Well, we sure did hype these up in the video. Ultimately they turned out eggy and flat. Don’t worry though, version 2.0 is in the works and features more flour (self-raising!), fewer eggs, no baking powder, bonus salt and more of the magic that is TEAM XRG!

After the enormous success of my previous cooking adventures, I thought cupcakes would be a lovely change of pace. How difficult could it possibly be? We’ve got butter, caster sugar, flour, eggs, milk, vanilla extract and baking powder. Practically everything you’d expect from a sensible cooking demonstration, apart from the sensible part.

SuperNick (Nick) was handling the camera, which meant I could concentrate on getting the ingredients into the bowl without accidentally dropping everything on the floor. I started with around 125 g of butter and a rather enthusiastic quantity of sugar. Measuring things accurately has never been one of my greatest talents, but surely cupcakes can forgive a little artistic interpretation?

Then came the eggs. Three of them! One even donated a little eggshell to the mixture, although I managed to fish that out before it disappeared completely. Nobody wants crunchy cupcakes unless the crunch is something you’ve added deliberately. At least we had that part under control.

We also learned that tsp stands for teaspoon, which is useful information to possess before adding the vanilla essence. A tablespoon of vanilla would probably make a rather different cake. I had to look that one up, but you can never be too old to learn something new!

The flour situation wasn’t especially promising either. I’d bought plain flour because the organic variety happened to be cheaper, and I was relying on baking powder to provide the rise. Unfortunately, I wasn’t entirely confident about the measurements, and the mixture became increasingly runny as everything went into the bowl.

I’d also forgotten to clean the baking trays, so we made do with layers of cupcake paper cases. With the little oven preheating to around 180 degrees Celsius, we spooned the mixture into the cases and hoped for the best. Naturally, I filled some of them much higher than recommended. They looked wonderful before cooking, which is the important part, isn’t it?

The toaster oven didn’t make matters any easier. Some cakes seemed to be cooking more quickly than others, and turning on the upper element produced an impressive amount of browning. A knife served as our testing instrument when I wanted to check whether the centres were cooked.

Eventually we had something resembling cupcakes. The tops looked quite respectable in places, but the texture was another story. They were rather flat and tasted much more like an omelette than a delicious little cake. Apparently putting three eggs into this particular mixture wasn’t my finest decision.

Still, SuperNick (Nick) and I had a good laugh, and that’s half the point of these videos. The next attempt will involve fewer eggs, more self-raising flour and a rather more carefully considered recipe. Hopefully version 2.0 will be an improvement!

So how do you make your cupcakes? Stay tuned for the revised edition! Maybe we can compare notes?

Cooking with McRetro