Love this recipe from Peyton & Byrne, it results in cloud soft, moist, flavoursome cakes. However as written in my oven it gives them a bit of an exterior crisp that just won’t do. In an effort to remove this I’ve resolved to identify the cause and refine the instructions.
There are three variables that could affect this.
1. Amount of sugar
2. Temperature of oven
3. Position of cupcakes in the oven
On this occasion I used the following…
165c
160g sugar
Second from bottom shelf position
In the size of muffin tin I have this makes 8 cakes, when 3/4 filled and are about 220 calories at this amount of sugar.
They take 25 minutes to bake, considerably more than the 15 minutes stated in the original recipe. But it works well!
I might be tempted to try 170c for slightly less time (22 minutes?), but this isn’t far off spot on.
Update, 06/09/23 – Additional tips after watching this:
Butter:
It could be using too hard butter, or the butter just generally not fully incorporating into the cake mix. So ensuring the butter is the correct temperature/consistency seems also critical.
Not too cold/hard, not to warm and melted. Just deformable with a finger prod.
Mixing:
The mix needs to properly incorporate, so that it’s not grainy, not wet – As can happen if undermixing. Additionally the undermixing seems to result in a harder exterior, perhaps due to the sugar not melting properly.
Overmixing seems to result in massively overblown out of the oven, producing an uneven texture.
It needs to stand up in swirls and be smooth in texture.
She mixes for 1 minute, all in one, medium speed, adding milk and vanilla after that for another 30 seconds… I’m not certain that’s better than the creaming then incorporating the flour method… But might be worth experimenting.