At Home: Cupcake Experiments

These cupcakes came to me in a dream. I was sleeping on a couch in Winnipeg in the middle of winter, and something about those uncomfortable circumstances had me dreaming up deserts.

And here they are in the flesh (so to speak...)

Lemon Cupcakes with Blueberry Filling
&
Earl Grey Icing

Having dreamt these into existence, I wasn't sure what to expect. But it turns out that making fruit-filled cupcakes is super easy and delicious!

I took my favourite vanilla cupcake recipe and added the zest and juice of one lemon to get a simple batter. My recipe for vanilla cake is so easy and takes so few ingredients that this was much easier and simpler that using an actual lemon cake recipe, and this way you have more control over how strong you want the lemon flavour to be.  

I found my vanilla cake recipe here a few years ago and have never needed another. (Although you do need to couple the recipe to make a two-layer cake, but that's another topic)

I filled each cupcake cup half full and spooned in a healthy dollop of blueberry jam. 

Next, I simply filled each cup to the top with the remaining cake batter, and baked it all according to the original recipe.

before

after

This is when I celebrated! It worked! I didn't worry about the little bits of jam showing through the tops because next up was the icing...

My mom taught me how to make icing when I was a little kid. It was probably one of the first recipes in my baking arsenal, and it's definitely one of the easiest. The only downside is that I've never used a written recipe which makes it hard to share with others... but the upside is that the only way to know if it's right is to taste it!

To make buttercream icing, throw some butter and icing sugar into a bowl and mix until creamy. Keep tasting and adjusting the butter/sugar ratio until it tastes right. The great thing about this recipe is that if you accidentally add to much of one ingredient you can balance it out by adding more of another. You'll just end up with more icing overall, but that's a good thing because it freezes super well! Next, add a little milk or cream until it's perfectly spreadable. For vanilla icing, add vanilla. For chocolate, add cocoa powder. 

But what to do for Earl Grey?

I started by making some Earl Grey tea and adding to the icing instead of milk or cream. This got it to the right texture, but it didn't have enough flavour so I threw in the tea itself. It tasted right in the bowl and I kind of liked the fun texture it gave tops of the cupcakes. 

delicious!

The only thing was that once the icing was on the cupcakes the tea flavour didn't come through nearly as much. It was too subtle compared to the lemon and blueberry. Next time I'll try making a syrupy Earl Grey reduction to strengthen the flavours. Stay tuned for more culinary adventures...

King & Simcoe : The Toronto Symphony Orchestra

When I was maybe six years old, my parents took me to the edge of the orchestra pit at the theatre so I could say hello to a family friend and his bass. I remember feeling confused. Why do they make him sit in the dark? What else was down there? What if I fall in?

Even after almost two decades, the intricacies of an orchestral performance remained a mystery. As a frequent theatre-goer and an occasional patron of live dance, music was always heard and not seen. Any live music I saw involved guitars, beer, and musicians dressed in plaid, not tails. Until last night that is, when my memories of a darkened orchestra pit came to life and finally took centre stage under the bright lights of Roy Thomson Hall at the Toronto Symphony.

My first symphony performance included featured artists Joshua Bell on violin, Edgar Meyer on double bass, and conductor Peter Oundjian. The highlighted piece of the evening was a composition by Meyer himself : Concerto for Violin and Double Bass, which placed the Symphony's esteemed guests well at the forefront.

I first heard of Joshua Bell when someone told me a story about him busking on the Washington Metro System. Bell was already an internationally acclaimed violinist when he took up his bow for an audience of commuters, playing an anonymous 45 minute set including Bach's D minor Chaconne (which the more musically inclined call "one of the peaks of the solo violin repertoire") [source]. According to The Guardian, only seven people out of 1097 stopped to listen for more than a minute and Bell earned a mere $32 and change. For the full article click here.

Even as an orchestral neophyte, it's easy to see that Bell is phenomenal. So I ask myself, would I have stopped to listen on that subway? I hope so. What if I'd been late for work? Probably not. Would I have missed an incredible performance? Absolutely.

Before going to the symphony I sometimes wondered why people paid so much money to watch orchestras perform live. Isn't the music supposed to be about the sound anyway? What's the point of spending all that money to watch something that it just supposed to be listened to? Because let's face it, most orchestras don't include the witty banter and raw sex appeal of a mainstream indie-rock concert. But, as always, the virtues of live performance never disappoint. Witnessing the dexterity, speed, synchronicity, and talent it takes to make a piece of classical music come alive is an experience that cannot be enjoyed by the ears alone. It took seeing the music performed live for me to truly appreciate the beauty of a symphony orchestra. And if I ever see a performer of that caliber on the subway, I think that now I'll know that it's worth it to stop and watch.

Pro Tip for anyone wanting to check out the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on a budget : visit TSoundcheck for $14 tickets!

My last piece of advice : you can't pick up these tickets at the regular box office. You have to go down past the entrances to a special line further south, where your tickets will be waiting next to a big "Soundcheck" sign. Despite the sign being huge, you can't see it from the regular box office entrance. My one problem with Roy Thomson Hall was crowd control. There were way too many people in all sorts of criss-crossing lines throughout the box office, and no one thought to mention that Soundcheck tickets were in another line all together... that would have definitely have helped with traffic flow and gotten a large number of people out of the way and into their seats faster.