Hi-Hats Report Card: F is for Failure
For months I've had a recipe in my stack for a cupcake called the Hi-Hat. I've seen pictures of Hi-Hats all over the place and they look delicious, fun and fancy. I could tell from the photos and from the recipe that this recipe was a whole new level of difficulty for me in the cupcake realm. The recipe has a lot of steps, requires timing, as well as a lot of time to make them. I've tried quite a few kinds of cupcakes in the past year, and some of them have been kind of tricky, but I could tell that this recipe would be a big test. Of my cupcakiness. Or cupcakeitude. Or baking ability, whatever.
The base of the cupcake is a rich chocolate cupcake with a touch of coffee. It's kind of thick and made a moist, dense cupcake. The recipe made 21 cupcakes. I thought about cutting the recipe down to make an even dozen, but the math required to do all those fractions was a deterrent. So, 21 cupcakes it was.
As the cupcakes cooled, I made the next layer - the Italian Meringue. As it turns out, an Italian Meringue is kind of like marshmallow cream. I pulled out my Grandma Mitchell's old mixer for this one, and let me tell you, that Kitchen Aid still works like a dream. I'm not sure how old the mixer is, but Grandma is 98 and she used the mixer for a long, long time.
Having achieved what looked like "soft peaks" to me in the mixer, I filled my mechanical pastry bag with the Italian Meringue. The recipe photo showed five layers of coils to create a Dairy Queen-like derby. I made it to four then decided we'd better stop while our towers of goodness were still fairly straight.
While I was doing this step, the kids started ripping the cupcake wrappers off of some of the untouched cupcakes. I managed to get 17 cupcakes topped with coils and into the refrigerator to set. While they set, I melted the chocolate.
For the Hi-Hat finale, the chilled cupcakes are dipped into melted chocolate to create a shell. I dipped the first one and it worked. The second one looked great. The third one slid off the side. The fourth one plopped right into the chocolate. And that's when I panicked. They were melting. Fast. So, I gently spooned chocolate over the rest of the cupcakes and put then back in the fridge.
That left me with two cupcakes that actually turned out as they should have. TWO out of 21 and after several hours of work. They were all delicious but especially the two that turned out as planned. The Italian Meringue was a big hit and I'll probably make that again as a substitute for whipped cream. It was such a big hit, that late one night, I found Marty holding the container of leftover Italian Meringue in one hand and a pop tart in the other, using the Italian Meringue as DIP.
Even though they didn't turn out, I'm glad I finally tried the recipe. But I don't think I'm ready for these, there's something I'm not doing right and I don't know enough about baking to figure it out. I'm going back to the trusty Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook, where everything looks fancy AND turns out properly.
The base of the cupcake is a rich chocolate cupcake with a touch of coffee. It's kind of thick and made a moist, dense cupcake. The recipe made 21 cupcakes. I thought about cutting the recipe down to make an even dozen, but the math required to do all those fractions was a deterrent. So, 21 cupcakes it was.
As the cupcakes cooled, I made the next layer - the Italian Meringue. As it turns out, an Italian Meringue is kind of like marshmallow cream. I pulled out my Grandma Mitchell's old mixer for this one, and let me tell you, that Kitchen Aid still works like a dream. I'm not sure how old the mixer is, but Grandma is 98 and she used the mixer for a long, long time.
Having achieved what looked like "soft peaks" to me in the mixer, I filled my mechanical pastry bag with the Italian Meringue. The recipe photo showed five layers of coils to create a Dairy Queen-like derby. I made it to four then decided we'd better stop while our towers of goodness were still fairly straight.
While I was doing this step, the kids started ripping the cupcake wrappers off of some of the untouched cupcakes. I managed to get 17 cupcakes topped with coils and into the refrigerator to set. While they set, I melted the chocolate.
For the Hi-Hat finale, the chilled cupcakes are dipped into melted chocolate to create a shell. I dipped the first one and it worked. The second one looked great. The third one slid off the side. The fourth one plopped right into the chocolate. And that's when I panicked. They were melting. Fast. So, I gently spooned chocolate over the rest of the cupcakes and put then back in the fridge.
That left me with two cupcakes that actually turned out as they should have. TWO out of 21 and after several hours of work. They were all delicious but especially the two that turned out as planned. The Italian Meringue was a big hit and I'll probably make that again as a substitute for whipped cream. It was such a big hit, that late one night, I found Marty holding the container of leftover Italian Meringue in one hand and a pop tart in the other, using the Italian Meringue as DIP.
Even though they didn't turn out, I'm glad I finally tried the recipe. But I don't think I'm ready for these, there's something I'm not doing right and I don't know enough about baking to figure it out. I'm going back to the trusty Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World cookbook, where everything looks fancy AND turns out properly.
Wow, WAY too much work for me! Love your Grandmother's mixer, don't ever let it go.
The Italian Meringue looks wonderful!
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I don't think I've ever seen a mixer that needs body work done to it!
I personally think its unfair to even publish recipes like these that are completely impossible to replicate. I think it could be considered false advertising. Like the recipe I tried that used black olives and cream cheese to make little penguins. After about 2 hours I had like 10 penguins that were eaten in about 30 seconds.
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