sweet cuppin' cakes

I had some ganache left over from the first installment of The Great Yellow Cake Bake-off and Regional Pro-Am of 2038, and I needed to do something with it before it went bad. I didn't really have enough to fill or ice a cake, so I decided: Cupcakes! Yaaaaay!

This was Cook's Illustrated's "Yellow Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Frosting," which is only available on their website to subscribers but was easily found elsewhere via google.

The money shot:

Vitals:

Fat

Butter

Flour

all purpose

Leaveners

Baking powder

Ratings:

Flavor

Very good, but I wish it had a rounder finish. Maybe my vanilla is just too cheap.

Texture

Good. Tender but not too delicate. The tops were a little funky but hey everyone loves icing.

Moistness

Spot on.

Aesthetics

Very good. A nice golden yellow, not so yellow that it looks artificial. Consistent but not overly consistent crumb. Some of them were a wee bit misshapen on top but that's more because I'm incapable of using a spoon than anything in the recipe.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Last time I noted that my oven seemed to be running a bit cool, so I obtained an oven thermometer. I have not yet carried out an extensive experiment, but so far it looks like my oven's thermostat is actually pretty good.
• Dishers are great for cupcakes because you can scoop each one out to an identical size. Unfortunately, I am incapable of actually using one apparently because I ended up with 10 cupcakes instead of 12, and some of them had tops that were way too big.
• As we shall see in later installments of The Great Yellow Cake Bake-off and Regional Pro-Am of 2038, Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen is CRAZYGONUTS when it comes to cake baking. By which I mean they completely eschew this blog's eponymous method in favor of, well, tossing all of the ingredients in a bowl and mixing them together (their full-on cake recipe is actually only slightly more complicated than that). Results: delicious! I don't have a stand mixer, and I did find that with the hand mixer it was a little hard to mix in the butter when I wasn't creaming it with the sugar first.

So, in short:

Pros

Good product all around, easy to make.

Cons

Flavor not round enough at the finish; I can't use a spoon.