my salvo in the cupcake wars

in honor of my lovely and talented sister's birthday, i decided to bake cupcakes! red velvet ones. actually, my initial idea was to order them from one of the many trendy cupcake boutiques --magnolia, billy's, sugar sweet sunshine. i set about checking prices ($2.25 each/2 dozen minimum at billy's; 1.50 each at sugar sweet), availability, icing options (she and i agree on few things, one of them is a disdain for buttery icings!). it was becoming quite a little project. and then i tried to remember which ones were really good. this was the challenge. as i've noted before, i didn't love any of the ones i'd had.

so i thought, heck, why not try and make'em myself! so i rifled through my recipe files and found three that i could use. i decided to try the version offered by cakeman raven, but with the icing recipe from gale gand, the lovely author of one of my favorite titles (partly for it's title), butter sugar flour eggs. i didn't want to make a cream cheese icing, which cakeman raven uses. i was hoping to find a recipe that replicated the sugary, marshmallow-y icing that adorns the red velvet cake at maroon's. (btw, maroons just opened a branch on bleecker, across from father demo square! awesome! i just talked to a rep from the chelsea location. maroon's smoke shack opened last saturday, and it specializes in barbeque. it's got a smaller "cute" menu. i can't wait to check it out!)

as far as the baking goes, the cakeman recipe was easy to follow. i was a little nervous, because the batter didn't smell great--it didn't have the sweet buttery smell (since there is none) and the teaspoon of vanilla couldn't compete with the cup of buttermilk. the batter smelled like yogurt! i was also nervous about the icing, since it didn't taste at all sweet enough. but it was the wee hours of the morning by the time i finished the icing, so i thought perhaps my judgment was a bit off. i considered adding more sugar, or adding cocoa powder, since chocolate makes every thing better, but couldn't decide. so i left the cakes un-iced.

sister came over the next morning to deliver the verdict. she loved the cupcakes, but the icing was too buttery. so, in went some more confectioner's sugar. and some more. and some more. we added about an extra 2 cups of sugar to it, to make it taste just right. the added sugar also greatly improved the texture of the icing, making it lighter and easier to spread, which i was happy about.

in the end, it was a success. sister gave it the thumbs up, as did the cousins and friends who we shared them with.

hooray!

it was a funny little coincidence that this week new york magazine published a feature length article on the cupcake war here in nyc (and perhaps soon, in cities across america. oooh... spatulas, en garde!!). it's pretty entertaining reading for foodies, nyers, and perhaps fledgling entrepreneurs.


maroon's smoke shack
228 bleecker street
212 924 9717