Revisiting Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes

My first batch of lemon poppyseed mini-cupcakes was in June 2012. Coincidentally, I used the same lemon cake brand and poppyseeds. The two emphases were as follows:

• Regular-size vs. mini-cupcakes made using aluminum pans that had round wells
• Separation methods between the cake batter and pan wells

This time, I triedd using silicone pans with square wells. One panful, I used scoops/spoon to dispense batter. The other panful, I pitcher-poured. (Pitcher dispensing is so much faster!) I also enriched the recipe with an extra egg and used milk instead of water. Richer flavor and body.

Wellll, the session did not go anywhere as well as I'd hoped. Various websites touted non-stickiness of silicone, and that the physical flexibility would allow quick release of baked items.

Alas, throwing caution to the wind, my un-oiled pans, filled with ~95% batter, yielded cringeworthy amounts of baked cake in the wells. The hoped-for flick-of-the-wrist cake releases kind of worked. They were fugly, better served in dim lighting.

The video shows straightforward steps that worked well until I got to the dispensing, baking, and cake extractions. (Pay attention to the kitchen versions of road caution signs.)

Calories and Sodium

The yield was from filling the cupcake wells higher than I should have. I have a recollection that I'd wound up with 77 at another baking session. Another wrinkle to the calculations is that much of the cake stuck to the pans. More units, fewer calories each. Same amount of units but successful detachments from pans, more calories each.

I did not list poppyseeds in the table. Google results show negligible stats for calories, sodium, or practically any other noteworthy nutrient.

Silicone Pan Resources That Seemed Persuasive at the Time

• "Silicone vs Paper cupcake liners"
• "How To Use a Silicone Muffin Pan?"
• "Webake Mini Brownie Pan Square Silicone Baking Mold for Keto Fat Bomb, Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Blondie"
• "24-Cavity Metal Reinforced Silicone Mini Muffin Pan by Celebrate It™"
• "Good Question: Help! Why Do Cupcakes Always Get Stuck In These Silicone Muffin Cups?"
• "What are the advantages of silicone molds?", subsection of "Grease the silicone mold - is it really necessary? - Wisefood"

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Related: "Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes"

Mini-cupcake Offload: Pan Type & Prep, Batter Amt

In case the blog article title seems oddly abbreviated, my intent is to minimize the number of characters but still convey the topic, related to my previous article about offloading fudge. For that experiment, I contrasted spray oil vs. spray oil and powdered sugar for offloading fudge, using mini-cupcake silicone and aluminum pans. That dessert requires no baking, thus, use of powdered sugar for prepping some of the pan cavities.

Initially, my experimentation idea this time was using liner papers for mini-cupcakes after baking them. The first time I tried a mini-cupcake recipe and used a silicone pan, I poured the batter into paper-lined cavities. The paper boundaries, nearly vertical, were more challenging for avoiding spills at edges. The baked cakes were instantly and easily removable. Unfortunately, some cake tend to stick to the papers, lessening the edible amount.

So, this time around, was going to only contrast spray oil vs. spray oil and flour in baking Choco Cherry Choco Chip mini-cupcakes. But then, I also wanted to see how well mini-cupcake paper liners fit the baked cakes if I varied the amount of batter—underfill (level tablespoonful) and common fill (rounded tablespoonful).

I had intended on using only silicone pans, After prepping and one of them and putting it in the oven, it occurred to me that the baking process was going to take a lot longer if I switch out several pans' worth. So, I pulled out the aluminum pans and prepped and filled them also. The second oven batch took aa bit of arranging and rearranging, with the second silicone pan and three aluminum pans. I balanced one metal pan on an oven rack ledge and another pan's edge.

The original recipe I modified for the mini-cupcakes is Cherry Vanilla Chocolate Chip Cake. Lucky Leaf pushed its canned pie filling.

A more elaborate recipe that uses chocolate cake mix is Chocolate Cherry Cake, but the baker uses the chocolate chips for the frosting and none in the cake itself.

An extremely elaborate recipe is from SugarWinzy—Cherry Chocolate Chip Layer Cake. Her one-off recipe for cupcakes is Chocolate Chip Cherry Cupcakes. My eyes glazed over from the number of ingredients and artistry.

