Babycakes: Cupcake Maker Review
While tromping through our local wholesale grocery and everything else you may ever possibly need store I was drawn into a display of pastel pink and blue counter top gadgets. They had the form of the George Forman Grill , the same as that sandwich maker I asked for five Christmases ago. The sandwich maker is great, my mom loves her grill and this thing claims to make CUPCAKES! How bad can it be?
I should point out here that I love cake: big cake, little cake, cup cake, slice a cake, and as of today Babycakes.
Of course I got the pink one to go with my raging fifties fetish and proceeded to aisle 3354 for some cake mix. I rode home imagining myself surrounded by heaping plates of warm cupcakes. I unpacked my new clam shell style batter incendiary device and read the instructions: wipe down, make batter, fill reservoirs, close lid, check in five minutes. Wow that sounded tough.
Batter made, frosting made, Babycakes near a plug. Let the filling begin! I tried a soup ladle, too big, I tried a serving spoon, too big. I was dripping batter all over the place and then I formed a tandem way of using the spoon and ladle together that seemed to be the best way to go. (I’ve seen mixing/measuring cups with lids that allow you to pour store batter. Getting one is on my short list.) With all eight forms filled I closed the lid and let the anticipation peak.
Two minutes in steam started pouring out the sides of the machine. Not to worry further reading in the instruction manual says to expect just this sort of thing the first few times you use it. It will go away and will not have any harmful effect on your cupcakes. I’m not sure if I actually buy that or not but since I’m all about the cake I was willing to risk it. At seven minutes I checked them and to my surprise they were done! The smell of warm chocolate permeated the kitchen as I teased the eight little cakes from their nests and put them on a plate to cool.
I had not used cupcake papers. BIG MISTAKE! Seems the non-stick coating is only non stick to a point and that point is the one where a very thin film of slightly overdone cake stays behind when you lift out the mini masterpieces. Thus the second batch was a lot less happy about being pried from their comfy self warming home. By this point the machine was exceedingly hot and you really couldn’t touch it to clean it out so I unplugged it to cool while the guests and I spread frosting on the finished cakes and greedily consumed them.
After the machine cooled I cleaned it out and started over this time using the cupcake papers and everything went smoothly. This machine will also do tartlets and mini cheese cakes. It comes with a recipe book, piping bag with coupler and four decorating tips, and a crust cutter and tartlet form. I got mine at the local food warehouse club but I’ve been seeing them all over the place. For around $30 it’s a good buy.
