My last attempt at lychee cupcakes was a semi-disaster. Only semi, because the cupcakes themselves were pretty good (or at least I thought they were), but the frosting was a disaster. I added too much liquid, and so it ended up being this weird, cottage cheese-like mess.
I haven’t had the best relationship with frosting. Before I took a cake decorating class, I actually used to never frost my cupcakes. People would tease me that they were muffins, not cupcakes. But it’s not the frosting that determines whether it’s a cupcake or muffin, dammit! It’s the proportion of flour, sugar, and fat. Cupcakes have a higher proportion of sugar and fat in relation to the other ingredients, compared to muffins. And so cupcakes feel more sinful.
Anyway, after I took that cake decorating class, I realized that making frosting is really not that hard. It’s basically just fat (butter or shortening), combined with a bunch of powdered sugar, some milk to thin it out, and some vanilla extract for flavor. The frosting we made for class was disgusting, I thought. It called for shortening but no butter, because shortening gives the frosting the stiffness it needs for us to do various tricks with decorating tools. I think shortening tastes like cardboard. The stuff is creepy, too. I mean, here’s this creamy substance that can sit on your shelf, unrefrigerated, literally for years. Well, since I wasn’t going to be doing anything fancy with the lychee frosting, I used butter instead of shortening. Butter just tastes so much better.
OK, so to recap, here’s the cupcake recipe. I didn’t make any changes from last time.
Lychee Cupcakes
3/4 cup butter (that’s one and a half sticks)
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 14-ounce can lychees (drain the fruit, save the syrup)
Here’s the batter. The butter and sugar are first creamed together, and then the eggs are added, followed by the vanilla extract. I added 7 tablespoons of the lychee syrup after that, but I had trouble getting the liquid to combine with the fat mixture. It wasn’t until I added the dry ingredients, along with the drained lychee fruit cut into pieces and coated in some of the flour, that everything came together.
Into some cupcake liners they go, since these are cupcakes after all.
They’re done after baking for 20 minutes in a 350F oven.
Here they are, naked. I think they’re fine like this, but since I didn’t want to be accused of making lychee muffins…
Lychee Frosting
1 stick butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons lychee syrup
Thankfully, this time the frosting came together into a creamy mixture, instead of falling apart. It was pretty soft and not stiff, but since I wasn’t piping anything, it didn’t matter to me.
After frosting. I don’t know how the bakeries make them look perfect. Well, I guess they are professionals…
I used an offset spatula, but I just can’t get them to look that pretty.
Not as strong of a lychee flavor as last time, with the decreased amount of lychee syrup in the frosting, but it still tasted like lychee.
I’d actually rather have whipped cream on top, I think. Frosting is a little too heavy. Whipped cream flavored with lychee sounds really good. Maybe next time…