is always popular but a little tip, don’t try to make passion fruit butter cream icing, for some reason it tastes kinda creepy. All along I was experimenting with what would make for the perfect texture. I tried using egg whites instead of whole eggs, altering the creaming time for the butter and sugar, different flours and raising agents. I found a really good brand of flour that was milled extra fine for things like sponges and played around with it for a while but in the end it made the cakes too light, great for a sponge but I think cupcakes need to be a little firmer in texture so that you can take the paper case off them without them falling to crumbs in your hand.
After so much sweetness I wanted something a little lighter in flavour for my cupcakes so for flavoring I decided in the end to go with Orange blossom, by this point it was a month away from competition and I just had to pick something so Orange blossom it was. Don’t let my cavalier tone sway you though they were damn delicious.
Instead of using self raising flour I decided to go back to plain and amended an old recipe I had for red velvet cake, it used butter milk and a mixture of 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 1 of white vinegar as the raising agent which gave the cakes a faint tartness that worked really well with the orange blossom flavour.
Thanks to global warming the season for Blood Oranges was a month early this year so I decided to try and use them where I could and used the juice in the icing and the peel for decoration, this worked well but got stupidly expensive so I went back to plan organic navel oranges.
At this point I just could face those freakin’ little cakes anymore, I was supposed to be tasting them but all I could manage was a bite before throwing the rest away, just too too much sweet thing. I never thought I would say it but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Everyone else seemed to look forward to them though, particularly everyone at work, friends kinda rolled their eyes, I’m referring to you Scott Gooding, but work colleagues flocked to my desk on Mondays to try out the latest test batches, half the time I wouldn’t even get to send out an email saying that there were cupcakes on my desk before I’d turn around and there would be a flock of Optus employees crowded round me like they were seagulls and I had chips, I think next time I do this I’ll demand that at least one of them pretend to have only one leg and squawk as I throw them the cakes.
Shortly before the competition I realized I was useless with a piping bag and panicked a little, I’d made so many cupcakes that I couldn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to be doing anymore and had a tiny little ‘my cupcakes are horrible I’m going to my room and never coming out and you cant make me’ tanty, but I maintained my dignity and internalized it like all good Anglo Saxons.
I broke out the piping bag and practiced til I could make the perfect rosettes.
All seemed promising until the day of competition; I awoke early and was driven to the show grounds by my self appointed manager. I had a slight freak out as we drew near and began to make pitiful whining sounds but my manger slapped me like a drunken stage mother and I got over it. The nice arts and crafts people let me put my entries in early and kindly cooed at them and said they were pretty which gave me hope. I totally advise if you’re ever planning to go to the show go as early as you possibly can, its great without all the bogans and screaming children around. I got tired of carrying around the remaining cupcakes as there were only 5 required for competition and so started offering the remainders to stall holders, there was a guy selling kites who happily took some for him and his son but I tried to offer one to a security guard and he wasn’t so forthcoming, bastard, why doesn’t he get a real job.
We killed time wandering around parents island, a collection of gourmet food and liquor stalls and told absolutely everyone that I came into contact with that I was entered in the cupcake competition. Judging was at about 11:30 so we headed back to hear the verdict but got side tracked by these clever women making sugar flowers.
I never got to hear my cupcakes being judged but I can tell you that I didn’t win this time.
I asked the judge for feedback but she didn’t really have anything specific, just that they were good and to try again next year. Personally I think they wanted vanilla, because every other entry was vanilla, I was the only crazy person who tried to flavour them.
I am totally doing this next year though, it might sound a little odd but there is a lot of fun to be had in baking for the royal show, I’m diversifying next year though, I’m going for cupcakes, sponge and mudcake. Cupcakes coz I’m determined to win something now, sponge coz I’m a masochist and mud cake coz there were very few entries in that section and sometimes winning by default is the sweetest victory.
A big thanks to all the friends and family that were guinea pigs and gave me feedback and to all the friends who came to the show and made me feel better by saying supportive things like “You wuz robbed mate”. And thanks also to Rob, the self appointed manager who tested every batch and became quite the connoisseur.
Despite vowing to never make cupcakes again I’ve been suckered into it repeatedly, when I think about it too much it feels like I’ve been sucked into some tiny cake version of hell.
But don’t let me dissuade you from trying to make them, knock yourself out, treat it like doing drugs though, make sure you have a sober friend, drink lots of water and when it stops being fun its time to give it a rest.

Orange Blossom Cupcakes.
Makes 24.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C, here’s a little tip, get yourself an oven thermometer they’re much more trust worthy than the dial on your oven and you’d be surprised how much the oven temperature differs particularly when you are cooking in a crappy oven in a rented apartment like mine.
Cream together ½ a cup of soft butter and 1 ½ cups of caster sugar either in a stand mixer or with an electric hand held mixer for about 5 minutes on a high speed, if you want to get crafty you can experiment and find the best amount of time for you as the creaming stage is kinda crucial to the overall result of the cupcakes.
Add 2 large eggs one at a time waiting a little bit between each addition to allow the eggs to combine with the butter and sugar, let your eggs get to room temperature before you add them as well as I found this seemed to improve the texture somewhat.
Turn down the speed of your mixture to low and start to add 2 ¼ cups of plain sifted flour in batches of about 4 so that the texture of the mix remains even and you don’t get lumps, alternate the additions of flour with splashes of buttermilk, you’ll add 1 cup of buttermilk in total, you don’t want to beat the mix too much at this point or the gluten in the flour will start to toughen the mix so you can do this part by hand if you’re worried about that.
Add a teaspoon of vanilla essence and 4 tablespoons of Orange blossom water that you can get from pretty much any deli now if not in a darkened corner of your supermarket.
In a small bowl combine 1 teaspoon of baking soda with a teaspoon of vinegar, it’ll fizz up and then you’ll fold it into the mix, this lightens the texture of the cake and is the raising agent. Spoon into paper cases and bake in the oven for about half an hour or until the cakes are golden and a skewer inserted into the center comes out cleanly.
Decorate and enjoy.