Orange cupcake with cream cheese frosting

Who loves orange? I do. But I can never put enough efforts to squeeze orange juice or cut oranges everyday, so I always end up having tons of dry, leftover oranges in my kitchen. That means, you guys can expect a series of orange dishes and cakes coming up. Let's start the series with Orange Cupcake today.

I am a DIE HARD FAN of cupcakes. Everyone who's close to me would know that. Back to the day when I was in Vietnam, I remember myself always buying boxes of 6 and ate alone, no sharing! And if I was sick, I needed to have cupcakes! Now that eating out is expensive here, I tend to make everything at home. This cupcake recipe was actually rearranged by myself after gathering info from the internet. And the cream cheese frosting was a creative product of leftover ingredients in my fridge, and it turned out so soft, smooth and fragrant with orange scent.

Ingredients (for 12 lovely cupcakes)

- Dry:

+ 1.5 cups self-raising flour

+ 1.5 tsp baking powder

+ 1/4 tsp salt

- Wet:

+ 1/2 cup of unsalted butter (room temperature, softened)

+ 3/4 cup of sugar

+ 3 eggs

+ 2.5 tsp orange zest

+ 1/4 cup orange juice

+ 1/3 cup milk

- Frosting:

+ 125g creamcheese (room temperature, softened)

+ Around 100g butter (room temperature, softened)

+ 100g Icing sugar

+ A little bit heavy cream

+ A little bit orange juice

+ Orange zest

Making

The Cupcakes:

- Mix the dry ingredients well together with a whisk

- In a separate bowl, beat the butter with sugar with a hand mixer. This should be done little by little. Slowly put a bit 1/4 of the sugar in, then 1/4, then again, then again. Beat until the mixture turns white and well-corporated.

- Add the eggs, one by one while keeping beating the the mixture.

- Add orange zest, then orange juice, then milk into the mixture. Make sure you keep beating. But don't over beat it or the mixture will turns out to be very hard and the cakes cannot raise beautifully. You can use a spatula in this step to avoid overbeating. We're looking for a smooth but not watery texture here.

- Scoop the batter into 12 cups and put them into the oven (make sure to preheat the oven everytime you bake). 170C for about 22 mins. To test if the cupcakes are ready or not, put a toothpick into the cake and pull it out. If there's no batter sticking to the toothpick, your cupcakes should be ready.

The frosting:

- While waiting for the cakes in the oven, we should get starting with the frosting. I use leftover ingredients for this part so really, not measuring methods. After following recipes for frosting a few times, I started feel like it's not something that we should do exactly like the recipes. For me (and for a lot of Vietnamese), the Western version of frosting is TOO TOO sweet. I followed the Western recipe once and it turned out to sweet. And sometimes the texture is not as soft as I want sometimes, so for the frosting, it really depends on personal wants. I myself like it to be soft, gently sweet. Others might like it to be sweet and stiff so they can use decorating tips.

- Mix butter and creamcheese with sugar first, using a handmixer until the mixture smooth and soft.

- Pour in the cream and orange juice, a bit orange zest. Beat until you get the smooth and clean texture.

In this recipe, I make it soft and just a lil bit sweet. If you want it to be sweeter, just add sugar; want it stiffer, just no cream or more butter. Be flexible.

That's it. Now it's the fun part. Be creative and decorate the cupcakes in whichever way you like, using orange zest, orange cuts, frosting tips, orange curd, orange jam, etc. I hope you find baking as fun as I find it and see you in my next recipe ;)

#cupcake #FoodIMake #dessert #orange #sweet #Cooking #baking