I’ve been known to make a cupcake here and there. When I decided to launch this blog, and introduce the fifty plus parve baking tips, I figured that there wasn’t a better way than with a cupcake recipe. Parve, and delicious, these cupcakes pack quite the punch!
The idea to make these cupcakes came from my sister. We are currently both obsessing over the TV show “Franklin and Bash.” On the show, they have Margarita Mondays, and my sister joked that we should start that tradition. The fact that we don’t live in the same home dampened the effect of this genius idea, but we agreed to start a Sangrias Shabbat tradition; but after one week, we forgot about it. Anyway, these cupcakes were quite the surprise when she got home! After we tried them, we both agreed that this recipe was a keeper. Neither of us had a margarita before but we both thought that if they don’t taste like the cupcakes, then they should because the cupcakes were beyond delicious!
Margarita Cupcakes
24 cupcakes - parve
Ingredients
Cake:
3 cups of all purpose flour
3 tbsp of baking powder
1\2 tsp of salt
1 cup of unsalted margarine (at room temperature)
1 1\2 cup of sugar
1\2 cup of brown sugar
4 large eggs (at room temperature)
1\4 of a cup of lime juice
1\4 of a cup of tequila
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 cup of soymilk
Butter cream:
2 cups of unsalted margarine (at room temperature)
4-5 cups of confectioners’ sugar
3 tbsp of lime juice
1\4 of a cup of tequila
1\4 of a cup of brown sugar
Coarse salt (for garnish)
Lime peel (for garnish)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Combine your flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Set the bowl aside.
- Beat your butter and sugars together, on a medium-high speed, until they start to look light and fluffy. This should take between 4-6 minutes.
- Mix in your eggs, one at a time. Make sure the previous egg is blended in properly before adding the next one.
- Lower your mixer’s speed to medium and add the lime juice, tequila, and vanilla extract.
- Once everything is combined, add the flour mixture you made earlier into your wet mixture in batches. You want to pour in your flour creation in three batches and your soy milk in two. You should start and end withhe flour.
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERMIX. ONCE EVERYTHING IS COMBINED, LEAVE YOUR BATTER ALONE!
- Pour your delicious batter into your cupcake tins.
- Bake for about 22 minutes. When the cupcakes are ready they should be a light, golden color on the top.
- To make buttercream, cream the margarine on a medium high speed for about five minutes.
- Once your margarine is light and fluffy pour three cups of confectioners’ sugar on top of your margarine. Don’t’ start mixing
- On the side, in a small bowl dissolve your brown sugar in the liquid ingredients for your butter cream. Mix them together a few times with a fork until the sugar has mostly melted in the liquid.
- Pour the small bowl’s contents on top of the confectioners’ sugar and margarine.
- Mix the ingredients together on a medium speed. Be sure to use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides.
- Gradually add the rest of the confectioners’ sugar to your butter cream.
- Once the cupcakes are completely cool, frost them, and garnish them with coarse salt and or lime peel.
Every once in while (or every Friday) we discover that we forgot to buy some neccessary ingredient for one of our recipes, while we are preparing it.
Hopefully this chart will prevent you from looking like this guy!
Baking powder - 1\4 tsp of baking soda per tsp of baking powdefr
Baking Soda - 1 tsp of baking powder per 1\4 tsp of baking soda
Unsalted butter - Equal amount of unsalted margarine
Butter (melted) - 3\4 of canola oil per cup of butter
Buttermilk -1 cup of Soymilk with 1\2 TBSP of vinegar mixed into it per cup of buttermilk
Brown sugar - 1 cup of white sugar with ¼ cup molasses per cup of brown sugar
Corn syrup - 1\4 cup of white sugar with mixed with 1 tbsp of warm water or 1\4 of honey per 1\4 of cup of corn syrup
Half and half - 7\8 of a cup of soymilk with 2 tbsp of melted unsalted margarine mixed into it
Heavy cream - Parve heavy cream or 1\2 cup of soymilk mixed with 3 tbsp of melted unsalted margarine in.
