The other day the husband bought the cookbook 500 Cupcakes: The Only Compendium You'll Ever Need . I, being the superior chef and baker, am a little wary of cookbooks that are big on pretty. It usually means they lack substance. And 500 Cupcakes is really big on pretty.
I began looking at the pictures and reading a few recipes and it came across as pretty lazy. One recipe, Vanilla Cupcakes on page 21, states "If you can get vanilla sugar, use half regular superfine and half vanilla superfine..." Huh? If you can get vanilla sugar? Well, considering that vanilla sugar is super easy to make it seems to me that the authors would include how to make it in the recipe rather than implying that you should try and look for it in specialty shops. Vanilla sugar only requires putting a split vanilla bean with the scraped seeds in an airtight container with two cups sugar for two weeks. After two weeks, sift the sugar and you're good to go. But I digress.
Pretty quickly after perusing the book I determined that it was not for me but would look cute on the coffee table for a few months. But just to make sure I decided to test out one recipe. The Classic Chocolate Buttercream Cupcakes on page 32 seemed as good a recipe as any.
