Late night semi-impulsive baking - The Queen’s birthday cupcakes shared from Buckingham Palace’s bakers https://www.instagram.com/p/B_PstbZnaF2 . I halved the recipe, which made six cupcakes. There seems to be one error in the recipe, 150c (300F) is a very low baking temperature for a cake. After 18 minutes, the centers were semi-liquid, so I bumped up to 350F and 8 more minutes, to get something more cake-like. Another bug that turned into a feature, I didn't fully melt the dark chocolate bar before I added to the icing, but the result was delicious: a light chocolate buttercream with nibs of dark chocolate.
My results were Dance 10 Looks 3 cupcakes. If you follow the link to the Royal results, mine are definitely less professional. I think the low temperature is why I ended up with brownie-like cracked tops. Go with the usual North American cake baking temperature of 350F.
Dance 10: The recipe (especially made with cake flour) had a wonderful light crumb and a chocolate flavor that was both delicate and intense. I halved the recipe, which was easy, and for the finer English caster sugar, took American granulated and put it in my spice grinder for about 10 seconds. Longer than that and it's powdered sugar. The other option I saw online was that US granulated sugar is finer than UK granulated, and can work in cake recipes if you don't melt the butter, but instead cream it with the sugar (a standard method here).
Looks 3: As for my decorating skills, they leave a lot to be desired. But I rarely make cakes; I'm more of a bread and dough maker. An offset spatula really helped, as did little colored geegaws to distract. I think there's also a lesson somewhere here: whether in baking, politics or life. It's amazing what you can cover up with a little foundation, or in the case of the Queen's bakers, a full-on fondant mask.
