Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe (39 page)
Read Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe Online
Authors: Jenny Colgan
Vanilla Cupcake, Courtesy of the Caked Crusader
For the cupcakes
125g unsalted butter, at room
temperature
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
125g self-raising flour, sifted i.e. passed through a sieve
2 tsp vanilla extract (N.B. ‘extract’, not ‘essence’. Extract is natural whereas essence contains chemicals and is nasty)
2 tbsp milk (you can use whole milk or semi-skimmed but not skimmed, as it tastes horrible)
For the buttercream
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250g icing sugar, sifted i.e. passed through a sieve
1 tsp vanilla extract
Splash of milk – by which I mean, start with a tablespoon, beat that in,
see if the buttercream is the texture you want, if it isn’t add a further tablespoon etc.
How to make
Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/gas mark 5.
Line a cupcake pan with paper cases. This recipe will make 12 cupcakes.
Beat the butter and sugar together until they are smooth, fluffy and pale. This will take several minutes even with soft butter. Don’t skimp on this stage, as this is where you get air into the mix. How you choose to beat the ingredients is up to you. When I started baking I used a wooden spoon, then I got handheld electric beaters and now I use a stand mixer. They will all yield the same result, however, if you use the wooden spoon, you will get a rather splendid upper arm workout … who said cake was unhealthy?
Add the eggs, flour, vanilla and milk and beat until smooth. Some recipes require you to add all these ingredients separately but, for this recipe, you don’t have to worry about that. You are looking for what’s called ‘dropping consistency’; this means that when you take a spoonful of mixture and gently tap the spoon, the
mixture will drop off. If the mixture doesn’t drop off the spoon, mix it some more. If it still won’t drop, add a further tablespoon of milk.
Spoon into the paper cases. There is no need to level the batter, as the heat of the oven will do this for you. Place the tray in the upper half of the oven. Do not open the oven door until the cakes have baked for twelve minutes, then check them by inserting a skewer (if you don’t have one, use a wooden cocktail stick) into the centre of the sponges – if it comes out clean, the cakes are ready and you can remove them from the oven. If raw batter comes out on the skewer, pop them back in the oven and give them a couple more minutes. Cupcakes, being small, can switch from underdone to overdone quickly so don’t get distracted! Don’t worry if your cakes take longer than a recipe states – ovens vary.
As soon as the cupcakes come out of the oven, tip them out of the tin on to a wire rack. If you leave them in the tin they will carry on cooking (the tin is very hot) and the paper cases may start to pull away from the sponge, which looks ugly. Once on the wire rack they will cool quickly – about thirty minutes.
Now make the buttercream: beat the butter in a bowl, on its own, until very soft. It will start to look almost like whipped cream. It
is this stage in the process that makes your buttercream light and delicious.
Add the icing sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Go gently at first otherwise the icing sugar will cloud up and coat you and your kitchen with white dust! Keep mixing until the butter and sugar are combined and smooth; the best test for this is to place a small amount of the icing on your tongue and press it up against the roof of your mouth. If it feels gritty, it needs more beating. If it’s smooth, you can move on to the next step.
Beat in the vanilla and milk. If the buttercream isn’t as soft as you would like, then add a tiny bit more milk but be careful – you don’t want to make the buttercream sloppy.
Either spread or pipe over the cupcakes. Spreading is easier and requires no additional equipment. However, if you want your cupcakes to look fancy it might be worth buying an icing bag and star-shaped nozzle. You can get disposable icing bags, which cut down on washing-up.
Add any additional decoration you desire – this is where you can be creative. In the past I have used sugar flowers, hundreds and thousands, Maltesers, edible glitter, sprinkles, nuts, crumbled Flake … the options are endless.
Bask in glory at the wonderful
thing you have made.
Eat.
It was amazing, the capacity for human sympathy, thought Issy. She would honestly not believe that she could sit here and listen to another human being pour out how unfair it was that Issy’s boyfriend wouldn’t get off with them.
‘You’d met me,’ she said finally. ‘You knew I existed.’
Kelly-Lee kept weeping, big tears pouring off the end of her perfect retroussé nose. ‘But you’re foreign,’ she said. ‘So I figured it didn’t really matter, know what I mean?’
‘No,’ said Issy.
‘You’re from Eurp! Everyone knows everyone has six girlfriends over there.’
‘Does everyone know that?’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Kelly-Lee. ‘And you have no idea how hard it is. Now I’m going to lose my job …’
‘For trying to pull someone?’ said Issy. ‘Cor, your boss is miles tougher than me.’
‘No … apparently my cupcakes are no good.’
‘They are no good,’ agreed Issy. ‘They’re terrible, in fact.’
‘Well, they drop off half, then I’m meant to practise making them fresh, but I never really bothered.’
Issy rolled her eyes.
Kelly-Lee blinked at
her. ‘Does he really, really love you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Issy, truthfully.
‘Maybe when I’m as old as you I’ll know what real love feels like,’ said Kelly-Lee, starting to weep again.
