So in true housewife fashion, I made him breakfast and cupcakes!Now, I'm all about saving money any way I can. I clip coupons but there are just somethings that don't go on sale and never have coupons for. Milk
is one of those things. With the amount of baking I do, our milk budget can get out of control. So I did some reading and decided to try dry milk in my baking. These cupcakes were my first experiment with it.
I have made these cupcakes at least a dozen times. I think that is important. I wanted to make something that I knew how it was supposed to look when cooked and how it tasted. That way, I could tell right away if they were off.
The hard part about all this was finding out how much dry milk to use. On the container it says that it can be used in baking but never tells you how much to use. I guess they assume that you are going to make a full quart or gallon of the stuff and then substitute it that way. NO, that's too much space in the fridge and to be honest, I would never drink dry milk unless it was an emergency. So, after some searching of the Internet, I found this website that tells you exactly how to sub it for milk! Awesome.
Now for the baking. I didn't notice any difference in taste using the dry milk. I guess I should have made two batches and compared them side to side but I consider myself a cupcake connoisseur. So I think I could tell the difference without a blind taste test.
After I made the cupcakes, I let them cool and then decorated them with homemade fondant and a perfect butter cream frosting as a glue. You can search the Internet for a homemade fondant recipe and save a ton of money over the store bought stuff... or you can melt a few handfuls of marshmallows with a few drops of water and knead in powdered sugar until no longer sticky. Color any color you want and voila! Fondant. It is that simple and that hard at the same time! I totally recommend doing it at home in clothes that you don't plan of wearing out again until they are washed, or wear an apron.
Here is the cupcake recipe. It is a standard vanilla that you can jazz up with any kind of extract you want in place of vanilla.
3/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 eggs at room temp
1 t vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
Preheat oven to 375*
*Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add in eggs and vanilla.
*In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients.
*Stir in 1/3 of mix into butter and sugar mixture. Add 1/3 of milk. Continue this way until all ingredients are combined.
*Fill cupcake cups with 1/4 cup of mix.
*Bake about 20 mins or until golden and firm
Enjoy... Happy Birthday LOVE
Come back tomorrow for a tutorial on Playroom Pyramids!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment