More Room for the Good Stuff

Sometimes things don't go as planned, even on the farm.

This morning I made chocolate cupcakes for my grandma's 92nd birthday. I carefully altered the recipe to account for high altitude by adding more liquid, less baking soda, more flour, less sugar and by increasing the baking temperature by 25 degrees. However, despite my best efforts, the cupcakes all sunk in the middle and turned into cavecakes.

This doesn't bother me too much because the little hollows can be filled with frosting. I think Deliverance would agree with me that the whole point of cupcakes is that they are a vehicle for frosting. More room for frosting = a good thing.

Deliverance and I like to see the positive side of everything.

Here are some pics with the final recipe for the cupcakes at the bottom. I'll post the frosting recipe later.

Sad looking cavecake, longing for frosting:

Happy cupcake, topped with strawberry frosting, a strawberry heart and two mint leaves:

Chocolate Cupcakes With More Room for the Good Stuff
This recipe is courtesy of Cavleen and includes high altitude changes.

Ingredients
3/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup + 4 Tbls. buttermilk
1 cup canola oil
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups minus 4 Tbls. sugar
2 cups + 2 Tbls. flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions

1. Mix cocoa and boiling water. Set aside to cool.
2. Mix buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla together.
3. Mix dry ingredients together.
4. Mix dry ingredients into buttermilk/oil mixture.
5. Mix in cocoa mixture.
6. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit in lined cupcake pans.
7. Bake until tester comes out clean, approximately 15 minutes.

Makes about 24 cupcakes.

About the Farm

If you follow the railroad tracks out of Santa Fe and keep following them far, far to the south, you might notice a small farm just off the side of the tracks. Approaching this farm your shins might be scuffled by an aggressive but beautiful rooster named George, or you might be followed by a limping cat named Zippy who's meows sound a bit like a goat. If you were to walk around the back of this farm you might see a garden (teaming with tomatoes and marigolds in the summer) and a brambly blackberry patch (watch out for those thorns!). If you do find this magical place, congratulations! You've found The Farm.

A lot of cookin' and cannin' takes place here on the farm and a lot of shenanigans. Deliverance and I would like to share them with you. My name's Wilful and I hope ya'll enjoy our bloggin'.

Deliverance and I are related by blood, but what holds us together the most is our love for cooking, our passion for gardening and a certain zany insanity that may or may not be hereditary.

Remember that aggressive rooster George? He was abandoned by his mama when he was just barely hatched. Deliverance found him, nursed him back to health and carried him around in her shirt until he got big enough to fend for himself. Now he's turned into kind of a nuisance but we haven't decided to eat him. At least not yet . . . .