Over the river and through the woods to Michigan City we go? Part 1

Hi again! Sorry I haven't blogged in such a long time! My computer crashed :( but now I'm back (and so is my computer) and ready to blog! I finally, FINALLY got to go to my neighbors cabin in Michigan City for a great week of relaxing and sun which is so conveniently placed in Indiana. Now there was a special request, "You can make cupcakes." Which also translates into, "Make me cupcakes!" Oh yes I most definitely will!

Her family and I decided on ORANGE CHIFFON CUPCAKES WITH ORANGE BUTTER ICING! Just saying it makes me drool. I had NO idea whatsoever on when I was going to make these! So thank you to people who like cupcakes!

Now unfortunately cabins are meant for taking a break from your hectic life, not cooking dinner, sleeping 'till noon, and frying in the sun until you look like a roast chicken (no offense chickens). Which is a bad case when you are baking gourmet cupcakes.

Take for example the many things we had to buy...

1. Cream of tartar. When in the world are they actually going to use this again?!
$3.59
2. Baking powder. They had some, but it was from 1988!
$2.74
3. Cake flour. Um yeah.
$5.24
4. Unsalted butter. There is nothing better than no salt!
$2.29
5. Powdered sugar! I find powdered sugar to be disgusting.
$1.50
6. Cupcake Pans. We bought them at an outlet mall only to find when we got back they had cupcake pans galore!
$9.99
7. An orange. DUH again!
69 cents
Having a great time and delicious cupcakes: Priceless

Things we had to hunt for...

1. Almond and Vanilla Extracts. At this cabin, get this, there are two kitchens, its pretty cool actually. After I couldn't find these downstairs, I went upstairs on an extract hunt, until we found them! They were old, I mean dinosaur old! But if I do remember they don't expire easily.

2. Electric Mixer. Probably the cutest electric mixer ever!

3. Cooling Rack. We used the upstairs oven rack instead.

Now time to bake!



Ingredients at hand! Ready to dive into the next un-tedious task of baking!



Lovely batter! Couldn't resist the sweet orange that beckoned to me. That made me drive my will power to the max.



The meringue was delicious!



Folding the meringue in with a mini spatula! Not that easy, not that easy. :)



It was a very thin batter, so I poured it into a water pitcher so it would be easier to fill the cupcake pan as Elinor Klivans suggested. Brilliant!



They came out perfect. Orange lingered throughout the kitchen and the creamy sweet aroma of puffy cupcakes had us all drooling, again. And we had to wait until dinner to eat them! Which was 30 minutes away! Yeah, we are such suckers when it comes to baked goods.



For some reason we had to have an equivalent amount of air circulate through these cupcakes. So you had to stack the pan on top of two cans, and flip it upside down.

Then the icing. I'm not going to go into detail about this.



After a day of zipping up and down Mount Baldy all day, I'm pretty sure we deserved these...

The result. A fabulous sensation of orange. The cupcake was light and moist and delicious without a doubt!