Sour Cream - 1\2 of soy yogurt per 1\2 of sour cream
Whipped cream - Thawed parve whipped topping
Ingredients
1. Read through your entire recipe before starting, in order to prevent any mishaps from happening.
2. Check the expiration dates on all your ingredients before you use them. If your ingredients are spoiled, chances are your dessert isn’t going to taste good.
3. Many parve ingredients have a subtle aftertaste that makes your desserts taste parve. In order to mask their unpleasant taste, consider adding powerful flavor enhancers, like alcohol, or savory spices into your dessert which will not only make you dessert more unusual but make them taste less parve.
4. Make sure your baking dish is sprayed. It might seem obvious but every once in a while you’ll forget to do it and you’ll spend the rest of the day kicking yourself.
5. Make sure that all the cake ingredients are at room temperature before you use them in your cake.
6. Assume when recipe call for ‘eggs’ they mean large eggs. Always use large eggs because they are the standard size used by bakers.
7. When a recipe calls for flour, assume it’s all purpose flour.
8. If a recipe just calls for butter, assume its unsalted butter.
9. Sift your ingredients before you mix them into your batter. This will prevent you from ending up with large clumps of an ingredient stuck in your batter.
10. In order to prevent ingredients like honey or molasses from sticking to your measuring cups or spoons and not get making the measurement precise, spray the measure tool with spray oil or dip them in hot water before using them.
11. For an easy flavor enhancer, roast nuts, or spices, before incorporating them into your dessert.
12. If you want to experiment with one of your recipes, you can use soy yogurt or parve sour cream instead of milk or soy milk, for a new texture and a new dessert.
13. Use better quality parve chocolate. The really cheap stuff tastes painfully parve and can ruin your dessert. A few extra cents can make your dessert taste like a million dollars.
14.When you’re baking, use pure vanilla extract (not the stuff from grocery stores). If you are using the cheap stuff, taste the batter, and consider adding more of it than the recipe calls for.
15. When substituting soymilk for milk, try using a flavored soymilk to enhance the flavor of your cake.
16. Replace a cup of buttermilk with a cup of soymilk with 1\2 teaspoon of vinegar mixed into it.
17.Don’t be afraid to go dairy! If you have a favorite dairy recipe, use the parve ingredients substitute chart and change the recipe around so that it can be one of your favorite parve desserts.
18. If you have the patience, weigh your ingredients. This give you the most precise quantity as is done in professional bakeries.
19. Don’t skip the salt in dessert recipes. You might think that salt has no place in your sweet dessert but a bit of salt helps bring out the flavors in your baking.
20. A single large egg yolk is about 20 grams, while a single large egg white is about 37 grams.
21. For a cleaner job, separate eggs when they are cold but let them reach room temperature before using them.
22. When making meringue or anything else that requires whipping egg whites make sure that they are at room temperature or warm. Their temperature will affect how long it will take, and how well they whip.
23. If you need to change egg temperature quickly, you can either put them in warm water to make them reach room temperature or cold water to make them cold.
24. If you need to bring butter to room temperature quickly, microwave it for a few seconds. Be careful though, because if you’re not, you’ll be cleaning melted margarine off the bottom of the microwave.
25. When trying to figure out what type of chocolate is what, keep in mind that semisweet chocolate can be replaced with regular dark chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate can be replaced with extra dark chocolate.
Mixing
26. Always mix dry ingredients together with a whisk before incorporating them with the wet ingredients.
27. You know that you have successfully creamed your butter and sugar when they turn a pale yellow color and have a fluffy texture. This could take several minutes.
28. When alternating the mixing of wet and dry ingredients into a batter, always start and end with dry ingredients.
29.If you are using kitchen stand-mixers, don’t run them at full-speed even if a recipe calls for a high speed. You’ll end up with half the mixture on your wall and the other half over mixed inside the bowl. If you are using small handheld mixers it probably won’t have to go over speed level 4, unless it’s specified otherwise. Keep in mind that the reason they flew planes and didn’t bake cakes in Top Gun was because they had a need for speed; which makes pilots look cool and home bakers serve store bought ice cream. This tip will not only make your dessert taste better but make your mixer last longer.
