Between all the food photography craziness and the recent feature of my last post on foodgawker (!!!!!!!!) and TasteSpotting (!!!!), I nearly forgot to tell you — I cracked the recipe for Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cupcakes. My earlier theory — that the chocolate (from the cocoa powder in the batter) needed to be set in […]
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The Science of Nothing: Chocolate Cupcakes Edition
Not gonna lie. My previous discovery — that chocolate cupcakes needed less baking powder than vanilla cupcakes at high altitude, proving my hypothesis completely wrong — had me stumped. I started out by consulting the usual sources. But to be honest, they weren’t that much help. For starters, my go-to cookbook, Susan Purdy’s Pie in […]
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High-Altitude Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes, Pt. 1: Decreasing Baking Powder
In my last post, I discovered that the sea-level recipe for chocolate cupcakes fared significantly better at high-altitude than that of the vanilla cupcakes. The additional cocoa powder in the chocolate cupcakes recipe provided the extra structure that was needed for the vanilla cupcakes to retain their form. For this reason, I decided to skip […]
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The Science of ‘Hey, That’s Not So Bad’: Chocolate Cupcakes Edition
So the main question that has been plaguing me since my initial control experiment for the Hummingbird chocolate cupcakes is this: why did the unaltered recipe for chocolate cupcakes fare so much better than the unaltered recipe for Hummingbird vanilla cupcakes? Recall that when I did my initial control experiment for Hummingbird Bakery vanilla cupcakes, […]
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Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes, High-Altitude Style
Not gonna lie — I was pretty nervous about adapting this particular recipe for a couple of reasons. Aside from my reluctant dislike for chocolate cakes and cupcakes, I was nervous about using cocoa powder in high-altitude baking. I just don’t know anything about it! Susan Purdy, author of the fairly comprehensive Pie in the […]
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Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate Cupcakes, Sea-Level Style
“We use a devil’s food cake for our chocolate base. The cocoa powder gives the cake a dark color and a chocolatey kick. The cake should be light and moist, with all the ingredients well incorporated. But don’t overbeat the batter, as the cake will be too heavy.” – The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook Hummingbird […]
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