The simplest recipe would have been using only one flavor of cake mix, but I wanted my batch to be more like milk chocolate cake. Ingredients from the Lucky Leaf recipe and my deviations:

1 16.25-ounce box white cake mix (I used 1/2 box *each* of chocolate and white cake mixes.)
3 eggs
1 21-ounce can LUCKY LEAF Regular or Premium Cherry Pie Filling (I used a different brand.)
1 cup mini chocolate chips (I used regular size chips.)

Instead of using either a bundt cake or oblong pan, I used the silicone and aluminum mini-cupcake pans, baking at 350 for only about 16 minutes each batch. I also skipped the icing part of the recipe. I considered the cakes (yield of 84) to be sweet enough naked, with less work, fewer ingredients, fewer calories.

The spray-oil only method of prepping the pans resulted in fewer instances of cakes sticking to pans than using both spray oil and flour. Originally, I wondered if the papers might be undersized with the bigger post-baked cakes. I was happy to see that the papers hugged well. Maybe the pleats of the sides help accommodate mini-cupcakes for perimeter and volume. The baking session yielded 84 mini-cupcakes.

Try the "Lemon Poppyseed Mini-cupcakes" recipe. Besides putting in a pixstrip for step-by-step instructions, I also talked about muffin vs. cupcake. Also visit Square Mini and Whoopie Muffin Experiment, the recipe where I contrast square mini-muffins and whoopie muffins for shape.

A Convenient Ganachey Icing

I don't have a good name for my hybrid icing, so I'll refer to it as ganachey icing. Ganache is a term for a chocolate icing with two main ingredients—chocolate (squares, chips, candies, etc.) and heavy cream. The white icing equivalent is white chocolate and heavy cream. A typical ganache to me is the chocolate icing on Hostess cupcakes.

My alternative to heavy cream is canned frosting. The convenience is microwaving two items and not having to boil cream. Anyway, the ratio is typically half "candy" and half frosting, by weight. For cupcakes, I tend to use 8 ounces of candy (Wilton, chocolate or other flavor chips, candy bars, "bark", ...) and 8 ounces of frosting for a batch of cupcakes cut into 48 halves.

You can be as flexible and adventuresome with icing flavors and cake shapes as you want. For that matter, the ganachey icing is good also on cookies and rice crispy bars/squares. I have not ever tried icing a whole cake because I tend to make bite-size desserts.

Melt the candy in a microwave. Follow instructions for melting if the package has them. Otherwise, microwave a minute at a time, using a spoon to test for meltedness each time. When it's melted, spoon in the frosting, stir, and microwave the mixture until it's a syrupy texture. Spread or dip items as desired.

• The first batch of images show icing one mini-cupcake. Coverage should be about 60 (one cake mix box recipe). YMMV for how many bite-sizers you ice.
• The second batch of images show icing a sheet of chocolate rice crispy treats, then cutting and arranging the squares into a container. Yes, that's a squeegie handle I use for spreading the warm ganachey icing—clean!

In case mentioning Hostess cupcakes triggers a Pavlovian response and you want to try making your own, do a Google search for "homemade hostess cupcakes recipe". Of several recipes I've viewed, these bakers are serious scratch-recipe people! One recipe that is particularly eye-catching for details and pictures is Faux Hostess Cupcakes - Childhood Lunchbox Memories. A secondary source for reasonable information is Homemade Hostess Cupcakes.

I myself would probably just be casual enough to bake from a box cake mix recipe, squirt in canned frosting, pour and spread my ganache recipe, and draw the squiggle with more canned frosting. Wouldn't these cupcakes look cute as mini versions?

Visit my other baking recipe articles:

• A Convenient Triple-dose Pnutty Butter Cooky Batch
  Cookies using PB cookie mix, turbocharged w/chopped peanuts & Wilton PB flavor candies
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--German Chocochip Bites
  Cookies using cake mix—German chocolate cake taste with predominance of chocolate, coconut, and pecans
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter
  For Easter, cookies using cake mix, decorated with color sugars, then imprinted with small cooky cutters.
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch
  Easy cooky recipe using cake mix for making red cookies for Valentine's Day. Includes a strip of images at the top of the article.