30.Don’t over mix, if you do, the cakes will become dried out. Once the ingredients are incorporated ,you don’t need to mix your batter anymore.
31. When you’re making a crust, make sure you have the right amount of sugar in your batter. If you aren’t careful and add too much, you’ll end up with a dark crust, and if you add too little you can end up with a light a crust or with a unpleasantly tough texture.
32. Carefully measure how much flour you put into your crust because too much of it will crack the top of your crust.
33. If a recipe calls for egg yolks, beat them with a fork before adding them to the batter.
34. When crisis occurs and you find a piece of egg shell in your batter, use the emptied half-shell to try to catch the broken bit. The eggshell pieces stick to one another.
35. If you bake a cake and are worried that there might be pieces of eggshell in the batter, flip the cake over. The eggshells’ weight causes them to sink so you can scrape them off the bottom of the cake, and ensure that your secret mishap stays secret forever.
36. If you’re folding two mixtures together, while you’re making batter; pour the lighter mixture on top of the heavier one, while using a gentle folding motion.
37. If you are making meringues, make sure to whip all your utensils clean with a paper towel and a bit of vinegar or lemon juice before starting the meringues. This will help prevent any bits of grease or anything else tampering with your meringues.
38. In order to prevent ending up with a cake with a domed top or uneven baking, don’t pack your oven with baking dishes. If there are too many things in the oven at once, the heat won’t be evenly dispensed and will end up ruining whatever you crammed in it. Patience is a baking virtue!
39.Make sure to preheat your oven before you put anything in it. Double check that your oven is on the temperature that your recipe called for, because otherwise you might not end up wit hteh results the recipe promised.
40. In order to end up with a flat cake, flatten the batter with an offset spatula before putting it in the oven.
41.Never fill a baking dish more than 2\3 – 3\4 of the way full; otherwise you might end up scraping bits of it off the bottom of your oven.
42. Preheat your oven and wait for it to reach the temperature you need to bake at before putting anything in the oven.
43. If you can, always bake in the middle of the oven, unless otherwise stated in recipe. If you are baking multiple things at once be sure not to let any baked goods be too close to the top or the bottom of the oven in order to prevent burning.
44. Don’t open the oven door. Your dessert is going to bake without your moral support, so there is no need to constantly open the oven door and check on it. When you open the oven door you are letting in cold air which will then effect the temperature inside of the oven and in turn effect the outcome of your dessert. Leave your dessert alone until you honestly think it might be ready.
45. Normally when your cake is about done, you will be able to smell it. If your kitchen is filled with enthusiastic taste testers who are sniffing the air, it’s a sign you should check if your cake is done.
46. When you’re checking if your cake is done, leave it in the oven. The quick change of temperature can cause it to collapse if it isn’t ready. If the cake is ready a toothpick should come out clean from the middle of the cake.
Cooling
47. Let your cake reach room temperature in its pan before taking it out, unless you’re instructed otherwise..
48. Cupcakes and other small, individual baked goods are the exception from the previous tip. Because of their size, they will dry out in the pan, so be sure to take them out immediately and allow them to cool on a wire rack.
49. If you are making a cheesecake, or any other type of cake prone to collapse, let the cake reach room temperature in the oven. This will prevent your cake from looking like the leaning tower of Pisa.
Frosting
50.Make sure you cake is completely cooled before you even think about frosting your cake. If your cake is still even a little bit warm it will make your frosting melt and make it difficult to ice your cake.
51. When you are making frosting or icing, be sure to gradually add the sugar. By not pouring all the sugar in your frosting at once, you’re preventing yourself from ending up with clumps of sugar in it.
52. Before you cover your cake with frosting or icing, use a pastry brush to get rid of any loose crumbs that stuck onto your cake and can ruin its appearance.
53. If you don’t have time to frost your cake, sprinkle a bit of powdered sugar on top; trust me, it does wonders!
This is a direct result of using the tips!
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