I made these cupcakes for one of my German classes. As you may (or may not) know, Germans are not terribly, outwardly patriotic, and they haven't been for some time. But shortly before and after (the first) German unification, there was a tremendous amount of national pride and patriotism. We were discussing this period in one of my classes, and to get a better idea of what we were talking about, we did a pretend, "in-character" Rollenspiel (role play), in a Berlin salon. And what do you do in salons other than talk politics and literature, etc.? Why, you eat small sweets! Now, I'm sure they wouldn't have eaten cupcakes in the salons of Berlin back in the day, but I like cupcakes.
This still doesn't explain why the cupcakes are called Germany cupcakes, but if you continue reading, you will find out soon!
The cake ingredients at this point are flour, sugar and baking soda, and cocoa for the chocolate cake.
I made the chocolate batter first: to the above mentioned ingredients I added some oil, water (it's supposed to be coffee, but we don't drink it!) and vanilla.
And I whisked it all up!
To the dry vanilla ingredients, I added oil, milk and vanilla.
And whisked it all up!
Next, I split the vanilla batter in two bowls and got out my trusty gel colouring...
Does anyone see where this is going yet?
I dyed one bowl yellow, and one bowl red (well, neon pink...:\)!
I layered the batters in my muffin tin, starting with chocolate.
And ending with yellow.
I realised afterward I should have done it the other way, since the black is actually on top and yellow on the bottom. Whoops!
After baking, they came out with cute little domes!
While they had been baking, I worked on some buttercream, which I also dyed schwarzrotgold (black red gold). I had never piped with more than one colour in the bag, so three was quite an ordeal! I also have a very small piping bag, so for many of the cupcakes, two colours came out fabulously, but the third was kind of lost.
In any event, I thought they looked pretty cute in the end! Which is why I took 23409834 photos...
Of course it rained the day I had to take them to class, and when it rains in Kingston, it rains horizontally. So this is how I ended up getting my hard work to class. In a Rubbermaid dishpan, which I then put in a garbage bag.
The cupcakes were enjoyed by one and all in my class! And what did I think? Well, something happened to my tried and true chocolate cupcakes. I must have messed something up in the ingredients, because they stuck like crazy to the paper. The vanilla turned out very well, considering it's an adaptation of the chocolate recipe (total current number of variations of that recipe: 3)!
But they were tasty and really cute. I just wish I had gotten some extra credit for it! ;]
I really want to post a recipe for this, but unfortunately, I typed it up in Notepad, and printed it to use while baking. Now it's attached to my fridge with a magnet... in Kingston. And I'm in Hamilton. So what I'll do is post the vanilla recipe when I get my hands on it, and if you're looking for the chocolate recipe, you can find it here!
Up next: chicken pot pie and blueberry cheesecake squares. And after that, stay tuned for some Christmas baking, as well as a ridiculously decadent cake which I'm planning to make for my mum's 60th birthday (on the 26th)!
Guten Appetit!
PS - apparently I have
2 comments:
so do i count as a follower?? :)
You do by default, but these people have actually joined my blog as followers! I've put a link for it on my blog now, in case you wanted to join as well. ;]
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