Taste of Spring Cupcakes

[gwydion]

I'm an artist, not a technician in the kitchen, which comes with it's strengths and weaknesses. This is why I'm good at homemade stir fry, soup, and cookies. It's why I'm good at experimenting, at guessing what might work without a recipe, at poverty cooking (turning random ingredients into something not only edible, but yummy). It's also why I suck at cake from scratch and don't even try to make real cheesecake.

As a result, this is not cake from scratch, but a twisting of cake mix cake to taste very little like it's intended to taste. I know this smacks of the despised Sandra Lee. If you are good at cake from scratch, I'd love to hear if it works for you.


For this experiment, I used the all egg white version of Pillsbury's white cske mix. (Egg yolks not only being medically counter indicated, but poisonous to me.) This had the added benefit of using more water.

First, I mixed in a looseleaf strainer:
1 pot measure of lavender sencha.
1 pot measure of Temple of Heaven (gunpowder green)
1 pot measure of lavender.

Add 1 1/4 cups of boiling water. Let steep.

Preheat oven, set up cup cake tins with papers, put mix, oil, and egg whites in a bowl.

Add Cardamom, orange zest (rind), and wattle seed to taste. I eyeballed this, but if you cook you'll likely have an idea of what you like. If not, try a half teaspoon each and see how you feel when it's mixed. If you haven't wattleseed, I'm betting poppy seeds would work, or leave it out. If you don't want muffin looking vaguely yellow cupcakes, add a little food colouring as these wood look good green.

Add the steeped tea and mix. Cook according to directions


I think they are delicious, but I love cardamom. YMMV.

Comments

[dlighe.livejournal.com]

Regarding the intro, I understand and am the same way. Cooking is art and baking is science. I do the former and my wife handles the latter.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

I do best with a partner who does the science bits.