A Retry of the Blood Orange Cupcakes

I was so bummed all day about last night's cupcakes. Despite my best googling efforts, I was unable to find anyone that has ever had the similar problem with a beige batter inexplicably turning blue-grey in the oven. My first efforts to blog about my baking were just sadly lacking, and it was almost an embarrassment being as I consider myself a better baker than producing moldy-looking cupcakes. So tonight I was determined to avenge these baking mishaps by straightening out the blood orange cake recipe.

My dad was in town for the night because he's working in my neighborhood these past few days, and after meeting him for a drink after work, I took him to Garden of Eden, one of my favorite places in Hoboken and also the best place to find exotic fruits and vegetables. I picked up a few more blood oranges, and we perused the wide array of produce. There are a lot of great cupcakes to be imagined out of all those different fruits.

My first change in the recipe was instead of adding the orange juice directly to the milk, I first added additional sugar and reduced it down to a syrup on low heat on the stove. I think the original recipe was too wet, and this helped cut some of that, plus add some sugar that was lacking in the original. Once this syrup cooled, I added it to the milk to comprise the wet ingredients. Other than that, the only change I made was to add some red and orange gel food color to the batter before the egg whites as a preventative measure against the grey. I would have preferred just the natural ingredients, but I wasn't about to serve a something that looked so awful (except to my coworker Kara today, but I gave her fair warning it wasn't supposed to look like that). The end result was a much, much better cupcake. Not only was the color much improved, but the orange taste was more pronounced and less bland.

These cupcakes are making the trek into the city with me tomorrow for work. I get some really weird looks when I walk onto my bus with my cupcake carrier. One girl in the streets of NYC followed me down a block yelling at my back "YO! Can I have some cupcakes?!?!" last time I brought cupcakes to work. Let's hope tomorrow's transport doesn't provoke that sort of anxiety again.

Wooooo...Finally a success!