Special Birthday Cake

Trying to come up something unique for my daughter L's 18 birthday, I decided to make a Spaghetti and Meatball cake, egged on by my friend C, especially after daughter choose the same cake from the book. However, I was not happy with the cupcake from the box as suggested by my friend. Too sweet and ordinary.That's the last time I listen to you C.... nothing but the best for my daughter!

Of course, I had to have the best so I went to Martha Stewart's website. There I found a recipe for Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla cupcake - a bakery cupcake winner. I watched the video, printed out the recipe and then happily measured out the ingredients, noting that there was some discrepancies between the video and the recipe posted notably the amount of baking powder and the quantities and type of flour. At this point the 2 tablespoon (*) of baking powder had already been added to the 1 3/4 cups of cake flour per video! I am now on the blog ( I know a little late) and noticing that there are numerous posting about the discrepancies and how other handled it. There were equal number of people having success with 1 and 2 tablespoon of baking powder. Some used regular all purpose flour versus the cake flour and all purpose flour combination. All it seems with equal incidence of success and failure.

And so..... because I was already thinking a plain vanilla cupcake would be too boring, I had halved some strawberries to put in the middle of the cupcakes. Heck if I was taking a risk, I thought I might as well go whole hog. I decided to use all cake flour instead of the flour combination suggested....... Well, they turned out beautifully. No, the extra strawberry did not add enough liquid to make a difference... so there C!!!!

Ha, ha, now as I am sitting here and trying to write this post, I am trying to visualize exactly how I made these cupcakes. I am seeing in my mind's eye that maybe I measured 2 teaspoon of baking powder versus 2 TABLESPOONS of baking powder. So is this like a total do over of the Billy's Vanilla, Vanilla Cupcakes????? Okay, I think it was 2 Tablespoon of baking powder as I had to sieve the lumpy baking powder. We will go with 2 tablespoon. Hey, if you are game try MY Spaghetti and Meatball Special.