Cupcake Workshop I & Cupcake Workshop II at Shermay's Cooking School

A belated Happy New Year to everyone!

As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, I'll be teaching classes at Shermay's Cooking School. Below, some of the highlights of Cupcake Workshop I and Cupcake Workshop II (PS: A Macaron Workshop and an Ice-Cream Workshop respectively are also in the works, tentatively slated for the second quarter of 2007!).

Cupcake Workshop I will be held on 24 February 2007 (Saturday), 25 February 2007 (Sunday), 10 March 2007 (Saturday), and 11 March 2007 (Sunday), while Cupcake Workshop II will be held on 24 March 2007 (Saturday) and 25 March 2007 (Sunday) - the February schedule and March schedule have all the details (for inquiries, call +65 6479 8442 or email shermaycs@yahoo.com.sg). I've recently learnt from the school that the February classes have been almost fully booked and there are limited spaces available for the March classes - I'm thrilled (and excited, and thankful, and relieved), to say the least. To everyone who signed up and am reading this, a huge thank you and I sincerely hope you'll find the classes as rewarding as I have found the planning process to be.

CUPCAKE WORKSHOP I
Based on a collection of recipes I truly love, and have been testing and re-testing exhaustively in the past months. The workshop is built around the idea that a few essential recipes, "master recipes" so to speak, can be the foundation of a cupcake repertoire as varied and as exciting as your imagination (and knack for mixing-and-matching) will allow. These include:

Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Cupcakes
Valrhona Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
Simple but Stunning Cupcake Variations: Raspberry Swirl; Nutella Swirl; Marbled
Swiss Meringue Buttercream: Master recipe & Variations
Basic Icing: Master recipe & Variations
Dark Chocolate Putty: How to make & shape
Creating Marzipan & Dark Chocolate Putty Designs

Think of the fluffy, tender vanilla cupcake and the darkly seductive chocolate cupcake as the equivalent of a classic white shirt or little black dress in a chic capsule wardrobe - just as all a clever girl needs is some additional savvy separates and choice accessories to create a wealth of looks, versatile recipes such as a Swiss meringue buttercream (which can be flavoured in a great variety of ways) and a basic icing (equally variable) allow you to create many variations, smartly finished with decorations rendered in malleable marzipan and dark chocolate putty, manipulated much in the same fashion as you would model clay.

CUPCAKE WORKSHOP II
This collection of recipes is very much inspired by two of my favourite things - madeleines and financiers. Specifically, the ingenious idea/technique of folding melted (and browned, in the case of the financier) butter delicately infused with spices, teas, herbs or flowers into a batter base in order to create a spectrum of flavours.

As I found out early on whilst recipe testing, it wasn't going to be as simple a matter as applying a straightforward madeleine or financier recipe to a cupcake format - madeleines and financiers may be utterly moreish freshly baked, but are notoriously quick to turn stale and stodgy with every minute that passes upon their exit from the oven. Cupcakes, on the other hand, while usually best eaten on the day they are baked, are most certainly not supposed to be quite so sensitive in constitution.

After much re-working and tweaking, I finally arrived at a recipe template that not only allowed flavour variations via the use of different infused butters, but kept well, in fact improved with keeping - the result is a cupcake with a divinely moist and finely knit crumb that, for lack of a fancier name, I've christened the Very Buttery Cupcake. Why mini cupcakes? In deference to the original inspiration for the recipe, and also because the flavours are sufficiently elegant so much so that you may well be tempted to serve an assortment as petits fours. Depending on the infused butter used, the following can be created:

Lavender Cupcakes (with Lavender & White Chocolate Frosting)

Earl Grey Tea Cupcakes (with Orange Blossom & White Chocolate Frosting)

Chai Spice Cupcakes (with Vanilla Bean & White Chocolate Frosting)

Lemon Cupcakes (with Lemon Curd Filling and Golden Meringue Topping)