Thursday, August 12, 2010

Helpful Tips.... Using Buttermilk

I've picked up some tips or helpful hints throughout the years that I'd like to share with everyone. Some may be common sense, others may be just really good ideas. I'll feature tips every once in awhile and please, if you have one to share, email me or shoot me a comment!!

My first featured tip is about changing up a boxed cake mix...
I took a decorating class with the fabulous Karen Tack and Allan Richardson. If you have a passion for cupcakes, you'll recognize their names.... They're the authors of Hello, Cupcake and What's New, Cupcake. They can be found here. One of the most helpful hints I learned from them was to replace the water with buttermilk and add an extra egg when using a boxed mix. This will give the cupcake more density and make decorating/handling it easier.

So...
Use 1cup buttermilk in place of water (regardless of the amount called for)
Use the oil as directed
Use one extra egg (or eggwhite - depending on the recipe)

I almost always switch out my water with buttermilk. It doesn't affect the taste, whips the batter up more (yielding more cupcakes), and they definitely seem "sturdier".

**Note: I DO NOT change out the water for buttermilk when I'm using my Babycakes Cupcake Maker. I've decided that I prefer the non-buttermilk recipe for those.

2 comments:

  1. I use buttermilk in my bacon croissants.

    btw: this is Geoff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll have to try this! I usually do not like boxed mixes and always bake from scratch but on the rare occasion when I need a quick fix to satisfy my sweet-tooth, I have made boxed brownies. I always use milk instead of water and butter instead of oil. I'm definitely going to try the buttermilk and extra egg next time. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete