{"id":81,"date":"2011-06-01T23:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T06:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/?p=81"},"modified":"2011-06-01T23:00:45","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T06:00:45","slug":"lychee-cupcakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/archives\/81","title":{"rendered":"Lychee Cupcakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I may have a slight lychee fetish. I did, after all, do two<\/a> consecutive<\/a> weeks of lychee cocktails. That sweet, tropical flavor is so irresistible. I wish I could bathe in lychee juice. Well, maybe not. That would get sticky. I learned that the hard way.<\/p>\n

So I decided to make some lychee cupcakes last weekend for Memorial Day. Lychee doesn’t particularly scream “remembering the men and women who died in war,” but you know, I like lychee. And cupcakes. I found the cupcake recipe here<\/a>. I just made cupcakes instead of a cake.<\/p>\n

Lychee Cupcakes<\/strong>
\n3\/4 cup butter (that’s one and a half sticks)
\n3\/4 cup sugar
\n2 eggs
\n2 teaspoons vanilla extract
\n2 cups all-purpose flour
\n1\/2 tablespoon baking powder
\n1\/4 teaspoon salt
\n1 14-ounce can lychees (drain the fruit, save the syrup)<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4535\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First, I chopped up the lychee fruit, leaving the syrup aside, and I took about a third of the flour and coated the lychee pieces so that they wouldn’t sink the bottom of the cupcakes.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4536\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I creamed together the butter and sugar, added the eggs and vanilla extract, and then added the dry ingredients, along with the lychee pieces from above. I also added 7 tablespoons of the lychee syrup into the batter.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4537\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And then the batter goes into some cupcake liners, as you might expect for a cupcake recipe.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4538\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After 20 minutes at 350F, they are done.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4539\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The cupcakes were very fragrant straight out of the oven. It smelled like lychee in my kitchen. Heavenly.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4540\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some people might say that a cupcake without frosting is just a muffin. I think they’re wrong. But still, I wanted frosting. So I made up a recipe.<\/p>\n

Lychee Frosting<\/strong>
\n1 stick butter
\n1 1\/2 cups powdered sugar
\n1\/4 cup lychee syrup
\n1 tablespoon Soho lychee liqueur<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4541\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I whipped the ingredients together with a hand mixer for the frosting.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4542\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I spread the frosting on the cupcakes. As you can see, the results were less than desirable.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_4543\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think I added too much liquid, which caused the frosting to have this odd texture. I thought they tasted good. The cupcakes and frosting both had a strong lychee flavor. I just need to decrease the amount of liquid in the frosting next time.<\/p>\n

It’s a difficult thing to get the right frosting texture without having it overwhelmed by powdered sugar. The only way I could get lychee flavor into the frosting was with lychee syrup and lychee liqueur, which are obviously both liquid. But more liquid ruins the consistency of the frosting. If I had some lychee powder, that would have solved the texture problem. Well, maybe next time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I may have a slight lychee fetish. I did, after all, do two consecutive weeks of lychee cocktails. That sweet, tropical flavor is so irresistible. I wish I could bathe in lychee juice. Well, maybe not. That would get sticky. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20,107],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baking","tag-cupcakes","tag-lychee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryotakahashi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}