The cupcakes

Well–I’ve never made buttercream frosting the European way–which is to melt sugar and whip it into meringue–but it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it might be.  It takes a while, because the hot melted sugar tends to freak out the egg whites, but with a stand mixer it DOES eventually whip up stiff and slick and shiny.

Only problems I encountered were:  the cakes were underdone in the center–both of them.  And I forgot to spread on the lemon syrup I had so painstakingly made.  Sigh.  Wonder if I can drizzle it on the slices of cake after I cut them?

I had doubled the cake recipe, but only made the frosting as called for, and I still had frosting left over to store in the freezer.  And when handed cakes with an underdone center, you cut it out and create mini-bundt cakes.  🙂

As you can see from the book photos, these cakes are filled with lemon curd between the layers, along with the frosting–yum.  Then I simply piped on some tiny flowers, sprinkled with sparkling sugar, and I consider myself done.

Now, off to make paella for dinner tonight.  Talk about throwing everything into a pan!  My recipe calls for chicken, clams, lobster, sausage, and saffon–and I had no luck finding saffron at the grocery yesterday.  Guess we’ll have to do without.  🙂

This cake is only missing the center on the bottom layer. (See why I don’t do this professionally?)

Ta da!  Mini-bundt cake. 🙂

~~Angie