This sour cream vanilla cupcakes were made the day after I made the New York cheesecake for my dear friend. I had been wanting to try out this recipe using sour cream and the leftover sour cream from the cheesecake making comes in timely. I had mentioned before that I'm on the lookout for basic vanilla cupcake recipes that would comes in handy whenever I want to make cupcakes. So this is yet another recipe I have 'conquered'.
The result was simply so good! It was very soft, fluffy, rich without being too dense like a pound cake. Of course if you were to compare with the low-fat vanilla cupcake, it's much more "unhealthier". I had opted for the full fat version of the sour cream as I do not want to try one recipe without realising it's full potential if I cut down on the fat. But I believe light sour cream should do fine too, probably not as rich.
I brought a batch for my colleagues and was happy that everyone came back to me with a word of thanks that the cupcake was yummy! Do try it if you happen to have sour cream, you'll have no regrets!
Ingredients:
- 120g sifted cake flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp baking powder
- 90g unsalted butter, softened at room temp
- 180g granulated sugar (I reduced to 140g)
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 125ml sour cream
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180°C.
- Line muffin pan with paper muffin liners.
- Sift together cake flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Set aside.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla extract and beat for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg and beat until smooth, about 1 minute.
- Using a rubber spatula, fold in one-third of the flour mixture.
- Fold in half of the sour cream. Repeat ending with the last third of the flour mixture.
- Fill prepared muffin liners to approximately three-quarters full (I filled it almost to the top unless you are making cupcakes).
- Bake until light golden brown and cupcake springs back when lightly pressed, about 20-25 minutes.
- Cool in pan for 5 minutes then transfer to cooling rack.
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I happened to buy some soya milk that day and decided to bake a soya milk chiffon. I always like to drink soya milk and was wondering how would the taste be like for a soya milk chiffon. I used a basic vanilla chiffon cake recipe but changed the milk to soya milk. Disappointingly the soya milk taste was not distinct at all. :( It tasted quite plain like a normal egg sponge cake. I believe a basic vanilla chiffon would taste much better because of the addition of vanilla essence and milk. Nevertheless, here's the original recipe which you may like to try.
Ingredients:
- 4 large egg yolks
- 60g milk
- 60g canola oil (any vegetable oil will do)
- 60g caster sugar
- 1g salt
- 120g cake flour
- 3g baking soda
- 0.5g vanilla essence
- 4 large egg whites
- 2g cream of tartar
- 70g caster sugar
Method:
- Sift cake flour and baking soda. Set aside.
- Whisk egg yolks with a wire whisk. Add in milk, oil, 60g sugar and salt and mix until all the sugar has dissolved.
- Add in sifted flour mixture into the egg yolk mixture. Mix until a smooth batter is formed.
- In a clean dry bowl, using an electric beater, beat egg whites with cream of tartar added in.
- Add in the 70g sugar in 3 separate additions. Beat until soft peaks formed.
- Continue beating until stiff peaks form (egg whites should form a peak which curls slightly).
- Fold 1/3 of the beaten egg whites into the egg yolk batter and mix throughly but gently. Mix the remaining egg whites into the batter until well incorporated.
- Pour batter into 8-inch chiffon tin.
- Bake at 180°C for about 30-35 minutes.
Actually I'm still wondering if my chiffon can be considered a success. Everytime after unmoulding, I found that the interior is rather moist. The top part usually shrank immediately after taking out of the oven, which subsequently caused the chiffon to be a little "deformed" after overturning it. I would say it's not firm and sturdy enough. Guess I must continue to keep on practising!!
I remember how in my young days, I love to visit bakeries and admired those beautifully decorated fresh cream cakes on display, wishing my birthday would be coming so that I would be able to request a birthday cake. In those days, the designs seemed to be rather standard, or I woud call old fashioned in today's context! haha...I don't know if there were actually mouuse cakes back then. I guess there was? Cos' I only knew about mousses, ganache...etc when I started baking. Likewise, many of those who don't bake don't know either. So I guess they should have existed in bakeries for a long time. 
These are some of the cookie cutters, muffin liners and other bento stuffs that we often see in Daiso. In Japan, Daiso is also a very popular store and according to my brother, these items, after converted to Sing dollars cost only about S$1.60! That's incredibly affordable especially for the Japanese where their cost of living is so high.
In this recipe, Nic introduces a special technique that would deliver something which is what I'd like in a brownie...fudgy, chocolately, not cakey, with a good crust. The special method involves baking the brownies at a high temperature for about 20 minutes, then dunking the pan in an ice bath. This recipe originated from 
