Our cupcakes made from doctored store-bought mix stand up to homemade versions in taste test after taste test. We use buttermilk to cut the edge of the sweetness and give the cake homemade flavor, and we add an egg to improve the structure. Cupcakes made from this variation on store-bought mixes cook up evenly without sinkholes or soft spots in the middle, and you get a nice firm surface that doesn’t pull apart when you start frosting.
But for special occasions like dinner parties or weddings, we prefer homemade cupcakes. The ones in this chapter bake up beautifully and are delicious additions to any special event.
Any cake tastes best the day it is baked. But when we are short on time, we make the cupcakes the night before, wrap them in plastic and decorate them the next day. Both the ones from the improved box mix and the homemade kind stay moist overnight.
We have yet to find a homemade frosting that can do what a store-bought one does. That’s why we use store-bought frosting right out of the can for most of our projects. Canned frosting is both smooth and elastic. Squeeze and pull a ziplock bag filled with store-bought frosting, and it delivers an elegant shape time after time. Most store-bought frostings also tint easily, resulting in vibrant colors. And, as if all that weren’t enough, store-bought frosting holds up to the heat, melting into a consistently smooth texture for dipping.
While you can’t beat store-bought frosting for shaping, tinting, and dipping, the flavor of homemade frosting is superior. You may want to make the frosting from scratch when you are working on a project in which the frosting doesn’t do much design work, but simply serves to hold the candies together, or when texture, brilliant color, and melting are not an issue, or when you are preparing for an extra-fancy occasion, like a wedding, or whenever taste should trump texture.
A couple of our frostings are a combination of store-bought and homemade. Next-to-lnstant Ganache, which is simply microwaved store-bought chocolate frosting, gives cupcakes a beautiful smooth coating. Almost-Homemade Vanilla Buttercream uses off-the-shelf Marshmallow Fluff and results In a buttercream that rivals the real thing.