Last weekend while it was still rainy and not yet blazingly hot, I baked these cupcakes to use up the cream cheese frosting I made for some red velvet cupcakes I had baked the week before. (Cupcake-making can become a dangerously endless cycle, you know.) Now that it's blazingly hot, they are safely tucked in the fridge, but they are still delicious cold. There wasn't enough frosting to go around, but even the frostingless ones are good, especially as accompaniments to the lentils and rice I've been eating all week, another autumnal recipe I suddenly felt like making in the dead of summer.
I used this recipe, except I used about 1/3 less sugar and added some ground ginger for laughs. I also used fresh kabocha because there is no such thing as canned pumpkin in Japan. It was easier than I expected -- I just boiled and mashed up a 500-gram piece. For the frosting, I used this recipe with a few tablespoons of whipping cream beaten in for extra creaminess.
Funny thing about baking in Japan: the ovens are only big enough to bake 6 cupcakes at a time. This is actually less "funny" and more "annoying," especially when you are all sweaty and irritable, wondering if your bowl of cupcake batter is going to go bad sitting out for an hour in the hot kitchen. Tinier is cuter, it's true, but a cute oven is not necessarily better.
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Comments (6)
Yum! Those look so good! I stuffed up some cream-filled ones in my japanese wonder-oven last year, but these look much easier, and tasty!
I can totally sympathize with the small oven woes, too. Don't even think about baking cookies--that was the most time-intensive kitchen work I ever did!
Oh, and I love love love the name of your blog!!
Posted by molly! | July 28, 2006 9:47 AM
wow! those look incredible... we *love* all things pumpkin at this house! If only it were easier to find fresh pumpkin year-round in the US... I try to stock up the freezer in the fall, but I never seem to get enough to satisfy our cravings!
Posted by kelly | July 28, 2006 9:54 AM
ick, lentils and rice sounds disturbingly like rice and dahl. which i still cannot manage to stomach. but everything else looks delicious! mm...cream cheese frosting.
mom said she saw the picture of the totebag! can't wait to see it...
Posted by sonya | July 28, 2006 11:10 AM
Oh wow! These look soooo yummy! You took a wonderful photo of them. :)
Pumpkin *anything* is one of my favorite flavors. Mmmmmmmmmm.
I've never had Red velvet, but I've been wanting to try it so badly for ages now.
Again, YUM! :)
Posted by Sera | July 29, 2006 2:36 AM
Sonya and I will have to try your recipe in the fall. I understand the frustration of small ovens--compounded by power fluctuations and black-outs--the reason I didn't attempt souffles in India.
Posted by Joanna | August 1, 2006 3:04 AM
my husband spent a couple of years in japan - it's not just the ovens - aren't the washing machines tiny, too? he said it took all day to get the equivalent of a couple of american wash loads done. nice photo of the cupcakes! i want one!
Posted by kirsten | August 2, 2006 12:34 AM