‘Yes, yes, maybe,’ said Issy. ‘Show me your kitchen?’
Kelly-Lee showed it to her. The oven wasn’t even warm, but the place was amazingly well equipped.
‘Look at all this space!’ said Issy. ‘I work in a bunker! You have windows and everything.’
Kelly-Lee looked around dully. ‘Whatever.’
Issy looked in the enormous, state-of-the-art vacuum fridge. ‘Wow. I would
love
one of these.’
‘You don’t have a fridge?’
Issy ignored her, and took out a dozen eggs and some butter. She sniffed at it. ‘This butter is very average,’ she said. ‘It’s a bad start. But it will do.’ She added milk, then went to the large flour and sugar vats, and started pulling on an apron. Kelly-Lee regarded her in confusion.
‘Come on,’ said Issy. ‘We haven’t got all day. Well, we have, because it’s Christmas Day and neither of us has anywhere better to go. But let’s not think about that right now.’
Kelly-Lee listened, at first half-heartedly, then with closer attention, as Issy talked her patiently through the right temperature for creaming the butter and sugar, the importance of not overmixing, the right height for sieving the flour, which Kelly-Lee had never heard of.
Twenty minutes later,
they put four batches into the oven, and Issy started to unravel the secrets of butter icing.
‘Wait for this,’ she said. ‘You won’t believe the other muck you were churning out.’
She whipped the icing into a confection lighter than cream, and made Kelly-Lee taste it. ‘If you don’t taste, you don’t know what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘You have to taste all the time.’
‘But I won’t fit my jeans!’
‘If you don’t taste, you won’t have a job and you won’t be able to buy any jeans.’
The smell – for once, heavenly rather than overwhelmingly of baking soda – rose up in the kitchen, and instantly Issy felt calm and more relaxed. She was here. He was here, somewhere. It would all come good. She picked up the phone to call her mother.
‘What the
hell
?’ said Marian.
In Queens, the situation became clear. Issy turned up accompanied by two dozen of what her mother insisted on referring to as fairy cakes.
‘Darny!’ said Issy, as he flew into her arms. She wasn’t expecting that.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry. I was grumpy with you and you went away.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I was bossy and being like a mum and it was wrong and I hurt you.
I’m
sorry.’
Darny mumbled something.
Issy crouched down so she could hear. ‘I wish you were my mum,’ he said.
Issy didn’t say anything, just held him tight. Then she remembered.
‘You know why my bag is so damn heavy?’ she said. Darny shook his head. ‘I brought you a present.’
It had been a last-minute idea; a silly one as she was toting it around. But she could get something else for Louis.
Darny’s eyes widened when he saw it.
‘WOW!’ he said. All the other kids rushed towards it too.
‘MONSTER GARAGE!’
Issy smiled at her mother. ‘He’s only little,’ she murmured.
‘He is,’ said her mother. ‘Well. Now. This is a mess.’
Issy sat down with a large glass of kosher red, which she was developing a real fondness for. She shook her head.
‘I don’t think it is,’ she said wonderingly. ‘I really don’t. I can’t believe … he’d drop everything. Travel all that way. Oh, I wish I was there now. I wish I was.’
Then her phone rang.
‘Don’t say anything,’ said a strong, humorous, familiar voice. ‘And I’ll text you.’
‘OK … I … I …’
But he’d already hung up.
Issy had received a text
message with a simple street address on it – cryptic, but to the point. When she got there, first thing on Boxing Day morning, it was quiet, but already people were starting to queue. He wasn’t there. But if she’d learned anything, Issy thought, it was that she could no longer wait for Austin. Or anyone.
‘One, please,’ she said politely. She figured out her skate size in American and strapped on the black boots, then, wobbling slightly, walked out on to the ice. Gramps had used to love to skate; they’d built a municipal rink in Manchester in the fifties, and he liked to go round it with his hands insouciantly behind his back, a funny sight in his smart dark suit. Issy used to go with him sometimes, and he would take her by the hand and whirl her round. She loved it.
Slowly she rotated on the ice, the sun glinting off the surface crystals, 30 Rock
towering overhead, people running in, rushing back to work the day after Christmas. She looked around at the pink light glancing off the high buildings. It was, she thought, spectacular. Wonderful. She and New York had had a rocky start, but now … Lost in thought, she attempted a small spin, failed, then stumbled. A hand reached out and grabbed her.
‘Are you all right?’
She turned. For a moment, the sun was so bright she was dazzled and couldn’t see. But she could still make out the shape of him, there, in that long coat, back in the green scarf she had bought him which matched the green dress she was wearing.
‘Oh,’ was all she could say. Now she could see again, she noticed he looked very tired. But apart from that, he looked so very, very happy. ‘Oh.’
And then, balancing on their skates, they were completely and utterly wrapped up in one another, and Issy felt as if she was flying; rushing round and round like an ice dancer leaping through snow flurries, or racing down a snowy slope, or flying through the cold air faster than a jet plane.